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Old Mortality, Volume 1. by Sir Walter Scott
page 56 of 328 (17%)
his fellow-condisciples, and the favour of the whole inhabitants of
that little village."]

This was the figure of a bird, decked with party-coloured feathers, so as
to resemble a popinjay or parrot. It was suspended to a pole, and served
for a mark, at which the competitors discharged their fusees and
carabines in rotation, at the distance of sixty or seventy paces. He
whose ball brought down the mark, held the proud title of Captain of the
Popinjay for the remainder of the day, and was usually escorted in
triumph to the most reputable change-house in the neighbourhood, where
the evening was closed with conviviality, conducted under his auspices,
and, if he was able to sustain it, at his expense.

It will, of course, be supposed, that the ladies of the country assembled
to witness this gallant strife, those excepted who held the stricter
tenets of puritanism, and would therefore have deemed it criminal to
afford countenance to the profane gambols of the malignants. Landaus,
barouches, or tilburies, there were none in those simple days. The lord
lieutenant of the county (a personage of ducal rank) alone pretended to
the magnificence of a wheel-carriage, a thing covered with tarnished
gilding and sculpture, in shape like the vulgar picture of Noah's ark,
dragged by eight long-tailed Flanders mares, bearing eight insides and
six outsides. The insides were their graces in person, two maids of
honour, two children, a chaplain stuffed into a sort of lateral recess,
formed by a projection at the door of the vehicle, and called, from its
appearance, the boot, and an equerry to his Grace ensconced in the
corresponding convenience on the opposite side. A coachman and three
postilions, who wore short swords, and tie-wigs with three tails, had
blunderbusses slung behind them, and pistols at their saddle-bow,
conducted the equipage. On the foot-board, behind this moving
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