United States or Afghanistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
What would she, what could she, think, but that I was the same punch-drinking, rowing, quarrelling bumpkin as those whom I had so lately been carefully endeavoring to separate myself from? How I hated myself for the excess to which passion had betrayed me, and how I detested my opponent as the cause of all my present misery.
Murphy fired away jokes, repartees, anecdotes, and country gossip, to their delight; and when the eatables were disposed of, he started them on the punch-drinking tack afterwards so cleverly, that he hoped to see three parts of them tipsy before they retired to rest. "Do you feel your knee better now, sir?" asked one of the party, of Murphy.
The card-playing and punch-drinking in the other room, the preliminary tuning of fiddles in the hall, the triumphant strains of a country dance, the weaving of the figures, the gay voices of the village youths, who lost all their abashedness as the evening went on, the supper, the table gleaming with the white lights of silver and the rainbow lustre of glass, the golden points of candles in the old candelabra, the fruity and spicy odors of cake and wine, were all as a dimness and vagueness of brilliance itself.
Tea-parties and punch-drinking followed, as was the custom. Mr. Arnold, as my aunt called him, after a fashion learned in London, and also common in the colonies, gave his bride Mount Pleasant as a dowry, and none knew not even the fair Margaret that it was hopelessly mortgaged.
Moreover, his easy-going ways even his punch-drinking and his card-playing made him a desirable husband at that time of French social history, when the aristocracy wished to act exactly as it pleased, with wanton license, and when an embassy was a very convenient place into which an indiscreet ambassadress might retire when the mob grew dangerous.
Fred did not enter into formal reasons, which are a very artificial, inexact way of representing the tingling returns of old habit, and the caprices of young blood: but there was lurking in him a prophetic sense that evening, that when he began to play he should also begin to bet that he should enjoy some punch-drinking, and in general prepare himself for feeling "rather seedy" in the morning.
Moreover, his easy-going ways even his punch-drinking and his card-playing made him a desirable husband at that time of French social history, when the aristocracy wished to act exactly as it pleased, with wanton license, and when an embassy was a very convenient place into which an indiscreet ambassadress might retire when the mob grew dangerous.
Major O'Shaughnessy, our host, was one of that class of my countrymen I cared least for, a riotous, good-natured, noisy, loud-swearing, punch-drinking western; full of stories of impossible fox hunts, and unimaginable duels, which all were acted either by himself or some member of his family.
When I asked him how, having left his country while still a boy, and having passed his youth at military stations in India, he had been able to educate himself, his answer was, that he had been stationed in the neighbourhood of an excellent library, that he had been allowed free access to the books, and that they had, at the most critical time of his life, decided his character, and saved him from being a mere smoking, card-playing, punch-drinking lounger.
As a man, I have seen the old narrow streets widening the old houses crumbling and the salty savouring of society evaporate, and the sea influence recede before improvement education and enlightenment of all sorts. Step by step has that sea-element in my townsmen declined. The three-bottle and punch-drinking man is the exception now, and not the rule of the table.
Word Of The Day