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I had a memorable pleasure in watching my beloved eat and drink under my roof. The duel remained incomprehensible to her. She first frightened me by remarking that duels were the pastime of brainless young men.
She had learned to read and write before she discovered that the process she went through to acquire these accomplishments was not an agreeable pastime specially invented by Tom for her amusement. At eleven years old she had become so interested in her work that she was quite an excited little student. By the time she was twelve Tom began to shake his head at her.
Being the dispenser of her husband's hospitality, the bread-giver, in the old Saxon phrase, the frequent companion of his pastime, and the bountiful friend, not only of the families whose cottages threw up their smoke within view of her dwelling, but of all who came and went on the occasions of business or pleasure in the common intercourse of the frontier, we may conceive the sentiment of respect and attachment she inspired in this insulated district, and the service she was thus enabled to command.
And I have, as I trusted some time since, awakened to perceive that those twenty years were a period of mere sentimental pastime, perfectly useless, fruitless, unless, as is possible, it has saved me from other follies. But it was a folly in itself. Can one's nature be too stedfast? The question whether a spice of frivolousness may not be a safeguard has often risen before me.
By such simple narratives do the Chinese strive to convey great truths to childish ears. Many sports were once common in China which have long since passed out of the national life, and exist only in the record of books. Among these may be mentioned "butting," a very ancient pastime, mentioned in history two centuries before the Christian era.
"It's an innocent pastime," she continued, as Philip stirred his tea, in perplexity as to how he should begin to say what he had to say "you won't object if I light a cigarette? One ought to retain at least one bad habit to keep from spiritual pride. Tea is an excuse for this. I don't think it a bad habit, though some people say that civilization is only exchanging one bad habit for another.
As she left she produced a little packet of lace wrapped in newspaper, which she deposited on my bed with tears in her eyes. I used to lie awake at nights and wonder about those artificial legs, just what they were like, and how much one would be able to cope with them. It was a great pastime!
That black cross marks one of the special blood-spots of the earth where, thousands of times over, the dying gladiator fell, and more of human agony has been endured for the mere pastime of the multitude than on the breadth of many battlefields. From all this crime and suffering, however, the spot has derived a more than common sanctity.
Another favorite pastime with him was to post himself in front of the reflector of the big searchlight up on the cabin, and make the most comical grimaces at his image on the polished reflector inside, sometimes uttering queer noises as if he were crying, and at other times chattering with the utmost anger at the phantom monkey, mixing these demonstrations up with wild dashes around behind the lamp to see if the mimicking animal were there.
One evening, Tom Fool, and a groom, his particular friend, were taking their pastime after a somewhat selfish fashion, by no means newly discovered in the castle that of teasing the wild beasts. There was one in particular, a panther, which, in a special dislike to grimaces, had discovered a special capacity for being teased.
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