United States or South Sudan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was the brother-in-law of Santa Anna, General Martin Perfecto de Cos, a man in whom that old, cruel strain was very strong, and whom Ned believed to be charged with the crushing of the Texans. Then he was right in his surmise that Mexican forces for the campaign were gathering here on the banks of the Teotihuacan!
Mr. Whittington's chin set a trifle more firmly. He pulled out his cigar-case and proffered it to each of the boys in turn. "Have a perfecto? No? Guess it's as well for you not to, after all. Wish Percy was taken that way. Excuse me if I light up. I can talk better." Soon he was smoking hard. "I want to have a little talk with you about my boy.
He pulled at his perfecto while assembling his facts; and then he made one of the longest speeches Joe Ellison "Silent Joe" some of his friends had called him in the old days was ever known to utter. But there was reason for its length; it was an epitome of the most important period of his life. "I had a nice little country place over in Jersey for three or four years. It all happened there.
Several officers were entering and chief among them he recognized General Martin Perfecto de Cos, the brother-in-law of Santa Anna, whom Ned believed to be a treacherous and cruel man. He hastened away from such an unhealthy proximity, and came to La Viga. He saw a rude wharf along the canal and several boats, all with the sails furled, except two.
He saw also five or six large white tents, and he was quite sure that the largest sheltered at that instant Martin Perfecto de Cos, whom he wished very much to avoid. He intended, when he reached the bottom, to keep as close as he could in the shadow of the pyramid, and then seek the other side of the Teotihuacan. The rain was still blown about by the wind, and it was very cold.
"Well, what did you find out about this job?" inquired a member of the office force who had entered from a communicating room, and the chief wrinkled his brow a little as he studied his perfecto. "It's a dirty business, Schenk," he replied crisply. "It's the kind of thing that gives knockers a license to put detectives in the same class as blackmailers and the old Whey-face himself is a tight-wad.
The rubber of whist over, came the fragrant perfecto these traders ransacked the world for their tobacco and Brock, under the influence of the soothing weed, would charm these wild vagrants into unlocking some of the strange secrets of the wilderness.
"A'll no' offend any o' ye," he explained, "by refusin' your hospitality. They mayn't be good seegairs, as A've reason to know, but A'll smoke them all in the spirit they are geeven." He sat down on a big packing-case, tucked up his legs under him and pulled silently at the glowing Perfecto.
BREVE TEMPUS etc.: one of the poets has said that 'in small measures lives may perfect be'. Cf. also Tusc. 1, 109 nemo parum diu vixit qui virtutis perfectae perfecto functus est munere; Seneca, Ep. 77 quo modo fabula, sic vita: non quam diu, sed quam bene acta sit refert.
He gets his perfecto goin' nicely, blows a couple of smoke rings up towards the ceilin', and then remarks in sort of a weak growl: "Hanged if I'll walk down a church aisle, Maria hanged if I do!" "I told them you wouldn't," says Ma Pulsifer, smoothin' the hair back over his ears soothin'; "so they've agreed on a simple home wedding, with only four bridesmaids." "Huh!" says he.
Word Of The Day