Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
"What's your name?" asked the good officer, stopping before the chestnut vender. "Mottka," answered Mottka. "And what are you doing here?" asked Policeman Billings, frowning. "I roast chestnuts and sell them," said Mottka. "Hm!" said Policeman Billings, "you do, eh? Well, we'll see about that. Come along." Mottka rose without question. One does not ask questions of an officer of the law.
Being exposed to the public view, in one of the most frequented situations of Paris, this was esteemed the noblest trophy belonging to the capital; and there was not a Parisian vender of a pail-full of water who did not look like a hero when the Venetian horses were spoken of. "'Have you heard what has been determined about the horses? was every foreigner's question.
Gone was the five-franc note which I had intrusted to a sandwich vender on the railroad platform in the vain hope that he would come back with the change. After that clincher there was no doubt about it we were in La Belle France all right, all right! Everything testified to the change.
No one in the crowd noticed that this hand of unwonted delicacy and whiteness did not seem to comport well with the dress of a vender of vegetables from the market; no one noticed that on one of the tapering fingers a jewel of no ordinary size glistened.
He even made inquiries of a master-plumber, of a Fourth Avenue vender of antiques, of a hairy woman with one eye who ran a news-stand, of a bar-tender, of saloon-keepers and bootblacks. He drifted through a department store, and whispered to a pretty girl who sold "art pictures." She shook her head.
Overhead the lazy crows flew by, winging out from their city roosts to the rice-fields for the day's food. "Tea-boiled eggs!" cried a vender from beyond the wall. A man stopped at the gate, put down his shoulder-tray of food, and bargained with the ancient, mahogany-scalped gate-keeper. Faint odours of food frying in oil stole out from the depths of the house behind him.
But when Maggie Byrne met the eyes of Sylvia looking curiously and kindly at her sad face, there broke through her seriousness a smile so bright and sunny that Sylvia was sure she had been mistaken, and that there had been no disappointment in the girl's life. Maggie shocked Mrs. Thorne by buying a shrine from an image vender and hanging it against the wall in the kitchen.
The vender was a venerable Irishman with a benevolent face and a tongue that worked easily in the socket, and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louis thirty-four years and had never been across the river during that period.
On the one hand we see the rich woman, the millionaire art dealer, the financial pirate being leniently dealt with, on the other hand we see the little milliner, the Italian fruit vender, and the peddler receiving harsh sentences. The sharp contrasts make good newspaper stories that are appealing and touching.
I sank back into my chair. There was a greater disaster to be recorded next day. A workingman in the square, looking about him for a pipe-light, espied the paper frisking near the curb-stone. He picked it up with the obvious intention of lighting it at the stove of a wandering vender of hot chestnuts who had just crossed the square.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking