The pocket George Borrow : $b passages chosen from the works of George BorrowBorrow, George
General
The pocket George Borrow : $b passages chosen from the works of George Borrow
Borrow, George
Authors, English -- 19th century; Borrow, George, 1803-1881 -- Selections
'He is a great fool who is ever dishonest in England. Any person who has
any natural gift, and everybody has some natural gift, is sure of finding
encouragement in this noble country of ours, provided he will but exhibit
it. I had not walked more than three miles before I came to a
wonderfully high church steeple, which stood close by the road; I looked
at the steeple, and going to a heap of smooth pebbles which lay by the
roadside, I took up some, and then went into the churchyard, and placing
myself just below the tower, my right foot resting on a ledge, about two
feet from the ground, I, with my left hand--being a left-handed person,
do you see--flung or chucked up a stone, which lighting on the top of the
steeple, which was at least a hundred and fifty feet high, did there
remain. After repeating this feat two or three times, I "hulled" up a
stone, which went clean over the tower, and then one, my right foot still
on the ledge, which rising at least five yards above the steeple, did
fall down just at my feet. Without knowing it, I was showing off my gift
to others besides myself, doing what, perhaps, not five men in England
could do. Two men, who were passing by, stopped and looked at my
proceedings, and when I had done flinging came into the churchyard, and,
after paying me a compliment on what they had seen me do, proposed that I
should join company with them; I asked them who they were, and they told
me. The one was Hopping Ned, and the other Biting Giles. Both had their
gifts, by which they got their livelihood; Ned could hop a hundred yards
with any man in England, and Giles could lift up with his teeth any
dresser or kitchen table in the country, and, standing erect, hold it
dangling in his jaws. There's many a big oak table and dresser in
certain districts of England, which bear the marks of Giles's teeth; and
I make no doubt that, a hundred or two years hence, there'll be strange
stories about those marks, and that people will point them out as a proof
that there were giants in bygone times, and that many a dentist will
moralise on the decays which human teeth have undergone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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