United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The rough life they led, and the frequent exposure to intense cold, had considerably weakened a frame which had never been robust, and an occasional cough, when he told a long story, sometimes warned him to desist. Games, too, were got up. "Hide-and-seek" was revived with all the enthusiasm of boyhood, and "fox-chase" was got up with tremendous energy.
Then came dextrous displays in the dances of our forbears, who followed the fiddle to the Fox-chase Inn or Garden of Gray's Ferry. There were French Fours, Copenhagen jigs, Virginia reels, spirited figures blithely stepped. And the grave-faced, square-jawed Elders seemed as eager as the unthinking youths and maidens to throw off for the moment the burden of their cares.
Ah me! never was that gallant boy to ride a fox-chase, or to take the place amongst the gentry of his country which his birth and genius had pointed out for him! Though I don't believe in dreams and omens, yet I can't but own that when a great calamity is hanging over a man he has frequently many strange and awful forebodings of it. I fancy now I had many.
Whilst I was in this situation, my lord Percy, the earl of Northumberland's eldest son, by an accident of losing his way after a fox-chase, was met by my father, about a mile from our house; he came home with him, only with a design of dining with us, but was so taken with me that he stayed three days.
General Sheridan then, after giving a summary of the scattered locations of the various portions of Early's army continues as follows: "It was my aim to get well on the road before Early could collect these scattered forces and as the officers had been in the habit of amusing themselves during the winter by fox-hunting, I decided to use the hunt as an expedient for stealing a march on the enemy and had it given out that a grand fox-chase would take place on the 29th of February.
"A fox-chase! a fox-chase! Tumble up, all hands!" The men were sitting at the time in a very dull and silent mood. They were much cast down, for as it had been cloudy weather for some weeks past, thick darkness had covered them night and day, so that they could not tell the one from the other, except by the help of their watches, which were kept carefully going.
Our outriders were quick to remark and imitate the manoeuvre, and came flying after us with a vast deal of indiscriminate shouting; so that the fine, sober picture of a carriage and escort, that we had presented but a moment back, was transformed in the twinkling of an eye into the image of a noisy fox-chase. A highwayman! It was otherguess work with Bellamy.
"D n me," says he, "if I won't walk in the rain rather than get into one of their hand-barrows again. They have jolted me more in a mile than Brown Bess would in a long fox-chase." When his wrath on this occasion was a little appeased, he resumed the same passionate tone on another. "There," says he, "there is fine business forwards now.
"Is all prepared?" he asked. "Yes, your highness. Old Philip is in ecstasies, and the other lackeys are like a pack of hounds on the eve of a fox-chase." "They shall hear the fanfare presently," returned Eugene, following his cousins, and taking his seat opposite to them. "What is that?" asked the Prince de Conti pointing to the long, thin roll of white paper which Eugene held in his hand.
Brown was puzzling himself to conceive how a fox-chase could take place among hills, where it was barely possible for a pony, accustomed to the ground, to trot along, but where, quitting the track for half a yard's breadth, the rider might be either bogged or precipitated down the bank. This wonder was not diminished when he came to the place of action.
Word Of The Day