United States or Italy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was not much past six o'clock the next morning when Mr. Calvert and Mr. Jefferson called, in the latter's carriage, for Mr. Morris in the rue de Richelieu, and once more set out for Versailles. As on the preceding day, the road was thronged with coaches, all making their way to the temporary capital.
The house or furniture didn't matter so much out there in the Bush where we were but, where there were no railways or coaches, and the roads were long, and mostly hot and dusty, a buggy was the great thing.
The weight in working order is, on the leading wheels, 12 tons 19 cwt.; driving wheels, 15 tons; trailing wheels, 13 tons 4 cwt.; total, 41 tons 3 cwt. These engines burn 27 lb. of coal per train mile with trains averaging thirteen coaches.
The posts holding up the wire were all shapes, thick and slender, bowed and slanting, so that the whole made a promiscuous impression, though the coaches were of a pleasing shape and glided along with great rapidity. They had passed the more frequented and dangerous section of the city without an accident and had reached the open country. The houses grew lower and farther apart.
I stood still all the while, then at the lowering of the colours to the ground, they received for them a low courtesy from me, and for himself a bow; then taking coach, with very many persons both in coaches and on foot, I went to the Duke's palace, where I was again received by a guard of his Excellency's, with the same ceremony of the King's colours as before.
He told us with a slightly depressed air that they had gone round to the hotels. "Daughter," he said to me, "J.P. Wicks does hate to make a fool of himself, and this morning he's done it twice over. The best seats will go to the people who had the sense to stay at their hotels, and the fact that the coaches go round shows that they run for tourist traffic only.
The Princes of the Blood did not send their coaches because they were not at Paris; Gaston Duke of Orleans was at Angers; the Prince of Condé had a cause depending at Rouen; and the Count De Soissons was at Senlis with the Court.
Beringhen, first master of the horse, left Versailles at seven o'clock in the evening of that day, to go to Paris, alone in one of the King's coaches, two of the royal footmen behind, and a groom carrying a torch before him on the seventh horse.
Perhaps their own cheers raised their spirit, for two days before the game the college was animated by a totally unwarranted degree of hopefulness that amounted almost to confidence. The coaches, however, remained carefully pessimistic and took pains to see that the players did not share the general hopefulness.
The other passengers were fat old women, who eat apples and drank gin-and-water for supper, and then snored, and sneezed, and groaned all night long. I know that I wished myself anywhere but where I was. The old ladies talked of highwaymen, coaches stopped, and passengers murdered, till they talked themselves into a state of nervous fear.
Word Of The Day