United States or Democratic Republic of the Congo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


I found 600,000 pounds of maize were wormy and over 700,000 pounds of corned beef were putrid. Women and wine, however, abounded. Never in any place and I know all the gayest and fastest places on earth have I seen, comparatively speaking, such an enormous amount of wine in stock, or such a number of demi-mondaines assembled. Most of the officers had private harems.

On the other hand, because to people who reflected for an instant it seemed highly improbable that fox-trotters and shimmy-shakers were sensitive or interesting people, that Christy Minstrels were great musicians, or that pub-crawlers and demi-mondaines were poets, there sprang simultaneously into existence a respectable, intelligent, and ill-tempered opposition which did, and continues to do, gross injustice to the genuine artists who have drawn inspiration, or sustenance at any rate, from Jazz.

Oh! she was nobody, La Tonietta was the name that people gave her; she was one of the few /demi-mondaines/ that Roman society talked of. Then, with the freeness and frankness which his race displays in such matters, Dario added some particulars. La Tonietta's origin was obscure; some said that she was the daughter of an innkeeper of Tivoli, and others that of a Neapolitan banker.

As they grow older they are allowed to attend late dances that necessitate remaining in bed the next morning until eleven or twelve o'clock; they are told that their future happiness depends on their ability to attract the right kind of man; they are instructed in every art save that of being useful members of society; and in the ease, luxury and vacuity with which they are surrounded their lives parallel those of demi-mondaines.

Oh! she was nobody, La Tonietta was the name that people gave her; she was one of the few demi-mondaines that Roman society talked of. Then, with the freeness and frankness which his race displays in such matters, Dario added some particulars. La Tonietta's origin was obscure; some said that she was the daughter of an innkeeper of Tivoli, and others that of a Neapolitan banker.

She was one of the few /demi-mondaines/ that the higher-class society of Rome took an interest in. For a month or so the rich Englishman to whom she owed her means had been absent, travelling. "Ah!" resumed Benedetta, whose budding jealousy was entirely confined to La Pierina, "so my poor Dario is ruining himself in white roses! Well, I shall have to twit him about it.

A crowd of demi-mondaines were present, some very fat, with a dirty greasiness acquired in a hundred seraglios, three chins, and an air of stupidity; others absolutely green in spite of their paint, as if they had been dipped in a bath of that arsenate of copper which is called in the shops "Paris green."

Like a flock of magpies the imprisoned demi-mondaines, petty thieves, and grosser criminals for love or for hate, crowded around the girl, inquiring what offence had brought her amongst them. "I am innocent!" Her little sobbing cry of self-justification was received with jibes and winks. Was not such the formula of every prisoner? They pressed her for her story.

It was a dismal vehicle, there being barely sufficient space to accommodate our party, which had been further encumbered by two German demi-mondaines, who had been arrested for some infraction of the German law as it affected their peculiar interests. We were so tightly packed that we had to stand sideways, and I amused myself by working out the allowance of air space per person.

My mission was indeed a difficult one and only by tedious, painstaking work, observing the life of the city and its character, I succeeded in isolating the individual who gave me the key to the circumventuous political life and the government of Constantinople. It took me a full month of night work to become familiar with the innumerable demi-mondaines.