Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 1849-1924 / 2008-06-26 00:00:00

EBOOK HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE ***


Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.


THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE
BY
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
NEW YORK



CHAPTER I


The history of the circumstances about to be related began many
years ago--or so it seems in these days. It began, at least, years
before the world being rocked to and fro revealed in the pause
between each of its heavings some startling suggestion of a new
arrangement of its kaleidoscopic particles, and then immediately
a re-arrangement, and another and another until all belief in a
permanency of design seemed lost, and the inhabitants of the earth
waited, helplessly gazing at changing stars and colours in a degree
of mental chaos.
Its opening incidents may be dated from a period when people
still had reason to believe in permanency and had indeed many of
them--sometimes through ingenuousness, sometimes through stupidity
of type--acquired a singular confidence in the importance and
stability of their possessions, desires, ambitions and forms of
conviction.
London at the time, in common with other great capitals, felt
itself rather final though priding itself on being much more fluid
and adaptable than it had been fifty years previously. In speaking
of itself it at least dealt with fixed customs, and conditions
and established facts connected with them--which gave rise to
brilliant--or dull--witticisms.
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