Isn't it nice?
This saving one's soul on fish when fish commands a premium, is expensive and monotonous.
Welcome the hens. Exit white-fish, enter eggs.
Whew!
Would that we lived in the grand old days when the sun danced in the sky on Easter morning; when the children played the pretty games with colored eggs; when the Aldermen went out on Easter morn for a little municipal game of ball; when it would have been my privilege to parade the streets and claim the privilege of lifting every woman three times from the ground, receiving as payment a kiss or a silver shilling, the women having the same privilege on the next day, in order to make things even.
Wouldn't it be nice? That is, if one didn't meet Parepa and undertake that little job.
When the men and women threw apples into the churchyard, and those who had been married during the year threw three times as many as the rest. It strikes me, however, that if this rule had been reversed, and those who had been divorced during the year were obliged to throw three times as many apples as the rest, the Chicago church-wardens would fare better.
And then to go to the minister's and feast on bread, cheese and ale, on bacon and tansy pudding.
As it is, the only relief one has now is the blessed feeling that he can go to sinning again. It is too much for any constitution to be strictly pious for six weeks, and live on beans and fish. Neither the moral nor the physical diet agrees with me. A little sin now will be an excellent tonic.
And it will agree with you, Celeste, also. You didn't look well sitting in black, picking fish bones. I knew all the time you were thinking of the flesh pots. It is useless for you to try to convince me that you have been an angel for the past six weeks. It won't do. There is not the slightest sign of a pin feather, even, on your pretty white shoulders. You are essentially human. I know that, eating your lentils, you sighed for the salads, and filets, and Burgundy. I know that, in your suit of serge, your eyes were prospectively fixed upon the new spring hat and all the pretty petals which would unfold about you on Easter, and turn you into a lily, to blossom to-morrow, in accordance with the provisions of the Council of Nice.