Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
The floors were full of holes, through which the unthinking merry-makers were continually sinking. Some tumbled through in the middle of a song; more at the end of a feast; and though there was many a cup of intoxication wreathed round with flowers, yet there was always poison at the bottom.
One of the actors suddenly stopped in the middle of his rôle, and gazing up the river, screamed out the now familiar by-word, 'Shui lai-la! This repetition of the stock jest, with well-simulated terror, as it seemed to the merry-makers, drew shouts of laughter; but the echoes of the laugh were drowned in the roar of a deluge.
Out of all that crowd of merry-makers that landed back on the Queen's Wharf, close on to midnight of that night, not one had noticed the solitary figure under the broad felt hat, though his very friends jostled and elbowed past him in the throng. Stepping ashore, he hired a carriage and drove rapidly away.
"Leonorine, take those wretched dogs out of my hearing. Dearwyn, lay aside your nonsense and go ask Gurth if he has heard anything yet of Teboen." She stamped again, angrily, as her eye went from one to another of the merry-makers.
As he reached the more populous quarters his walk slackened to a stroll; and now and then he paused to observe a knot of merry-makers or look through the curtains of the tents set up in the squares. The man was plainly but decently dressed, like a petty tradesman or a lawyer's clerk, and the night being chill he wore a cloak, and had drawn his hat-brim over his forehead.
Even Korzh could not contain himself, as he gazed at the young people, from getting gay in his old age. Bandura in hand, alternately puffing at his pipe and singing, a brandy-glass upon his head, the greybeard began the national dance amid loud shouts from the merry-makers. What will not people devise in merry mood! They even began to disguise their faces. They did not look like human beings.
I went to look at John-street, Clerkenwell, and dawdled about the immediate neighbourhood of Smithfield, thinking of the old fair-time, and of all the rioters and merry-makers, who now were so much or so little dust and ashes in City churchyards, until the great bell of St. Paul's boomed three, and I felt that it might be a leisure time with Mr. Grewter.
So one royal August day Bob found himself on the train with six University graduates, bound for "up North," for a glorious three weeks' outing. Their canoes, tents and duffle were all stored away in the express car ahead. Their cares and their studies were packed away in the weeks left behind, their hearts as merry, their clothes as hideous as a jolly crowd of merry-makers could desire.
Once he looked back on the gay scene presented to him the disordered supper- table, the easy lounging attitudes of the well-fed men, the flare of the lights which cast a ruddy glow on old and young faces and sparkled over the burnished pewter, then with a strange yearning pain in his eyes he turned slowly away, leaning on the arm of the girl beside him, and went, leaving the merry-makers to themselves.
The streams were frozen, and the merry-makers skimmed lightly and gracefully over the glassy surface of pond and lake.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking