FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40  
41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   >>  
BLIC, 1870. DEAR PUNCHINELLO:--If America has any "bowels of compassion" it is fit that they should yearn now. This frothy and frenzied Republic is at that ebb where national "extreme unction" must be administered speedily, else the sufferer will pass away from the theatre of sublunary things without the benefit of clergy. I feel as if I would like to get the whole nation on a toasting-fork before a slow fire, and roast it into a realizing sense of what the devil is doing for it. To see BISMARCK feeding on shrimps with anchovy sauce, and drinking champagne, while TROCHU and JULES FAVRE fight domestic treason within the walls, and the Prussians without, upon stomachs that feebly digest Parisian "hard tack" and gritty _vin ordinaire,_ is enough to make the spirit of liberty lay over the mourner's bench and perpetrate a perfect Niagara of tears. When FLOURENS bagged the whole government at the Hotel de Ville the other day, my feelings got the better of me, and I went for him. "Idiotic Frenchmen!" I exclaimed, in a voice that must have sounded like an echo working its way through a thick upper crust of doughy apple-dumplings; "Idiotic Frenchmen, do you know what you are doing? Have you the feelings of a man, or of a mad dog? Which is it that it is, that you should be worrying the life out of this croupy infant of liberty, as is hardly able to waggle its head, barring all hope that it will ever get upon its pins and take its 'constitutional' like other mortals in distress? Where is the ghost of MIRABEAU, that it does not come upon you all of a sudden, to confiscate the very marrow in your bones and set up a candle factory in spite of the tax on tallow? Where is LAFAYETTE? Where is REGINALD DE LYLE? Where is ROBESPIERRE and GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN? Where is the DUKE DE MONTEBELLO, or the Count of MONTE CHRISTO, that they don't hang round you like aggravated wasps, and sting you into that appreciation of the fitness of things whereby some razor may be slipped across your wizzen, and Paris follow your corse to the _Pere la Chaise_ with joy and gladness? Why, in the name of all the torments--" I stopped for want of breath, in time to see that the crowd paid no attention, and that, to say the least of it, I had been making an ass of myself. Not that there was no wisdom in my words, but these Frenchmen are the most "dog gorned" insensible people to right up and down, plain, everyday gospel truth that Providence ever permitted to
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40  
41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   >>  



Top keywords:

Frenchmen

 

Idiotic

 

things

 

liberty

 

feelings

 

worrying

 

candle

 

tallow

 

factory

 

LAFAYETTE


MONTEBELLO
 

FRANCIS

 

GEORGE

 
REGINALD
 

ROBESPIERRE

 

infant

 

barring

 

MIRABEAU

 
constitutional
 

mortals


distress

 

waggle

 
marrow
 

croupy

 

confiscate

 
sudden
 

wisdom

 

making

 

attention

 

everyday


gospel
 

permitted

 
Providence
 
gorned
 

insensible

 

people

 

breath

 

fitness

 

appreciation

 

slipped


CHRISTO
 

aggravated

 

wizzen

 

gladness

 
torments
 

stopped

 

Chaise

 

follow

 

working

 
realizing