Capon

“ Westenra, and would be sure to make it pay. Turn your cockerels into capons. It is the most profitable business going."
"Capons?" said Val, vague-eyed. "I always thought capons were fish, and that monks ate them for Friday's dinner."
"Oh, dear me, no, they are not fish, though monks will eat them fast enough if they get the chance--any one will, they 're delicious. You 'll get from seven shillings and sixpence to ten shillings for them any day in the week," averred Mrs. Scone, and proceeded to explain to the open-mouthed Val and Haidee the process of caponising. ”

“ The fear of life came on him as he lay;
"Outside the world is garish," thought the king,
And then—and then he heard the lone bell ring
And saw the peace and green light of a wood;
It was a very vision of escape,
A high-walled garden on the crescent cape,
Fair as an evil thing but good.
The cape is luniform
Whereon the hermit's form
Lies bony white and still
Beside the chapel on the hill;
The long grass waves as if he breathes
At every breeze that weaves ”

“ In light cavalry of all kinds, except lancers, the fur cap, lately re-introduced into the British army, is the most useful and most suitable covering; it is at once comfortable and becoming; its form is warlike and harmonious; its colour rich; and it admits of as much or as little ornament as you please to put upon it. Without a feather it is good, with one it is better; guard-bands add to its appearance without troubling the wearer; and it has the merit of lasting to look well longer than any other kind of cap whatever. ”

“ The great cape thrusts its knees far out into the Mediterranean, and close down by the sea on the very point a lighthouse stands out from the green mass like a white pencil. South-westwards the land runs sharply back in heights of tangled undergrowths and trees, overhangs a wide bay and drops at the end of the bay to the mouth of a spacious, empty harbour. Eastwards the cape slopes inland at a gentler angle with an undercliff, a narrow plateau, and behind the plateau mountain walls. ”

“ After a long, hot, and dusty canter with the post-riders, through the Ecca valley, I off-saddled, by a train of waggons outspanned on the green flats of Botha's Hill, to give my horse a roll, as he had now carried me nearly ninety miles, with only a short time for baiting at three places. The moment a Cape horse is off-saddled he rolls himself on the ground,—mud, rock, sand, or grass all alike; kicks up his heels in the air, rubs his neck and face on the earth, more like a dog than a horse; and after a shake is ready for the road again, and as fresh as if he had had a feed of corn. ”

“ The short rope at his neck had been so disposed and knotted—the collar of the domino serving—as to make him look, indeed, as if he strained at the tether’s end. He had dragged his long hair over his eyes; his head lolled to one side; his tongue protruded. For the rest, the cloak hid all, even to his feet.
The goatherd whimpered.
“Ah, holy saints, he is dead!
The head came erect, grinning.
“Eugenio!” she cried. “Oh, my God! Thou wilt be discovered—thou wilt slip and strangle! Ah, the crows—soul of my soul, the crows!” ”

“ In the crumpled and tasselled top of the velvet cap, and in the ermine border visible below the rim, the high conical form of the cap of maintenance proper can be still traced in the cap of a peer's coronet, and that the velvet cap contained in the crown of the sovereign and in the coronet of a peer is the survival of the old cap of dignity there can be no doubt. ”

“ When I do not walk, to give countenance to his running, he has a game of his own. He plays it with an ancient fur cap that he keeps conveniently stored. The cap represents a prey of considerable dignity which must be sprung upon and shaken again and again until it is finally disabled. ”

“ Every person over 6 years of age shall wear on Sundays a wool knitted cap made by the cappers, except for maidens, ladies, gentlewomen, noble persons, and every lord, knight, and gentlemen with 2,667s. of land, since the practice of not wearing caps has damaged the capping industry. This employed cappers and poor people they had employed and the decrepit and lame as carders, spinners, knitters, parters, forsers, thickers, dressers, dyers, battelers, shearers, pressers, edgers, liners, and bandmakers.
No man under the degree of knight may wear a hat or cap of velvet. ”

