United States or Pakistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He remembered now having seen an account of the Squaw Creek raid on a sheep camp, ending in a battle that had resulted in the death of two men and the wounding of three others. He had been sitting in a hotel at San Antonio, Texas, when he had read the story over his after-dinner cigar. The item had not seemed even remotely connected with himself.
"Partner," said Scottie Macdougal from the cab, where he still kept the engineer and fireman covered, "a little hunt is like an after-dinner drink to me." To the utter amazement of Andrew the whole crowd the crowd which had just been carefully and systematically robbed burst into laughter. But this was the end.
"And I must go back as soon as I can take a little sieste. I am determined to see him this very day." "Ah! my poor mother!" "No, Frowenfeld," said little Doctor Keene, speaking for the after-dinner loungers, "you must take a little human advice. Go, get the air on the Plaza. We will keep shop for you. Stay as long as you like and come home in any condition you think best."
As for the matter, it is not of the slightest consequence. Anybody may make an after-dinner speech who will be content to talk onward without saying anything.
I told Grey that I was determined to get it out of him, as it was certain to be amusing, though we agreed that we were not bound to believe all he said. He certainly was an extraordinary character. Grey and I, one afternoon when it was our watch below, found him in his cabin. He was taking his after-dinner potation of rum and water, y-clept "grog," and reading by the light of a purser's dip.
He was preaching on Joshua ordering the sun to stand still: "My hearers," he said, "there are three motions of the sun; the first is the straightforward or direct motion of the sun, the second is the retrograde or backward motion of the sun, and the third is the motion mentioned in our text 'the sun stood still. Now, gentlemen, I do not know whether you see the application of that story to after-dinner oratory.
He would, in those after-dinner gatherings which Gillespie mentions, lead the doctor into arguments on literature, politics, Spanish and even naval affairs, and would occasionally provoke from him a lecture on navigation itself, to the great entertainment of Murray, Hardy, and the other officers present.
When they told him, he grew as pale as a corpse that such an indignity should have been offered to Sidonia, and reprimanded his equerry severely, but prayed that all would keep quiet now, as otherwise the Duchess and the Lord Chamberlain would certainly be awakened out of their after-dinner sleep, and then what an afternoon they would all have.
Norvin Green was wont to observe of Commodore Vanderbilt, "he held them exceeding close to his boo-som." Mr. Whitney, Secretary of the Navy in his first administration, equally rich and hospitable, had often "the road gang," as a certain group, mainly senators, was called, to dine, with the inevitable after-dinner soirée or séance. I was, when in Washington, invited to these parties.
The differentiating absurdities of after-dinner oratory are photographed in Thackeray's Dinner in the City, where the speech of the American Minister seems to have formed a model for a long series of similar performances. Gregsbury, M.P., and his constituents in a later chapter of the same immortal book. The parliamentary eloquence of a later day was admirably reproduced in Mr. Stephen's.
Word Of The Day