Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
The obvious truth is, that such "celebrations" are not to our taste, that there is something burlesque, to our ideas, in this useless honour; and that we think a bonfire, a discharge of squibs, or even a discharge of rhetoric, and a display of tinsel banners and buffoonery, does not supply the most natural way of reviving the memory of departed genius.
This unlucky whipster showed an early propensity to mischief, which he gratified in a small way, by playing tricks upon the frequenters of the Wild Goose; putting gunpowder in their pipes, or squibs in their pockets, and astonishing them with an explosion, while they sat nodding round the fire-place in the bar-room; and if perchance a worthy burgher from some distant part of Pavonia had lingered until dark over his potation, it was odds but that young Vanderscamp would slip a briar under his horse's tail, as he mounted, and send him clattering along the road, in neck-or-nothing style, to his infinite astonishment and discomfiture.
There were poems, taunts, jibes, and squibs, printed as rapidly as the press and ingenuity could turn them out. If our ancestors were capable of appreciating the literary excellence of their pamphleteers, as many of those who have replaced them to-day could not, it must be admitted that we do not rage and hate so violently.
'Hurrah! jolly! jolly! shouted Reginald, dancing on the ottoman, 'and mind there are lots of squibs. 'And that Master Reginald Mohun has a new cap and bells for the occasion, said Lord Rotherwood. 'Let me make some fireworks, said Maurice. 'You will begin like a noble baron of the hospitable olden time, said Lily.
Francis Club, where I had some friends, I casually mentioned the troubles of the Huntington Closes. I was surprised to learn that Close spent little of his time at the Club, none at home, and only dropped into the hospital to make formal inquiries as to his wife's condition. It then occurred to me to drop into the office of Society Squibs, whose editor I had long known.
That there is some truth in these severe remarks, the paltry personal squibs in the Leipzig Almanach for 1832, which called them forth, with regard to Augustus Schlegel at least, sufficiently show: but there is a general truth involved in them also, which the worthy fraternity of us who, in this paper age, wield the critical pen, would do well to take seriously to heart; and it is this, that great poets and philosophers have a natural aversion as much to be praised and patronized, as to be rated and railed at by great critics; and very justly so.
Four weeks of acute torment in a city where nobody seemed to understand the simplest English sentence had driven 'Squibs' completely from his mind for the time being. The fact that such a paper existed was brought home to him with the coffee. A note was placed upon his table by the attentive waiter. "What's this?" he asked. "The lady, sare," said the waiter vaguely.
Of these I but remember tall old Miss Wintletop, most entertaining of rustic old maids, with her nice lace and thick satin, and her small, kindly round face pretty, I dare say, in other days, and now frosty, but kindly who told us such delightful old stories of the county in her father's and grandfather's time; who knew the lineage of every family in it, and could recount all its duels and elopements; give us illustrative snatches from old election squibs, and lines from epitaphs, and tell exactly where all the old-world highway robberies had been committed: how it fared with the chief delinquents after the assizes; and, above all, where, and of what sort, the goblins and elves of the county had made themselves seen, from the phantom post-boy, who every third night crossed Windale Moor, by the old coach-road, to the fat old ghost, in mulberry velvet, who showed his great face, crutch, and ruffles, by moonlight, at the bow window of the old court-house that was taken down in 1803.
"Well, daddy he fixed up a lot o' the big squibs an' Roman candles round the walls o' the hut in such a way that they all p'inted from ivery corner, above an' below, to the centre of the hut, right in front o' the fireplace, so that their fire should all meet, so to speak, in a focus.
And, sirrah, let me see thee fool handsomely, speak squibs and crackers, instead of that dry, barren, musty gibing which thou hast used of late; or, by the bones! the porter shall have thee to his lodge, and cob thee with thine own wooden sword till thy skin is as motley as thy doublet."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking