The Maid of SkerBlackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
General
The Maid of Sker
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
Foundlings -- Fiction; Romance fiction; Wales -- Fiction
Deeply surprised as I was to find how accurately, upon the whole, this
paper had got the story of it--for not much less than half was true--it
was at first a puzzle to me how they could have learned so much about
myself, and the valiant manner in which I intended to behave, but found
no opportunity. Until I remembered that a man, possessing a very bad
hat, had requested the honour of introducing himself to me, in my own
house, and had begged me by all means to consider myself at home, and to
allow him to send for refreshment, which I would not hear of twice, but
gave him what I thought up to his mark, according to manners and
appearance. And very likely he made a mistake between my description of
what I was ready, as well as desirous, to carry out, and what I bodily
did go through, ay, and more, to the back of it. However, I liked this
account very much, and resolved to encourage yet more warmly the next
man who came to me with a bad hat. What, then, was my disgust at
perceiving, at the very foot of that fine description, a tissue of stuff
like the following!
"_Another account_ [from a highly-esteemed correspondent].--The great
invasion of sand, which has for so many generations spread such wide
devastation, and occasioned such grievous loss to landowners on the
western coast of Glamorganshire, made another great stride in the storm
of Sabbath-day, July 11. A vessel of considerable burthen, named the
Andalusia, and laden with negroes, most carefully shipped for conversion
among the good merchants of Bristol, appears to have been swallowed up
by the sand; and our black fellow-creatures disappeared. It is to be
feared, from this visitation of an ever-benign Providence, that few of
them had been converted, and that the burden of their sins disabled them
from swimming. If one had been snatched as a brand from the burning,
gladly would we have recorded it, and sent him forward prayerfully for
sustenance on his way to the Lord. But the only eyewitness (whose word
must never be relied upon when mammon enters into the conflict), a
worn-out but well-meaning sailor, who fattens upon the revenue of an
overburdened country--this man ran away so fast that he saw hardly
anything. The Lord, however, knoweth His own in the days of visitation.
A little child came ashore alive, and a dead child bearing a coronet.
Many people have supposed that the pusillanimous sailor aforesaid knows
much more than he will tell. It is not for us to enter into that part of
the question. Duty, however, compels us to say, that any one desiring to
have a proper comprehension of this heavy but righteous judgment--for He
doeth all things well--cannot do better than apply to the well-known
horologist of Bridgend, Hezekiah Perkins, also to the royal family."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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