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He was indeed a wizard as Barry had said, with a genius for ragtime and popular music hall ditties, and possessed also of the further gift of improvisation that made his services invaluable on just such an occasion as this. From one popular air to another he wandered, each executed with greater brilliance than the last, but he failed to excite anything more than a mild interest and approval.
The language of this literature was not a dead language, It was the language of government, of science, of religion; and a little dislocated, a little barbarised, it had penetrated to the minds of the people, and found expression in drinking songs and street ditties.
"It is perhaps difficult to express... but people say I have a good voice... I sing some French ditties... they are a novelty in England, I think.... If I could sing them in fashionable salons... I might perhaps..."
Mr Escot passed a sleepless night, the ordinary effect of love, according to some amatory poets, who seem to have composed their whining ditties for the benevolent purpose of bestowing on others that gentle slumber of which they so pathetically lament the privation. The deteriorationist entered into a profound moral soliloquy, in which he first examined whether a philosopher ought to be in love?
The noise of the gun broke through the painful silence of The Desert, and came finely back reverberating from the Saharan hills with double and treble discharges of sound. When their powder began to be exhausted, and they have never more than half-a-dozen charges, they sang their plaintive love ditties, or chatted to the merchants.
"With tender woe sad memory woos back time, And paints the scenes when youth was in its prime; The craggy hill, where rocks, with wild flow'rs crown'd, Burst from the hazle copse or verdant ground; Where sportive nature every form assumes, And, gaily lavish, wastes a thousand blooms; Where oft we heard the echoing hills repeat Our untaught strains and rural ditties sweet, Till purpling clouds proclaimed the closing day, While distant streams detain'd the parting ray.
Just you git that lavender and go. And tell Nanny I'll be at the station to see her off." Up-stairs in a big sunny room of the Ainslee house Grandma Wentworth looked reproachfully at a flushed, busy girl who was laughing and singing snatches of droll ditties the while she emptied closets and dresser drawers and tucked things into four trunks, two suitcases and a handbag.
"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
The brigades moved onward in parallel columns, with the artillery in the interval and the 21st Lancers covering the front, flanks and rear of the infantry. Tommy was jubilant and carolled, as he tramped, topical songs and patriotic ditties. He heeded not the boisterous south wind that ladened the atmosphere with dust till there was darkness as of a city fog.
The young lady herself had never received kindness except from this old spinster, and her brother and father: and she repaid Miss Crawley's engoument by artless sweetness and friendship. The old spinster used to wake up when these ditties ceased, and ask for more.
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