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Recollections of Curran and some of his comtemporaries
Recollections of Curran and some of his comtemporaries Author:Charles Phillips 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: . dence prevented any solicitation for such dangerous celebrity. Curran in after-times used often to declare, that he never produced such an effect upon any a... more »udience as in the humble character of Mr. Punch's man. At this period of his life it was that an incident occurred, which, moulding, as it did, his future fortunes, the reader shall have as nearly as possible as he related it: "1 was then," said he, " a little ragged apprentice to every kind of idleness and mischief, all day studying whatever was eccentric in those older, and half the night practising it for the amusement of those who were younger than me. Heaven only knows where it would have ended. But, as my mother said, I was born to be a great man. One morning I was playing at marbles in the village baU alley, with a light heart and a lighter pocket. The gibe and the jest and the plunder went gaily round; those who won laughed, and those who lost cheated ; when suddenly ther.e appeared amongst us a stranger of a very venerable and very cheerful aspect: his intrusion was not the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage; on the contrary, he seemed pleased, and even delighted : he was a benevolent creature, and the days of infancy (after all, the happiest we shall ever see) perhaps rose upon his memory. God bless him ! I see his fine form at the distance of half a century just as he stood before me in the little ball alley in the days of my childhood ! His name was Boyse ; he was the rector of Newmarket: to me he took a particular fancy; I was winning, and was full of waggery, thinking every thing that was eccentric, and by no means a miser of my eccentricities; every one was welcome to share them, and I had plenty to spare after having freighted the company. Some sweetmeats easily bribed me home with him. ...« less