Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
Kite-flying amongst Indians is an exciting sport, quite different to the tame amusement of merely seeing how high a kite will go. The Indian kites are nearly always quite small, made of thin coloured paper pasted on to a frame of very slender wooden splints. The better kites are made of paper of several different colours tastefully combined, and often decorated with gold.
Kite-flying is also a favourite amusement; and old age and childhood may frequently be seen side-by-side, tugging at soaring monsters, in the construction of which great ingenuity is displayed. The Japanese often play with cards, which are about a quarter of the size of ours; and they are much given to gambling, although it is strictly prohibited, and, when detected, severely punished.
The weather was getting rather too hot for most of our running games which we played in the spring and autumn with the exception, of course, of cricket, the most delightful of all summer amusements when Monsieur Malin proposed a grand kite-flying match. Two different objects were to be tried for. There were two equal first prizes.
If it was a hot July day the sky would be full of kites, and the Commons would be dotted over with boys holding them, or setting them up, or winding them in, and all talking and screaming at the tops of their voices under the roasting sun. One might think that kite-flying, at least, could be carried on quietly and peaceably; but it was not.
Three hundred thousand dollars a month could no longer be relied upon from the royal exchequer, or from the American voyages, or from the kite-flying operations of the merchant princes on the Genoa exchange. A great fleet, to be sure, had recently arrived, splendidly laden, from the West Indies, as already stated.
These talents, however, were not discovered for some time. We did not disdain to fly kites at our school, but they were very large, handsome kites, and we used to vie with each other in trying which could get the largest and strongest and most finely ornamented, and make them fly the highest. Our French master, Monsieur Malin, was a great hand at kite-flying.
If you will come along I'll ask you to help me by carrying and operating a light transit I shall carry another myself. I am desirous to get the elevation that the kite attains and certain other data that will be of use to me. We will make a detour towards the south, for I don't want old Syx's suspicions to be prodded any more." "What interest can he have in your kite-flying?"
No, son, you might as well get a book and settle down for the afternoon, for there is no kite-flying to be done to-day. Thank your silver stars if you get her up by tomorrow!
Another source of entertainment, no less popular, as well among the ladies as the gentlemen, consists in kite-flying, and they will sit for hours looking at their paper monsters in the air. There is a large open spot set apart for this purpose in the garden of every Chinese nobleman. We noticed an abundance of running water and ponds, but we did not observe any fountains.
Let him discover what his is, or was gardening, philosophy, reading, travel, billiards, raising animals, training animals, killing animals, yachting, collecting pictures or postage-stamps or autographs or snuff-boxes or scalps, astronomy, kite-flying, house-furnishing, foreign languages, cards, swimming, diary-keeping, the stage, politics, carpentry, riding or driving, music, staying up late, getting up early, tree-planting, tree-felling, town-planning, amateur soldiering, statics, entomology, botany, elocution, children-fancying, cigar-fancying, wife-fancying, placid domestic evenings, conjuring, bacteriology, thought-reading, mechanics, geology, sketching, bell-ringing, theosophy, his own soul, even golf....
Word Of The Day
Others Looking