Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta
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Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta
Literary curiosa; Literature -- Dictionaries
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie;
and, at the same time, a great she-bear coming up the street pops its
head into the shop—What! no soap? So he died; and she very imprudently
married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the
Joblilies, and the Garyulies, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the
little round button at top. And they all fell to playing the game of
“catch as catch can,” till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their
boots!
BURLESQUE OF THE STYLE OF DR. JOHNSON.
While I was admiring the fantastical ramifications of some umbelliferous
plants that hung over the margin of the Liffey, the fallacious bank,
imperceptibly corroded by the moist tooth of the fluid, gave way beneath
my feet, and I was suddenly submerged to some fathoms of profundity.
Presence of mind, in constitutions not naturally timid, is generally in
proportion to the imminence of the peril. Having never learned to move
through the water in horizontal progression, had I desponded, I had
perished; but, being for a moment raised above the element by my
struggles, or by some felicitous casualty, I was sensible of the danger,
and immediately embraced the means of extrication. A cow, at the moment
of my lapse, had entered the stream, within the distance of a protruded
arm; and being in the act of transverse navigation to seek the pasture
of the opposite bank, I laid hold on that part of the animal which is
loosely pendent behind, and is formed by the continuation of the
vertebræ. In this manner I was safely conveyed to a fordable passage,
not without some delectation from the sense of the progress without
effort on my part, and the exhilarating approximation of more than
problematical deliverance. Though in some respects I resembled the pilot
of Gyas, _Jam senior madidaque fluens in veste_, yet my companions,
unlike the barbarous Phrygian spectators, forbore to acerbitate the
uncouthness of embarrassment by the insults of derision. Shrieks of
complorance testified sorrow for my submersion, and safety was rendered
more pleasant by the felicitations of sympathy. As the danger was over,
I took no umbrage at a little risibility excited by the feculence of my
visage, upon which the cow had discharged her gramineous digestion in a
very ludicrous abundance. About this time the bell summoned us to
dinner; and, as the cutaneous contact of irrigated garments is neither
pleasant nor salubrious, I was easily persuaded by the ladies to divest
myself of mine. Colonel Manly obligingly accommodated me with a covering
of camlet. I found it commodious, and more agreeable than the many
compressive ligaments of modern drapery. That there might be no
violation of decorum, I took care to have the loose robe fastened before
with small cylindrical wires, which the dainty fingers of the ladies
easily removed from their dresses and inserted into mine, at such proper
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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