United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As the vessel was to be docked and fresh coppered, we were hulked, and I took lodgings on shore, where the commissioner did me the honour of calling on me and requested me to dine with him the following day. The dinner party consisted of another brother officer, his own family, who were very amiable, and myself.
They are fond of talking about their thefts and how they effected them. A gipsy, for instance, related one day in my presence how he had swindled a countryman as you shall hear: The gipsy had an ass with a docked tail, and he fitted a false tail to the stump so well that it seemed quite natural. Then he took the ass to market and sold it to a countryman for ten ducats.
He gave up the morning nip, docked the number of cocktails, went to bed before two, took a little gentle exercise, met Mrs. Mrs. Dearman whom, in his letters to her, Dickie had described as "a jolly old buster, simply full of money, and fairly spoiling for a wife to help him blew it in."
A like t' see a wench look bonny and smart, an' a tak' a kind o' pride in thee, an should be a'most as much hurt i' my mind to see thee i' a pinched cloak as if old Moll's tail here were docked too short. Na, lass, a'se niver got a mirroring glass for t' see mysen in, so what's waistcoats to me? Keep thy stuff to thysen, theere's a good wench; but a'se main and glad about t' measter.
After about an hour's consultation, our ship was ordered to Bombay to be docked, it being the most convenient one for a ship of our burden. In a few days after we proceeded on our passage, and arrived in safety, keeping the pumps in continual motion during our passage.
One of the rules on the killing beds was that a man who was one minute late was docked an hour; and this was economical, for he was made to work the balance of the hour he was not allowed to stand round and wait. And on the other hand if he came ahead of time he got no pay for that though often the bosses would start up the gang ten or fifteen minutes before the whistle.
In summer time, when flies are troublesome, we may often see a long-tailed brood mare at grass protecting both herself and her suckling foal from these irritating pests by the free use of her tail; but docked mares are deprived of this means of driving away insects, and have been known to unwittingly injure their young by kicking and plunging violently in their efforts to rid themselves of attacking flies.
Whoever had docked his tail, in his defenceless puppyhood, had evidently been too tender-hearted to cut those silken and sensitive ears. So Sonny had been obliged to face life in the incongruous garb of short tail and long ears which is almost as unpardonable as yellow shoes with a top hat. When the wagon drew close to the foot of the lane, Sonny was still uncertain.
By means of an axe and a knife, he carved a representation of his own head, and covered it with hair by means of the tail of one of his light-coloured horses, which he docked for the purpose. The cave, it will be remembered, was on the right of that entrance.
In half an hour after the ship had docked, Mrs. Her hotel was decided upon, and rooms engaged. An old friend of Mrs. Merriam, a cosmopolitan American woman, had once praised the Hotel Valmont, Angela had remembered; and driving from Twenty-third Street up into the Forties, New York was almost as strange to her as if she had never seen it before.
Word Of The Day