Explore "The Last Chance" by Rolf Boldrewood on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Again the train, the monotonous stretches of level waste, unbroken save here and there by straggling villages, or prosperous farm-holdings; rich and populous goldfields, or, as occasionally happened, ill-fated and deserted mines, with melancholy machinery, all rusted and abandoned. On these and other landmarks was writ large the tale of hope and enterprise, success, decay, despair. All were heedfully observed and noted by the younger traveller; as regularly explained and classified by the less impulsive senior. Then darkness, a cooler atmosphere, lights, sea strand, city and hotel-goal of the weary traveller!
England again! Hexham Hall. Again the aged woods, the peerless turf, the murmuring brook, the delicious, settled comfort of English country life. Then such rides and drives, such traps and drags, broughams and landaus! -all the component parts of fully appointed coach-houses and stables, where expense was not too closely regarded; such, and all other matters of comparative luxury, seemed to be forthcoming with a sort of Arabian Nights profusion.