Crimson with booze

Even in the South they respected him for his courage; I remember the verdict, delivered to me by a grizzled Alabama veteran, crimson with booze and chewing on his Wheeling tobey:* “Ole Ossawatomie? Well, now, suh, Ah reckon he lived like a skunk — an’ died like a lion.”

* A particularly pungent cigar.

 
Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.348, Harper Collins, 1995.


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The loveliest of all languages

If I hadn’t served long in Afghanistan, and learned the speech and ways of the Central Asian tribes, I suppose I’d have imagined that I was in a cell with a couple of madmen. But I knew this trick that they have of reviling those they respect most, in banter, of their love of irony and formal imagery, which is strong in Pushtu and even stronger in Persian, the loveliest of all languages.

Flashman at the Charge, p.221, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Pushtu, Persian.