Project Gutenberg's Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished, by R.M. Ballantyne

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Title: Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished
A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure

Author: R.M. Ballantyne

Release Date: June 7, 2007 [EBook #21729]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUSTY DIAMONDS CUT AND POLISHED ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished, by R.M. Ballantyne.

First published 1884

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As so often with Ballantyne there are two concurrent stories in this
book. In one of these we meet two little stray and homeless boys in the
vicinity of Whitechapel in the East-End of London. These two are rescued
from the streets, trained up and sent to Canada to live as part of a
farmer's family there.

The other story concerns the mother of one of the boys, with too many
children, a drink-habit, and a wife-beating and criminal husband:
plainly there's not much going for her, but her eldest daughter manages
to bring life together for the family. The bad father, on his release
from jail, deserts his wife, which is no bad thing; the wife takes the
Blue Ribbon and gives up drinking; a couple of well-to-do gentlemen take
an interest in the family; and finally they all emigrate to Canada and
live happily ever after.

Of course, it is a little more complicated than that, with a burglary
thrown in as well as a smattering of do-good-ers and do-bad-ers. But for
those with an interest in the street-life of the nineteenth century this
will be a very interesting book for you.

A Note about the Author.

Robert Michael Ballantyne was born in 1825 and died in 1894. He was
educated at the Edinburgh Academy, and in 1841 he became a clerk with
the Hudson Bay Company, working at the Red River Settlement in Northern
Canada until 1847, arriving back in Edinburgh in 1848. The letters he
had written home were very amusing in their description of backwoods
life, and his family publishing connections suggested that he should
construct a book based on these letters. Three of his most enduring
books were written over the