Penelope's English Experiences: Being Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton — John Shaqi
Penelope's English Experiences: Being Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope HamiltonWiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
General
Penelope's English Experiences: Being Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
Americans -- England -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
“I don't understand your business signs in England,--this 'Company,
Limited,' and that 'Company, Limited.' That one, of course, is quite
plain” (pointing to the front of a building on the village street),
“'Goat's Milk Company, Limited'; I suppose they have but one or two
goats, and necessarily the milk must be Limited.”
Salemina says that this was not in the least funny, that it was
absolutely flat; but it had quite the opposite effect upon the
Honourable Arthur. He had no command over himself or his horses for some
minutes; and at intervals during the afternoon the full felicity of
the idea would steal upon him, and the smile of reminiscence would flit
across his ruddy face.
The next day, at the Eton and Harrow games at Lord's cricket-ground, he
presented three flowers of British aristocracy to our party, and asked
me each time to tell the goat-story, which he had previously told
himself, and probably murdered in the telling. Not content with
this arrant flattery, he begged to be allowed to recount some of my
international episodes to a literary friend who writes for Punch. I
demurred decidedly, but Salemina said that perhaps I ought to be
willing to lower myself a trifle for the sake of elevating Punch! This
home-thrust so delighted the Honourable Arthur that it remained his
favourite joke for days, and the overworked goat was permitted to enjoy
that oblivion from which Salemina insists it should never have emerged.
Chapter V. A Hyde Park Sunday.
The Honourable Arthur, Salemina, and I took a stroll in Hyde Park one
Sunday afternoon, not for the purpose of joining the fashionable throng
of 'pretty people' at Stanhope Gate, but to mingle with the common herd
in its special precincts,--precincts not set apart, indeed, by any
legal formula, but by a natural law of classification which seems to be
inherent in the universe. It was a curious and motley crowd--a little
dull, perhaps, but orderly, well-behaved, and self-respecting, with
here and there part of the flotsam and jetsam of a great city, a ragged,
sodden, hopeless wretch wending his way about with the rest, thankful
for any diversion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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