United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He found about one thousand of us aboard, and singling me out made me the non-commissioned officer in command. I was put in charge, of issuing the rations and of a barrel of milk punch which the Sanitary Commission had sent down to be dealt out on the voyage to such as needed it. I went to work and arranged the boys in the best way I could, and returned to the deck to view the scenery.
If only I need not miss it! "It would take no more than five minutes," she pleaded in her queer French, which was barely understandable, and evidently not the tongue in which she was most at home. "Well, then," I said, hastily calculating that it was no more than ten minutes since Lady Turnour and Sir Samuel left me, and that the water for their punch couldn't possibly have begun to boil yet.
Snelling's back was turned to shake his fist at Bert and Frank, and mutter loudly enough for them to hear: "I'll punch the heads of you both at recess, see if I don't." At length, with some little difficulty, Mr. Snelling got matters arranged, and the two boys were placed in the farthest corner of the room, and, to their profound delight, side by side.
"The big picture is Dover," said little Jamie, "and that Britannia sitting on the cliff, they cut out of Punch and stuck on. You see she has a boot in her hand. It belongs to our Sham memory that father made for us." "It's nearly the same as what Feinangle invented," Johnnie explained. "The vowels do not count, but all the consonants stand for figures.
"But I do mind you," cried the boy. "And how can I go on eating without you? I say, though, what a chap you are! What was that you said to him?" "Bless you for this!" "Yes, I guessed that was it; but how did you say it so as to make him understand? I talked to him enough, but he couldn't make out a word of what I said. Was that there Spanish?" "No, Punch; Latin."
What do you mean to eat and drink?" "Eggs potatoes and bacon buttermilk, and potheen . It's odd if I can't get plenty of them in Mayo, if I've nothing better." "I suppose you will, Frank; but bacon won't go down well after venison; and a course of claret is a bad preparative for potheen punch. You're not the man to live, with a family, on a small income, and what the d l you'll do I don't know.
Well, the second person whom I admitted through my door was the High Church curate of the parish at least, I deduced High Church from his collar and the cross which dangled from his watch chain. He seemed to be a fine upstanding manly fellow in fact, I am bound in honesty to admit that I have never met the washy tea-party curate outside the pages of Punch. Still, I have no love for the cloth.
He surveyed it critically, putting up a pair of thin hands, as so to shut off an excess of light. "Jimmie Whistler taught that fellow a trick or two," he remarked. "You knew Whistler?" "Oh yes." We left him with Punch and a copy of an art journal. Ajax said to me, as we went back to the barn "I'll bet he's an artist of sorts."
Try him by that, and he has abounding virtues to flood and conceal with lustrous and far-raying light his exceptional errors. To brief notices of some of these regretting the want of room to enlarge upon them as it would be pleasant to do we gladly turn. Punch is to be loved and cherished as the maker of mirth for the million.
While this was going on, Mr Macmichael, perceiving that the operation ought not to be interrupted any more than a surgical one, stood quite still waiting, and Willie stood also absorbed in staring, and gradually creeping nearer and nearer to the anvil, for there were no sparks flying about to make it dangerous to the eyes, as there would have been if they had been striking the iron itself instead of the punch.
Word Of The Day