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I longed to enquire about them of some good authority, for I did not put much faith in Barbaro. In half an hour the visitors commenced to come on foot and in carriages. Among the arrivals were several pretty and well-dressed girls, and numerous smart young men all vying with each other in their eagerness to pay court to the two cousins. There were twenty of us in all.
There were French and Swedish sailors in their red woollen shirts, Norwegians and Danes in blue, with white canvas trousers, Yankees and English all in blue; and as they swung the gracefully dressed Dutch girls with their small white caps and little capes, and petticoats fastened up to do justice to the neat shoes and white stockings below, vying with each other who should dance the best and longest, the foundation of many a friendship or enmity was laid, to be prosecuted later on in the evening over a bottle of brandy or in a stand-up fight.
All day Sunday she made but little progress, and lay in a calm for several hours. Towards night, however, a fresh westerly wind came to her aid, and on Monday morning the crew saw the mountains of Europe and Africa vying with each other in sublimity, though they were too sour to appreciate the grandeur of the scene.
Too much praise can not be bestowed upon our officers and men, regulars and volunteers, for their gallantry, discipline, indomitable courage, and perseverance, all seeking the post of danger and vying with each other in deeds of noble daring.
The King, in recalling afterwards the happy impromptus of that scene when Prelates and Laity were vying with each other in the expression of their relief, remembered how once or twice the Prime Minister had halted and gone back to the repetition of a former phrase, like one who having learned a lesson had momentarily lost the hang of it.
But, however reluctantly on both sides, our adieux had to be made, a promise being exacted from me to visit Franche-Comte ere long again. I shall carry away no more agreeable recollection of Eastern France than this pleasant country home and its occupants in the Jura, father, mother, young son and daughter, all vying with each other in making my visit pleasant and profitable.
In the meanwhile I sat listening, not to my enemy the cuckoo, but to a whole concert of nightingales, scarcely interrupted by any meaner bird, answering and vying with each other in those short delicious strains which are to the ear as roses to the eye: those snatches of lovely sound which come across us as airs from heaven.
They crowded round the actresses, offering advice as to the placing of a flower or a jewel, handing the powder-box or the rouge-pot, presenting the little hand-mirror, taking upon themselves all such small offices with the greatest "empressement," and vying with each other in their gallant attendance upon the fair objects of their admiration; the younger and more timid among them holding a little aloof and sitting on the large chests scattered about, swinging their feet and twisting their mustaches, while they watched the proceedings of their bolder companions with envious eyes.
It has placed the supreme bliss in the vying with each other in all things, so that the evil passions are never in repose vying for power, for wealth, for eminence of some kind; and in this rivalry it is horrible to hear the vituperation, the slanders, and calumnies which even the best and mildest among them heap on each other without remorse or shame."
But alas! where is the English statesman, where is even the great writer or the newspaper capable of inaugurating such a policy? For lack of these, we see England vying with France in courtesy to Russia in anxiety to please her.
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