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


"Are you an Italian?" "Well, yes," returned Signor Orlando, with a wink, "that's what I am, or what people think me; but I was born in Vermont, and am half Irish and half Yankee." "How did you come by your name, then?" "I took it," answered his companion. "You see, dear boy, I'm a professional." "A what?" "A professional singer and clog-dancer.

"Gentlemen all, Miss Florence Simcox or shall us say Mrs Offlow, wife of the gentleman who has just obliged the champion female clog-dancer of the Midlands, will now oblige." These words put every man whom they surprised into a state of unusual animation; and they surprised most of the company. It may be doubted whether a female clog-dancer had ever footed it in Bursley.

And he recalled for a second the figure of Florence Simcox, the clog-dancer. And below these images and reflections in his mind was the thought: "I haven't known what life is! I've been asleep. This is life!" The upper squares of the drawing-room window were filled with small leaded diamond-shaped panes of many colours. It was the latest fashion in domestic glazing.

He had been, as he claimed, "a cruel uncle's ward" in his early orphan-hood, and while yet almost a child he had run away from home, to fulfil his heart's desire of becoming a clog-dancer in a troupe of negro minstrels. But it was first his fate to be cabin-boy and bootblack on a lake steamboat, and meet with many squalid adventures, scarcely to be matched outside of a Spanish picaresque novel.

He had been, as he claimed, "a cruel uncle's ward" in his early orphan-hood, and while yet almost a child he had run away from home, to fulfil his heart's desire of becoming a clog-dancer in a troupe of negro minstrels. But it was first his fate to be cabin-boy and bootblack on a lake steamboat, and meet with many squalid adventures, scarcely to be matched outside of a Spanish picaresque novel.

"There's a first-class clog-dancer among them; but he's a little stuck up, and I don't know as you could get him to dance," he said in a low tone. "What a bloated aristocrat!" cried the lady. "Then the only thing is for us to dance first. Can they play?" "One of 'em can whistle like a bird, he can whistle like a whole band," answered Kinney, warming. "And of course the Kanucks can fiddle."

And he suddenly thought of Florence, the clog-dancer. He had scarcely thought of her for months. The complexity of the interests of life, and the interweaving of its moods, fatigued his mind into an agreeably grave vacuity. It was not one of his official bilious attacks that Darius had on the following day; he only yielded himself up in the complete grand manner when nature absolutely compelled.

If he had not rushed home instantly it was solely because he had been held back by the stronger desire to hear more music and by the hope of further novel and exciting sensations. But Florence the clog-dancer had easily diverted the seeming-powerful current of his mind.

He did not know what to think of Florence, the champion female clog-dancer. He felt that she was wondrous; he felt that he could have gazed at her all night; but he felt that she had put him under the necessity of reconsidering some of his fundamental opinions.

It wouldn't do for you to cultivate the clog-dancer and like "Peter Pan," because in that case you probably liked the clog-dancer for the wrong reason for something other than that sublimated skill which is art. Of course this is only a wildly chosen example. I never heard either of them mention "Peter Pan." And the proper hatreds were ever more difficult than the proper devotions.