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The adventures of Philip on his way through the world
The adventures of Philip on his way through the world Author:William Makepeace Thackeray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Pulvis et Umbra Sumiis. "THE first and only Earl of Ringwood has submitted to the fate which peers and commoners are alike destined to undergo. ... more »Hastening to his magnificent seat of Whipham Market, where l;e proposed to entertain an illustrious Christmas party, his Lordship left London scarcely recovered from an attack of gout to which he has been for many years a martyr. The disease must have flown to his stomach, and suddenly mastered him. At Turreys Regum, thirty miles from his own princely habitation, where he had been accustomed to dine on his almost royal progresses to his home, he was already in a state of dreadful suffering, to which his attendants did not pay the attention which his condition ought to have excited : for when labouring under this most painful malady his outcries were loud, and his language and demeanour exceedingly violent. He angrily refused to send for medical aid at Turreys, and insisted on continuing his journey homewards. He was one of the old school, who never would enter a railway (though his fortune was greatly increased by the passage of the railway through his property) ; and his own horses always met him at ' Popper's Tavern,' an obscure hamlet, seventeen miles from his princely seat. He made no sign on arriving at 'Popper's,' and spoke no word, to the now serious alarm of his servants. When they came to light his carriage- lamps and look into his postchaise, the lord of many thousand acres, and, according to report, of immense wealth, was dead. The journey from Turreys had been the last stage of a long, a prosperous, and, if not a famous, at least a notorious and magnificent career. "The late John George, Earl and Baron Ringwood and Viscount Cinqbars, entered into public life at the dangerous period before the French Revoluti...« less