United States or Croatia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
During about two hundred years after the discovery of America, that continent was a constant source of great and little money humbugs.
It sounded to us partly like an echo of ancient legends kept alive by dragomans and officials for purposes of revenue, and partly like an outcrop of the hysterical habit in people who travel in flocks and do nothing without much palaver. In our quiet camp, George the Bethlehemite assured us that the sheikhs were "humbugs," and an escort of soldiers a nuisance.
It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble.
You don't seem to have much faith in religion, yet you've always taken a high line and somehow I'm glad you have about things that never seemed to me to matter much. We're given these passions and desires and my! don't it hurt, falling in love! and then the clergy, though they're awful humbugs, tells us we must deny our cravings..."
Perhaps some of the members of the pathetic little group of Russian monarchist emigrés who meet weekly in the basement of a certain church to pray for the restoration of tsarism will condescend to tell us how the names were chosen. How stupid these pious humbugs are in their forgeries!
He left her to her fate embarked at sea, with the disclosure that he had never seen the South, and that his illiterate harangues were humbugs for hungry abolitionists. Once more alone! Yet not alone. A still newer compan- ionship would soon force itself upon her. No one wanted her with such prospects. Herself was burden enough; who would have an addi- tional one?
"Of course. It has to be acquired some way if one is not born to it. As a matter of fact, Louise is entitled, through her connection with my family " "Pshaw, I knew your family, Martha," he interrupted. "An arrant lot of humbugs." "John Merrick!" "Don't get riled. It's the truth. I knew 'em. On her father's side Louise has just as much to brag about an' no more.
"Not till I see how the case turns." "When will you be able to say then?" "When the disorder declares itself more fully." Hawes exploded in an oath. "You humbugs of doctors couldn't speak plain to save yourselves from hanging." There was some truth in this ill-natured excuse. After fifteen years given to the science of obscurity Mr. Sawyer literally could not speak plain all in one moment.
Why, even Dodd himself, who was one of the greatest humbugs who ever lived, would not have had the face to say that he approved of his wife telling the truth in such a case. Would you have had Flora Macdonald beckon the officers, saying, "This way, gentlemen! You will find the young chevalier asleep in that cavern."
Similarly the genuine zeal of his successor appears in painstaking search; his discrimination in the detection, his eloquence in his handling of humbugs.
Word Of The Day