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It was an unschooled, impulsive cry of the heart to the great soul of life and beauty that lies back of nature. No human eyes or ears were meant to see or hear the outburst. A shy girl's first day-dreams of her lover ought no more to be dragged out to the public gaze than this. Through the quaking asps by the creek narrowed eyes gloated. Out of the thicket Jake Houck strode with a ribald laugh.
How long was it since lips had touched its brim before, and whose? Lovers', maybe, and how. How long since that cold crystal had glowed with the ripples of wine? This, at all events, was its last service. It is an old legend of the Venetian glass its shivering at touch of poison; and there are those of whom it is said, 'the poison of asps is under their lips.
A gate made of three strands of barbed wire and two poles barred the wagon trail. For already the nester was fencing the open range. As Houck moved forward to the gate the moon disappeared back of the banked clouds. June's eye swept the landscape and brightened. The sage and the brush were very thick here. A grove of close-packed quaking asps filled the draw. She glanced at Jake.
For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps. Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?
So they arrived with a clatter, and were met at the door by Andrew Vessons knowing of eye as a blackbird, straw in mouth, the poison of asps on his tongue. Undern Hall, with its many small-paned windows, faced the north sullenly. It was a place of which the influence and magic were not good.
At 4 P.M., seeing the sandy hills of Bonjem, our merciful slave-master, Essnousee, determined we might now encamp, and go fresh and early next day to the Fortress. Observed two small snakes to-day in open Desert, the first time I have seen them in Sahara. So much for the snakes, asps, adders, basilisks, cockatrices, and fiery flying serpents of The Desert!
Riding leisurely across the creek, their broad hats bobbing unevenly in the sunshine, they spurred swiftly past the grove of quaking asps, and in a moment were lost beyond the trees. Where the Little Crawling Stone River tears out of the Mission Mountains it has left a grayish-white gap that may be seen for many miles. This is the head of the North Crawling Stone Valley.
The fourfold asps signify the structure of man's body upon four treacherous and unstable elements which, being disordered and disturbed, bring that body to destruction. Furthermore, the fiery cruel dragon betokeneth the maw of hell that is hungry to receive those who choose present pleasures rather than future blessings.
The men of science will smile at the exorbitant claims put forward in behalf of Swedenborg as a scientific discoverer. "Philosophers" will not be pleased to be reminded that Swedenborg called them "cockatrices," "asps," or "flying serpents;" "literary men" will not agree that they are "conjurers and charlatans," and will not listen with patience to the praises of a man who so called them.
These myriad bells, with their little copper tongues, seemed to him like the mouths of so many asps, open and ready to sting and to hiss. "Oh!" he said, in a very low voice, "is it possible that my life depends on the slightest vibration of the least of these bells? Oh!" he added, with clasped hands, "bells, do not ring, hand-bells do not clang, mule-bells do not quiver!"
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