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Out in the dining-room could be heard voluble voices, weeping, and Irish expletives of mingled wrath and grief, and then, with eyes dilating with horror, with streaming hair, with pallid lips and a ghastly look in her white face, Grace Truscott, clad in a morning wrapper, came rushing through the little parlor into the hall, gave one glance at her girl friend, and then, stretching forth her arms, she cried,

But he was hardly up the hill before the agent, having recovered himself by dint of copious expletives, was looking after him with a grim chuckle. He knew his master, and he knew himself, and he thought between them they would about manage to keep that young spark in order. Robert meanwhile went straight home into his study, and there fell upon ink and paper.

I can see him sporting with children, or taking long walks, or cutting down trees for exercise, or given to deep draughts of old October when thirsty; but to see him with a long pipe, or dallying with ladies, or giving vent to unseemly expletives, or retailing scandals, these and other disreputable follies are utterly inconceivable of Mr. Gladstone.

They one and all poured out maledictions on our heads; and in their language, one most rich in expletives, they exhausted the whole vocabulary. Meanwhile the gunners stood with lighted port-fires, waiting for the word of command to fire the guns and launch the sepoys into eternity.

Dice, backgammon-boards, and cards were spread on many of the tables; punch smoked around with a very fragrant odour; and whatever might have been the nature of the conversation in general, the oaths and expletives, with which it was interlarded from time to time, spoke not very well for either the morality or the eloquence of our ancestors: for such, indeed, I must call these gentlemen, forming as they did part of the great ancestral body of a hundred and fifty years ago; though I devoutly hope and pray that none of my own immediate progenitors happened to be amongst the number there assembled.

So, after pounding long on the door, a drowsy voice demanded, with many and vivid expletives, who was there, and then added: "Oh, it's you, Jasper; what in the name of thunder are you making all that row about? And what are you doing waking up a man this time o' night! Hold on! You're an obstinate man, and I guess you'll bust my door unless I let you in."

The offending boy in the bows was making frantic efforts to haul in his misguided rope, but the possibility of making a second cast was unworthy of consideration. The mate muttered such a string of foreboding expletives as augured ill for the delinquent.

Needless to say, he was heartily welcomed and an agreement was made to club their dinners. Mr. Pott soon began to entertain the company with gossip about his mission and firebrand intentions, taking the opportunity of letting off some of his best abusive expletives at the expense of his rival paper, the Eatanswill Independent, and its editor.

Other words there are, of which the sense is too subtle and evanescent to be fixed in a paraphrase; such are all those which are by the grammarians termed expletives, and, in dead languages, are suffered to pass for empty sounds, of no other use than to fill a verse, or to modulate a period, but which are easily perceived in living tongues to have power and emphasis, though it be sometimes such as no other form of expression can convey.

The idea it conveyed to him was that a man had tripped or fallen over something; and this suggestion was strengthened when, immediately afterward, certain low muttered words in the Korean tongue, which sounded remarkably like a string of hearty expletives, issued from the same quarter. And the voice was undoubtedly that of Ling.