United States or Guadeloupe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I imagined that she saw her husband installed in a luxurious suite of rooms, dining at one smart restaurant after another, and she pictured his days spent at race-meetings and his evenings at the play. "It can't go on at his age," she said. "After all, he's forty. I could understand it in a young man, but I think it's horrible in a man of his years, with children who are nearly grown up.
But except at mahaye time he is always ready for relaxation, whether it takes the form of a polo match, a pig-sticking expedition, or a race-meeting at Sonepoor, Muzzufferpore, or Chumparun. These race-meetings last for several days on end, there being racing and hunting on alternate days with a ball every second night.
Francesca shook her head decisively; she could foresee the sort of steady work Comus was likely to accomplish, with the lodestone of Town and the minor attractions of race-meetings and similar festivities always beckoning to him from a conveniently attainable distance, but apart from that aspect of the case there was a financial obstacle in the way of his obtaining any employment at home.
Chifney was a gentle, pious woman, with whom her husband's profession went somewhat against the grain. She would have preferred a nice grocery, or other respectable, uneventful business in a country town, and dissipation in the form of prayer rather than of race-meetings. But as a slender, slightly self-righteous, young maiden she had fallen very honestly and completely in love with Tom Chifney.
"And if I'll only be engaged to him, he promises to get rich, become as big a swell on the Rand as Marks or Du Taine isn't that funny, his not knowing Du Taine is my father? and drive me to race-meetings on a first-class English drag, with a team of bays in silver-mounted harness, with rosettes the colour of my eyes."
They had been observed together, both in London and the country at race-meetings and theatres; and a brawl in the Dunscombe refreshment-room, late at night, in which Birch had been involved, brought out the scandalous fact that Miss Merton was in his company. Birch was certainly not sober, and it was said by the police that Miss Merton also had had more port wine than was good for her.
I have since then seen in the Journal of the United Service Institution of India, 1886, a paper on 'Horse-breeding in Central Asia, translated from the Russian of Kostenko by W.E.G., in which the following details regarding the Kirghiz race-meetings and the pace and staying powers of their horses are given.
Whether it was that he looked on David as having taken an unsportsmanlike advantage of the giant or whether he doubted that so much could be done with such little stones, he did not make quite clear. Anyhow, from that day on, he never believed in revealed religion. He quarrelled with his clergyman. He broke the Sabbath. He began to drink beer and to go to race-meetings.
A box at the play; the cricket-match party, little dinners, and a rubber of whist, or a quiet game of vingt-et-un; the lunches here, the suppers there; the country houses where, in the winter, one could dine and sleep and hunt the next day, and, in the autumn, shoot, and, in the summer, flirt; the attendance at race-meetings, balls, and weddings; journeys to the Continent, civilities everywhere, in fact, the whole business of society no matter how modestly done demands money.
Without too much preparation for so perilous an enterprise, I threw myself into the gaieties of Cairo, attending polo matches, race-meetings, picnics at the Pyramids, dances at the different hotels, and on the island of Roda, where according to tradition, Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes.
Word Of The Day