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But the Laird was all happy, a boy again with all his days before him, and when McRae made an end of his piping, said Dan with a queer sigh "A great gift, Hamish, to be drowned in drink," and as I watched the piper gulp his usquebach I kent what he meant. But at his stopping, the Laird rose. "Let be the days o' innocence, McRae. The March, The March, now, and the onset o' battle.
Piper Tom had finished his work. Doctor Ralph would come no more, Araminta had gone, and Miss Mehitable offered little comfort. She went to the gate and leaned upon it, looking down the road. Thus she had watched for Anthony Dexter in years gone by. Memories, mercilessly keen, returned to her.
He saw a farmer's wife dauring to order about his ancestors; and if that's the way wi' a shepherd, what will it be wi' a piper that has the kilts on him a' day to mind him o' his ancestors ilka time he looks down?" Elspeth retired to discuss the probable disturbance at the Spittal with her family, giving Waster Lunny the opportunity of saying to me impressively
Occasionally, to be sure, the children insist upon books being easy to read, and refuse to find "lovely talk" in them if they are not. It was only a short time ago that I read to a little boy Browning's "Pied Piper of Hamelin." When I had finished there was a silence. "Do you like it?" I inquired. "Ye-es," replied my small friend; "it's a nice story, but it's nicer in my book than in yours.
I was the President, Piper the Court. The Court found him guilty and sentenced him to be shot. I confirmed the sentence, and proceeded to carry it out." He rapped the words out clean and clear. Kit felt himself seeing this man with new eyes, the eyes of a great respect. The fellow schoolboy of yesterday had turned into the man of war, stern and terrible. Kit was afraid of him.
Piper states the following case: "Within about half a mile of my residence there is a pond upon which mills have been standing for a long time, dating back, I believe, to the first settlement of the town. These have been kept in constant operation until within some twenty or thirty years, when the supply of water began to fail.
Now, to shew you how difficult it is to trace the origin of our airs, I have heard it repeatedly asserted that this was an Irish air nay, I met with an Irish gentleman who affirmed he had heard it in Ireland among the old women; while, on the other hand, a countess informed me, that the first person who introduced the air into this country was a baronet's lady of her acquaintance, who took down the notes from an itinerant piper in the Isle of Man.
I once knew a side-show man who bent iron bars between his teeth and who summoned stout men from his audience to swing upon the bar, but I cannot believe that he has discharged the bawling rascal at his door. I rather choose to think that the piper was one of those self-same artists who, on lesser days, squeeze comic rubber faces in their fingers, or make the monkey climb its predestined stick.
But now the kings of the earth are raging financiers with a shrewd eye to business, and their subjects starve to pay them. We used to be told that the man who paid the piper called the tune. Do the people call the tune of peace or war? Not at all. The ruling classes both call the tune and pocket the pay. There is one other point that may obscure the hope arising from Norman Angell's book.
"The kind of curiosity that plays a flute." He began his descent of the steps, not replying until he stood with her upon the sidewalk before her carriage. "I might have put up with a poet," he remarked with his foreign shrug, "but I'm compelled to draw the line before a piper." "Well, I thought you would," confessed Gerty, "or I shouldn't have suggested it."
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