Rodney Stone by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — Read

ON this, the first of January of the year 1851, the nineteenth century / has reached its midway term, and many of us who shared its youth have / already warnings which tell us that it has outworn us. We put our / grizzled heads together, we older ones, and we talk of the great days / that we have known; but we find that when it is with our children that we / talk it is a hard matter to make them understand. We and our fathers / before us lived much the same life, but they with their railway trains / and their steamboats belong to a different age. It is true that we can / put history-books into their hands, and they can read from them of our / weary struggle of two and twenty years with that great and evil man. / They can learn how Freedom fled from the whole broad continent, and how / Nelson's blood was shed, and Pitt's noble heart was broken in striving / that she should not pass us for ever to take refuge with our brothers / across the Atlantic. All this they can read, with the date of this / treaty or that battle, but I do not know where they are to read of / ourselves, of the folk we were, and the lives we led, and how the world / seemed to our eyes when they were young as theirs are now.

If I take up my pen to tell you about this, you must not look for any / story at my hands, for I was only in my earliest manhood when these / things befell; and although I saw something of the stories of other / lives, I could scarce claim one of my own. It is the love of a woman / that makes the story of a man, and many a year was to pass before I first / looked into the eyes of the mother of my children. To us it seems but an / affair of yesterday, and yet those children can now reach the plums in / the garden whilst we are seeking for a ladder, and where we once walked / with their little hands in ours, we are glad now to lean upon their arms. / But I shall speak of a time when the love of a mother was the only love I / knew, and if you seek for something more, then it is not for you that I / write. But if you would come out with me into that forgotten world; if / you would know Boy Jim and Champion Harrison; if you would meet my / father, one of Nelson's own men; if you would catch a glimpse of that / great seaman himself, and of George, afterwards the unworthy King of / England; if, above all, you would see my famous uncle, Sir Charles / Tregellis, the King of the Bucks, and the great fighting men whose names / are still household words amongst you, then give me your hand and let us / start.