Project Gutenberg's Nearly Lost but Dearly Won, by Theodore P. Wilson

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Title: Nearly Lost but Dearly Won

Author: Theodore P. Wilson

Illustrator: M. D. H.

Release Date: April 18, 2007 [EBook #21135]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEARLY LOST BUT DEARLY WON ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Nearly Lost but Dearly Won

by the Reverend T.P. Wilson, M.A.
________________________________________________________________
Wilson wrote several books around the end of the 1880s. He had won a
prize some ten years previously for the best book assessed by The Band
of Hope, a Society devoted to helping the young never to take up
drinking. This present book gives you the impression that it might well
have been another one written to be entered into the competition.
Anyway, if it was, it didn't win.

It's quite a good story, but I think its trouble is, that it is neither
a book that would appeal directly to teenagers, which one supposes was
its target audience, nor yet to young adults. There is nothing like the
amount of action we saw in "Frank Oldfield."

it is rather a short book, but one of its crowning glories is the set of
ten line drawings by "MDH". These are really superb, full of action and
life, particularly where there are children or horses. I wish all
childrens' books were as well illustrated. NH
________________________________________________________________

NEARLY LOST BUT DEARLY WON

BY THE REVEREND T.P. WILSON, M.A.

CHAPTER ONE.

ESAU TANKARDEW.

Certainly, Mr Tankardew was not a pattern of cleanliness, either in his
house or his person. Someone had said of him sarcastically, "that there
was nothing clean in his house but his _towels_;" and there was a great
deal of truth in the remark. He seemed to dwell in an element of
cobwebs; the atmosphere in which he lived, rather than breathed, was
apparently a mixture of fog and dust. Everything he had on was faded--
everything that he had about him was faded--the only dew that seemed to
visit the jaded-looking shrubs in the approach to his dwelling was
_mil_dew. Dilapidation and dinginess went hand-in