Book Description

Excerpt from The Gates of Life "I would rather be an angel than God " The voice of the speaker sounded clearly through the hawthorn tree. The young man and the young girl who sat together on the low tombstone looked at each other. They had heard the voices of the two children talking, but had not noticed what they said; it was the sentiment, not the sound, which roused their attention. The girl put her finger to her lips to impress silence, and the man nodded; they sat as still as mice whilst the two children went on talking. The scene would have gladdened a painter's heart. An old churchyard. The church low and square-towered, with long mullioned windows, the yellow-gray stone roughened by the waste and stress of ages and tender-hued with growth of lichens. Round it clustered many old tombstones tilted and slanted in all directions; amongst them a few stately monuments, rising patrician fashion. Behind the church a line of ancient yews so gnarled and twisted in their thick brown stems, so worn and broken and wasted with time and storm, that one could well imagine that long ago from them came the furnishing of battle when the bowstrings twanged and the clothyard shafts whistled on their deadly way. The churchyard was full of fine cedars. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."