United States or Jamaica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One or two of them are already beginning to cast eyes at her, so that I dare not let her help me carry home my basket, far less go alone. 'Tis not the wench's fault. She shrinks from men's eyes more than any maid I ever saw, but if she bide long with me, I wot not what may come of it. There be rufflers there who would not stick to carry her off!"
Thereafter she became the favourite of the rufflers, the commonplace of the poets. Newgate knew her, and Fleet Street; her manly figure was as familiar in the Bear Garden as at the Devil Tavern; courted alike by the thief and his victim, for fifty years she lived a life brilliant as sunlight, many-coloured as a rainbow.
Passing and repassing along the steep path with the picket fence which connected the two quarters, they saw the whole panorama of Canadian life moving before their eyes, the soldiers with their slouched hats, their plumes, and their bandoleers, habitants from the river cotes in their rude peasant dresses, little changed from their forefathers of Brittany or Normandy, and young rufflers from France or from the seigneuries, who cocked their hats and swaggered in what they thought to be the true Versailles fashion.
That I was amazed at such audacity goes without saying; but doubting of what it might be the preclude for the breakdown of the coach in that narrow place, the haunt of rufflers and vagrants of every kind, might be part of a concerted plan I fell back into my place.
Thus the cathedral underwent another afflicting change. A blight had come over it, mildewing its holy walls, and tainting and polluting its altars. Its aisles, once trodden by grave and reverend ecclesiastics, and subsequently haunted by rufflers, bullies, and other worthless characters, were now filled with miserable wretches, stricken with a loathsome and fatal distemper.
Now the critic, nine times out of ten, takes down a volume from its established shelf, dusts it off, ruffles the leaves a bit, and then puts it back where it was. The ruffling is sometimes very nice and interesting and often gives the ruffler a good position in the glorious company of earlier rufflers " "I shouldn't be satisfied with anything like that. Things have got to move.
I be's the cove, the merry old cove, Of whose max all the rufflers sing; And a lushing cove, I thinks, by Jove, Is as great as a sober king! CHORUS. Is as great as a sober king! Whatever the noise as is made by the boys At the bar as they lush away, The devil a noise my peace alloys As long as the rascals pay! CHORUS. As long as the rascals pay!
THOU? An' I get my hands upon thee " "Tut-tut!" said the burley Ruffler, interposing in time to save the King, and emphasising this service by knocking Hobbs down with his fist, "hast respect for neither Kings NOR Rufflers? An' thou insult my presence so again, I'll hang thee up myself."
Thus feeding this old man with pleasant talk until they were on the top of the hill, where these Rufflers might well behold the coast about them clear, quickly steps unto this poor man and taketh hold of his horse bridle and leadeth him into the wood, and demandeth of him what and how much money he had in his purse. "Now, by my troth," quoth this old man, "you are a merry gentleman!
Word Of The Day