United States or Turkmenistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


"Don't apologize, Sir," answered the General, "don't apologize; for I see that to your youthful habit of going to negro shindies we owe your truthful pictures of negro life." And the General was right.

"Now, just listen. I've got a young woman I want to pack out o' the country. I must do it, while I'm a a bachelor boy. She must go, or we shall be having shindies. You saw how she caught me out of a cab. She's sure to be in the place where she ain't wanted. She goes to America. I've got to pay her passage, and mine too. Here's the truth: she thinks I'm off with her. She knows I'm bankrup' at home.

In the evening our occupations became still more pressing; there were balls, suppers, whist parties, rows at the theatre, shindies in the street, devilled drumsticks at Hayes's, select oyster parties at the Carlingford, in fact, every known method of remaining up all night, and appearing both pale and penitent the following morning.

Wilfrud, becas I'm a widde and just an abom'nation to garls, poor darlin's! And twenty shindies per dime we've been havin', and me such a placable body, if ye'll onnly let m' explode. I'm all powder, avery bit! and might ha' been christened Saltpetre, if born a boy. She hasn't so much as a shot to kill a goose, says Chump, poor fella! But he went, anyway. I must kiss somebody when I talk of 'm.

This last affair, however, made me seriously uneasy, because if his exquisite sensibilities were to go the length of involving him in pot-house shindies, he would lose his name of an inoffensive, if aggravating, fool, and acquire that of a common loafer. For all my confidence in him I could not help reflecting that in such cases from the name to the thing itself is but a step.

But notwithstanding all this, we were frequently hard pressed for cash; as the colonel said, 'It's a mighty expensive corps. Our dress was costly; not that it had much lace and gold on it, but that, what between falling on the road at night, shindies at mess, and other devilment, a coat lasted no time.

And the bad were there; not the very, very bad perhaps; but the doubtful; over-jewelled, over-tinted of lip and brow and cheek, with shoes too shapely and waists too small and hair too bright and wavy, and but dusty alpaca and false front cannot do absolute justice to a pearl collar and a gown of lace; and tired, toil-dimmed eyes may make mistakes, especially as it is already a tradition that America goes to Palm Beach to cut up shindies, or watch others do it.

Marks, shindies, prayers and punishments, all flavoured with the leathery stuffiness of time-worn Big Hall.... And then out one would come through our grey old gate into the evening light and the spectacle of London hurrying like a cataract, London in black and brown and blue and gleaming silver, roaring like the very loom of Time.

Well, when you was about six, your brother Edwin, who was then about twenty, had got so bad in his ways, an' used to kick up sitch shindies in the house, an' swore so terrible, that your mother made up her mind to send you to a boardin'-school, to keep you out o' harm's way, though it nigh broke her heart; for you seemed to be the only comfort she had in life.

Sergeant Smith had written a musical libretto, of which I remember the following: "When we were for this preparing Late last fall, Neither time nor trouble sparing To please you all, Zounds! these niggers raised the shindies, Cracking crowns and court-house windies, Sent us sharp to the West Indies, Late last fall."