Just as he reached one end of the glassy line a little milliner with a bandbox and a brown-paper parcel stepped upon the other.
They had never met before, but the instant their feet touched that atrocious slide they darted together with the enthusiasm of old lovers.
Then there was a collision, and a confused combination of legal documents and straw bonnet, proceedings in bankruptcy and colored ribbons, opinions of counsel and hairpins; and when the law adviser got home he found in his bag an artificial bang where he had been looking for the draft of a will, and that poor little milliner’s duck of a bonnet had vanished out of her ruined bandbox, while its place was filled with a horrible notice to claimants and incumbrancers.
When the law and the lady had gone from my gaze the pantomime was continued by new artists. A poor-law guardian, who had voted against the North Dublin Union adopting the laborers’ act, was explaining his reasons therefor, and appealed to his auditor thus: “You would have done the same yourself in my position. Put yourself in my place.”
And away he went, express speed, on his hands and knees, till he was brought to a stop by his head thundering on a policeman’s belt. Then the policeman sat on top of him, and a postman threw a double somersault over the pair, and the band of the Coldstream Guards marching smartly round the corner got mixed up with them, and it wasn’t till the policeman had half swallowed the trombone, and the poor-law guardian had got the double bass round his neck for a collar, and the postman had been engulfed in the big drum that order was restored, and constitutional peace triumphed once more over revolutionary chaos.
But I ask the civilized and great British Empire, how much longer are we going to tolerate a state of society which permits slides and pitfalls and chasms to be laid for loyal feet, and bruised heads, smashed ribs, and pulverized hip bones to bring woe and desolation to loyal homes? It’s awful!
Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division Of the Army of the Danube, is a private--nothing more; And nobody expects of him to form a wise decision On the diplomatic reasons that have mobilized his corps. He is rather dull and stupid, and not given much to reading, And even when he has a thought his words are few and rude; So when summoned to his sotnia, about that same proceeding Rough Ivan’s stray ideas were most miserably crude. But he heard his colonel reading out the regimental order, Which explains in glowing language why the Russians go to war; And he holds some dim idea that he’s on the Turkish border, “For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”