Excerpt from Looking for Grace Blackheath, as everybody knows, is not what it was. Its glory has departed. The mansions which, fifty years ago, housed the families of the elect are now, for the most part, degraded into boarding-establishments, or given over frankly to the rats by the executors of their late tenants. No longer around the Heath do crocodiles of well-born damsels take their daily walks, nor the sons of gentlemen disport themselves with a football in their leisure hours. Footballs there are, and boys to play with them; girls too, and quite nice girls, but they are not so exclusive, so refined, or so genteel as in the days when these words had real meanings of their own. However, not to take a too gloomy view of what was once an aristocratic neighbourhood, Blackheath has still a certain cachet of its own for the older generation. It is still quite near to Woolwich, and many a retired veteran of either Service may yet be seen in his ample tweed knickerbockers playing golf on the links. 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.