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Here was no silence, but blatant noise roar and chatter and shriek, the beat of the tom-tom, the thin piping of a flute the crash of a band. But it was the thin piping which Christopher followed, guiding Anne with his hand on her arm. Following the plaintive note, they came at last to the snake-charmer an old man in a white turban. The snakes were in a covered basket.
Nearly the last sound that greeted our ears as we walked down over the irregular pavements, and through the narrow lanes towards the pier from whence we were to embark, was the rude music of the snake-charmer; and the last impressive sight was that of a public story-teller, in one of the little squares, in earnest gesticulation, as with a high-pitched, shrill voice he related to a group of women, who were squatted in their white haiks, and men of the desert in their hooded gehabs, what the guide told us was a chapter from the "Thousand and One Nights!"
I run acrost a couple I knowed out there the first thing it was Watty and the snake-charmer woman. Only she wasn't charming them now. Her and Watty had a Parisian Models' show. I ast Watty where Dolly was. He says he don't know, that Dolly has quit him. By which I guess he means he has quit her. I ast where Reginald is, and the Human Ostrich.
Patrick's, for the servant-girls. The latter is located on Fifth Avenue, where its towering white spires divide with the homes of the Vanderbilts the interest of the crowds of sight-seers. Now, early every Sunday morning, before "Good Society" has opened its eyes, you may see the devotees of the Irish snake-charmer hurrying to their orisons, each with a little black prayer-book in her hand.
But more interesting than any is the snake-charmer, who has just squatted down in front of us, prepared to give us an entertainment. That is a cobra he takes out; you know it by its large, flat head. It seems sleepy and stupid, but its bite is deadly. It is possible, of course, that he has abstracted the poison-fangs which make its bite fatal, but even without them I shouldn't care to handle it.
There was a certain wobbly buoyancy in its gait and a jauntiness about its waving white trunk, which was locked at the end, as Mary explained, to guard against the ferocious assaults of this terrible man-eater, which never failed to convulse the audience and put them in the proper humor for the rest of the performance. The snake-charmer exhibited her paper pets.
"I didn't know it was going to be quite as awful as this." "Awful?" "You know what I mean you're worn out, and you look dreadfully and I didn't know we'd have to do so much " She fumbled for the word. "What is it when a man stands outside, and tries to make people come in and look at the snake-charmer?" "Ballyhoo. Would you have wanted me to stay out of it, if you'd known?" She deliberated.
The snake-charmer, the story-teller, the beggar, the water-carrier, the incense seller, whose task in life is to fumigate True Believers, all who go to make the typical Moorish crowd, were to be seen indolently plying their trade. But inquiries for mules, horses, and servants for the inland journey met with no ready response.
If the call were that of business of any of the great perilous affairs he handled like a snake-charmer spinning the deadly reptiles about his head she knew she would drop from his life like a loosened leaf. These anxieties sharpened the intensity of her enjoyment, and made the contrast keener between her crowded sparkling hours and the vacant months at Saint Desert.
"What are you going to suggest? Hire a snake-charmer and a wild-man-from-Borneo and an infant pachyderm and a royal ring-tailed gyasticutus, and pull off a side-show after the main tent's closed?" "Oh, Henry! Can't you see what a lark it would be?" "Lark?" he repeated, hazily. "Lark? You've got the wrong bird. It's crow." "No, but Henry dear, you aren't going to be a quitter, are you?"
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