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Updated: May 2, 2025
And far away, perhaps, in the quainter squares of the more primitive island villages in Burano or Chioggia before the Duomo, some reader lies at full length in the brilliant moonlight under the banner of San Marco, his "Boccaccio" open before him, repeating in a half-chant, monotonous and droning, some favorite tale from the well-worn pages to listeners who pause in groups in their evening stroll and linger until another story is begun; this time it is some strophe from the "Gerusalemme," to which a passing gondolier may chant the answering strain for this is the very poem of the people, echoing familiarly from lip to lip, and tales from the Tasso are not seldom wrought into the ebony carvings of their barks.
His mien was resolute. Altogether, a quainter or 'cuter little man it has never yet been my lot to set eyes on. He walked in with a brisk step, eyed Charles up and down, and then, without much formality, asked for what he was wanted. "This is Sir Charles Vandrift, the great diamond king," Marvillier said, introducing us. "So I see," the man answered. "Then you know me?" Charles asked.
Here and there, however, a queer edifice meets your eye, endowed with the individuality that belongs only to the domestic architecture of times gone by; the house seems to have grown out of some odd quality in its inhabitant, as a sea-shell is moulded from within by the character of its inmate; and having been built in a strange fashion, generations ago, it has ever since been growing stranger and quainter, as old humorists are apt to do.
Yet not even the sweet season seemed to hurry the catastrophe that we hope, dearest reader, thy tender eyes have long seen impending. No, for this quaint alliance a quainter Cupid waited, the chubby little fellow with a big head and a little arrow, who waits on youth and loveliness, was not wanted here.
This was the most original quality, too, of his satire, and just the quality which is least common in our present satirical literature. He had read the old writers, Browne, Donne, Fuller, and Cowley, and was tinged with that richer and quainter vein which so emphatically distinguishes them from the prosaic wits of our day. His weapons reminded you of Damascus rather than Birmingham.
But my thirst for approbation was too intense. I had to choose: Cut capers and be followed, or walk in dignity, ignored. I chose to cut the capers. As time wore on I found myself striving to cut them quicker, quainter, thinking out funny stories, preparing ingenuous impromptus, twisting all ideas into odd expression. I had my reward. Before long my company was desired by all the school.
Again there was a dull report, and we sent a second back this time behind their trench and again "Vorsicht! Vorsicht!" they sent an answer back. Four times this was repeated. A quainter way of making war it would be hard to imagine. They might have been boys playing "anty-over" over the old house at home. Bombs of this sort have little penetrating power.
His hair curled crisply and incorrigibly and he bore himself with a lazy sort of grace, agile for all its indolence. Alexander could not be quite sure whether the eyes were insolent or humble. When he had stated his mission of "borrowing fire" he had used a quaint phrase, eloquent of a quainter custom.
Thus it is, again, with this sentence from Ruskin's "Seven Lamps of Architecture": "They are but the rests and monotones of the art; it is to its far happier, far higher, exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of variegated mosaic, charged with wild fancies and dark hosts of imagery, thicker and quainter than ever filled the depths of midsummer dream; those vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves; those window-labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry light; those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed tower; the only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations."
But it is rather to amuse you with the incidents of our explorations, our quaint encounters with a quaint people of still quainter manners and habits and with ideas quainter than all, and to present you with a picture of a country and a society interesting equally in themselves and from their strong contrasts with our own, I say, it is rather with these objects that I invite you, O reader, to join our little party, and participate in the manifold adventures of "HUNTING A PASS."
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