The Touchstone of Fortune - Being the Memoir of Baron Clyde, Who Lived, Thrived, and Fell in the Doleful Reign of the So-called Merry Monarch, Charles II

The Touchstone of Fortune is a historical romance by Charles Major. Major was an American lawyer and novelist. Excerpt: "So it was that at the time this story opens, which was several years after King Charles's return, Sir Richard and his two daughters were living almost in poverty at Sundridge, hoping for help from the king, though little expecting it. Without assistance furnished by myself and a former retainer of Sir Richard, one Roger Wentworth, who had become a prosperous tanner of Sundridge, my cousins and my uncle would have been reduced to want. But Wentworth and I kept up a meagre household, and I was on watch at court to forward my uncle's interest, if by any good fortune an opportunity should come. At last, after long waiting, it came, though as often occurs with happiness delayed, it was mingled with bitterness."