The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Jasper Carew, by Charles James Lever

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Title: Sir Jasper Carew
His Life and Experience

Author: Charles James Lever

Illustrator: E. Van Muyden and Phiz.

Release Date: July 5, 2010 [EBook #33081]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR JASPER CAREW ***

Produced by David Widger

SIR JASPER CAREW.

His Life and Experience

By Charles James Lever

Illustrated By E. Van Muyden and Phiz.

Boston: Little, Brown, And Company. 1904.

Copyright, 1894, By Little, Brown, And Company.

DEDICATED TO H. D. W.

By ONE WHO THINKS HIGHLY OF HIS HEART, AND HOPES MUCH FROM HIS HEAD.

NOTICE

It has been constantly observed by writers of travels that to gain
credence for any of the strange incidents of their journeys, they have
been compelled to omit many of the most eventful passages of their
lives. "The gentlemen," and still more the ladies, "who live at home at
ease" take, indeed, but little account of those adventures which are the
daily lot of more precarious existences, and are too prone to set
down as marvellous, or worse, events which have comparatively little
remarkable for those whose fortunes have thrown them on the highways of
the world.

I make this remark in part to deprecate some of the criticism which I
have seen pronounced upon these Memoirs. It has been said: How could any
man have met so many adventures? and my answer is simply: By change of
place. Nothing more is required. The pawn on the chess-board has a life
of a very uneventful character, simply because his progress is slow,
methodical, and unchanging. Not so the knight, who, with all the
errantry of his race, dashes here and there, encountering every rank and
condition of men,--continually in difficulties himself, or the cause of
them to others. What the knight is to the chess-board, the adventurer
is to real life. The same wayward fortune and zig-zag course belongs
to each, and each is sure to have his share in nearly every great event
that occurs about him. But I also refer to this subject on another
account. Tale-writers are blamed for the introduction of inciden