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Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a well known English novelist in the 19th century, and he's been immortalized for coining famous phrases like "pursuit of the almighty dollar" and "the pen is mightier than the sword".
In which the history opens with a description of the social manners, habits, and amusements of the English People, as exhibited in an immemorial National Festivity.-Characters to be commemorated in the history, introduced and graphically portrayed, with a nasological illustration.-Original suggestions as to the idiosyncrasies engendered by trades and callings, with other matters worthy of note, conveyed in artless dialogue after the manner of Herodotus, Father of History (mother unknown).
It was a summer fair in one of the prettiest villages in Surrey. The main street was lined with booths, abounding in toys, gleaming crockery, gay ribbons, and gilded ginger bread. Farther on, where the street widened into the ample village-green, rose the more pretending fabrics which lodged the attractive forms of the Mermaid, the Norfolk Giant; the Pig-faced Lady, the Spotted Boy, and the Calf with Two Heads; while high over even these edifices, and occupying the most conspicuous vantage- ground, a lofty stage promised to rural playgoers the "Grand Melodramatic Performance of The Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's Child." Music, lively if artless, resounded on every side,-drums, fifes, penny- whistles, cat-calls, and a hand-organ played by a dark foreigner, from the height of whose shoulder a cynical but observant monkey eyed the hubbub and cracked his nuts.
It was now sunset,-the throng at the fullest,-an animated, joyous scene. The, day had been sultry; no clouds were to be seen, except low on the western horizon, where they stretched, in lengthened ridges of gold and purple, like the border-land between earth and sky. The tall elms on the green were still, save, near the great stage, one or two, upon which had climbed young urchins, whose laughing faces peered forth, here and there, from the foliage trembling under their restless movements.
Amidst the crowd, as it streamed saunteringly along, were two spectators; strangers to the place, as was notably proved by the attention they excited, and the broad jokes their dress and appearance provoked from the rustic wits,-jokes which they took with amused good-humour, and sometimes retaliated with a zest which had already made them very popular personages. Indeed, there was that about them which propitiated liking. They were young; and the freshness of enjoyment was so visible in their faces, that it begot a sympathy, and wherever they went, other faces brightened round them.
One of the two whom we have thus individualized was of that enviable age, ranging from five-and-twenty to seven-and-twenty, in which, if a man cannot contrive to make life very pleasant,-pitiable indeed must be the state of his digestive organs. But you might see by this gentleman's countenance that if there were many like him, it would be a worse world for the doctors. His cheek, though not highly coloured, was yet ruddy and clear; his hazel eyes were lively and keen; his hair, which escaped in loose clusters from a jean shooting-cap set jauntily on a well-shaped head, was of that deep sunny auburn rarely seen but in persons of vigorous and hardy temperament. He was good-looking on the whole, and would have deserved the more flattering epithet of handsome, but for his nose, which was what the French call "a nose in the air,"-not a nose supercilious, not a nose provocative, as such noses mostly are, but a nose decidedly in earnest to make the best of itself and of things in general,-a nose that would push its way up in life, but so pleasantly that the most irritable fingers would never itch to lay hold of it. With such a nose a man might play the violoncello, marry for love, or even write poetry, and yet not go to the dogs.
Never would he stick in the mud so long as he followed that nose in the air.
By the help of that nose this gentleman wore a black velveteen jacket of foreign cut; a mustache and imperial (then much rarer in England than they have been since the Siege of Sebastopol); and yet left you perfectly convinced that he was an honest Englishman, who had not only no designs on your pocket, but would not be easily duped by any designs upon his own.
The companion of the personage thus sketched might be somewhere about seventeen; but his gait, his air, his lithe, vigorous frame, showed a manliness at variance with the boyish bloom of his face. He struck the eye much more than his elder comrade. Not that he was regularly handsome,-far from it; yet it is no paradox to say that he was beautiful, at least, few indeed were the women who would not have called him so. His hair, long like his friend's, was of a dark chestnut, with gold gleaming through it where the sun fell, inclining to curl, and singularly soft and silken in its texture. His large, clear, dark-blue, happy eyes were fringed with long ebon lashes, and set under brows which already wore the expression of intellectual power, and, better still, of frank courage and open loyalty. His complexion was fair, and somewhat pale, and his lips in laughing showed teeth exquisitely white and even. But though his profile was clearly cut, it was far from the Greek ideal; and he wanted the height of stature which is usually considered essential to the personal pretensions of the male sex. Without being positively short, he was still under middle height, and from the compact development of his proportions, seemed already to have attained his full growth. His dress, though not foreign, like his comrade's, was peculiar: a broad- brimmed straw hat, with a wide blue ribbon; shirt collar turned down, leaving the throat bare; a dark-green jacket of thinner material than cloth; white trousers and waistcoat completed his costume. He looked like a mother's darling,-perhaps he was one.
