Tears to him are golden, and laughter is but base coin.

Well, my dears, it is useless for me to expound to you that which I cannot myself understand.

If, as I have heard, it is impossible to get the thumb-marks of any two men to be alike, how can we expect their inmost thoughts and feelings to tally?
Yet this I can say with all truth, that when I asked your grandmother's hand I did not demean myself as if I were chief mourner at a funeral.
She will bear me out that I walked up to her with a smile upon my face, though mayhap there was a little flutter at my heart, and I took her hand and I said--but, lack-a-day, whither have I wandered?
What has all this to do with Taunton town and the rising of 1685?
On the night of Wednesday, June 17, we learned that the King, as Monmouth was called throughout the West, was lying less than ten miles off with his forces, and that he would make his entry into the loyal town of Taunton the next morning.

Every effort was made, as ye may well guess, to give him a welcome which should be worthy of the most Whiggish and Protestant town in England.

An arch of evergreens had already been built up at the western gate, bearing the motto, 'Welcome to King Monmouth!' and another spanned the entrance to the market-place from the upper window of the White Hart Inn, with 'Hail to the Protestant Chief!' in great scarlet letters.