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In the pillared hall beyond the vestibule bearded soldiers were sitting on benches or squatting in groups on the ground, drinking noisily and singing, or laughing and squabbling as they threw the dice on the costly mosaic pavement. A riotous party were toping and reveling in the beautiful garden of the impluvium round a fire which they had lighted on the velvet turf.
All this toping goes forward with little or no apparent exhilaration of spirits; nor does this seem to be the object sought, it being rather, I imagine, to create a titillation of the coats of the stomach and a general sense of invigoration, without affecting the brain. Very seldom does a man grow wild and unruly.
Young Aaron was very clever at it. He pottered round the inn of an evening and Saturday afternoons, doing odd jobs in the cellar with the barrels; for your true toping spirit loves to knock the hoops and to work about the cask, and carry the jugs in answer to the cry for some more 'tangle-legs' for thus they called the strong beer.
He recommended that we should begin piddling with a regular quart of claret per day, which, with the aid of March beer and brandy, made a handsome competence for a beginner in the art of toping.
The former be found at once, in a large hall where sundry Goths were lounging and toping, into the nearest corner of which he shrank, and stood, his late terror and rage forgotten altogether in the one new and absorbing thought His sister might be in that house!.... and yielding to so sweet a dream, he began fancying to himself which of all those gay maidens she might be who had become in one moment more dear, more great to him, than all things else in heaven or earth.
A sit-still party had its advantages; but an undisturbed position of ease in chairs and settles was apt to lead on the men to such an unconscionable deal of toping that they would sometimes fairly drink the house dry.
Alexis saw none of the trees in flower, their great spathes being yet unfolded; but, toping to find some one more forward than the rest, he kept on for a considerable distance through the forest. As he was walking leisurely along, his eyes at intervals turned upward to the fronds of the palms, he saw that one of the trunks directly in front of him was in motion. He stopped and listened.
He recommended that we should begin piddling with a regular quart of claret per day, which, with the aid of March beer and brandy, made a handsome competence for a beginner in the art of toping.
For they were, in the first place, even down to the very poorest, a well-fed people, with fewer luxuries than we, but more abundant necessaries; and while beef, ale, and good woollen clothes could be obtained in plenty, without overworking either body or soul, men had time to amuse themselves in something more intellectual than mere toping in pot-houses.
Let us begin, for my body feels the weight of its own clay. Before the Virgin, Rob? Ha! ha! man, art going to die? Come, man "When grim Death is looking for us, We are toping at our bowls; Bacchus joins us in the chorus Death, begone! here's none but souls." Drink, Rob Paterson, and thou'lt pray the better to the Virgin."
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