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This thing of using the common beggar's trick and the common beggar's shibboleth to put you on your liberality when you were expecting a simple straightforward commercial transaction, adds a little to your prospering sense of irritation. You ignore her reply, and ask again: "How much?" and she calmly, indifferently, repeats: "NACH BELIEBE."
Our boasted Republican government, whose shibboleth has ever been the equality of all men that the harvester of the lowly hoop-pole stands on a parity with a prince swinging a gilded scepter and robbing a poverty-stricken people considered that its paid representatives in Russia would be unequal to the task of spilling sufficient slobber over the chief representative of "divine right," the great arch-enemy of human liberty, and sent special envoys to assist at the ceremony.
His Shibboleth was, that the disgrace of the State must be wiped out by the repeal of the Yazoo Act; and repeal rang from every mouth, from Savannah to the mountains. Jackson resigned his seat in Congress, and was elected a member of the Legislature. Immediately upon the assembling of this body, a bill was introduced repealing the odious Act, and ordering the records containing it to be burned.
This man's name was Wressley, and it was the Shibboleth, in those days, to say "Wressley knows more about the Central Indian States than any living man." If you did not say this, you were considered one of mean understanding.
He entirely lacked the keen insight and dialectic subtlety of such a writer as Bishop Butler; and, in his explanation of this Stoical shibboleth, any real meaning which it may possess is evaporated into a gorgeous mist of confused declamation and splendid commonplace. Nor is he much more fortunate with his ideal man.
La Cibot, however, struck up an acquaintance with the portress, and traversed all distances in a brief space. There is a sort of freemasonry among the porter tribe, and, indeed, among the members of every profession; for each calling has its shibboleth, as well as its insulting epithet and the mark with which it brands its followers. "Ah! madame, you are the portress here," began La Cibot.
"Om-m-ject and sum-m-m-ject!" "om-m-ject and sum-m-m-ject," in short, as that famous flash of Thomas Carlyle's genius discovered and summarised Coleridge, and with Coleridge the whole nineteenth century. A screed of jargon a patter of shibboleth and that is all.
In Russia time and space have no exact importance, living counts for more than dominating life, emotion is not castrated, feelings are openly indulged in; in Russia there are the extremes of cynicism, and of faith; of intellectual subtlety, and simplicity; truth has quite another significance; manners are different; what we know as "good form" is a meaningless shibboleth.
The only meat we could find was pork, that shibboleth between Mohammedanism and Confucianism. The Dungan restaurant-keeper would not cook it, and only after much persuasion consented to have it prepared outside and brought back to be eaten beneath his roof. With better water and more substantial food we began, from this time on, to recuperate.
We believed, but I do not know whether this could be the fact, that carmine of this superlative quality was sold at a guinea a cake. 'Carmine', therefore, became my shibboleth of self-indulgence; it was a symbol of all that taste and art and wealth could combine to produce.
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