American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
My countrymen were in great force on the Boulevards, walking arm and arm,
four abreast, as it is the proud custom of Britons to do. From them, I
heard, how Major Pongo, of the Company’s service, would certainly have
placed his sword at the disposal of the Government in support of law and
order, had he not been confined to his bed with a severe attack of
rheumatism: how Mr. Bellows, Parisian correspondent to the “Evening
Grumbler,” had been actually led out to be shot, and was only saved by the
interposition of his tailor, who was a sergeant in the National Guard; and
who, passing by, though not on duty, exerted his influence with the
military authorities, to save the life of Mr. Bellows; how the Reverend
Mr. Faldstool, _ministre Anglican_, was discovered in a corn-bin, moaning
piteously: how Bluckey, the man who talked so much about the Pytchley
hounds, and of the astonishing leaps he had taken when riding after them,
concealed himself in a coal-cellar, and lying down on his face, never
stirred from that position from noon till midnight on Thursday (although
I, to be sure, have no right to taunt him with his prudence): how,
finally, M’Gropus, the Scotch surgeon, bolted incontinently in a cab, with
an immense quantity of luggage, toward the _Chemin-de-fer du Nord_; and,
being stopped in the Rue St. Denis, was ignominiously turned out of his
vehicle by the mob; the cab, together with M’Gropus’s trunks, being
immediately converted into the nucleus of a barricade:—how, returning the
following morning to see whether he could recover any portion of his
effects, he found the barricades in the possession of the military, who
were quietly cooking their soup over a fire principally fed by the
remnants of his trunks and portmanteaus; whereupon, frantically
endeavoring to rescue some _disjecta membra_ of his property from the
wreck, he was hustled and bonneted by the soldiery, threatened with
arrest, and summary military vengeance, and ultimately paraded from the
vicinity of the bivouac, by bayonets with sharp points.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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