These Three Shining Ones With The Very New Yellow Hide Boots And
The Red Silk Sashes Had Assembled Themselves For The Purpose Of
Knocking The Ball About.
They smote with great solemnity up and
down the grounds, while the little boys looked on.
When they
trotted, which was not seldom, they rose and sunk in their
stirrups with a conscientiousness that cried out "Riding-school!"
from afar.
Other young men in the park were riding after the English manner,
in neatly cut riding-trousers and light saddles. Fate in
derision had made each youth bedizen his animal with a checkered
enam-elled leather brow-band visible half a mile away - a
black-and-white checkered brow-band! They can't do it, any more
than an Englishman, by taking cold, can add that indescribable
nasal twang to his orchestra.
The other sight of the evening was a horror. The little tragedy
played itself out at a neighboring table where two very young men
and two very young women were sitting. It did not strike me till
far into the evening that the pimply young reprobates were making
the girls drunk. They gave them red wine and then white, and the
voices rose slightly with the maidens' cheek flushes. I watched,
wishing to stay, and the youths drank till their speech thickened
and their eye-balls grew watery. It was sickening to see,
because I knew what was going to happen. My friend eyed the
group, and said: - "Maybe they're children of respectable people.
I hardly think, though, they'd be allowed out without any better
escort than these boys.
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