United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He was a great, muscular fellow with a stoic face, and, for the purpose of visiting Saul, presumably, he had doffed his white raiment and now wore a sort of livery, with a peaked cap. Smith watched him enter the house. Then: "I wonder where Van Roon obtains his provisions and so forth," he muttered. "It's odd they knew nothing about the new tenant of Cragmire Tower at 'The Wagoners."
As the day wore on, the rain increased, and the sky put on that dull, gray cast, which denotes a lengthened storm. We were fain to stop at nightfall, but there was no inn near at hand not even a hovel of a cabaret in which to shelter ourselves, and, on enquiring of the wagoners, we received the comforting assurance that there was yet a league and a half to the nearest stopping place.
The traveler reported a tilt between two wagoners: "'What's cotton in Augusta? says the one with a load.... 'It's cotton, says the other. 'I know that, says the first, 'but what is it? 'Why, says the other, 'I tell you it's cotton.
Hither would come the long lines of Conestoga wagons, from distant counties, such as Dauphin and Berks, with fat horses, and wagoners persuading them by means of biblical oaths jabbered in Pennsylvania Dutch.
Length of the Train in statute miles, as it jumbles along at this point, is not given; but we know it was many miles; that horses and wagoners were in panic hardly restrainable; and we dimly descry, here especially, human drill-sergeantcy doing the impossible to keep chaos plugged down.
In the course of three hours we were obliged to stop at a little village; it blew a perfect hurricane and the rain began to soak through our garments. Here we stayed three hours among the wagoners who stopped on account of the weather.
After supper and attention to the teams, the wagoners would gather in the bar-room and listen to the music on the violin furnished by one of their fellows, have a Virginia hoe-down, sing songs, tell anecdotes, and hear the experiences of drivers and drovers from all points of the road, and, when it was all over, unroll their beds, lay them down on the floor before the bar-room fire side by side, and sleep with their feet near the blaze as soundly as under the parental roof."
In more than one group were horse-copers, and their kin the market-gardeners' thieves and country wagoners' pests, who not only lighten the loads on the way to the city market on the road, but plunder the drivers after they receive their salesmoney by cheating at cards.
And you, you, D'Artagnan, a man sprung from the ancient nobility of France, bearing an honorable name, carrying a good sword, have helped to give up a king to beersellers, shopkeepers, and wagoners. Ah! D'Artagnan! perhaps you have done your duty as a soldier, but as a gentleman, I say that you are very culpable."
Even the wagoners trudging along beside their ponderous teams, and traversing the kingdom, from one end to the other, were objects of envy to me. I fancied to myself what adventures they must experience, and what odd scenes of life they must witness.
Word Of The Day