The Inn at the Red Oak

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - By the end of the second decade of the last century Monday
Port had passed the height of prosperity as one of the principal
depots for the West Indian trade. The shipping was rapidly
being transferred to New York and Boston, and the old
families of the Port, having made their fortunes, in rum and
tobacco as often as not, were either moving away to follow the
trade or had acquiesced in the changed conditions and were
settling down to enjoy the fruit of their labours. The harbour
now was frequently deserted, except for an occasional coastwise
trader; the streets began to wear that melancholy aspect of a
town whose good days are more a memory than a present
reality; and the old stage roads to Coventry and Perth Anhault
were no longer the arteries of travel they once had been.