Excerpt from Elizabeth's Pretenders One of the most prominent men in the great mannfac turing town which I shall call Whiteburn, was the late Anthony Shaw. He was not wholly a self-made man; rather a self-uplifted man. His father, beginning life as a common mechanic, had amassed a considerable fortune, which he divided between his two sons. To Anthony, who had been associated with him in business during the last few years of his life, were left the iron works at Whiteburn, and the substantial house in the town. The younger son, William, a man with a limited capacity for fox-hunting and billiards, and little else to serve as a breastplate to a soft credulons heart, found himself the possessor of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. He bought himself a small estate in an adjoining county, within reach of two packs of hounds; and, in process of time, he also bought himself a wife. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.