Jack Frost and Sons — Robert Michael Ballantyne / R.M. Ballantyne

One year in the last quarter of the present century John Frost, Esquire, of Arctic Hall, paid an unusually long visit to the British Islands. John, or Jack, Frost, as he was familiarly called by those who did not fear him, was a powerful fellow; an amazingly active, vigorous, self-willed fellow, whom it was difficult to resist, and, in some circumstances, quite impossible to overcome. Jack was a giant. Indeed, it is not improbable that he was also a "giant-killer,"--an insolent, self-assertive, cold-hearted giant, who swaggered with equal freedom into the palaces of the rich and the cottages of the poor; but he did not by any means meet with the same reception everywhere.