The Partisan (Volume 1); A Tale of the Revolution

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TO RICHARD YEADON, Jr., Esa., OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Dear Sir, My earliest, and, perhaps, most pleasant rambles in the fields of literature, were taken in your company?permit me to remind you of that period by inscribing the present volumes with your name. THE AUTHOR. Barnwell, South Carolina, July 1, 1835. chapter{Section 4ADVERTISEMENT. Spending a few weeks, some eighteen months ago, with a friend, in the neighbourhood of the once beautiful, but now utterly decayed, town of Dorchester, South Carolina, I availed myself of the occasion to revisit the old, and, at one time, familiar ruins. When a boy, I had frequently rambled over the ground, and listened to its chronicles from the lips of one?now no more?who had been conversant with all its history. Many of its little legends were known to me, and the story of more than one of its inhabitants, of whom nothing now remains but the record in the burial- place, had been long since registered in my mind. These, ?together with its own sad transition by repeated disasters, from the busy bustle of the crowded thoroughfare, to the silence and the desolation of the tombs?were well adapted to inspire in me a sentiment of veneration; and, with the revival of many old time feelings and associations, I strolled through the solemn ruins?the dismantled church?the frowning fortress, now almost hidden in the accumulating forests?reading and musing as I went, among the mouldering tombstones, and finding food for sweet thoughts and a busy fancy at every step in my ramble. The Mr. John W. Sommers, of St. Paul's Parish?a gentleman whose fine conversational powers and elegant hospitality need no eulogy from me for their proper appreciation among all those who know him. walls of the fort, built of the shell and mortar, or tapia...