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In 1826, when she was surrounded by adorers, Dinah completed her twentieth year, and the Abbe Duret kept her in a sort of fervid Catholicism; so her worshipers had to be content to overwhelm her with little attentions and small services, only too happy to be taken for the carpet-knights of this sovereign lady, by strangers admitted to spend an evening or two at La Baudraye.
In 1826, when she was surrounded by adorers, Dinah completed her twentieth year, and the Abbe Duret kept her in a sort of fervid Catholicism; so her worshipers had to be content to overwhelm her with little attentions and small services, only too happy to be taken for the carpet-knights of this sovereign lady, by strangers admitted to spend an evening or two at La Baudraye.
They had been very intimate as girls, but had not met for years hardly since the former married sir John, the son of one of King James's carpet-knights. Hearing of her cousin's illness, she had come to visit her at last, under the escort of her son.
The best cavalry in those Roman battles were never a match for infantry when in close formation, and Pompey's brilliant squadrons were carpet-knights from the saloon and the circus. They never rallied, or tried to rally; they made off for the nearest hills.
They had been very intimate as girls, but had not met for years hardly since the former married sir John, the son of one of King James's carpet-knights. Hearing of her cousin's illness, she had come to visit her at last, under the escort of her son.
It was pleasant, occasionally, to distinguish a grizzly veteran among this crowd of carpet-knights, the trained soldier of a lifetime, long ago from West Point, who had spent his prime upon the frontier, and very likely could show an Indian bullet-mark on his breast, if such decorations, won in an obscure warfare, were worth the showing now.
Pedlars, pedlars: wandering from door to door with the small ware of lies and cajolery: exploits for carpet-knights; honesty for courtiers; truth for monks, and chastity for nuns: a good saleable stock that costs the vender nothing, defies wear and tear, and when it has served a hundred customers is as plentiful and as marketable as ever. But, sirrahs, I'll none of your balderdash.
In a famous speech delivered at a New York state convention in Rochester in September, 1877, Conkling poured his scorn on the reform element in general and on Curtis in particular, as "man-milliners," "carpet-knights of politics," "grasshoppers in the corner of a fence," and disciples of ladies' magazines with their "rancid, canting self-righteousness."
Little would one imagine, as he passes the groups of dainty and scrupulously neat French officers upon the boulevards, looking the laziest persons in the world, that these seeming carpet-knights are out upon the Champ de Mars at three o'clock in the morning, and often drill until nine or ten in the forenoon, or that the little toulourou, as he is nicknamed, or private of the ligne, in his brick-colored trowsers and clean gaiters, whose voice is the gayest and whose legs are the nimblest in the barrier-ball, has done a day's work of parade and gymnastics which equals the toil of an ouvrier.
Such men as this lived in the old days of chivalry, at which modern puny carpet-knights make bold to laugh, while inwardly thanking their stars that they live in the peaceful age of the policeman.
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