United States or Isle of Man ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Now his voice was loud and challenging, now it was apologetic, always it stimulated curiosity. One moment he was jubilant and gay, again he was contrite and querulous. Occasionally he burst forth into plaintive self-denunciations. Fixing a hypnotic gaze upon a bland, blue-eyed bystander who had just joined the charmed circle, he murmured, invitingly: "Better try your luck, Olaf.
His idea on this point is soon confirmed a bystander takes up the bet, the thimble is raised, and there sure enough is the ball just where he knew it was! "Again the ball is covered, and once more the bet is offered. Eager to prove his sagacity, our friend produces a 'V' or 'X spot' and covers the sharper's money.
"Can't the party raise any better material than that?" asked a bystander before a speech of his; after it, he exclaimed that the speaker knew more than all the other candidates put together. This time he was elected, being then twenty-five, and thereafter he was returned for three further terms of two years.
One afternoon Frank went to the post-office a little after the usual time. As he made his way through a group at the door, he notice compassionate glances directed toward him. His heart gave a sudden bound. "Has anything happened to my father?" he inquired, with pale face. "Have any of you heard anything?" "He is wounded, Frank," said the nearest bystander. "Show it to me," said Frank.
If a ghost that could not speak was then and there haunting that chamber, its tongue must have itched to remind his lordship what a satisfaction it would be to a disembodied bystander to get a peep into the cinquecento recesses of that complicated storehouse of ancient documents, which was never opened in the presence of anyone but its owner.
It is always the innocent bystander who suffers. "The darned old sneak thief!" said Mr. Peters. "Father!" "Don't sit there saying 'Father! What's the use of saying 'Father!? Do you think it is going to help your saying 'Father!? I'd rather the old pirate had taken the house and lot than that scarab. He knows what's what! Trust him to walk off with the pick of the whole bunch!
Or one child displays what relatives rate as musical genius, and is educated to the full extent of the parent's ability. This done, the proficient becomes, in his or her own opinion, a privileged prodigy. "Don't you suppose," said the late Mrs. "A tune in it!" repeated a bystander in intense amusement. "Dear Mrs. Barrow, tunes are musical tricks, not true art."
He would linger in the background, an unobtrusive bystander, until the condemned sinner had gone through the mockery of eating his last breakfast; and, still making himself inconspicuous during the march to the gallows, would trail at the very tail of the line, while the short, straggling procession was winding out through gas-lit murky hallways into the pale dawn-light slanting over the walls of the gravel-paved, high-fenced compound built against the outer side of the prison close.
Imposing as they certainly looked, and heavier though they were than most of those with which the world's famous sea-fights have been fought, they were already antediluvian. A few years later I saw a long range of them enjoying their last repose on the skids in a navy-yard; and a bystander, with equal truth and irreverence, called them pop-guns.
But he could not allow it to follow him, that was sure. The girls were already disgusted with him for having attracted the brute. "And I never meant to!" thought the boy, in despair. "Oh! if I only had him out in the woods, and had a good rock!" But he dared not pelt the mongrel after what the bystander had said. The crowd became so numerous that a policeman came strolling that way.
Word Of The Day