United States or Montserrat ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He is seldom dull, never sardonic or cruel, and always clean, healthy, and decent. His heroines are ideal fairy queens, his heroes are all visionary and chivalrous nincompoops; and even, though we know that much of it is whimsical banter and nonsensical fancy, there is an air of refined extravaganza in these books which may continue to give them a lasting charm.
"You ain't obliged to listen, but I ain't obliged to shut up." And for some time he continued his dissertation upon Imperialism, militarism, and international politics. But their talking put him out, and for a time he was certainly merely repeating abusive terms, "prancin' nincompoops" and the like, old terms and new. Then suddenly he remembered his essential grievance.
He knew the idiosyncrasies of councillors and aldermen in committee; he had learnt more about mankind in the committee-rooms of the old town hall than he could have learnt in ten thousand London clubs. He could divide the city council infallibly into wire-pullers, axe-grinders, vain nincompoops, honest mediocrities, and the handful who combined honesty with sagacity and sagacity with strength.
So, and no otherwise, did these good people present their parlor Kings, and condottieri, and heroic passion. They were worthy scions of the illustrious nincompoops of the days of Grand Cyrus, those Gascons of the ideal Scudery, La Calprenede an everlasting brood, the songsters of sham heroism, impossible heroism, which is the enemy of truth.
Of course if it comes to souls, my mother's the best person I've ever seen. But what does it help her? She's got to stand washing clothes for those stuck-up nincompoops of fine ladies! Wait till I've got money! It'll be somebody else then, who " "Peter Halket," said the stranger, "who is the greatest; he who serves or he who is served?"
"But will the poor steamer really be lost?" she inquired timidly; "wrecked, as sailors call it?" "Yes, I'm afraid so with the pack of nincompoops we've got on board," he growled.
But mum's the word, you know." "Never fear," Barton answered, somewhat thickly; "I'm an old bird, Fortune." "That you are! Men like you and me are not made of the same stuff as those young nincompoops; we can follow a trail without giving tongue at every jump." Highly flattered, Barton rode nearer, and gave his friend an affectionate punch in the side.
No more gingerbread education, no more treatment as dolls and nincompoops, no more discrimination between one sex and the other as to knowledge of this world's wickedness, no more curtailment of personal liberty on the score of that bugaboo, propriety all these, if you like, ladies; but we men, we fathers and philosophers, ask that you retain, for our sakes, beauty of face and form, beauty of raiment, low, modulated voices, and a graceful carriage, faith, hope, and charity, even though you continue to reveal these last-named as at present with sweet, illogical inconsequence.
"Am I going to lose her?" I murmured. And then: "What a sensation there'll be in the papers if this ship does go down!" My brain flitted from point to point in a quick agitation. I decided suddenly that the captain and crew must be a set of nincompoops, who had lost their heads, and, not knowing what to do, were unserenely doing nothing.
Are we to stand quietly aside and see the destinies of decent people entrusted to the leaders of a movement which owes its success to such supporters? Are Englishmen willing to be longer fooled by a Government of nincompoops? Those who have studied the thing on the spot will excuse a little warmth. And then, I am subject to a kind of Dillonism.
Word Of The Day