Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Holly Tree the Seven Poor Travellers The childhood and early manhood of Dickens were years Of great importance with respect to changes wrought in social history, and may be said to mark the parting of the ways between the ages, past and present. His life began when the stage coach was the only means of quick travel, but he lived to cross the Atlantic in a steamship, and his writings are filled with charming and vivid descriptions of these bygone manners and customs. 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.