Excerpt from The Old Oak Chest, Vol. 1 of 3: A Tale of Domestic Life When Sir Walter Scott wrote his first great romance, called "Waverley," he added to the title, as has been common in title pages and police reports, what is called an alias, saying, "Or, 'Tis sixty years since." The words were very significant even then; but they imply much more at present. Within the sixty years then just gone past, many vast changes had taken place in the politics, the manners and the customs of the world. The term comprised a great epoch in the history of society. But within the sixty years now just past, how much greater has been the change! 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.