Music Welcome to Snuescast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is brought to you by Delicious Toils and Parals. Tonight, we'll read the opening to Borderland, a country town chronicle written by Jesse Fothergill and published in 1890. Land is a Victorian era novel that explores themes of love, societal expectations, and personal sacrifice. The story follows protagonist, Theodora North, as she navigates the complexities of relationships, class distinctions, and her own desires all set against the atmospheric backdrop of rural England. The author, Jesse Fotherkill, was a celebrated English novelist, best known for her depictions of strong-willed heroines and vivid landscapes.

The novel was praised in its time for its psychological depth and exploration of moral dilemmas, which were relatively progressive for Victorian literature. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now, take a few deep breaths. In childhood, one summer, which in point of date now lies many years behind us, four boys used to play together and to quarrel and make it up again with one another. To live together through the long golden days that vivid eager life peculiar to children in a curious old-fashioned garden on the bank of the river Tees and on the Durham side of that stream. The garden belonged to a great house, not very old, though it was the abode of an old family, solemn, not to say gloomy, in its dullness and stateliness of appearance, and standing out in rather somber contrast to the woods which were behind it, and the terraces which sloped down from its front to the river side. The name of the house was Thor's Garth. Many a spot here about bore some name reminiscent of long past Danish occupation and Scandinavian paganism. It was a characteristic giving a peculiar flavor to the language and nomenclature of the whole countryside and one, two, which has been sweetly sung by at least one of our English poets. With this fact, these four particular boys were probably unequainted, and it is more than probable that if they had known all about it, they would have cared less than nothing for the circumstance. What could it matter to them that a little farther down the stream, that sweet spot where they loved to wade in the shallows, and not far from which noisy gretta came tumbling and laughing into the arms of sedator teas, where the numerous wasps nests were to be found under the bank, to destroy which nests they had gone through such delicious toils and perils, and where, on sunny days, the trout would lurk in the pools amongst the big boulders. could it matter to them that this scene had been immortalized by both poet and painter? To them it was all their own paradise. The presence of an artist would have vexed and incommoted them. There they kicked, jumped, splashed, and generally misconducted themselves in the sweet solitude and the generous sunshine of that far back summer. Without a thought of its being hallowed ground, three of them were not of an age

at which the ordinary boy is given to appreciate poetry,

as for the eldest of them,

if he ever did read it, he kept the fact to himself.

These four boys were all the sons of gentlemen in the conventional sense of the term, albeit their fathers were men of widely different caliber, as regarded not only worldly but also mental and moral characteristics. The eldest and the third in age were brothers, Michael and Gilbert Langstroth. Their fathers was one of the oldest families in the neighborhood and had been one of the richest, although many people had begun to say that not much was now practically left to him except the old house itself, the red gables, which stood in genial vicinity to many other houses, both great and small, in the great cobblestone slanting square, which formed the west end of Bradstain Town. Michael Landstrawff at this period was 12 years old, a noble boy to look at, tall and broad, with a dark face and a sweet, rather rare smile. There was a good deal of unconscious pride in his manner and bearing. Perhaps his piercing grey eyes, going with this dark complexion, might really be token that Norse descent in which his family gloried. All his actions were, so far as one could judge, in harmony with his outer appearance, without fuss or ostentation, but all partaking of the intrinsically splendid generous and lavish. Even at this early time of their lives, the other boys knew that Michael resented any untruth amongst them as if it had been a personal insult. There was, indeed, no doubt that Michael was a son in whose proud looks a father might glory. While with all his strength and power there were in him other and quiet her charms, such as a mother might delight in. And Mrs. Langstroth did very greatly delight in what seemed to her, her sons high and noble qualities during the short time that she was allowed to do so. I fear it will never last, she would say to herself, watching him with prayer and trembling, As mothers do watch those sons who have a way of turning into something so different from what the maternal yearnings would shape them into if, along with the yearnings, the power existed of fulfilling them. I fear it will never last. Contact with the world will harden him.

