Tales of a Pilgrim Author:Alexander Sutherland Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: is ' - THE MARINERS. O little did my mother ken, The day she cradled me, Of the lands I was to travel in, Or the death I was to die. The Queen's ... more »Marie. Every village has its tale of sorrow; every tombstone its melancholy legend ; but, happily for humanity, the remembrance of misadventure and suffering is extremely transient. Each year, as it rolls away, carries with it into oblivion many an agonizing recollection. Hearts that would not be comforted,—eyes that tears threatened to dim for ever,—wax cheerful and bright again, under the in this respect blessed influence of time:—events which have uprooted families, and shot arrows, banefully poisoned by fate, into many a happy dwelling, are speedily forgotten by the ever-toiling multitude; and he who would make himself acquainted with the details of private calamities chronicled in other years, must rely solely on the tenacious memory of some garrulous crone or octogenarian sexton. After sojourning for nearly ten years in strange lands, it my was fortune to revisit the soil which I felt, and still feel, proud to claim as that of my birth. I had seen much during my voluntary exile. I had contracted friendly ties abroad, which it was my hope never to see unloosed ; and had become familiar to the prospect of passing the winter of my life, and even laying my bones in a land that was not mine. Still there were a thousand recollections of happy boyhood, that neither time nor distance had been able to efface. Like all men who have passed the first ten years of manhood remote from the haunts endeared by the sports of their younger days, I anticipated much pleasure from renewing my acquaintance with the localities of my native village. Those mutations, to which every family is more or less subjected, had, in the interim, ...« less