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The life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell
The life and adventures of Mr Duncan Campbell Author:Daniel Defoe 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: CHAP. II. After the death of Mr. Duncan Campbell's mother in Lapland, his father, Archibald, returned with his son to Scotland. His second marriage, and how h... more »is son was taught to write and read. Mr. Archibald Campbell, having buried his Lapland lady, returned to Scotland, and brought over with him his son Mr. Duncan Campbell. By that time he had been a year in his own country he married a second wife; a lady whom I had known very well for some years, and then I first saw the boy; but, as they went into the western islands, I saw them not again in three years. She being, quite contrary to the cruel way much in use among stepmothers, very fond of the boy, was accustomed to say, she did, and would always think him her own son. The child came to be about four years of age, as she has related to me the story since, and not able to speak one word, nor to hear any noise; the father of him used to be mightily oppressed with grief, and complain heavily to his new wife, who was no less perplexed, that a boy so pretty, the son of so particular a woman, which he had made his wife, by strange accidents and adventures, and a child coming into the world with so many amazing circumstances attending his birth, should lose those precious senses by which alone the social commerce of mankind is upheld and maintained, and that he should be deprived of all advantages of education, which could raise him to the character of being the great man that so manyconcurring incidents at his nativity promised and betokened he would be. One day, a learned divine, who was of the university of Glasgow, but had visited Oxford, and been acquainted with the chief men of science there, happening to be in conversation with the mother-in- law of this child, she related to him her son's misfortunes, with so many m...« less