United States or Montenegro ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"What's that?" growled the millionaire. "Carry me? I guess you don't know the Whittingtons, young man!" His jaw set and he rose somewhat unsteadily to his feet. "Come on, Percy! Where's that camp?" Walking slowly, the father leaning on his son's shoulder, the two disappeared in the darkness. Jim watched them for a few seconds, then started down over the ledges.
Of our early mishaps and misadventures I need not speak, the result being discernible as the story progresses. We did not find our fortunes, but we found some wisdom. Neither Tom nor I ever confessed to disappointment at finding the pavements of mere stone, but certainly two more absolute Whittingtons never trod the streets of the great city. But before I resume I must say a few words of myself.
They were so full of the romance that anybody could be Lord Mayor, that they seemed to have slipped into thinking that everybody could. It seemed as if a hundred Dick Whittingtons, accompanied by a hundred cats, could all be accommodated at the Mansion House. Step by step, however, with a horrid and increasing clearness, this man discovered what he was doing.
Here the City merchants of old Whittingtons, Fitzwarrens, Sevenokes, Greshams thronged to do their business. To these wharves came the vessels laden from Antwerp, Hamburg, Riga, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Venice, Genoa, and far-off Smyrna and the Levant. This line stretches across the whole breadth of the City.
Where in Europe will you see streets so well ordered, squares so spacious, houses so comfortable, yet elegant, as in this mile east and south of Hyde Park? Where such solid, self-respecting wealth as in our City? Where such merchant-princes and adventurers as your Whittingtons and Greshams? Where half its commerce? and where a commerce touched with one tithe of its imagination?
We are on the threshold of the careers of commercial magnates, like the Philpots and the Whittingtons. Even when Edward III. was still on the throne, a London mayor of no special note, John Pyel, could set up in his native Northamptonshire village of Irthlingborough a college and church of remarkable stateliness and dignity.
They were, most of them, mere boys: young Whittingtons, whom the bells did not ring back, to become lord-mayors; who, indeed, had not even the limited possessions of that celebrated worthy; and, thus destitute, they wandered off, many hundreds of miles, "to see the world and make their fortunes," at an age when the youth of the present day are just beginning to think of college.
Dick Whittingtons, too, sitting friendless by the roadside, were helped on to fortune; and the Sleeping Beauty was rescued from her dull little home, and taken about to see the world.
You remind me of Whittington, afterwards thrice Lord Mayor of London. I give you my unsullied word of honour, that you very strongly remind me of that historical character. You are a pair of Whittingtons, gents, without the cat; which is a most agreeable and blessed exception to me, for I am not attached to the feline species. My name is Tigg; how do you do?
A moment after I was in the hot crowd, whose roar rolled east and west for miles. And at the back of it, as the woman had said, in street and side-lane and blind-alley, I heard the footfall of a multitude more terrible than an army with banners, the ceaseless pelting feet of children of Whittingtons turning and turning again.
Word Of The Day