Had to take a few day Hiatus - Income Tax and of course, regardless how many promises over the years the receipts are unsorted in a plastic bin -
Then I am in the middle of my own Jarndyce versus Jarndyce - lesson - read all email regardless if you recognize the sender or not - I usually trashed without opening what appeared to me to be an ad - well during the holidays some company that said that for a monthly fee I could each month receive as many credit reports as I wanted and further it said that I had 7 days to OK or cancel the service -
Never ordered the service - Never received anything by either snail mail or email - but for a couple of months there was this strange bill that I finally saw this weekend when I took time to scour my credit card activity - Being out of town for the holidays I just paid and then just paid in January and February -
Well they have been charging me and rang up on my credit card a total of $106 - so a weekend with lots of calls - Did cancel the ahum service but, no satisfaction getting money back - reported them to our Attorney General who is going after them and still trying to get it worked out with my credit card company to go after them and return my money.
OK book - I am in awe that y'all got through and understood chapter 11 - thank goodness for Rosemary's links but I have not been able to figure out what is a
salute of the skittles - first I thought skittles was something to eat - than a frying pan and finally a board game but no - it is like outdoor bowling and so next to the Alms is a 'bowling' skittles field or whatever it is called - after I finally figured that out by reading the chapter 3 times and researching I still cannot find anything that tells me what is the "
salute of skittles" - anyone Know???
And another what does it mean when the pieman's "
brandy-balls go off like smoke." I know what brandy-balls are unless, this has another meaning - we used to make them every year at Christmas time with Kentucky Bourbon - ours were not cooked so I am assuming if these are the same cookie made with brandy they are not cooked so what is the reference to smoke??
Didn't you just love Mrs. Piper's testimony - I love it - bringing up anything that seems unrelated with an unholy possible outcome till she gets around to what she wants to say - to think folks had the patience to listen to her dream, an attention getter for sure with a pick-ax and a child's head being split, not - oh my - I bet she was not alone using this descriptive way to express herself - what was it they said on TV the other night, we now have the attention span of I think they said 27 seconds - and 160 years ago folks listened to a Mrs. Piper - just love it!
Ahh and Mr. Snagsby has a good heart giving Jo a coin on the sly. And 20 seizures in one night for dear Guster - oh dear, although, I bet even if she was not a child of poverty there would be no help since medicine was only a knowledge of herbs and the use of various hallucinogenics. Did you see that article in last weeks paper about the various famous people that used drugs from Ben Franklin to Pope Leo XIII, 1878 to 1903.
Interesting comparing childhood experiences - the Jellyby children, Mrs. Pardiggle's children, Mrs. Rouncewell's sons and Jo - needy, angry, sent away, abandoned to the streets.
Now what is a
jack-towel neckcloth - a roller towle hung on the back of the door or in some old fashioned public restrooms is a jack-towel and a neckcloth I believe is what was fashionable before the modern tie but, I cannot picture what a Jack-towel neckcloth could look like.
A fun by-the-way blog on Dandyism -
http://www.dandyism.net/trivial-pursuit-the-test-of-dandy-knowledge/Lords - Boodle, Coodle, Foodle, Goodle, Hoodle, Joodle, Koodle, Moodle, Noodle, Poodle, Quoodle - a riot - and then Buffy, Cuffy, Duffy etc. - Oh my talk about Gothic - Tulkinghorn is assigned the turret chamber. Is that not descriptive,"walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook."
Their crowing is not a song but has often been described like the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. They usually create communities which seems an anathema to Tulkinghorn however, their diet is the larvae of injurious insects, grubs and they do damage to corn fields.
And what does
evindenfly mean - as in Guppy, "
leaning against the post and evidenfly catching cold." The best I could find was, it is a word used by Shakespeare in Hamlet with another word that is used to describe
evidenfly being "encomium" meaning: Warm, glowing praise. A formal expression of praise; a tribute - formal praise; an elaborate or ceremonial panegyric or eulogy.
I am thinking this is another of Dickens worthy attempt to use irony suggesting a ceremonious certainty decorated with a eulogy to ascribe that Guppy is indeed catching cold. What do y'all think?
Oh and what glee - wonderful Mr. Badger - I have heard of folks living vicariously through another but he takes Aristotle's "law of association by contiguity" to the extreme...
intimate extreme...the past husbands seem to provide an endless topic of conversation with Mrs and Mr Badger each getting something from it and each other. A nice segue to Richard and Ada and now a dark gentleman - I guess if Nemo is no longer the secret, 'who is he?' now we have, I hope a worthy substitute in the dark gentleman - 'who is he?'.