Excerpt from Thankful Blossom: A Romance of the Jerseys, 1779 One by one the faint sunset tints faded from the sky; the far-off crests of the Orange hills grew darker; the nearer files Of pines on the Whatnong Mountain became a mere black background; and, with the coming-on of night, came too an icy silence that seemed to stiffen and arrest the very wind itself. The crisp leaves no' longer rustled; the waving whips of alder and willow snapped no longer; the icicles no longer diopped a cold fruitage from barren branch and spray; and the roadside trees relapsed into stony quiet, so that the sound of horses' hoofs breaking through the thin, dull, lustreless films of ice that patched the furrowed road, might have been heard by the nearest Conti nental picket a mile away. 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.