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Updated: May 4, 2025
Let us imagine that some malicious Arabian Night's genius had snatched up the infant male child of a Scandinavian couple the largest of their nation; and flying away to Africa with it, to the heart of the great Aruwhimi forest had laid it on the breast of a little coffee-coloured, woolly-headed, spindle-shanked, pot-bellied, pigmy mother, taking away at the same time her own newly-born babe; that she had tenderly nursed the substituted child, and reared and protected it, ministering, according to her lights, to all its huge wants, until he had come to the fullness of his stature, yet never suspected, that the magnificent, ivory-limbed giant, with flowing yellow locks and cerulean eyes, was not the child of her own womb.
I am not very strong in the French 'dialect' myself. It would be better if he spoke no language at all; he wouldn't tell lies then. But of course, here he is, in the very nick of time," continued Marfa Timofeevna, looking down the street. "Here comes your agreeable man, striding along. How spindle-shanked he is, to be sure just like a stork!" Maria Dmitrievna arranged her curls.
He himself plays the heroic parts; a spindle-shanked, barber's apprentice sort of fellow, takes the aged father parts; and there's a matron, well advanced in years, who acts the young missies. They are now making ready to give a representation this evening.
Oh, I could give you a hundred instances, both ancient and modern, of this unseemly propensity of our illustrious race, though I will only trouble you with a few more ancient ones; they not only nicknamed Regner, but his sons also, who were all kings, and distinguished men; one, whose name was Biorn, they nicknamed Ironsides; another, Sigurd, Snake in the Eye; another, White Sark, or White Shirt I wonder they did not tall him Dirty Shirt; and Ivarr, another, who was king of Northumberland, they called Beinlausi, or the Legless, because he was spindle-shanked, had no sap in his bones, and consequently no children.
His delicate clothing and effeminate habits were derided by his playmates, who nicknamed him Batalus, after, we are told, a spindle-shanked flute-player. We do not know, however, just what Batalus means. As the boy was not fit for vigorous exercise, and never likely to make a hardy soldier or sailor, it became a question for what he was best fitted.
A hedge of forlorn fir-trees knee-deep in wooden tubs guarded its terrasse of round metal tables and spindle-shanked chairs; of which few were occupied. Inside, visible through the wide plate-glass windows, perhaps a dozen patrons sat round half as many tables no more idling over dominoes and gossip: steady-paced burghers with their wives, men in small ways of business of the neighbourhood.
"With a spindle-shanked husband capering in a Court suit before he goes to bed every night, that he may n't forget what a fine fellow he was one day bygone! You're growing lean on it, Mart, like a recollection fifty years old." "You have never forgiven me that day, Philip!" "Jealous, am I? Take the money, give up the girl, and see what friends we'll be.
As for spindle-shanked, he filled his loose woolen clothes better than before. He had made himself modestly fine for the day to be spent in company of the fair: he had on a necktie which, if expressive of mood, declared his outlook on life to be cheerfuller: it was a vibrant tone of violet that accorded agreeably with his gray suit.
For he was long, stooping, gaunt and spindle-shanked, his hands big and crippled with gout: his cheeks were red after an old man's fashion, covered with a crimson network like a pippin; his lips thin and not well hiding his few teeth; his nose long like a snipe's neb. In short, a shame and a laughing-stock to the Folk, and a man whom the kindreds had in small esteem, and that for good reasons.
A sharp click told him that the deacon had hung up the receiver in something of a temper. Donaldson came out of the booth, hesitated, and then put in another call. He found relaxation in the vaudeville picture he had of the spindle-shanked hypocrite fretting in the cold so many miles distant. He was morally certain that the old fellow had robbed the dying Burnham of half his scant property.
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