United States or Angola ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Pola bubbled over with fun, and his voice could be heard chattering and singing gaily at any hour of the day. He made up little verses about me, which he sang to the graceful gestures of the Siva or native dance, showing unaffected delight when commended. He cried out with joy and admiration when he first heard a hand-organ, and was excitedly happy when allowed to turn the handle.
I had not seen any American clothes for a year, but on Easter Sunday at luncheon I saw the most bewitching array of smart street-gowns worn by the inimitable American woman, who is as far beyond the women of every other race on earth in her selection of clothes and the way she holds up her head and her shoulders back and walks off in them as grand opera is above a hand-organ.
No severe, wasting labor is demanded before corn and milk for wife and little ones are wrung from reluctant clods. No danger is there of sons or daughters being obliged to quit their homes and roam over foreign lands for a precarious and beggarly subsistence. No prairie-boy will ever carry about a hand-organ and a monkey, or see his sister yoked to the plough, by the side of horse or ox.
Then, with one big, strong pull of his paws, Mappo broke the collar around his neck, and, as fast as he could run, he scampered toward the big tent the tent where he knew his cage was. Oh, how Mappo ran! "Come back here! Come back! My monkey! He is running away!" cried the hand-organ man, as he raced after Mappo.
He went reluctantly behind the curtain and soon reappeared carrying in his arms a small hand-organ, which he put down on the table with an air of deep dejection. Lakamba settled himself comfortably in his arm-chair. "Turn, Babalatchi, turn," he murmured, with closed eyes.
Perhaps I was shadowed by the watchers in the areaway. I neither knew nor cared. My one idea was to catch up with the child, and this time luck was with me. The little girl acknowledged shyly that she had learned the tune from a hand-organ. "It belongs to my uncle Bartolomeo," she explained, proudly. "It is a good organ, signore.
We get not Byron's "self-torturing sophist", but a martyred sage who suffered and died at the hands of Christians, 'he who makes out of Christians human beings'. Toward the end he is apostrophized as the 'Great Endurer, and bidden to leap joyously into Charon's boat and go tell the spirits about this 'dream of the war of frogs and mice, the hand-organ doodle-doodle of this life'.
"No," was all Avrillia said, but her voice made Sara's heart quiver, for in the sound of it she seemed to hear the temple-bells, and the fairy hand-organ she had heard in the steep street at Zinariola, and the drowsy tinkle of the fountain in the Butterfly Palace, and the little Laughs that leaped about the mountain, and the morning and evening sheep-bells, all gathered together into one sound that seemed to say that presently she would have to say good-by to Avrillia.
All day the Emperor left the company perfectly free. In the evening there was dancing to the music of a piano like a hand-organ, of which a chamberlain turned the handle. The Emperor was treated with great deference, but no one feared him, because his words were always marked by great affability. Napoleon I., on the other hand, was perhaps more feared than admired.
"He was here when I come," replied Roaring Dick, indifferently, "and, anyway, he's bound he's goin to be a river-hog. You couldn't keep him out with a fly-screen." "How're things going?" inquired Welton. "All right," said Roaring Dick. "This ain't no drive to have things goin' wrong. A man could run a hand-organ, a quiltin' party and this drive all to once and never drop a stitch."
Word Of The Day