Flattery will make him vain. Universal homage will spoil him. Mrs. Langstroth was a sweet and saintly lady, and her son Michael abrave a noble boy. But what insignificant henmother exists, who does not think that the attention to herself and her matchless offspring must of necessity be universal. With pathetic, devoted blindness, she would have prepared him to meet this irresistible tide of flattery and greatness by keeping him fast at her own side and never losing his leading strengths. The mention of a public school drew tears from her eyes and sent her gentle heart beating wildly. It was written that her son, Michael's education, every branch of it, was to be taken out of her hands and placed in others, firmer, harder, stoner, And to them who can survive their roughness, kinder hands than even those of a mother. Gilbert, Michael's brother, was a well-grown boy, too, of ten, with a smaller, rounder head and a narrower forehead and blue grey eyes which had a trick of languishing sometimes. He had an exquisitely soft and melancholy voice, with slow of speech and possessed a graceful, though by no means a feminine figure. He was always and apparently by nature, courteous and gentle in manner and speech, seldom indulging in the downright unflattering candor which Michael, for all he was so gentlemanly, frequently used towards his companions. Gilbert never said rude things to anyone, but he was not so popular with his comrades as Michael. The second boy, in order of years, was Swarthe Roger Cam, the son of the curate of Bradstain. 11 were the years he counted in actual point of time, 30 perhaps, and those rough ones in his knowledge of care and trouble, in his painful and forced acquaintance with grief, with contrivances and economies, and weary struggles to make both ends meet. For his father was not passing rich on 40 pounds a year, he was more than passing poor on something less than a hundred, out of which he had dullfully to keep up the appearance of a gentleman, clothe and feed his son and himself, and educate the former. His wife, poor soul, exhausted with the endless and complicated calculations necessitated by this ever-present problem, had some years ago thankfully closed her eyes and said goodbye to labor and grief. The curate and his lads struggled on without her as best they could. that Roger, whether of solid instruction or flimsy accomplishment, little enough was there of the latter to gloss his manners or appearance. He was taught by his father, and that with fasting and prayer. with his Latin and Greek declensions, he imbibed also the more bitter lesson of declining fortunes. For his father had married late and was not promoted as he grew older and more care-warned. Side by side with the first problem of Euclid, as with the last, there was forever present another, which it would have required more than a mere mathematical head to answer, and which yet empirously demanded some sort of solution. It was a problem which Mrs. Cam had carried with her to her grave, and it ran, given not sufficient income to buy a proper supply of butcher's meat, cakes and ale, how to make water porridge twice a day with skim milk to wash it down, answer the same purpose as the more liberal diet, save on certain rare and solemn feast days, not specified in the calendar. and along with the invaluable role that pre-positions governed the objective case

for the Reverend Silas cam held fast by the Lindley Murray of his boyhood, Roger Grast, and held fast the axiom so that he could and did mold his conduct upon it, that to bear your hardships in And silence necessary, that to utter one word of complaint, to look greedily at occasional dainty's, or to gorge an unseemly fashion on the abundance at other men's tables, no matter what the size of the internal void to be filled, to betray by word, look, or deed that you ever feel the pinch of hunger at home. To do this is disgrace of the deepest die, second only to lying and stealing. By the time he was 11 years old, Roger had digested these lessons thoroughly, and had, as it were, assimilated them, so that they were in his system. Sometimes, at the abundant spreads on the Thor's garth or red gables boards, his salo young face would take a faint glow. His deep-set black eyes would grow wistfully misty, but never a word betrayed the bearness of the board at home. Nor the fact that his father might even then be asking a blessing upon a bowl of oatmeal porridge, sole reward of a hard day's work. For the living of Bradstain, although ancient, was not rich, and the parish priest's own One stipend was not a fat one. Judge therefore how exceeding short the curate must have come. Roger was on good terms with all his companions, and if they sometimes wondered why he never used to ask them to go and play with him, or have tea with him. They were

quite satisfied with his explanation that there was no garden to his father's house,

and they agreed with him that without a garden to play in, there could be no fun.

He and Michael Langstroth, very dissimilar in almost everything, were fast friends. While Gilbert Langstroth and the fourth and last of this party of boys hung together in a lukewarm manner, the older and calmer of them often quietly instigating the mischief that the younger one performed.

This fourth and youngest was Otto Askham, the only son of the master of Thor's Garth, and heir to the somber-looking house, and the grand old garden in which they all disported themselves.

Although, like his friends, was tall for his age and well set up, one can but guess at the man to come in the little father of eight years old, but although gave strong signs of individuality even at this early age. other boys, if they had spoken their minds, would have said that he was fitful and moody in temper, that no one could tell what would please, what would offend him, that when he was pleased, it was in a merciless style, strange and so young a child. That when offended, his wrath was more deep than loud, but that his brown eyes glowed on such occasions with a dull fire, and his childish face in its anger took an expression of savage fierceness. They laughed at him and talked about his little rages. They were bigger and stronger than he was. The youngest of them was two years his senior. Although snuffled then, but took an early opportunity of laying a crooked route in an unexpected and obscure spot over which Michael tripped and nearly barked his shins when the snuffle became a joyful chuckle. Later, in the same afternoon, Michael Langstroth found himself apart from the other boys in a lonely part of the garden where a broad terrace ended and rough, uncut grass dotted with wild plants began.

