Excerpt from Estelle: An Idyl of Old Virginia Ome years since, when the author was Professor Of Ancient Languages in the Male High School, he urged upon the young men of his classes, as an excellent exercise in the acquisition of facility in English expression, a carefully written as well as a painstaking and exact oral translation Of the thoughts of the great authors they were reading. He had followed such a course himself at school and at the University Of Virginia, and to prove to his pupils that even one without natural gifts might, by such a practice, make some headway in expression, he sat down one Saturday morning, and before the day was over he had finished the most of Estelle. It embodies, it is true, in the main, experiences had by the author amid the uplands Of the Rappahannock, close under the Blue Ridge, in Old Virginia, where at his cousin's home, Estelle, now the author's wife, was teaching. In some points, however, the story is purely imaginative. It is hardly necessary to tell any one who knows the author that the author is no artist. 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.