United States or Cyprus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Don't worry, dear," Dorothy exclaimed, "I'll hold you in my arms, and take you with me." "Take us, too!" cried the nine tiny piglets, all in one breath. "Perhaps I can," answered Dorothy. "I'll try." "Couldn't you manage to hold me in your arms?" asked the cab-horse. Dorothy laughed. "I'll do better than that," she promised, "for I can easily save you all, once I am myself in the Land of Oz."
More telephoning brought the information that several might be had in a day or two, and finally I called up Simpson & Co., who informed me that the skipper was tearing his hair at the delay. "He says you're to return at once. You can kill the cab-horse if you want to. He'll pay for it." These were the last words I heard.
Any instruction, however, in the art of getting out of a cab, is wholly unnecessary if you are going any distance, because the probability is, that you will be shot lightly out before you have completed the third mile. We are not aware of any instance on record in which a cab-horse has performed three consecutive miles without going down once. What of that? It is all excitement.
I have rejoiced that my lot was not that of a Paris cab-horse, but I never in all my life thought of any fate so appalling as that contained in those words the perpetual society of fools. Why not reform our penitentiary methods? What is a prison cell to a clever embezzler, if he can have books and a pipe? Nothing but a long rest for his worn-out nerves possibly a grateful change.
Say I shall be there tonight certainly. Don't bother me with questions. Drive off at once. Or wait. Get another cab. I'll take this." Ripton was ejected, and found himself standing alone in the street. As he was on the point of rushing after the galloping cab-horse to get a word of elucidation, he heard some one speak behind him. "You are Feverel's friend?" Ripton had an eye for lords.
In my nine or ten weeks' sojourn, so largely spent in the streets, I saw the body of only one accident worse than a cab-horse falling; but that was early in my stay when I expected to see many more. We were going to the old church of St. Bartholomew, and were walking by the hospital of the same name just as a cab drove up to its gate bearing the body of the accident.
"It appears that the path ends here," announced the Wizard, gloomily. "And there is no way to go back," added Zeb, with a low whistle of perplexity. "I was sure it would come to this, in the end," remarked the old cab-horse. "Folks don't fall into the middle of the earth and then get back again to tell of their adventures not in real life.
Close behind her a tiny patch upon the roadside showed where the little boy was stretched. Still nearer to us was the dead cab-horse, kneeling between the shafts. The old driver was hanging over the splash-board like some grotesque scarecrow, his arms dangling absurdly in front of him. Through the window we could dimly discern that a young man was seated inside.
"If he had but a little more brains," she thought to herself, "I might make something of him"; but she never let him perceive the opinion she had of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories of the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes; felt the greatest interest in Jack Spatterdash, whose cab-horse had come down, and Bob Martingale, who had been taken up in a gambling-house, and Tom Cinqbars, who was going to ride the steeplechase.
Gradually, along the steep road from Camerata there came a roll of distant carriage-wheels. The sound came nearer and nearer, till one could see the carriage, and see the driver leading the tired, thin, cab-horse, his bones starting under the shaggy hide.
Word Of The Day