Rodney Stone

IT was at the end of my first week in London that my uncle gave a supper to the fancy, as was usual for gentlemen of that time if they wished to figure before the public as Cori...

MY uncle drove for some time in silence, but I was conscious that his eye was always coming round to me, and I had an uneasy conviction that he was already beginning to ask hims...

NOW that I was in my seventeenth year, and had already some need for a razor, I had begun to weary of the narrow life of the village, and to long to see something of the great w...

THE curt announcement was followed by a moment of silent surprise, and then by a general shout of laughter. There might be argument as to who was champion at each weight; but th...

“Ss-whack! ss-whack! ss-whack!” went the horse-whips—for a number of the spectators, either driven onwards by the pressure behind or willing to risk some physical pain on the ch...

SO Boy Jim went down to the George, at Crawley, under the charge of Jim Belcher and Champion Harrison, to train for his great fight with Crab Wilson, of Gloucester, whilst every...

AND now the day of the great fight began to approach. Even the imminent outbreak of war and the renewed threats of Napoleon were secondary things in the eyes of the sportsmen—an...

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...

I HAVE told you something about Friar’s Oak, and about the life that we led there. Now that my memory goes back to the old place it would gladly linger, for every thread which I...

MY uncle’s house in Jermyn Street was quite a small one—five rooms and an attic. “A man-cook and a cottage,” he said, “are all that a wise man requires.” On the other hand, it w...

OUT of the whole of that vast multitude I was one of the very few who had observed whence it was that this black hat, skimming so opportunely over the ropes, had come. I have al...

THE valet had shrunk into the dark corner of the room, and had remained so motionless that we had forgotten his presence until, upon this appeal from his former master, he took...

ALL through that weary night my uncle and I, with Belcher, Berkeley Craven, and a dozen of the Corinthians, searched the country side for some trace of our missing man, but save...

MY uncle and I were up betimes next morning, but he was much out of temper, for no news had been heard of his valet Ambrose. He had indeed become like one of those ants of which...

MANY a woman’s knee was on the ground, and many a woman’s soul spent itself in joy and thankfulness when the news came with the fall of the leaf in 1801 that the preliminaries o...

SO much for Champion Harrison! Now, I wish to say something more about Boy Jim, not only because he was the comrade of my youth, but because you will find as you go on that this...

MY uncle was an impassive man by nature and had become more so by the tradition of the society in which he lived. He could have turned a card upon which his fortune depended wit...

MY father’s appointment with Lord Nelson was an early one, and he was the more anxious to be punctual as he knew how much the Admiral’s movements must be affected by the news wh...

MY father sent me to bed early that night, though I was very eager to stay up, for every word which this man said held my attention. His face, his manner, the large waves and sw...

MY uncle was humanely anxious to get Harrison to bed as soon as possible, for the smith, although he laughed at his own injuries, had none the less been severely punished.

SIR JAMES OVINGTON’S carriage was waiting without, and in it the Avon family, so tragically separated and so strangely re-united, were borne away to the squire’s hospitable home...

MY uncle’s impatience would not suffer him to wait for the slow rotation which would bring us to the door, but he flung the reins and a crown-piece to one of the rough fellows w...