United States or Trinidad and Tobago ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Let us hope that this extraordinary receipt for “hot coppers” was intended satirically, or else given seriously as the only advice that a confirmed toper was likely to follow in any case.
There was not much of the Bluebeard about the squire; but he had succeeded in making it understood through the household that he was not to be interrupted by messages from his wife during the post-prandial hour, which, though no toper, he loved so well. As a period of twelve months will now have to be passed over, the upshot of this long conversation must be told in as few words as possible.
"Ha! ha! yes, so it would," cried Victor, tossing off a can of cold water like a very toper. "Well, boys, I'm off to sleep, my digestiveness being uninjured as yet. Good-night." "What! without a pipe, Vic?" "Come, now, don't chaff. To tell you the truth, Ian, I've been acting your part lately.
He and I will make a bee-line for David's Store an' have a drink. Who'll keep me company?" Several of the more reckless among the men intimated their willingness to join the toper. The rest said they had other business on hand than to go carousin' around.
No! no! a toper Master Junco is not; he is too sane a bird for that! Would that all the citizens of our republic would display as much sound judgment and self-control. Where all the birds sleep on biting winter nights it would be difficult to say, but the acute little juncos lease the farmer's corn shocks hard by the woods. At dusk you may startle a dozen of them from a single shock.
Scattergood had viewed so recently: "Of course, there isn't a word of truth in it?" "That Hopewell's become a toper and beats his wife?" chuckled Walky. "Wal I reckon not! Maybe Hopewell takes a glass now and then I dunno. I never seen him. But they do say he went home airly from the dance at Lem Parraday's t'other night in a slightly elevated condition. Haw! haw! haw!"
The inner room is hung round with pictures and engravings of various kinds, a painting of a premium ox, a lithograph of a Turk and of a Turkish lady, . . . . and various showily engraved tailors' advertisements, and other shop-bills; among them all, a small painting of a drunken toper, sleeping on a bench beside the grog-shop, a ragged, half-hatless, bloated, red-nosed, jolly, miserable-looking devil, very well done, and strangely suitable to the room in which it hangs.
"Are you going to set up for a soldier-saint, too?" sneered Ben, turning to the old man. "I'm no saint, but I've larned better than to gamble." "I think you'd better stop drinking too," added Ben. "Come, Ben, you are meaner than dirt," said Tom, indignantly. Old Hapgood was a confirmed toper.
I once heard an hilarious Irish song that stated: "We are jolly and happy, for we know without doubt, That the whisky is plenty, and the water is out." This, I learn is the normal condition at Aden as to the relative status of whisky and water a very elysium for the toper who could not understand why whisky should be spoiled by mixing it with water.
Burke seemed incapable of sitting still, with folded hands, for any length of time; and when the stress of her attention to household work, and her devotion to neighborly good deeds relaxed, she turned to knitting wash-rags as a sportsman turns to his gun, or a toper to his cups.
Word Of The Day