Philip Winwood: A Sketch of the Domestic History of an American Captain in the War of Independence; Embracing Events that Occurred between and during the Years 1763 and 1786, in New York and London: written by His Enemy in War, Herbert Russell, Lieutenant in the Loyalist Forces.Stephens, Robert Neilson
History
Philip Winwood: A Sketch of the Domestic History of an American Captain in the War of Independence; Embracing Events that Occurred between and during the Years 1763 and 1786, in New York and London: written by His Enemy in War, Herbert Russell, Lieutenant in the Loyalist Forces.
Stephens, Robert Neilson
United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction
"Come back," called his father, not risking his dignity in a doubtful
pursuit, but using such a tone that few would dare to disobey the
command.
"Suppose I don't choose to come back," answered Ned, to whose head the
very devil had now certainly mounted. "Maybe there's other places to
go to, where one doesn't have to stand by and see an upstart beggar
preferred to himself, and put in his place, and fed on the best while
he's lying hungry in his dark room."
"If there's another place for you, I'd advise you to find it," said
Mr. Faringfield, after a moment's reflection.
"Oh, I'll find it," was the reply; and then came what Master Ned knew
would be the crowning taunt and insult to his father. "If it comes to
the worst, I know how I can get to England, where I'd rather be,
anyway."
There was a reason why Mr. Faringfield's face turned dark as a
thunder-cloud at this. You must know, first, that in him alone was
embodied the third generation of colonial Faringfields. The founder of
the American branch of the family, having gone pretty nearly to the
dogs at home, and got into close quarters with the law, received from
his people the alternative of emigrating to Virginia or suffering
justice to take its course. Tossing up his last sixpence, he
indifferently observed, on its coming down, that it lay in favour of
Virginia. So he chose emigration, and was shipped off, upon condition
that if he ever again set foot in England he should be forthwith
turned over to the merciless law. His relations, as he perceived,
cherished the hope that he would die of a fever likely to be caught on
the piece of marshy land in Virginia which they, in a belief that it
was worthless, had made over to him. Pondering on this on the voyage,
and perhaps having had his fill of the flesh and the devil, he
resolved to disappoint his family. And, to make short a very long
story of resolution and toil, he did so, becoming at last one of the
richest tobacco-planters in the province.
He might now have returned to England with safety; but his resentment
against the people who had exiled him when they might have compounded
with justice otherwise, extended even to their country, which he no
longer called his, and he abode still by the condition of his
emigration. He married a woman who had her own special reasons for
inimical feelings toward the English authorities, which any one may
infer who is familiar with one phase (though this was not as large a
phase as English writers seem to think) of the peopling of Virginia.
Although she turned over a new leaf in the province, and seems to have
been a model wife and parent, she yet retained a sore heart against
the mother country. The feeling of these two was early inculcated into
the minds of their children, and their eldest son, in whom it amounted
almost to a mania, transmitted it on to his own successor, our Mr.
Faringfield of Queen Street.
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