Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 26, 2025
"We were quite comfortable, thank you. The only drawback was the tea. Why a woman in your position can't give people China tea instead of that Ceylon syrup will be a mystery to me to my dying day." She rose in her wrath and shook me. "You're the most aggravating wretch on earth!" "My dear Tom-Tit," said I gravely. "Remember the moral tale of Bluebeard."
Bessie declined altogether; Sam had lent her his beautiful book of The British Songsters, and she was hard at work at the table copying a tom-tit, since she no longer carried on the work in secret; but at one locker were the other three elders, at the other the three lesser ones, and little George in a corner by Susan, pegging away at his own private lump, and constantly begging for more.
Man's a musquet, primed, loaded, ready to supply a friend or kill a foe charge not to be wasted on every tom-tit. But you! not a musquet, but a cracker! noisy, harmless, can't touch you, but off you go, whizz, pop, bang in one's face! baugh!" "Well!" said the good-humoured landlord, "I should think Master Aram, the great scholar who lives down the vale yonder, a man quite after your own heart.
Why, there it is, in the trunk of the cherry-tree. I just saw the tom-tit fly in."
"This beats cock-fighting," said mine host admiringly. He spread himself, happy and conspicuous as a tom-tit on a round of beef, and the crowd, pleasantly anticipating mugs of beer later on, urged the Mayor to be up and doing. "What have you to say for yourself?" said his grocer-ship to me, with a dim and belated idea, perhaps, that I might be interested in the proceedings.
As for the little crawling flies and other insects, it was wonderful how fast they were snapped up; and though people would say that Tom-tit and his wife did a great deal of mischief by pecking the buds, it was quite a mistake; for though they pecked the buds, it was almost always when some sly little insect had made itself a hole in the bud, where it would have laid eggs, and its young would have totally destroyed the tree.
It is observable, that Fowls, for the most part, lay a greater number of Eggs than Birds, even many more than they can sit upon at one time. I have known about thirty Eggs lay'd by one common Poultry-Hen, but it is seldom that any Bird lays more than five or six, except the Wren, and the Tom-tit, and the Pigeon not more than two.
You don't suppose that you are a serious poet, do you, and are going to cut out Milton and Aeschylus? Are you setting up to be a Pindar, you absurd little tom-tit, and fancy you have the strength and pinion which the Theban eagle bear, sailing with supreme dominion through the azure fields of air?
Man's a musquet, primed, loaded, ready to supply a friend or kill a foe charge not to be wasted on every tom-tit. But you! not a musquet, but a cracker! noisy, harmless, can't touch you, but off you go, whizz, pop, bang in one's face! baugh!" "Well!" said the good-humoured landlord, "I should think Master Aram, the great scholar who lives down the vale yonder, a man quite after your own heart.
Todkins, the old gardener, used to be in a fine way about it, and laid all sorts of charges against not only Tom-tit but all the rest of the birds, and used to want to set traps, and spread poisoned wheat, and get guns to shoot them with; but the master of Greenlawn would not let him; so the old man used to grumble and say there would be no fruit and no vegetables, for the birds would eat everything up, seed, fruit, and all.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking