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Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851

"The Spy"


"It is no trifle that can be had by jist asking of the right person, if
ye're in need of silver; and the baste is sure of foot, and jumps like a
squirrel."
"Woman, fifty horses, aye, the best that were ever reared on the banks
of the Potomac, would be but a paltry price, for one blow at a villain."
"Come," said the surgeon, "the night air can do no service to George, or
these ladies, and it is incumbent on us to remove them where they can
find surgical attendance and refreshment. Here is nothing but smoking
ruins and the miasma of the swamps."
To this rational proposition no objection could be raised, and the
necessary orders were issued by Lawton to remove the whole party to the
Four Corners.
America furnished but few and very indifferent carriage-makers at the
period of which we write, and every vehicle, that in the least aspired
to that dignity, was the manufacture of a London mechanic. When Mr.
Wharton left the city, he was one of the very few who maintained the
state of a carriage; and, at the time Miss Peyton and his daughters
joined him in his retirement, they had been conveyed to the cottage in
the heavy chariot that had once so imposingly rolled through the
windings of Queen Street, or emerged, with somber dignity, into the more
spacious drive of Broadway.


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