A Woman's First Impressions of Europe: Being Wayside Sketches Made During a Short Tour in the Year 1863

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Derby & Miller, 1865 - Europe - 355 pages

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Page 119 - English brusque and ungracious. The unfailing well-bred courtesy of equals, and the unfailing respectful civility of inferiors have, so far as our experience has gone, given a daily refutation of that error, and goes to establish that which I like to believe true, that good breeding is a cosmopolitan virtue, and however its expression may differ in small matters of national custom, yet it recognizes its shibboleth in the glance of the eye and the tone of the voice, and gives a ready response to the...
Page 98 - ... The King made cedars to be as the sycamore trees that are- in the vale for abundance." In an excellent volume by Mrs. Forbes, lately published, under the title of " A Woman's First Impressions of Europe," the following passage occurs : " Down the long vistas of the park of Warwick Castle, England, stand cedars of Lebanon, stretching their wide branches over English earth, perhaps brought from Palestine by the great Earl Guy himself.
Page 19 - I wish I could picture the scene to home eyes, by way of contrast to the commonly received ideas of even pleasant life on shipboard. Here was an elegant . room, about sixty by thirty feet in extent, brilliantly lighted by chandeliers and gaily decorated shades, and adorned with banners, filled with gay dancers and a merry host of spectators, officers, waiters with trays of ices...
Page 14 - But the careful steward of the bed chamber soon made all fast; hooked up the tables, screwed up the port, made a barricade of the luggage before my sofa, confiscated one chair and made a chevaux-de-frise of the other, and left us all prostrate at the altar of the Tritons. However, it is not to be supposed that we were so wanting to ourselves as to be absent from...
Page 12 - The men are tied in sacks to their throats, feet, hands and all, and accomplish their progress by hopping within their limited accommodations — of course, the slightest mischance sends them rolling helplessly upon the ground. In addition to the interest common to all the spectators, the races have evidently gratified the English thirst for betting. The weather grows cold, but is delightful and invigorating.
Page 14 - But the disease is fatal neither to life nor spirits, and although I had missed the sermon, I stood at the port-hole, and the magnificent waves took to themselves a text and preached to me a solitary sermon upon the might of Him who has poured these resistless waters from the hollow of His hand, and yet has made of the sand a bound to the sea that it shall not pass over.
Page 16 - I do not know that there is any thing very terrible in the thought of being consigned to this vast sepulchre of the dead, where no foot of mammon may disturb the long repose; where the solemn requiem of wind and wave rings ever above the spot, marked only by the eye of Him who knows where to find His beloved when the sea shall...
Page 20 - ... her commander. I hear, at this moment, the merry shouts on deck. They are finishing the races of the trip with a grinning match. To-morrow night we expect to sleep on shore. If our tour should end here, I should be the happier, for the rest of my life, for the pleasure of the last fortnight Aug.
Page 224 - After the custom of these countries to turn every thing feminine to useful account, the cows are employed in labor quite as much as oxen. A very good type of the civilization appears in a team whose motive power is, conjointly, a woman and a cow.

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