本书摘录:
Chapter 1
_ CHAPTER I
"What! no music, no dancing at Castle Hermitage to-night; and all the ladies sitting in a formal circle, petrifying into perfect statues?" cried Sir Ulick O‘Shane as he entered the drawing-room, between ten and eleven o‘clock at night, accompanied by what he called his rear-guard, veterans of the old school of good fellows, who at those times in Ireland--times long since past--deemed it essential to health, happiness, and manly character, to swallow, and show themselves able to stand after swallowing, a certain number of bottles of claret per day or night.
"Now, then," continued Sir Ulick, "of all the figures in nature or art, the formal circle is universally the most obnoxious to conversation, and, to me, the most formidable; all my faculties are spell-bound--here I am like a bird in a circle of chalk, that dare not move so much as its head or its eyes, and can‘t, for the life of it, take to its legs."
A titter ran round that part of the circle
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