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Pushing their way through the crowded assembly, where men and women were engaged in drinking and indulging in loud and boisterous laughter, they reached a position in front of a stage that had been erected in the rear end of the hall, and before which hung a gaudily-painted curtain, which hid from the spectators the mysteries and perhaps the miseries that lay beyond.
Mortimer's talk seemed to put a current into it, calling them southward and to high adventures southward where no smoke was, and the swallows skimmed over the scented water-meads. Even the gaudily-painted cups and saucers, which Mr. Mortimer produced from a gaudily-painted cupboard, made part of the romance. Tilda had never seen the like.
The gaudily-painted houses, many stories high, with wooden balconies and projecting windows, were interspersed with ruinous palm-thatched bamboo huts and grotesquely decorated temples filled with fat priests and hideous, ochre-daubed gods, and noisy with the incessant blare of conch shells and the jangling of bells.
And more especially did he loathe the last picture presented to him on the outskirts of the common. At the door of a gaudily-painted van, somewhat apart from the rest, stood a strapping lass, tambourine in one hand, tin mug for the holding of pennies in the other.
The latter had never been under-drawn: its entire anatomy lay bare to an inquiring eye, except where a frame of wood laden with oatcakes and clusters of legs of beef, mutton, and ham, concealed it. Above the chimney were sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols: and, by way of ornament, three gaudily-painted canisters disposed along its ledge.
Queenston is a poor place; it has never gained an inch since the war of 1812; but, as a railroad has been established, and a wharf is building in connection with it, it will go ahead. Opposite to it is Lewiston, in the United States, less ancient and time-worn, full of gaudily-painted wooden houses, and with much more pretension.
On the following day I found myself in quaint old Amsterdam, that city built upon the sand in defiance of a certain text in St. Matthew, the city with its great network of canals, and its many gaudily-painted barges.
I had walked down some mile or so, and just as I heard a cannon, as I thought, fire at some distance, and wondered at its meaning, I came to a sudden bend of the river, with a church-tower hanging over the stream on the opposite bank, a knot of tall poplars, weeping willows, rich lawns, sloping down to the water's side, gay with bonnets and shawls; while, along the edge of the stream, light, gaudily-painted boats apparently waited for the race, altogether the most brilliant and graceful group of scenery which I had beheld in my little travels.
Interspersed with the houseboat folk, although of different character, are those whose business leads them to dwell as nomads upon the river merchant peddlers, who spend a day or two at some rustic landing, while scouring the neighborhood for oil-barrels and junk, which they load in great heaps upon the flat roofs of their cabins, giving therefor, at goodly prices, groceries, crockery, and notions, often bartering their wares for eggs and dairy products, to be disposed of to passing steamers, whose clerks in turn "pack" them for the largest market on their route; blacksmiths, who moor their floating shops to country beach or village levee, wherever business can be had; floating theaters and opera companies, with large barges built as play-houses, towed from town to town by their gaudily-painted tugs, on which may occasionally be perched the vociferous "steam piano" of our circus days, "whose soul-stirring music can be heard for four miles;" traveling sawyers, with old steamboats made over into sawmills, employed by farmers to "work up" into lumber such logs as they can from time to time bring down to the shore the product being oftenest used in the neighborhood, but occasionally rafted, and floated to the nearest large town; and a miscellaneous lot of traveling craftsmen who live and work afloat, chairmakers, upholsterers, feather and mattress renovators, photographers, who land at the villages, scatter abroad their advertising cards, and stay so long as the ensuing patronage warrants.
Here he halted; and, looking upwards, read, at the foot of an immense sign-board, displaying a gaudily-painted angel with expanded pinions and an olive-branch, not the name he expected to find, but that of WILLIAM KNEEBONE, WOOLLEN-DRAPER.
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