Scratch across his back went one of those ingenious mechanical contrivances familiarly in vogue at fairs, which are designed to impress upon the victim to whom they are applied, the pleasing conviction that his garment is rent in twain.
The boy turned round so quickly that he caught the arm of the offender,- a pretty village-girl, a year or two younger than himself. "Found in the act, sentenced, punished," cried he, snatching a kiss, and receiving a gentle slap. "And now, good for evil, here's a ribbon for you; choose."
The girl slunk back shyly, but her companions pushed her forward, and she ended by selecting a cherry-coloured ribbon, for which the boy paid carelessly, while his elder and wiser friend looked at him with grave, compassionate rebuke, and grumbled out,-"Dr. Franklin tells us that once in his life he paid too dear for a whistle; but then he was only seven years old, and a whistle has its uses. But to pay such a price for a scratch-back!-Prodigal! Come along."
As the friends strolled on, naturally enough all the young girls who wished for ribbons, and were possessed of scratch-backs, followed in their wake. Scratch went the instrument, but in vain.
"Lasses," said the elder, turning sharply upon them his nose in the air, "ribbons are plentiful,-shillings scarce; and kisses, though pleasant in private, are insipid in public. What, still! Beware! know that, innocent as we seem, we are women-eaters; and if you follow us farther, you are devoured! "So saying, he expanded his jaws to a width so preternaturally large, and exhibited a row of grinders so formidable, that the girls fell back in consternation. The friends turned down a narrow alley between the booths, and though still pursued by some adventurous and mercenary spirits, were comparatively undisturbed as they threaded their way along the back of the booths, and arrived at last on the village-green, and in front of the Great Stage.
"Oho, Lionel!" quoth the elder friend; "Thespian and classical,-worth seeing, no doubt." Then turning to a grave cobbler in leathern apron, who was regarding with saturnine interest the motley figures ranged in front of the curtain as the Drumatis Persona, he said, "You seem attracted, sir; you have probably already witnessed the performance." "Yes," returned the Cobbler; "this is the third day, and to-morrow's the last. I are n't missed once yet, and I sha' n't miss; but it are n't what it was a while back."
"'That is sad; but then the same thing is said of everything by everybody who has reached your respectable age, friend. Summers, and suns, stupid old watering-places, and pretty young women, `are n't what they were a while back.' If men and things go on degenerating in this way, our grandchildren will have a dull time of it."
The Cobbler eyed the young man, and nodded approvingly. He had sense enough to comprehend the ironical philosophy of the reply; and our Cobbler loved talk out of the common way. "You speaks truly and cleverly, sir. But if old folks do always say that things are worse than they were, ben't there always summat in what is always said? I'm for the old times; my neighbour, Joe Spruce, is for the new, and says we are all a-progressing. But he 's a pink; I 'm a blue."
"You are a blue?" said the boy Lionel; "I don't understand."
"Young 'un, I'm a Tory,-that's blue; and Spruce is a Rad,-that's pink!
And, what is more to the purpose, he is a tailor, and I'm a cobbler."
"Aha!" said the elder, with much interest; "more to the purpose is it?
How so?"
The Cobbler put the forefinger of the right hand on the forefinger of the left; it is the gesture of a man about to ratiocinate or demonstrate, as Quintilian, in his remarks on the oratory of fingers, probably observes; or if he has failed to do so, it is a blot in his essay.
"You see, sir," quoth the Cobbler, "that a man's business has a deal to do with his manner of thinking. Every trade, I take it, has ideas as belong to it. Butchers don't see life as bakers do; and if you talk to a dozen tallow-chandlers, then to a dozen blacksmiths, you will see tallow- chandlers are peculiar, and blacksmiths too."
"You are a keen observer," said he of the jean cap, admiringly; "your remark is new to me; I dare say it is true."