“ To seek and gaze upon the somber house, of which, and of whose inmates, such terrible stories had been told or hinted, had always been a secret desire and purpose of Capitola.
And now the presence there of a beautiful girl near her own age was the one last item that tipped the balance, making the temptation to ride thither outweigh every other consideration of duty, prudence and safety. And having once started on the adventure, Cap felt the attraction drawing her toward the frightful hollow of the Hidden House growing stronger with every step taken thitherward. ”

“ But there is another kind of covering for the head, which, for its peculiar purposes, seems to us more useful and more ornamental even than this hat; we allude to the common round travelling cap, the officers' undress cap in the British army. Are you going a journey? have you any rough work to do? have you got a headach and want something light? would you put on something that will not spoil by being pulled about, sat on, slept on, and stood on? something handy, useful, comfortable, and withal good-looking?—What do you do? you get a foraging cap. Every man looks well in a foraging cap ”

“ Indubitably the triumph of the day was the purchase of a cap, green, with blue circular stripes, crested with an eagle invincibly—a cap which proclaimed to the whole abashed world that here was one who was of the world's elect, here was one who was no lesser a mortal than a scholar at Doomington School. ”

“ Are they spirits abroad by day?
Or the foes of my clan that are come, bringing death by a perilous way?”
183
The valley was gouged like a vessel, and round like the vessel’s lip,
With a cape of the side of the hill thrust forth like the bows of a ship.
On the top of the face of the cape a volley of sun struck fair,
And the cape overhung like a chin a gulf of sunless air.
“Silence, heart! What is that?—that, which flickered and shone,
Into the sun for an instant, and in an instant gone? ”

“ I have been accustomed to make excursions to the ponds within ten miles of Concord, but latterly I have extended my excursions to the seashore.
I did not see why I might not make a book on Cape Cod, as well as my neighbor on “Human Culture.” It is but another name for the same thing, and hardly a sandier phase of it. As for my title, I suppose that the word Cape is from the French cap; which is from the Latin caput, a head; which is, perhaps, from the verb capere, to take,—that being the part by which we take hold of a thing:—Take Time by the forelock. ”

“ The capeadors scatter, like a flock of sparrows [221] at which some man has fired small-shot. Holding behind them red capes, they circle now in the arena, with a swiftness that makes the head dizzy; they are everywhere; they glitter to the right, to the left; they are in the middle of the arena, at the paling, before the eyes of the bull, in front, behind. ”

“ The capadors had great game with him. He was very quick, and sometimes he turned with such sharpness that his hind legs lost their footing and he plowed the sand with his quarter. But he charged always the flung capes and committed no harm.
"He has no chance," said John Harned. "He is fighting wind."
"He thinks the cape is his enemy," explained Maria Valenzuela. "See how cleverly the capador deceives him."
"It is his nature to be deceived," said John Harned. "Wherefore he is doomed to fight wind. The toreadors know it, you know it, I know it--we all know from the first that he will fight wind. ”

“ Our surveyors suppose the cape to be shaped like a shoulder of mutton with the knuckle placed inwards, where they say that the land cannot be above two or three miles across, and that most probably in high winds the sea washes quite over the sands, which here are low. ”

“ You must excuse me, kind reader, I am still talking about the cap: made of tulle, light as a feather, a broad cherry-coloured ribbon covered with lace passing between the tulle and the ruche, and at the back two wide long ribbons they would fall down a little below the nape of the neck. . . . All that the cap needed was to be tilted a little to the back of the head; come, look at it; I ask you, after that . . . but I see you are not looking . . . you think it does not matter. You are looking in a different direction. ”

“ The blue cap for all enlisted men except chief petty officers, officers’ stewards and cooks, and bandsmen, is of the style known as the “flat cap.” It has a band two inches wide around which is sewn a black silk cap ribbon bearing the name of the ship or station of the wearer in plain gold letters, the ribbon being tied in a double-bow knot at the left side. ”

“ In consequence of having wool hide, these skins are not so tough as the Cape Hope goat with the hair hide. One pays less for them than for the real cape, but, for ordinary appearance, they are a fair substitute, and their wearing qualities undoubtedly meet the average requirement. ”

