United States or Western Sahara ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It happened when a guy named Merritt and myself were running a snake show next to a camp meeting down on the Jersey coast. We didn't have any regular snake charmer, but we bought a lot of wrigglers from a dealer down on the Bowery and Merritt made himself up for a Hindoo fakir.
Skimming the ground with hungry noses, the dogs answered each cry with a single keen yap of preoccupied affirmation. Almost at once Charmer came to the spot pointed out to me, reared her full length upon the rails and let out a new note; long, musical, fretful, overjoyed.
"Well, I suppose it's hard for us to understand his point of view. We talked about it one night in New York when we were dining with Margaret Oldcastle she takes the leading part in 'Pretty Fanny, you know." "Yes, I know. What is she like?" A strange, still look came into her face, as though she waited with suspended breath for his answer. "She's a charmer on the stage.
He knew she had been a charmer of many, and in yielding himself to her recognized power he was for the moment playing with a force that was new and interesting, with which he had felt altogether strong enough to contend for an evening or he would not have come. That it should thrill along all his senses with this unreasoning rapture was most astonishing.
Cesario wholly forgetting, cried out again, "Ha! lost all for a trifling woman! Lost all those trophies of thy conquest for a mistress! By heaven I will shake the charmer from my soul, if both I cannot have."
Never for a moment did the shrill, monotonous, unceasing rhythm of the whistle cease to dominate the dance. It always rose above the beat of the dancers, it penetrated everything, ruled everything this single, shrill note, like the chant of a snake charmer. It even showed its power over Dick and Albert.
"What king," said the mystical charmer, and as he spoke he carelessly rested his hand on my shoulder, so that I trembled to feel that this dread son of Nature, Godless and soulless, who had been and, my heart whispered, who still could be my bane and mind-darkener, leaned upon me for support, as the spoilt younger-born on his brother, "what king," said this cynical mocker, with his beautiful boyish face, "what king in your civilized Europe has the sway of a chief of the East?
I was made very welcome, indeed. There were two very pretty girls here, and I could have "loved either were 'tother dear charmer away." But I fell in love with both of them, and thereby overdid the thing. This was by a dim fire-light. The next day was Sunday, and we all went to church in the country. We went in an old rockaway carriage.
We were bankrupt, diseased; and our bones, like those of the Psalmist, were all out of joint; and if our hearts did not become like melting wax in the midst of our bodies, it was not the fault of Mr. John Harrington, but rather was it due to the hardening of those organs against the voice of the charmer. "The Navigation Act called down the choicest of the orator's vessels of wrath.
So he took her, moved both by desire of the promised recompense and a wish to find favour with God, and hid her in his bosom. When the charmer had passed and gone his way and the serpent had no longer any reason to fear, he said to her, "Where is the recompense thou didst promise me? Behold, I have saved thee from that thou dreadest."
Word Of The Day