United States or Montserrat ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But except in a few offices like the Treasury, which were once filled with aristocratic people, and have an odour of nobility at second-hand, minor place is of no social use. A big grocer despises the exciseman; and what in many countries would be thought impossible, the exciseman envies the grocer. Solid wealth tells where there is no artificial dignity given to petty public functions.
M'Vicar said I had surprised everybody; but I was fearful there was something of jocularity at the bottom of all this. The year 1781 was one of dolour and tribulation, for Lord Eglesham was shot dead by a poaching exciseman, and Lady Macadam died of paralysis; but the year after was one of greater lamentation.
My dear Clara, I cannot flatter you this certainly is not a wise transaction. So, to reward a poet, you made him an innkeeper. Well, I have known wiser heads, to reward a poet, make him an exciseman. Clara. But, sir, I am not quite so silly as they were, for I did not make the poet an innkeeper he is one already. Sir W. An innkeeper already! Whom do you mean? Clara.
The horses were soon ready, and the lieutenant and the two midshipmen, led by the mounted exciseman who had brought the information, set off by a road which would lead them to the westward of Milford.
If the two last years passed o'er the heads of me and my people without any manifest dolour, which is a great thing to say for so long a period in this world, we had our own trials and tribulations in the one of which I have now to make mention. Mungo Argyle, the exciseman, waxing rich, grew proud and petulant, and would have ruled the country side with a rod of iron.
Shebeen-house keepers and excisemen have been, time out of mind, destructive of each other; the exciseman pouncing like a beast or bird of prey upon the shebeen man and his illicit spirits; the shebeen man staving in the exciseman, like a barrel of doublings, by a knock from behind a hedge, which sometimes sent him to that world which is emphatically the world of spirits.
For when society finally turned the cold shoulder on him he had to go back to farming again, carrying with him a bitter sense of injustice and neglect. He leased a farm at Ellisland, in 1788, and some friends procured his appointment as exciseman for his district.
"There's a distillery there, you know, and a fishing-village at the foot at least there used to be six years ago, when I was living with the exciseman. There may be some bother about the population, though. The last laird shipped every mother's son of the aboriginal Celts to America; but, after all, that's not of much consequence. I see the whole thing!
They have a peculiar way of mystifying the exciseman as to the number of leaves on a string, for this is the regulation way of reckoning; besides which, wholesale smuggling goes on at times, and waggon-loads are got away. Occasionally there is a fight between the officials and the peasants. I had intended getting on to Kronstadt the next day, but I stopped at the Saxon village of Zeiden.
He has lately taken a coadjutor worthy of himself, being another stray sheep that has returned to the village fold. This is no other than the son of the musical tailor, who had bestowed some cost upon his education, hoping to see him one day arrive at the dignity of an exciseman, or at least of a parish clerk.
Word Of The Day