Memoirs of the Extraordinary Military Career of John Shipp

undham, in the county of Suffolk--covered with the red remnants of the old worn-out velvet pulpit-cushion of the said village church, into which the Christian religion had been beaten and enforced, both with clenched fist and pointed elbow, and which now plainly told the congregation that it had at last yielded only to Parson Brown's impressive manner and arguments--in this prodigious volume, protected by huge brass clasps, which naught but the rough hand of the man of skulls[2] could force to obedience, after the oft-wetted thumb had aroused some hundreds of gigantic leaves from their peaceful slumber, and the book had opened wide its time-worn pages, there was, and, I doubt not, is still to be discovered, a plainly-written record, setting forth, in most intelligible terms, that I, John Shipp, the humble author of these Memoirs, came into this wicked and untoward generation on the 16th day of March, A.D. 1785. If this register be an authentic enrolment, which I have neither reason nor inclination to doubt, I