The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell : $b a gentleman, who, tho' deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight, with their future contingencies of fortune
General
The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell : $b a gentleman, who, tho' deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight, with their future contingencies of fortune
Campbell, Duncan, 1680?-1730; Deaf people -- Great Britain -- Biography; Occultism -- Early works to 1900; Prophets -- Great Britain -- Biography
Well, to Mr. Campbell's they accordingly came; and after Mr. Saxon, in
deference to his wife's desire, had paid our predictor a handsome
complement of gold, Mr. Duncan Campbell saluted him in as grateful a
manner, with the assurance that there was in Kent a little country
house, with some lands appertaining to it, that was his in right of his
wife; that he had the house, as it were, before his eyes, that though he
had never substantially seen it, nor been near the place where it stood,
he had seen it figuratively as if in exact painting and sculpture; that
particularly it had four green trees before the door, from whence he was
positive, that if Mr. Saxon went with him in quest of it, he should find
it out, and know it as well the moment he come near it, as if he had
been an inhabitant in it all his life.
Mr. Saxon, though somewhat of an unbeliever, yet must naturally wish to
find it true, you may be sure, and yet partly doubting the event, and
partly pleased with the visionary promise of a fortune he never
expected, laughed very heartily at the oddness of the adventure, and
said he would consider whether it would not savour too much of
Quixotism, to be at the expense of a journey on such frolics, and on
such a chimerical foundation of airy hopes, and that then he would call
again and let Mr. Campbell know his mind upon that point.
In every company he came into, it served for laughter and diversion;
they all, however, agreed it was worth his while, since the journey
would not be very expensive, to go it by way of frolic. His wife, one
morning, saying that she did remember some talk of a house, and such
things as Mr. Campbell had described, put him forward upon the
adventure; and upon Mr. Saxon's proposing it to his brother Barnard, Mr.
Barnard favoured the proposal as a joke, and agreed upon the country
ramble. They came on horseback to Mr. Campbell's with a third horse, on
which the dumb predictor was mounted, and so on they jogged into Kent,
towards Sevenoaks, being the place which he described. The first day
they set out was on a Saturday morning in June, and about five that
afternoon they arrived at the Black Bull, at Sevenoaks, in Kent. It
being a delicate evening, they took an agreeable walk up a fine hill,
gracefully adorned with woods, to an old seat of the Earl of Dorset.
Meeting by the way with an old servant of the earl, one Perkin, he
offered Mr. Barnard, who it seems was his old acquaintance, to give them
all a sight of the fine ancient seat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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