One Hundred World's Best Novels Condensed

David Copperfield to Quo Vadis, Don Quixote to The War of the Worlds — a hundred of the world's great novels, each condensed to a brisk summary with its author's life story, as read in 1919.

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The Virginians: Esmond

We see George Washington, a frequent and welcome guest at "Castlewood," greeting the Widow Esmond with friendship so ardent that her sons, jealous of every attention paid their mother, mistake his gallantry for a tenderer sentiment and are on the point of challenging the colonel to a duel when they discover their error. Afterward George, the elder twin by the narrow margin of a half-hour, goes forth with Braddock and Washington into the campaign that costs the English general his life and in which the king's troops are defeated by the French and Indians. From this disastrous pilgrimage Washington's young aid, George Esmond Warrington, fails to return, and great is the grief at "Castlewood." Madam Esmond reproaches Colonel Washington that he should come back unscathed when her son is missing. As for Harry, the loss of his elder brother so overwhelms him that it is deemed wise to send him on a sea voyage to England in the hope of diverting him from constantly mourning the twin he so devotedly loved.

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