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With such antecedents to sustain me, I ought to be able to hold my own against the staunchest toper in Iceland! So, with a devil glittering in my left eye, I winked defiance right and left, and away we went at it again for another five-and-forty minutes. At last their fire slackened: I had partially quelled both the Governor and the Rector, and still survived.
As a relief to the monotonous surface of this simple screen, various ballads and learned legends were pinned to the blanket. There might you read in verses, pathetic and unadorned, how "Sally loved a sailor lad As fought with famous Shovel!" There might you learn, if of two facts so instructive you were before unconscious, that "Ben the toper loved his bottle, Charley only loved the lasses!"
There were Baigreys about Gilmerton; ye'll be one of that lot? Then this'll be a friend's portmantie, like? Why? Because the name upon it's Nucholson! Oh, if ye're in a hurry, that's another job. Waverley Brig? Are ye for away? So the friendly toper prated and questioned and kept John's heart in a flutter.
She is entirely right about the college professors. Her understanding is based upon years of observation and the patient cooking of uncounted pots of beans. I confess to a weakness for gardening and no sense at all of proportion in vegetables. I can no more resist a seed catalogue than a toper can his cup.
"You must have passed numerous plantations of such bushes up on the hillsides as you flew over into the basin here. The Yemen Arabs like to chew the leaves so well that they have all of the passion for them that a toper has for whiskey, and they will spend their last rupee for a small bundle." "Does this chewing of the leaves intoxicate them?" asked John. "Oh, no; the leaves are quite harmless.
To go to bed on such an occasion, would have been held no better than for a jolly toper to shirk his bicker, a lover to eschew the trysting thorn, or a warrior to fly the scene of his country's glory; neither would it have been safe, for no good guyser of the old school would take the excuse of being in bed in lieu of the buttered pease-bannock the true hogmanay cake, to which he was entitled, by "the auld use and wont" of Scotland; and far better breathe the smoke of the "smeikin horn" on foot, and with the means of self-defence at command, than lie choked in bed, and "deaved" by the stock and horn, the squalling bagpipe, and the eternal
You should see his articles and his tracts only see, not read! every page is full of the devil and his horns, and the desperate fryings which await your impious revolutionists and then the authority of the bishops, the power of the Pope hang it! how could I know it all? This toper, Ninny Moulin, gives good measure enough for their money!"
He threw back his head "Magnificent Arry, the man that's played more avock with earts in his day than any other seaman afloat.... It's the whiskers done it," he added simply. The two men in him were at war: the high and mighty fighting-man and the confidential toper. Each came bobbing out in turns.
On returning to the hut, pipes were introduced; and, after a while, Long Ghost, who, at first, had relished the "Arva Tee" as little as myself, to my surprise, began to wax sociable over it, with Varvy; and, before long, absolutely got mellow, the old toper keeping him company. It was a curious sight.
The small grey eyes blinked, the lips moved, with greed; greed was the ruling passion; and though there was some good nature, some genuine kindliness, a true human touch, in the old toper, his greed was now so set afire by hope, that all other traits of character lay dormant. He sat there a monument of gluttonous desire. John's heart slowly fell.
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