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The prince of Wales's garden-party, and other stories
The prince of Wales's gardenparty and other stories Author:J. H. Riddell 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: CAPTAIN MAT'S WAGEB. "I HE wind was howling up Carrickfergus - Lough. It had for days previously been blowing steadily from the north-east, and now there was ... more »such a gale rushing past the Gobbins on the one side and Donaghadee on the other, outward-bound vessels did not care to tempt that which the Channel might have in store for them, but lay snug in Belfast Harbour, or, lower down the Lough, rode at anchor as near shore as was safe and practicable. Good fires, good company, good liquor, and a roof over his head will, however, go far to make a man comfortable in almost any weather, and on that stormy night, when it was blowing great guns along a treacherous coast, Mr. Peters, known to all in that country side as " the gauger," seated in the best parlour of widow Campbell's public-house, at Eden, near Carrickfergus, certainly did not enjoy the merits of a particularly strong tumbler of punch any the less because the waves in the Lough weretossing like mad creatures, and there was no likelihood of any change in the weather, unless indeed that change might be for the worse, for twelve hours, at any rate. In such a gale, and with such a sea running, there was not a man in the north who would even think of trying to run a cargo, unless indeed it might be Captain Mat; and there in the flesh, and a good deal of it, sat Captain Mat before him partaking of his " tumbler" also, and judiciously abstaining from praising too loudly whisky which he was well aware had never paid the king sixpence. The habits of all ranks were different then from what they are now. Life was simpler—no better perhaps, and probably not much worse than it is at the present time, but certainly not fettered by such hard and fast rules of expediency and propriety as harass the souls of easy-going people at thi...« less