"Course it is; and the stars have summat to do with it; for if they order a man's calling, it stands to reason that they order a man's mind to fit it. Now, a tailor sits on his board with others, and is always a-talking with 'em, and a-reading the news; therefore he thinks, as his fellows do, smart and sharp, bang up to the day, but nothing 'riginal and all his own, like. But a cobbler," continued the man of leather, with a majestic air, "sits by hisself, and talks with hisself; and what he thinks gets into his head without being put there by another man's tongue."
"You enlighten me more and more," said our friend with the nose in the air, bowing respectfully,-"a tailor is gregarious, a cobbler solitary. The gregarious go with the future, the solitary stick by the past. I understand why you are a Tory and perhaps a poet."
"Well, a bit of one," said the Cobbler, with an iron smile. "And many 's the cobbler who is a poet,-or discovers marvellous things in a crystal, -whereas a tailor, sir" (spoken with great contempt), "only sees the upper leather of the world's sole in a newspaper."
Here the conversation was interrupted by a sudden pressure of the crowd towards the theatre. The two young friends looked up, and saw that the new object of attraction was a little girl, who seemed scarcely ten years old, though in truth she was about two years older. She had just emerged from behind the curtain, made her obeisance to the crowd, and was now walking in front of the stage with the prettiest possible air of infantine solemnity. "Poor little thing!" said Lionel. "Poor little thing!" said the Cobbler. And had you been there, my reader, ten to one but you would have said the same. And yet she was attired in white satin, with spangled flounces and a tinsel jacket; and she wore a wreath of flowers (to be sure, the flowers were not real) on her long fair curls, with gaudy bracelets (to be sure, the stones were mock) on her slender arms. Still there was something in her that all this finery could not vulgarize; and since it could not vulgarize, you pitied her for it. She had one of those charming faces that look straight into the hearts of us all, young and old. And though she seemed quite self- possessed, there was no effrontery in her air, but the ease of a little lady, with a simple child's unconsciousness that there was anything in her situation to induce you to sigh, "Poor thing!"
"You should see her act, young gents," said the Cobbler: "she plays uncommon. But if you had seen him as taught her,-seen him a year ago."
"Who's he?"
"Waife, sir; mayhap you have heard speak of Waife?"
"I blush to say, no."
"Why, he might have made his fortune at Common Garden; but that's a long story. Poor fellow! he's broke down now, anyhow. But she takes care of him, little darling: God bless thee!" and the Cobbler here exchanged a smile and a nod with the little girl, whose face brightened when she saw him amidst the crowd.
"By the brush and pallet of Raphael!" cried the elder of the young men, "before I am many hours older I must have that child's head!"
"Her head, man!" cried the Cobbler, aghast.
"In my sketch-book. You are a poet,-I a painter. You know the little girl?"
"Don't I! She and her grandfather lodge with me; her grandfather,- that's Waife,-marvellous man! But they ill-uses him; and if it warn't for her, he'd starve. He fed them all once: he can feed them no longer; he'd starve. That's the world: they use up a genus, and when it falls on the road, push on; that's what Joe Spruce calls a-progressing. But there's the drum! they're a-going to act; won't you look in, gents?"
"Of course," cried Lionel,-"of course. And, hark ye, Vance, we'll toss up which shall be the first to take that little girl's head."
"Murderer in either sense of the word!" said Vance, with a smile that would have become Correggio if a tyro had offered to toss up which should be the first to paint a cherub.
You must often have felt, gentlemen, -- each and all of you, -- especially when sitting alone at night, a strange and unaccountable sensation of coldness and awe creep over you; your blood curdles, and the heart stands still; the limbs shiver, the hair bristles; you are afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darker corners of the room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly is at hand. Presently the whole spell, if I may so call it, passes away and you are ready to laugh at your own weakness.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a well known English novelist in the 19th century, and he's been immortalized for coining famous phrases like "pursuit of the almighty dollar" and "the pen is mightier than the sword".
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a well known English novelist in the 19th century, and he's been immortalized for coining famous phrases like "pursuit of the almighty dollar" and "the pen is mightier than the sword".
