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Since Sir Patrick sailed from Aberdour, what a multitude have gone down in the North Sea! Yonder is Auldhame, where the London smack went ashore and wreckers cut the rings from ladies' fingers; and a few miles round Fife Ness is the fatal Inchcape, now a star of guidance; and the lee shore to the east of the Inchcape is that Forfarshire coast where Mucklebackit sorrowed for his son.
The light had broken, the sun was up; the crown of the morning was upon the heads of the hills; here and there a light wreath of mist lay along their sides, floating slowly off, or softly dispersing; the river lay in quiet beauty waiting for the gilding that should come upon it. I listened the brisk notes of a drum and fife came to my ear, playing one after another joyous and dancing melody.
But in his chapter "The Shrill Trump," in the Biography, he writes: "'O you mortal engines, whose rude throats the immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, O for the 'spirit-stirring drum, and the ear-splitting fife' 'in these piping times of peace. Small wonder it was that with the clang and clank of sabre and artillery in his ears, with the huzzas of comrades and the sparkle of the wine of war in his eyes, our hero wrote the never dying words that made him famous.
At other times my thoughts were very different, I recalled how strong I had expressed myself both to Rankeillor and to Stewart; I reflected that my captivity upon the Bass, in view of a great part of the coasts of Fife and Lothian, was a thing I should be thought more likely to have invented than endured; and in the eyes of these two gentlemen, at least, I must pass for a boaster and a coward.
But Mannering was chiefly delighted with the view from the windows, which commanded that incomparable prospect of the ground between Edinburgh and the sea the Firth of Forth, with its islands, the embayment which is terminated by the Law of North Berwick, and the varied shores of Fife to the northward, indenting with a hilly outline the clear blue horizon. When Mr.
When the town folks found out who I was and that I was back from far-away Alaska they began to come in to see me they had a right too They had watched over my dear old mother and father when they were sick as only the best friends on earth know how, how much I owe those dear old neighbours at Fife Lake. They filled the house and store and we had a great time for several days.
I go on, save up; bimeby I enlarsh." "But somebody else, with plenty of money, might go into the business and fill the market; then it would be no use to enlarge." "Sorry, but can't help it. No monish, no enlarsh." "I've got five hundred dollars." The phlegmatic Dutchman brightened up. "Fife hunnard dollar?" "Yes." "Much monish. Do great business on fife hunnard dollar." "That you could."
We had obtained a drum and fife; and being all assembled on the forecastle, and such other parts of the ship as were accessible to us, prisoners, we in the morning struck up the animating tune of Yankee Doodle; and saluted the Nassau prison ship with three cheers, which was returned; the ships more distant caught the joyful sound, and echoed it back to its source.
And I made 'em understand that I meant it, too!" "Did they let you resign?" she gasped. "Sure after a tussle! But you see I'd made myself so popular by that time that they'd do anything I told 'em to do, even to lettin' me resign! And there's goin' to be a serenade to me to-night, Hiram Look's fife and drum corps and the Smyrna Ancients leadin' the parade.
Then something happened that almost none of the people in the wagons understood. Martin Tighe's boy, who played the fife, had studied well his part, and on his poor short-winded instrument now sounded taps as well as he could. He had heard it done once in Alton at a soldier's funeral. The plaintive notes called sadly over the fields, and echoed back from the hills.
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