The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Entailed Hat, by George Alfred Townsend

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Title: The Entailed Hat
Or, Patty Cannon's Times

Author: George Alfred Townsend

Release Date: August 30, 2006 [EBook #19146]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE ENTAILED HAT

OR

_PATTY CANNON'S TIMES_

A Romance

BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND

"GATH"

[Illustration]

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1884

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

_All rights reserved._

TO

JUDGE GEORGE P. FISHER

OF DELAWARE

AND

HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL

OF MARYLAND

LOVERS OF OLD TIMES

WELCOMERS OF THE NEW ERA

"Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not
venerable."--CARLYLE: _Sartor Resartus_

INTRODUCTION.

Once the author awoke to a painful reflection that he knew no place
well, though his occupation had taken him to many, and that, after
twenty-five years of describing localities and society, he would be
identified with none.

"Where shall I begin to rove within confines?" he asked, feeling the
vacant spaces in his nature: the want of all those birds, forest trees,
household habits, weeds, instincts of the brooks, and tints and tones of
the local species which lie in some neighborhood's compass, and complete
the pastoral mind.

Numerous districts rose up and contended together, each attractive from
some striking scene, or bold contrast, or lovely face; and wiser policy
might have led his inclinations to one of these, redundant, perhaps, in
wealth or literary appreciation; yet the heart began to turn, as in
first love, or vagrancy almost as sweet, to the little, lowly region
where his short childhood was lived, and where the unknown generations
of his people darkened the sand--the peninsula between the Chesapeake
and the Delaw