Toward evening the two steam tugs that had accompanied us with a
rollicking champagne-party of young New Yorkers on board who wished to bid farewell to one of our number in due and ancient form departed, and we were alone on the deep.
When she broke into the swift rattling measures of a chorus some half-tipsy men near the stage joined in the
rollicking refrain and glasses were pounded rhythmically upon the tables.
Then the bands turned their instruments towards Cathy and burst in with that
rollicking frenzy of a tune, "Oh, we'll all get blind drunk when Johnny comes marching home - yes, we'll all get blind drunk when Johnny comes marching home!" and followed it instantly with "Dixie," that antidote for melancholy, merriest and gladdest of all military music on any side of the ocean - and that was the end.
Like a mob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round the world at such a reckless,
rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them any more than he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard.
We are singing a
rollicking sea song, all save one who sits on the ground and weeps; and we are marking the rhythm with waving square faces.
Other friends, with whom I have sat at dinner in the brave,
rollicking days in the Solomons have since passed out--by the same way.
But the third emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down
rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music.
The trees were jubilant with birds, and the paths with
rollicking children.
A minute later she was whirled away in his arms to the dancing-floor, where, along with the other three women and their partners, a
rollicking Virginia reel was soon in progress.
Don't I tell you that His blessed Majesty King George the Third would no more stand a rioting and
rollicking in his streets, than he'd stand being crowed over by his own Parliament?'
Morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and
rollicking company were gathered at Judge Thatcher's, and everything was ready for a start.
It was an important-looking village, with a fine old church and large churchyard in the heart of it, and two or three large brick-and-stone homesteads, with well-walled orchards and ornamental weathercocks, standing close upon the road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the rectory, which peeped from among the trees on the other side of the churchyard:--a village which showed at once the summits of its social life, and told the practised eye that there was no great park and manor-house in the vicinity, but that there were several chiefs in Raveloe who could farm badly quite at their ease, drawing enough money from their bad farming, in those war times, to live in a
rollicking fashion, and keep a jolly Christmas, Whitsun, and Easter tide.