The Midnight Queen, May Agnes Fleming [phonics books .txt] 📗

twelve years after, representing the knight and his lady sitting serenely in their "ain ingle nook" with their family around them. Sir Norman,--a little portlier, a little graver, in the serious dignity of pater familias; and Leoline, with the dark, beautiful eyes, the falling, shining hair, the sweet smiling lips, and lovely, placid face of old. Between them, on three hassocks, sit three little boys; while the fourth, and youngest, a miniature little Sir Norman, leans against his mother's shoulder, and looks thoughtfully in her sweet, calm face. Of the fate of those four, the same ancient lore affirms: "That the eldest afterward bore the title of Earl of Kingsley; that the second became a lord high admiral, or chancellor, or something equally highfalutin; and that the third became an archbishop. But the highest honor of all was reserved for the fourth, and youngest," continued the narrating voice, "who, after many days, sailed for America, and, in the course of time, became President of the United States."

Determined to be fully satisfied on this point, at least, the author invested all her spare change in a catalogue of all the said Presidents, from George Washington to Chester A. Arthur, and, after a diligent and absorbing perusal of that piece of literature, could find no such name as Kingsley whatever; and has been forced to come to the conclusion that he most have applied to Congress to change his name on arriving in the New World, or else that her informant was laboring reader a falsehood when she told her so. As for the rest,

"I know not how the truth may be;
I say it as 'twas said to me."


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Publication Date: 09-21-2009

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