Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
"A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls, A noise of falling weights that never fell, Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand, Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door, And bolted doors that open'd of themselves." These phenomena were doubtless caused by rats and water-pipes, but they do not destroy the pity and the passion of the tale.
Then, however, became the dead wilderness vocal: for from the ground a noise welled up, gurgling and rattling, as water gurgleth and rattleth at night through stopped-up water-pipes; and at last it turned into human voice and human speech: it sounded thus: "Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Read my riddle! Say, say! I entice thee back; here is smooth ice!
However, the latest erected dwelling-houses here have had water-pipes and bath-tubs introduced. Wealth can command its bath here as well as its gaslight and its supplies of ice, but wealth only. The humblest abode of a Philadelphia mechanic contains comforts and conveniences which are wellnigh unattainable luxuries in all but the most splendid apartments of the most luxurious city of Europe.
There was under the plane-trees a little coffee- house, shaded by a trellis-work, covered over with a vine, and ornamented with many rows of shining pots and water-pipes, for which there was no use at noon-day now, in the time of Ramazan.
We're snowed in fas'." She looked like a tramp woman, in a jacket patched with many colours, her head tied up in an old black "fascinator," with ravelled yarn hanging down over her face like wild locks of hair. She kept this costume for calamitous occasions; appeared in it when the water-pipes were frozen and burst, or when spring storms flooded the coops and drowned her young chickens.
There are no masons' and carpenters' contracts to be made, no plumbers' bills to be vexed over, the furnaces never smoke, and the water-pipes never freeze; they need no insurance, and you have no vain regrets over mistakes in your plans, for you may have alterations and additions whenever you please without making a small pandemonium and eating dust and ashes while they are in process.
He found the water-pipes and stopped them up, and the city surrendered. There were plenty of bishops and archbishops there, of course, and they were perfectly willing as they had been from the first, for that matter to baptize the unruly royal convert, but Vladimir was not content now with that.
He cut off the water-pipes, by which water was conveyed from the public fountains into private houses and gardens, destroyed all houses that encroached upon the public streets, lowered the price of contracts for public works, and farmed out the public revenues for the highest possible rents. All this made him still more unpopular.
A few days later I met Carson on the train and the mystery was solved. "The trouble was with the water-pipes," he explained. "They were put in wrong, and the location of the house is such that every time Colonel Hawkins, on the other side of the street, takes a bath, all the water that flows down the hill is diverted into his tub." I tried not to laugh.
'Ever since he came home he has raised Cain generally, with his carpenters, and masons, and painters, and stewing about water-pipes, and sewer-gas, and smells. He's mad as a March hare, and if I can't get rid of him by going to Washington, I'll do it in some other way. You know he is crazy, and so do I, and I'll swear to it on a stack of Bibles as high as the house.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking