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The pecuniary difficulties of the kingdom exercised no influence over the festivities of the Court; balls, banquets, and comedies took place in rapid succession; and the young Queen danced in a ballet which was the admiration of all the spectators; an example which was followed by the nobles of the royal household.

There are no two dramas alike: there are hideous sores, deadly chagrins, love scenes, misery that soon will lie under the ripples of the Seine, young men's joys that lead to the scaffold, the laughter of despair, and sumptuous banquets. Yesterday it was a tragedy. A worthy soul of a father drowned himself because he could not support his family.

Banquets are always pleasant things, consisting mostly, as they do, of eating and drinking; but the specially nice thing about a banquet is, that it comes when something's over, and there's nothing more to worry about, and to-morrow seems a long way off.

Thus, the divinities have feasted, at your board, off the same viands that supply their banquets on Olympus. You have done well, my dear old friends. Wherefore, request whatever favor you have most at heart, and it is granted." Philemon and Baucis looked at one another, and then, I know not which of the two it was who spoke, but that one uttered the desire of both their hearts.

He could not make a book a humorous book out of these people and their country; he was too fond of them. England fairly reveled in Mark Twain. At one of the great banquets, a roll of the distinguished guests was called, and the names properly applauded. Mark Twain, busily engaged in low conversation with his neighbor, applauded without listening, vigorously or mildly, as the others led.

The other great lords, highborn and highly titled as they were and served at their banquets by hosts of lackeys on their knees Nottinghams, Northamptons, Suffolks were, after all, ciphers or at best, mere pensioners of Spain. For all the venality of Europe was not confined to the Continent.

For bread the king paid £27 10s., at the price of four loaves to the penny. When the king kept his Christmas at York in 1250, the royal treasury must have been very full, for he ordered for the royal banquets 7000 fowls, 1750 partridges, besides immense numbers of boars, swans, pheasants, &c.

In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back-parlours, on board herring smacks, canal boats, and East Indiamen; in shops, counting- rooms, farmyards, guard-rooms, ale-houses; on the exchange, in the tennis-court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra- Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts.

Haman thereupon fell into such a rage that he exclaimed: "In sooth, they shall be the first to feel the weight of my hand." What gave Mordecai the greatest concern, was the certainty that the danger had been invited by the Jews themselves, through their sinful conduct in connection with the banquets given by Ahasuerus.

Intimations of intended receptions, by corporations, and addresses to be presented, with invitations to banquets and balls, poured in, in overwhelming numbers; so that on leaving the Monastery I knew the series of ordeals that were in store for me. His Excellency the Governor, Sir William Robinson, K.C.M.G., most kindly despatched Mr. John Forrest with a carriage to meet us.