“Sell Paché! You buy him! A bag full of gold
You show him! Tell of him the tale I have told!
Why he bore me through fire, is blind and is old.”
Joaquin Miller, Songs of the Sierras (1871).
Kite (Sergeant), the “recruiting officer.” He describes his own character thus:
“I was born a gypsy, and bred among that crew till I was 10 years old; there I learnt canting and lying. I was bought from my mother by a certain nobleman for three pistoles, who ... made me his page; there I learnt impudence and pimping. Being turned off for wearing my lord’s linen, and drinking my lady’s ratafia, I turned bailiff’s follower; there I learnt bullying and swearing. I at last got into the army, and there I learnt ... drinking. So that ... the whole sum is: canting, lying, impudence, pimping, bullying, swearing, drinking, and a halberd.”—G. Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer, iii. 1 (1705).
Sergeant Kite is an original picture of low life and humor, rarely surpassed.—R. Chambers, English Literature, i. 599.
The original “Sergeant Kite” was R. Eastcourt (1668-1713).
Kitely (2 syl.), a rich City merchant, extremely jealous of his wife.—Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humor (1598).
Kit-Kat Club, held in Shire Lane, now called Lower Serle’s Place (London). The members were whig “patriots” who, at the end of William III.’s reign, met to secure the Protestant succession. Joseph Addison, Steele, Congreve, Garth, Vanbrugh, Mainwaring, Walpole, Pulteney, etc., were members.