The top of the riverbank, in fact,

the lad seated himself on this bank,

under a tree, just out of the broiling sun,

and a silence and quietness fell upon him

while he gazed before him into the gurgling, flowing river. It was a pastime he loved. Shadowee have formed thoughts pass through his brain at such times. Thoughts as vague as the murmur of the river. intuituitions, impulses stirred him, whose nature he did not now understand, but which, for all that, might be not the less blamed and fruitful in years to come. When he should have forgotten these, their first upsprings, for thus it was, as well as in other ways, that the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. The river was the thing which Michael remembered longer than anything else. a babe babe in his nurse's arms he had leaped at its sudden shimmer through the trees, and since then its presence had been ever with him more or less. It had been his companion and confident without his knowing it. He went unconsciously to its side to think out his young thoughts, and it carried all his vague meditations, gliding down its stream as it flowed between the two fair counties of York and Durham. Of course, he was not conscious how potent was its presence in his life. He would find that out only when he should come to move in other scenes, when he should get men for his companions instead of the stream. Little more remains to be said of them at this time, save that the mothers of the Langstroffs and of Aathoe Ascom were both living then, young and beautiful women, one of them at least wrapped up in her husband and her children. Although was the only one of the lads who had a sister, the little Eleanor, three years of age, and so much younger than they that she never shared their sports. And they knew nothing of her, save when they saw her sometimes walking on the upper terrace, led by her nurse or her mother, when she would sometimes stop and look at them with a pair of great, candid eyes, and burst into a laugh at some of their antics. A sturdy looking, not very pretty child, with little resemblance to Autho in either expression or complexion. Chapter 1. Authos Return. It was a dull morning in October, with a grey sky, low hanging clouds, and muddy lanes. The tees valley hunt breakfasted that morning at Sir Thomas Winthrop's and the brothers, Michael and Gilbert Langstroth rode slowly in company towards the house. Michael was now 25 and Gilbert just turned 23. They had ridden and hunted ever since they had been able to stick on the back of a pony. And despite their changed fortunes, for the House of Langstroth was no more a flourishing house. They rode and hunted still. They felt a deeper degree of interest than usual in this particular breakfast, for it was known to them as to all the rest of the neighborhood that the long closed doors of Thorsgarth had at last been thrown open. Although Asgome's minority was over, and he had come, or was on his way, to take possession of the house of his fathers, and the abundant revenues and possessions which had been accumulating for him. It was now several months since he had come of age, but he had not immediately repaired to his home. Now, Aathoe Ascom, Michael and Gilbert Langstroth, and their friend Roger Cam had all played together as children in the Thor's Garth garden, had shouted through its avenues, chased each other amongst its discolored marble fawns and nymphs, and almost succeeded more than once in drowning themselves in the waters of the swiftly rushing teas, who flowed beneath the lowest terrace of the garden. That had been more than ten years ago, and many changes had taken place since then. The Ascum fortunes had accumulated. The deaths of both Mr. and Mrs. Ascum had left their children, although and a girl Eleanor, several years younger than him, under the care of guardians, while their property increased. The Langstroths, on the contrary, had gone downhill to a certain extent. Poor then, they had become poor since, till now, Mr. Langstroth, their father, was a hopeless, helpless invalid. Michael, the elder, was by way of earning his living as a country doctor. This chance, having been given to him by the kindness of the old family friend and advisor, the little Quaker Dr. Roundtree, whose assistant Michael was supposed to be. Gilbert stayed at home, tended his father, and devoted his distinguished erythmetical powers to an endeavor to extricate the family fortunes in some degree from the confusion into which they had fallen. for Roger Cam, whose father had been the curate of Bradstain on Tees, he had vanished for years, passed from the scenes of his childhood. But he and Michael, who had been friends in those former days, were friends still, keeping up a close correspondence. And if Roger by any chance imagined that Gilbert had forgotten him, he was mistaken. Gilbert Langstroff had a long memory. It was not only these brothers who looked forward with interest to the possibility of young Ascums presence at the meet that morning. All the countryside was more or less a gog on the subject. Thorsgarth was a very considerable house. The Ascums were very considerable people in the neighborhood. Everyone was excited. Many fair creatures had gone so far as to say that they were dying to see him, dying to know what he was like, and if he were going to be an acquisition

or not to their society. People began to recall things and to say to one another, I remember how his mother used to ride to Hounds, what a woman she was, how handsome, and what a temper. And then the voices would sink a little. While for the benefit of some stranger, it would be related how the late Mrs. Ascom had come to her untimely end. How she would go out one day despite her husband's exposulations, how she put her horse at a certain fence, which he refused, how she flogged him till he unwillingly took the leap and caught his legs in the top rail, pitching his rider head foremost off him. for cotton things like these were talked about. Amongst all the wondering and speculation, there was little kindness, little personal feeling. There was no matron who said, Oh, his mother and I used to be great friends.

I know I shall like him for her sake.

For... Oh, his mother and I used to be great friends.

I know I shall like him for her sake.

...