Micah Clarke by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — Read

It may be, my dear grandchildren, that at one time or another I / have told you nearly all the incidents which have occurred during my / adventurous life. To your father and to your mother, at least, I know / that none of them are unfamiliar. Yet when I consider that time wears / on, and that a grey head is apt to contain a failing memory, I am / prompted to use these long winter evenings in putting it all before / you from the beginning, that you may have it as one clear story in your / minds, and pass it on as such to those who come after you. For now that / the house of Brunswick is firmly established upon the throne and that / peace prevails in the land, it will become less easy for you every / year to understand how men felt when Englishmen were in arms against / Englishmen, and when he who should have been the shield and the / protector of his subjects had no thought but to force upon them what / they most abhorred and detested.

My story is one which you may well treasure up in your memories, and / tell again to others, for it is not likely that in this whole county of / Hampshire, or even perhaps in all England, there is another left alive / who is so well able to speak from his own knowledge of these events, / or who has played a more forward part in them. All that I know I shall / endeavour soberly and in due order to put before you. I shall try to / make these dead men quicken into life for your behoof, and to call back / out of the mists of the past those scenes which were brisk enough in / the acting, though they read so dully and so heavily in the pages of the / worthy men who have set themselves to record them. Perchance my words, / too, might, in the ears of strangers, seem to be but an old man's / gossip. To you, however, who know that these eyes which are looking at / you looked also at the things which I describe, and that this hand has / struck in for a good cause, it will, I know, be different. Bear in mind / as you listen that it was your quarrel as well as our own in which / we fought, and that if now you grow up to be free men in a free land, / privileged to think or to pray as your consciences shall direct, you may / thank God that you are reaping the harvest which your fathers sowed in / blood and suffering when the Stuarts were on the throne.