Explore "The Japanned Box" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It WAS a curious thing, said the private tutor; one of those grotesque / and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes through life. I / lost the best situation which I am ever likely to have through it. But / I am glad that I went to Thorpe Place, for I gained -- well, as I tell / you the story you will learn what I gained.
I don't know whether you are familiar with that part of the Midlands / which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part of England. / Shakespeare, the flower of the whole race, was born right in the middle / of it. It is a land of rolling pastures, rising in higher folds to the / westwards, until they swell into the Malvern Hills. There are no / towns, but numerous villages, each with its grey Norman church. You / have left the brick of the southern and eastern counties behind you, / and everything is stone -- stone for the walls, and lichened slabs of / stone for the roofs. It is all grim and solid and massive, as befits / the heart of a great nation.