ONE:Once more she is downstairs, in the lane which the dancers are making for their last reel. Two of the gallants have gone out to see the horses, and something keeps them, but there is no need to wait. The fiddle rings a chord! the merry double line straightens down the hall from front door to rear, bang! says the fiddler's foot--"hands round!"--and hands round it is! In the first of the evening they had been obliged to tell the fiddler the names of the dancers, but now he knows them all and throws off his flattering personalities and his overworked rhymes with an impartial rotation and unflagging ardor. Once in a while some one privately gives him a new nickname for the next man "a-comin' down de lane," and as he yawps it out the whole dance gathers new mirth and speed.
FORE:When the Doctor had finished his eulogy upon the Japanese, the boys clapped their hands, and were evidently touched with his enthusiasm. From the little they had seen since their arrival in the country, they coincided with him in opinion, and were ready to endorse what he said. And if they had been in any doubt, they had only to refer to the great majority of foreigners who reside in Japan for the confirmation of what the Doctor had declared. Testimony in this matter is as nearly unanimous as it is generally possible to find it on any subject, and some of the foreign residents are ready to go much further in their laudations of the kindly spirit of the natives than did Doctor Bronson.
FORE:The Doctor seized hold of the other's collar and turned the huge body round. His hand fumbled wildly among the stops."I sailed for years in a sperm-whaler in the South Pacific, and had a good many lively times. The sperm-whale is the most dangerous of all, and the hardest to kill; he fights with his tail and his mouth, while the others fight only with their tails. A right-whale or a bow-head will lash the water and churn it up into foam; and if he hits a boat with his tail, he crushes it as if it was an egg-shell. A sperm-whale will do all this, and more too; he takes a boat in his mouth, and chews it, which the others never do. And when he chews it, he makes fine work of it, I can tell you, and short work, too.
