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But, in fact, he says, the service on the continent has had a sad effect upon the young men; they have been ruined by light wines and French quadrilles. "They've nothing," he says, "of the spirit of the old service. There are none of your six-bottle men left, that were the souls of a mess-dinner, and used to play the very deuce among the women."
In answer Boris showed his sketching folio; then he would play her quadrilles, mazurkas, excerpts from opera, and finally his own improvisations. Tatiana Markovna's astonishment remained. "Just like your mother," she said. "She was just as restless, always sighing as if she expected something to happen. Then she would begin to play and was gay again.
He prefers always the agreeable to the useful: he knows how to dance all the quadrilles: he knows how to make grimaces of ten thousand sorts one after the other without stopping, and at the rate of twenty in a minute. Of his other attainments, I say little.
I have danced to its music before now to my mother's playing; but I am sure it has not a tone left." "I wish you would dance now, dear aunt," exclaimed Mabel, jumping up at the idea; "you never told me you could dance; I never, somehow, fancied you could dance, and I have been obliged to practise my quadrilles with two high-backed chairs and my embroidery frame.
No doubt it was presumed here at home that these frolicsome veterans laughed and sang and romped all day, and day after day, and kept up a noisy excitement from one end of the ship to the other; and that they played blind-man's buff or danced quadrilles and waltzes on moonlight evenings on the quarter-deck; and that at odd moments of unoccupied time they jotted a laconic item or two in the journals they opened on such an elaborate plan when they left home, and then skurried off to their whist and euchre labors under the cabin lamps.
Before the glimmering marble façade he took out his watch, a pale gold efflorescence in the gloom, and rang the hour in minute, clear notes. The third quarter past ten. He recalled the ball, but then commencing, at Stephen Jannan's; there it would be indescribably gay, a house flooded with the music of quadrilles, light, polite-chatter; and he determined to proceed and have a cigar with Stephen.
It happened in this manner: New quadrilles were being formed. Claudia was again dancing with Lord Vincent, and they had taken their places at the head of one of the sets. Ishmael was dancing with one of the poor neglected "wallflowers" to whom Bee had kindly introduced him, and he led his partner to a vacant place at the foot of one of the sets; he was so much engaged in trying to entertain the shy and awkward girl that he did not observe who was their vis-
Brother Stenhouse, at the request of President Young, formally introduces me to company from the platform. There is a splendor of costumery about the dancers I had not expected to see. Quadrilles only are danced. The mazourka is considered sinful. Even the old-time round waltz is tabooed. I dance. The Saints address each other here, as elsewhere, as Brother and Sister. "This way, Sister!"
Just then the door of the box opened and the entrance of the general prevented her from replying. I was just going, when the count said: "I am sure madame has prevailed on you to stay, and to come to my ball and supper to-morrow?" "She has led me to anticipate that you would do me that honour, and she promises to dance the quadrilles with me. How can one resist entreaty from such lips?"
Lord and Lady Lansdowne and their two daughters, now Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Osborne Beauclerk, could execute the most complicated Quadrilles and Lancers on skates, and could do the most elaborate figures. Once a week all Ottawa turned up at Rideau Hall to skate to the music of a good military band.
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