FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62  
63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   >>   >|  
t of his coat. More sensible than our muffs too, the fur was inside instead of out. "He was the very pink of politeness, but at this point his pride of superior intelligence could not be restrained, and he broke into fits of delighted laughter, in which the horse-boys, the spectators, my friends, and (as is customary in China) everybody within sight and hearing joined. "I took good care to laugh heartily too. After which I made signs the counterpart of his. He looked anxious. I put my hand in my pocket, and drew out my gloves. He stared. _I put them on_, and nodded, to show that that was the way we barbarians did it. "'Eyah!' cried the silk-robed old gentleman. "'Eyah!' echoed the horse-boys and the crowd. "Then I laughed, and the horse-boys laughed loudly, and the crowd louder still, and finally the old gentleman doubled himself up in his blue silk fur-lined robe in fits of laughter. "An Asiatic only relishes one thing better than being outwitted--that is to outwit. "'Eyah! Eyah! Ha! ha! ha!' they cried as we rode away. "'Ha! ha! ha!' replied I, waving a well-gloved hand, on my road to Pekin." WAVES OF THE GREAT SOUTH SEAS. (_Founded on Fact_.) "Very likely the man who drew it had been nearly drowned by one himself." "Very likely nothing of the sort!" "How could he draw it if he hadn't seen it?" "Why, they always do. Look at Uncle Alfred, he drew a splendid picture of a shipwreck. Don't you remember his doing it at the dining-room table, and James coming in to lay the cloth, and he would have a bit of the table left clear for him, because he was in the middle of putting in the drowning men, and wanted to get them in before luncheon? And Uncle Herbert wrote a beautiful poem to it, and they were both put into a real magazine. And Uncle Alfred and Uncle Herbert never were in shipwrecks. So there!" "Well, Uncle Alfred drew it very well, and he made very big waves. So there!" "Ah, but he didn't make waves like a great wall. He did it very naturally, and he draws a great deal better than those rubbishy old pictures in Father's _Robinson Crusoe_." "Well, I don't care. The Bible says that when the Children of Israel went through the Red Sea the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. And I believe they were great waves like the wave in _Robinson Crusoe_, only they weren't allowed to fall down till Pharaoh and his host came, and then they washed them all
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62  
63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Alfred

 

Herbert

 

laughed

 

gentleman

 

Crusoe

 

laughter

 

Robinson

 

washed

 

drowning

 
middle

putting
 

coming

 

picture

 
shipwreck
 

splendid

 

remember

 
allowed
 

dining

 
wanted
 

Children


Father
 

Israel

 

pictures

 

Pharaoh

 

naturally

 

rubbishy

 

waters

 

luncheon

 

beautiful

 

magazine


shipwrecks

 

heartily

 

joined

 
hearing
 

counterpart

 

barbarians

 

nodded

 
stared
 

looked

 
anxious

pocket
 
gloves
 

customary

 

politeness

 

inside

 

superior

 

intelligence

 

delighted

 
spectators
 

friends