: Nearly Lost but Dearly Won by Wilson Theodore P - Christian life Fiction; Temperance Fiction

@FreeBooksTue 06 Jun, 2023

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Illustrator: M. D. H.

Nearly Lost but Dearly Won

It's quite a good story, but I think its trouble is, that it is neither a book that would appeal directly to teenagers, which one supposes was its target audience, nor yet to young adults. There is nothing like the amount of action we saw in "Frank Oldfield."

NEARLY LOST BUT DEARLY WON

BY THE REVEREND T.P. WILSON, M.A.

ESAU TANKARDEW.

And yet Mr Tankardew was a man of education and a gentleman, and you knew it before you had been five minutes in his company. He was the owner of the house he lived in, on the outskirts of the small town of Hopeworth, and also of considerable property in the neighbourhood. Amongst other possessions, he was the landlord of two houses of some pretensions, a little out in the country, which were prettily situated in the midst of shrubberies and orchards. In one of these houses lived a Mr Rothwell, a gentleman of independent means; in the other a Mrs Franklin, the widow of an officer, with her daughter Mary, now about fifteen years of age.

Mr Tankardew employed no agent, but collected his own rents; which he required to be paid to himself half-yearly, in the beginning of January and July, at his own residence.

It was on one crisp, frosty, cheery January morning that Mr Rothwell, and his son Mark, a young lad of eighteen, were ushered into Mr Tankardew's sitting-room; if that could be properly called a sitting- room, in which nobody seemed ever to sit, to judge by the deep unruffled coating of dust which reposed on every article, the chairs included. Respect for their own garments caused father and son to stand while they waited for their landlord; but, before he made his appearance, two more visitors were introduced, or rather let into the room by old Molly, who, considering her duty done when she had given them an entrance into the apartment, never troubled herself as to their further comfort and accommodation.

A strange contrast were these visitors to the old room and its furniture. Mr Rothwell was a tall and rather portly man with a pleasant countenance, a little flushed, indicating a somewhat free indulgence in what is certainly miscalled "good living." The cast of his features was that of a person easy-going, good-tempered, and happy; but a line or two of care here and there, and an occasional wrinkling up of the forehead showed that the surface was not to be trusted. Mark, his son, was like him, and the very picture of good humour and light- heartedness; so buoyant, indeed, that at times he seemed indebted to spirits something more than "animal." But the brightness had not yet had any of the gilding rubbed off--everyone liked him, no one could be dull where he was. Mrs Franklin, how sweet and lovable her gentle face! You could tell that, whatever she might have lost, she had gained grace--a glow from the Better Land gave her a heavenly cheerfulness. And Mary--she had all her mother's sweetness without the shadow from past sorrows, and her laugh was as bright and joyous as the sunlit ripple on a lake in summer time.

The Rothwells and Franklins, as old friends, exchanged a hearty but whispered greeting.

"I daren't speak out loud," said Mark to Mary, "for fear of raising the dust, for that'll set me sneezing, and then good-bye to one another; for the first sneeze 'll raise such a cloud that we shall never see each other till we get out of doors again."

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