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Updated: May 27, 2025
In cabinet-making, in shoe-making, in tailoring, in masonry, in upholstery, in the various contrivances of tin and sheet iron with which our houses are made comfortable, in gas-fitting and plumbing, in the thousand-and-one necessities of the farm, the garden, and the kitchen, a workman who is ready and expert with his pencil, who has learned to put his own ideas, or those of another, rapidly on paper, is worth fifty per cent. more than his fellows who have not this skill.
If I had not caught my foot in the reins that time I got out of the buggy in front of her house if I had not fallen in the water and had my clothes shrink in drying nor choked almost to death nor got under the counter nor failed to "speak my piece" nor sat down in that mud-puddle nor committed suicide nor run away from home nor performed any other of the thousand-and-one absurd feats into which my constitutional embarrassment was everlastingly urging me, I declare boldly, "Belle might have been mine."
Oh! the lurking vice that prowls about on pay-day, the candles that are lighted in the depths of dark alleys, the dirty windows of the wine-shops where the thousand-and-one poisonous concoctions of alcohol display their alluring colors. Frantz was familiar with all these forms of misery; but never had they seemed to him so depressing, so harrowing as on that evening.
In cities and large towns, his cart is loaded with the infinitely-varied wares of street trade; with cabbages, fish, fruit, or with some of the thousand-and-one nicknacks that find a market among the masses of the common people.
These all become matters that are never forgotten. Other great difficulties, experienced by every general, are to measure truly the thousand-and-one reports that come to him in the midst of conflict; to preserve a clear and well-defined purpose at every instant of time, and to cause all efforts to converge to that end.
There are halts at Boulogne and Calais; news must be obtained from English sentries and French railway officials; there is, in one place, a train of German prisoners; there are long halts at tiny stations where you can procure hot water while the O.C. Train discusses life with the R.T.O.; there are the thousand-and-one things which serve to remind you that you are in the war zone, although the country is peaceful, and you look in vain for shell holes and ruined houses.
Time and again he has told his friends that he has no fonder desire than to be able to walk about undisturbed, to saunter along the avenue, look into shop-windows, do the thousand-and-one common little things that are permitted other human beings.
I repeat it; we deserve our popularity. Which of us does not get head and ears in debt with garrison balls and steeple-chases, picnics, regattas, and the thousand-and-one inventions to get rid of one's spare cash, so called for being so sparingly dealt out by our governors?
Return we ourselves to Lucy. It so happened that the squire's carriage was the last to arrive; for the coachman, long uninitiated among the shades of Warlock into the dissipation of fashionable life, entered on his debut at Bath, with all the vigorous heat of matured passions for the first time released, into the festivities of the ale-house, and having a milder master than most of his comrades, the fear of displeasure was less strong in his aurigal bosom than the love of companionship; so that during the time this gentleman was amusing himself, Lucy had ample leisure for enjoying all the thousand-and-one reports of the scene between Mauleverer and Clifford which regaled her ears.
The thousand-and-one young gentlemen in blue neck-ties, who for a twelvemonth, in frantic strains, varying from basso profundo to piping tenor, had proclaimed their entire willingness to "mourir pour la patrie," were engrossed at their shops; innumerable fascinating trimmers of bonnets, who, like poor little "Dora," religiously believed the chief end of man consisted in "dancing continually ta la ra, ta la ra," sat busily plying the needle, elbow-deep in ribbons; the consumptive-looking flute-player before the foot-lights trilled out his spasmodic trickle of melody, and contemplated with melancholy pleasure the excited audience; the lank danseuse ogled and smirked at it behind them, and, with passionate gestures of her thin legs, implored its applause; men, women, and children, of all grades and degrees, crowded into the murky night; for a day was coming when the youths of the neck-ties would not agree to mourir on any account; when the flute-player would cease to be contemplative; when the danseuse would forget her attenuated extremities; when the whole world, where the grace of the Redeemer is known, would believe that the chief end of the hour, at least, consisted in "dancing continually ta la ra, ta la ra."
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