





Transcribed from the 1896 Smith Elder and Co. "Lizzie Leigh and Other
Tales" edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





MY LADY LUDLOW
by Elizabeth Gaskell


CHAPTER I.


I am an old woman now, and things are very different to what they were in
my youth.  Then we, who travelled, travelled in coaches, carrying six
inside, and making a two days' journey out of what people now go over in
a couple of hours with a whizz and a flash, and a screaming whistle,
enough to deafen one.  Then letters came in but three times a week:
indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed when I was a girl,
the post came in but once a month;--but letters were letters then; and we
made great prizes of them, and read them and studied them like books.  Now
the post comes rattling in twice a day, bringing short jerky notes, some
without beginning or end, but just a little sharp sentence, which well-
bred folks would think too abrupt to be spoken.  Well, well! they may all
be improvemen