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The Lincoln Imp, who sits enthroned at the foot of a cul-de-lampe in the choir, is so familiar to every child, now, through his photographs and casts, that it is hardly necessary to describe him. But many visitors to the cathedral fail to come across the old legend of his origin. It is as follows: "The wind one day brought two imps to view the new Minster at Lincoln.
In a few minutes they were all placed in the boat, and the crew had partly embarked, when Phil Briant, unable to restrain himself, muttered between his teeth to the Portuguese commander as he passed "Ye imp o' darkness, av I only had ye in the ring for tshwo minits jist tshwo ah thin, wouldn't I polish ye off."
They were dancing something original and unpremeditated, with twirls and springs, sweeps and bends, bounds and footings, just as the little lady's fancy prompted, perhaps guided in some degree by her partner's experience of national dances. White and black, they figured about, she with floating sheeny hair and glistening robes, he trim and tight and jetty, like fairy and imp!
Mammy!" and Crawford could just discern that he had run over and partially demolished a little negro boy carrying a pitcher, the pitcher and the boy seeming to have suffered about equally. Neither of them had any nose left, to speak of; and the little imp did not make any effort to rise from the floor, but lay there and yelled merrily.
"So it saams; but, little dread need we have of disturbance if they always kaap at such a respictable distance as that. Whisht, now! but don't ye saa those same bushes moving? There's some one passing through them! Mebbe it's a shadow, mebbe it's the divil himself. If so, here goes after the imp!"
"There, we'll be after puttin' it where Stumpy can't be rubbin' his nose in it" setting the pail, as she spoke, on a rough anchor-stone. Here the goat moved up, rubbing his head in the boy's face, and then reaching around for the pail. "Look at him, Patsy! Git out, ye imp, or I'll hurt ye! Leave that kiver alone!"
"Oh dear!" cried Marianne, "I hope you are not hurt? How careless of the Chintz Imp to throw you down like that!" "It was no one's fault but my own," said Santa Klaus as he dusted the remains of soot and plaster off his brown cloak.
Having opened each package with great care and laid out their contents upon a log near by, the Imp approached the ruined building with signs of the most elaborate caution, and gave three loud, double knocks. Now casting my eyes about, I espied a short, heavy stick, and picking it up, poised it in my hand ready in the event of possible contingencies.
He would reach out to Dad for more money, and Dad would reach into another pocket and dig up another roll. Dad looked at the Dakota man and said: "You started me in all right. What happened to your system?" The Dakota man was silent for a moment, and then he pointed to me and said: "That imp of yours crossed his fingers every time I bet, except the first time."
Laura indeed may be eminently useful; but the plotting, daring, mischievous, malignant yet subaltern imp incarnate, that should run, fly, dive, be visible and invisible, and plunge through frost or fire to execute my behests, is yet to be discovered.