United States or Saint Martin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


In the capital of Eyeo, it is the custom of the court, for the monarch to hold a levee twice a day, at six in the morning, and two in the afternoon; rather hot work for the courtiers, perspiring in a temperature of about 120°. The son of a Highland clansman, or of an Irish bogtrotter, is ushered into the presence of his sovereign with very little preliminary instruction; not so however with the more refined and polished court of Katunga.

This is a bad omen, Hugh, to find that Jack Dunning, of all men in the country, should have changed his servant good, quiet, lazy, respectable, old, grey-headed Garry the nigger for such a bogtrotter as that fellow, who climbs those stairs as if accustomed only to ladders." Dunning was in his library on the second floor, where he passed most of his evenings.

So I became his bonnet, and assisted him in the fair, and in many other fairs beside; but I did not like my occupation much, or rather my master, who, though not a big man, was a big thaif, and an unkind one, for do all I could I could never give him pleasure; and he was continually calling me fool and bogtrotter, and twitting me because I could not learn his thaives' Latin, and discourse with him in it, and comparing me with another acquaintance, or bit of a pal of his, whom he said he had parted with in the fair, and of whom he was fond of saying all kinds of wonderful things, amongst others, that he knew the grammar of all tongues.

"Tory" was at this time the name for a native Irish outlaw or "bogtrotter," and in fastening it on the loyalist adherents of James's cause the "petitioner" meant to brand the Duke and his party as the friends of Catholic rebels. Charles at once took advantage of this turn of affairs. He recalled the Duke of York to the Court.

So far well but further inquiry brought forth further truths. It came out that one of the party had called the other "a beggarly bogtrotter," for which he received in reply a blow upon his nose. Thus the row commenced; but better still, it appeared that one of "the dreadful Irishmen" was a Welshman! and that it was he who called poor Paddy "a bogtrotter."

'I contend for it that all our civilisation is higher, and that class for class we are in a more advanced culture than the English; that your chawbacon is not as intelligent a being as our bogtrotter; that your petty shopkeeper is inferior to ours; that throughout our middle classes there is not only a higher morality but a higher refinement than with you.

"Step up, ye divils, the Irishman shouted, applying his sharp-pointed spear to the sides of the most obstinate robber. "Go to the devil, you Irish bogtrotter!" was the reply. "Did ye hear him, master, dear, call me names? O, that the ruffians should abuse a dacent lad, who has worked night and day for the paraties that he ates, and the meat that he drinks." "Whiskey, more like," grunted Bill.