Books with title Under the cactus flag

... There are some who think it is a wicked thing to dance on a Sunday evening, even after one has worshipped at one's parish church faithfully and reverently on Sunday morning ; some there are who think it is wicked to dance at all ; and there are others who worship in dancing, and are moved to wild leanings and whirlings by the spirit of piety ; others, again, who are devil-dancers, and worship the principle of evil in their demoniac gyrations. But, assuredly, of all who ever danced upon this earth, none ever danced on the edge'' of a more terrible volcano than that which trembled and throbbed under the feet of those light hearted revellers tonight — happy, unforeseeing, rejoicing in the balmy breath of summer, the starlit sky, the warmth and the flowers, with no thought that this fair Paris, whitely beautiful in the sheen of starlight and moonlight, was like a phantasmal or fairy city— a city of palaces which were soon to sink in dust and ashes, beauty that was to be changed for burning, while joy and love fled shrieking from a carnival of blood and fire. Even tonight there were bystanders in the lami>lit garden who shooK their heads solemnly as they talked of the probability of war with Prussia. The battle of Sadowa had been the beginning of evil. France had played into the hands of her most dangerous rival, and had been swindled out of the price of her neutrality. To have allowed Austria to be crushed by Bismarck was worse than a crime, it was a blunder. And now all the signs and tokens of the time pointed to the likelihood of war. The day had come when the overweening ambition of the house of Brandenburg inust be checked, and in the opinion of the Bonapartists tlie onus to fight was upon ...

WHAT HAPPENED ON THE PERICLES. “You, Thompson, go down and send the second mate up to me. Tell him to leave whatever he is doing and to come up here at once. I want to speak to him,” growled Captain Fisher of the steamer Pericles, turning, with a menacing expression, to the grizzled old quartermaster who stood beside him on the bridge. Thompson, as though only too glad of an excuse to leave the neighbourhood of his skipper, grunted out an assent, and, swinging round on his heel, shambled away down the ladder leading from the bridge to the spar-deck, and departed on his errand. The Pericles was an iron single-screw steamer of two thousand tons or thereabout. She was employed in the carriage of nitrates, silver ore, hides, etcetera, between Chilian ports and Liverpool. She was owned by a company, which also possessed two similar vessels employed in the same trade. Captain Fisher, her skipper, had a considerable number of shares in this company, a circumstance which accounted in no small measure for the fact of his being the skipper of the Pericles; for a man less fit to have the control of other men it would have been exceedingly difficult to find. Fisher was a man of enormous stature and splendid physique, but his features, which would otherwise have been considered handsome, were marred by a ferocious expression, due to his chronic condition of ill-humour. He was constantly “hazing” his men, and was never at a loss for an excuse for irritating them in every possible way. In this pleasing occupation he was ably seconded by his first mate, an American, named Silas Hoover. Between the pair of them they had contrived, during the course of the several voyages which they had performed together, to render their men thoroughly dissatisfied almost to the verge of mutiny; and there is little doubt that long before this the crew would have given open and forcible expression to their feelings had it not been for the efforts of the second mate, a young fellow of eighteen years of age, named James Douglas. This was the individual for whom Fisher had just sent. He had conceived a most virulent hatred for him, in consequence, probably, of the fact that Douglas was the only officer in the ship for whom the men would work willingly and for whom they showed any real respect. The lad had been left an orphan at an early age, and as he showed even from he first a predilection for a seafaring life, he had been sent by his uncle at the age of fourteen as an apprentice on board a sailing ship, and during the four following years he had gradually worked his way upward until now he was second mate of the Pericles

Excerpt from Under the Red FlagA campaign would be a triumph for French arms, of course; but such triumphs, however certain, are never won without loss. For France as a people there must needs be profit and fame; but for individuals - well, even in a succession Of victories some French blood must be shed, some French corpses must lie scattered on distant battle-fields - there must be cypress as well as laurel.Yet the idea of impending war was not un pleasant. It electrified the intellectual atmosphere, set the hearts of men and women throbbing with new hopes, new fears. To elderly people it seemed only the other day that the army was coming home in triumph after the Italian War, and France was crowning the liberators Of a sister land; but to the young people that Italian campaign seemed to have happened a long while ago. It was time that France should arise in her might and strike a great blow.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Under the Red FlagA campaign would be a triumph for French arms, of course; but such triumphs, however certain, are never won without loss. For France as a people there must needs be profit and fame; but for individuals - well, even in a succession Of victories some French blood must be shed, some French corpses must lie scattered on distant battle-fields - there must be cypress as well as laurel.Yet the idea of impending war was not un pleasant. It electrified the intellectual atmosphere, set the hearts of men and women throbbing with new hopes, new fears. To elderly people it seemed only the other day that the army was coming home in triumph after the Italian War, and France was crowning the liberators Of a sister land; but to the young people that Italian campaign seemed to have happened a long while ago. It was time that France should arise in her might and strike a great blow.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884 edition. Excerpt: ...feared, and now to be revealed in all their power for evil. With the opening of the gates began an emigration of the respectable classes. Husbands and fathers hastened to rejoin their families, provincials returned to their provinces--one hundred thousand of the National Guard, good citizens, brave, loyal, devoted to the cause of order, are said to have left Paris at this time. Those who remained behind were for the most part an armed mob, demoralised by idleness, by drink, by the teaching of a handful of rabid Republicans, the master-spirits of Belleville and Montmartre. Too soon the storm burst. There is no darker day in the history of France than this 18th of March 1871, on which Paris found itself given over to a horde of which it knew neither the strength nor the malignity, but from which it feared the worst. Hideous faces, which in peaceful times lurk in the hidden depths of a city, showed themselves in the open day, at every street corner, irony on the lip and menace in the eye. A day which began with the seizure of the cannon at Chaumont and Montmartre by the Communards, and the desertion of the troops of the Line to the insurgents, ended with the murder of Generals Lecomte and Clement Thomas, and the withdrawal of the government and the loyal troops to Versailles. When night fell Paris was abandoned to a new power, which called itself Central Committee of the Federation; and it seemed that two hundred and fifty battalions of the National Guard had become Federals. They were for the most part Federals without knowing why or wherefore. They knew as little of the chiefs who were to command them as that doomed city upon which they were too soon to establish a reign of ignominy and terror. But the Central Committee, sustained by the...