“ The land trends from this cape north-west by west into the bay, and on the other side south-west per compass, which is south-west 9 degrees west, allowing the variation which is here 9 degrees east. The land on each side of the cape is more savannah than woodland, and is highest on the north-west side. The cape itself is a bluff point of an indifferent height with a flat tableland at top. ”

“ Besides, I don't beat up for common soldiers; no, I list only grenadiers, grenadiers, gentlemen. — Pray, gentlemen, observe this cap — This is the cap of honour; it dubs a man a gentleman in the drawing of a tricker: and he that has the good fortune to be born six foot high was born to be a great man. — Sir, will you give me leave to try this cap upon your head? ”

“ The Cape having been so frequently described, I shall only add that the Character of the Hottentots, at which I have hinted, has been found to be too True, that they scarce deserve to be reckoned of the Human Kind: they are such a nasty, ill-looking, and worse-smelling people. Their Apparel is the Skins of Beasts; their chief Ornament is to be very Greasy and Black; so that they besmear themselves with an abominable Oil, mixed with Tallow and Soot; and the Women twist the Entrails of Beasts or Thongs of Hides round their legs, which resemble Rolls of Tobacco. ”

“ Lat. capa, cappa) , a liturgical vestment of the Western Church. The word “cope,” now confined to this sense, was in its origin identical with “cape” and “cap,” and was used until comparatively modern times also for an out-door cloak, whether worn by clergy or laity. This, indeed, was its original meaning, the cappa having been an outer garment common to men and women whether clerical or lay (see Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v.) . The word pluviale (rain-cloak) , which the cope bears in the Roman Church, is exactly parallel so far as change of meaning is concerned. ”

“ But how about the cap?--"What in the name of wonder have you done to this, Lina?--It's morally impossible to get it back to the proper fassong.--Ah--let me think.--What's the old lady like on Sunday afternoons? She has a good bunch of silk curls on each side of her face, then the front of the cap rises about three inches higher than the curls; so the thing must be drawn more to the front. She hasn't anything particular in the middle, for her bald head shows through, but it always goes into a great bunch at the back where it sticks out in a mass of frills. ”

“ The crowd made way for her, and no man durst follow. Soon she was upon the outskirts of the throng, soon quit of it altogether. Some whispered ribaldries, some rude touches she had to endure, and that was all. She believed that the lure would not have let her lose sight of him; and sure enough there he was going on in front, a noble by token of his jewelled bonnet, with the long pendant gathered from it about his neck, and the rich scarlet hose which showed under his cloak. ”

“ The modern stiff corners of the cap are an addition, which is not an improvement; the old cap drooped gracefully from its tuft in the centre, as can still be seen in the portraits of seventeenth-century divines, e.g. in Vandyck's 'Archbishop Laud', so familiar from its many replicas and copies. Later usage has specialized the round cap of velvet as belonging to the Doctors of Law and Medicine, and a most beautiful head-gear it is; it is preserved, in a less elaborate form, at the degree ceremony in the round caps of the Bedels. ”

“ That was because he lay in an eyrie on the hill-side. Then at once, into his white field of vision, as if thrown from a magic-lantern slide, floated the dismal long face, surmounted by an ancient cocked hat (whereof the flaps had slouched down from their buttons) and hung from the throat, like an august Aunt Sally, with a bat-wing funeral cloak. ”

“ College cap, the so-called square mortarboard, or trencher-cap, worn at English colleges.—Percussion cap, a small copper cylinder, closed at one end, for conveniently holding the detonating powder which is exploded by the act of percussion in percussion-arms.—Set one's cap at, of a woman, to set herself to captivate a man's fancy.—The cap fits, the allusion hits or suits ”

“ Even to-day cockades are of various colours, and, as Mr. Calthrop points out, the servant’s chaperon from which it was derived used to bear the colours of the master’s livery. The chaperon is also to be seen on the robes of the Knights of the Garter at the present day, where it is fixed on the right shoulder as a kind of cape. (See Figure 144.) Mr. Calthrop also points out that the present head-dress of the French lawyer is another descendant of the chaperon, and that the buttons worn by the members of the Legion of Honour and other foreign Orders are connected with the same idea. ”