The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

Opening of the book

THE ENTAILED HAT
OR
PATTY CANNON'S TIMES
A Romance
By GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND
"GATH"
Joe Johnson's Kidnapper's Tavern
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1884
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
All rights reserved.
TO
JUDGE GEORGE P. FISHER
OF DELAWARE
AND

HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL
OF MARYLAND
LOVERS OF OLD TIMES
WELCOMERS OF THE NEW ERA
"Friends! trust not the heart of that man
for whom Old Clothes are not venerable."—
Carlyle: Sartor Resartus
INTRODUCTION.
Once the author awoke to a painful reflection that he knew
no place well, though his occupation had taken him to
many, and that, after twenty-five years of describing
localities and society, he would be identified with none.
"Where shall I begin to rove within confines?" he asked,
feeling the vacant spaces in his nature: the want of all
those birds, forest trees, household habits, weeds,
instincts of the brooks, and tints and tones of the local
species which lie in some neighborhood's compass, and
complete the pastoral mind.
Numerous districts rose up and contended together, each
attractive from some striking scene, or bold contrast, or
lovely face; and wiser policy might have led his
inclinations to one of these, redundant, perhaps, in
wealth or literary appreciation; yet the heart began to
turn, as in first love, or vagrancy almost as sweet, to
the little, lowly region where his short childhood was
lived, and where the unknown generations of his people
darkened the sand—the peninsula between the Chesapeake and

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