Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 560, August 4, 1832 by Various
page 16 of 53 (30%)
breadth would appear to be each night guarded from discolouration by
careful involution above the hocks. Taken, from his gridiron spurs and
long pointed boots, up his broad, blue-striped pantaloons, _à la
Cossaque_, to the thrice-folded piece of white linen on which he is
seated in _cool_ repose; thence by his cable chain, bearing seals as
large as a warming-pan, and a key like an anchor; then a little higher
to the figured waistcoat of early British manufacture, and the
sack-shapened coat, up to the narrow brim sugar-loaf hat on his
head,--where can be found his equal? Nor does he want a nose as big as
the gnomon of a dial-plate; and two flanks of impenetrable, deep, black
brushwood, extending under either ear, and almost concealing the
countenance, to complete the singular contour of his features.

_A Lisbon Water-carrier_ earns about sixpence per day, the moiety of
which serves to procure him his bread, his fried sardinha from a cook's
stall, and a little light wine perhaps, on holidays,--water being his
general beverage, nay, one might almost say, his element. A mat in a
large upper room, shared with several others, serves him in winter as a
place of repose for the night; but during the summer he frequently
sleeps out in the open air, making his filled water-barrel his pillow.

_Vanity._--A young Lisbon dandy hearing an Englishman complain of the
intolerable filth and stench of his metropolis, retorted that, for his
part, when he was in London, it was the absence of that filth, and the
want of the smells complained of, that had rendered his residence in our
metropolis so disagreeable and uncomfortable to him. "No passion," as
Southey says, "makes a man a liar so easily as vanity."

_Dogs._--In Lisbon dogs seem to luxuriate under the violence of the
heat, and to avoid the shady sides of the streets, though the
DigitalOcean Referral Badge