Rena got into an entanglement with a big shot when she was drunk one night. She needed Waylen's help while he was drawn to her youthful beauty. As such, what was supposed to be a one-night stand progressed into something serious. All was well until Rena discovered that Waylen's heart belonged to another woman. When his first love returned, he stopped coming home, leaving Rena all alone for many nights. She put up with it until she received a check and farewell note one day. Contrary to how Waylen expected her to react, Rena had a smile on her face as she bid him farewell. "It was fun while it lasted, Waylen. May our paths never cross. Have a nice life." But as fate would have it, their paths crossed again. This time, Rena had another man by her side. Waylen's eyes burned with jealousy. He spat, "How the hell did you move on? I thought you loved only me!" "Keyword, loved!" Rena flipped her hair back and retorted, "There are plenty of fish in the sea, Waylen. Besides, you were the one who asked for a breakup. Now, if you want to date me, you have to wait in line." The next day, Rena received a credit alert of billions and a diamond ring. Waylen appeared again, got down on one knee, and uttered, "May I cut in line, Rena? I still want you."
Charlee was left at the altar and became a laughingstock. She tried to keep her head high, but ultimately lost it when she received a sex tape of her fiance and her half-sister. Devastated, she ended up spending a wild night with a hot stranger. It was supposed to be one-time thing, but he kept popping up, helping her with projects and revenge, all while flirting with her constantly. Charlee soon realized that it was nice having him around, until her ex suddenly appeared at her door, begging for another chance. Her tycoon lover asked, “Who will you choose? Think carefully before you answer.”
6 years ago, Lydia suffered a brutal betrayal orchestrated by her own husband and step-sister, who drugged her and framed her. In a twist of fate, she ended up having a one-night stand with a stranger. Don't even remember what he looked like. Later, in the throes of death, she discovered the truth about her mother's death all those years ago. In the blink of an eye, she lost everything. 6 years later, Lydia returned with her genius son, vowing to exact revenge on all her enemies! Little did she know, she encountered an incredibly familiar man at the airport! *** The man was briskly pushing open the door to the restroom, heading to the urinal. Even with such a mundane action, he did it with unparalleled elegance and grace. Lydia, following him in a daze, saw his fierce lower body and suddenly snapped back to reality. She let out a high-pitched scream, instinctively covering her eyes with her hands, her cheeks flushed, and stood there stiffly, unsure of what to do. Lambert furrowed his brows slightly but remained calm as he continued to relieve himself. The sound of water hitting the urinal made Lydia's face even redder. She angrily shouted, "You pervert!" Little did Lydia know that Lambert, seeing her in this state, had a flicker of recognition in his eyes. Memories from many years ago flashed through his mind, and his heart couldn't help but stir. It was her!
After my family's sinister plots collapsed, they lashed out at me, taking their rage to a violent level. Cornered and desperate, I married Jaxton—the town's most sought-after bachelor—due to an unplanned pregnancy. Love had no part in this marriage; I assumed he married me purely out of responsibility, his heart belonging elsewhere. The moment I chose to let him go and turned to leave, he grabbed me and pinned me down hard. "Jaxton, you promised you'd never touch me!" I snapped, glaring fiercely. His eyes flashed arrogantly as he leaned closer. "You're the one who started this!"
"Sign the divorce papers and get out!" Leanna got married to pay a debt, but she was betrayed by her husband and shunned by her in-laws. Seeing that her efforts were in vain, she agreed to divorce and claimed her half of the properties. With her purse plump from the settlement, Leanna enjoyed her newfound freedom. The constant harassment from her ex's mistress never fazed her. She took back her identities as top hacker, champion racer, medical professor, and renowned jewelry designer. Then someone discovered her secret. Matthew smiled. "Will you have me as your next husband?"
They don't know I'm a girl. They all look at me and see a boy. A prince. Their kind purchase humans like me for their lustful desires. And, when they stormed into our kingdom to buy my sister, I intervened to protect her. I made them take me too. The plan was to escape with my sister whenever we found a chance. How was I to know our prison would be the most fortified place in their kingdom? I was supposed to be on the sidelines. The one they had no real use for. The one they never meant to buy. But then, the most important person in their savage land-their ruthless beast king-took an interest in the "pretty little prince." How do we survive in this brutal kingdom, where everyone hates our kind and shows us no mercy? And how does someone, with a secret like mine, become a lust slave? . AUTHOR'S NOTE. This is a dark romance-dark, mature content. Highly rated 18+ Expect triggers, expect hardcore. If you're a seasoned reader of this genre, looking for something different, prepared to go in blindly not knowing what to expect at every turn, but eager to know more anyway, then dive in! . From the author of the international bestselling book: "The Alpha King's Hated Slave."