United States or Sint Maarten ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As I moved about from day to day, making such acquaintance as I could, I found in the air a feeling of excitement and expectation. The hotels, bad as they were, were packed. The public places were noisy, the private houses crowded. Gradually the town became half-military and half-savage.
This gentleman was slender of limb, and tall; his lower extremities were clad in a tight pair of short breeches, beneath which, scarlet stockings plunged themselves into enormous shoes, decorated with huge rosettes; his coat was half-military, half-fop; and a long sword buckled round his waist, knocked against his fantastic grasshopper legs.
Two bright looking boys of about fifteen, dressed in a half-military fashion, stood on a terrace in front of a rambling, two-story building overlooking the surrounding country, the Hudson River being seen in the distance at the foot of a mountain of considerable height, everything being most distinct in the clear Autumn air, the steamboats on the river, the roof of the little railroad station and the puff of smoke from the engine as it pulled out being seen very clearly.
He himself was not smiling and did not unbend even when the station master, who had known him from his boyhood, felt at liberty to offer a deferential welcome. "Happy to see you home with her ladyship, Sir Nigel," he said; "very happy, if I may say so." Sir Nigel responded to the respectful amiability with a half-military lifting of his right hand, accompanied by a grunt.
It was in the depth of a broad valley, where there was a semblance to a trail which had been made by bison or other animals on their way to water, that Chief Amokeat drew up and awaited the approach of the Shawanoe. The latter, as was his custom, made a half-military salute, and, without any more preliminaries came to the point. He used the Blackfoot tongue, which was familiar to the Nez Perce.
These questions were put to me in English by an old half-military looking man, who translated into that language the suggestions which his companions for the most part threw out in Irish.
The leader of the party was, indeed, well mounted and clad in a buff coat, richly embroidered, the half-military dress of the period; but his domestics had only coarse jackets of thick felt, which could scarce be expected to turn the edge of a sword, if wielded by a strong man; and none of them had any weapons, save swords and pistols, without which gentlemen, or their attendants, during those disturbed times, seldom stirred abroad.
The men touched their foreheads as the carriage passed, and the children made bobbing curtsies. Sir Nigel condescended to straighten himself a trifle in his seat, and recognised the greetings with the stiff, half-military salute.
And amid all the noises I seemed to hear the voice of a man shouting in the midst like one ordering regiments hither and thither in the fight; the voice of the great half-military master-builder; the architect of spears. I could almost fancy he wore armour while he made that church; and I knew indeed that, under a scriptural figure, he had borne in either hand the trowel and the sword.
The other man was a policeman, pure and simple, with the helmet-looking hat which has lately become common, and all the ordinary half-military and wholly disagreeable outward adjuncts of the profession. "Wilkins," said the superintendent, "likely enough I shall want you, for they tell me the gent is uncommon strange.
Word Of The Day