The Lantern by the Drugstore

From the "Diaries of a Lady of Quality" by Frances Williams Wynn :

I was about sixteen or seventeen when, at Dropmore - where I was with Lord and Lady Grenville only - Mr Pitt arrived for a visit of two days. First, I was disappointed in that turned up nose, and in that countenance, in which it was so impossible to find any indication of the mind, and in that person which was so deficient in dignity he had hardly the air of a gentleman... From what I then heard and saw, I should say that mouth was made for eating; - as to speaking, there was very little, and that little was totally uninteresting to me, and I believe it had been so to everybody... On the second day arrived Lord Wellesley whom I thought very agreeable; partly, I fancy from his high-bred manners, and still more from his occasionally saying a few words to me, and thus making me feel treated as a reasonable creature. After we had retired for the night, I heard from the library, which was under my room, the most extraordinary noises - barking, mewing, hissing, howling, interspersed with violent shouts of laughter. I assumed it was the servants that had come into the room, and had got drunk and riotous; and I turned to sleep when the noise had ceased.Never can I forget my dismay (it was more than astonishment) when the next day at breakfast I heard that my wise uncle and his two wise guests, whom they had left talking, as I supposed on the fate of Europe, had spied in the room a little bird; they did not wish it to be shut out there all night: therefore, after having opened every window, these great wise men tried every variety of noise they could make to frighten out the poor bird.


P.S.: Am thinking to create a separate journal (community?) where things like that could be posted. >.>