Saturday, September 21, 2013

Opening paragraphs....................

People set out early, harnessing steaming horses in the post-dawn chill or walking across stubbled fields still drifted in mist.  The veins of frost in the rutted trails Virginians called their "High Waies" returned to mud under the pale wintry sun, and farm wagons and the gentry's coaches alike struggled across the hilly, broken ground of Prince Edward County, through the long stretches of pine forests separating the tobacco and wheat fields and the peach, pear, and apple orchards not yet in bud.  They came from thirty miles around, fording creeks or the meandering Appomattox, then climbing one more ridge to the crossroads hamlet that was Prince Edward Court House.
-Henry Mayer,  A Son of Thunder:  Patrick Henry And The American Republic

No comments:

Post a Comment