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In sunny spots beneath the trees, where green grass is overstrewn by the dry, fallen foliage, as I passed, I disturbed multitudes of grasshoppers basking in the warm sunshine; and they began to hop, hop, hop, pattering on the dry leaves like big and heavy drops of a thunder-shower. They were invisible till they hopped. Boys gathering walnuts.
Mat would bring out his chair, and, placing it on the shady side of the hedge, sit with his pipe in his mouth, the contented lord of his little realm, whilst nearly a hundred and fifty scholars, of all sorts and sizes, lay scattered over the grass, basking under the scorching sun in all the luxury of novelty, nakedness, and freedom.
The magnificent phrases and solemn promises of the mystic Germans got firm hold of his fancy. Night and day, waking or sleeping, the diamond, basking in the silence of the full moon, sparkled before his eyes. Meanwhile all was at a stand. In the very last steps of his discovery he was arrested.
Their hobbies do not spread desolation over the social world, their prejudices do not insult our intelligence. They may be so "abreast with the times" that we cannot keep track of them, or they may be basking serenely in some Early Victorian close. They may believe buoyantly in the Baconian cipher, or in thought transference, or in the serious purposes of Mr.
Wednesday, August 10th. ... At ten o'clock we started for Weymouth, where we arrived in the course of an hour, and found it basking on the edge of a lovely summer sea, with a dozen varying zones of color streaking its rippling surface; from the deep, dark purple heaving against the horizon to the delicate pearl-edged, glassy golden-green that spreads its transparent sheets over the sparkling sand of the beach.
When you reach the Carolinas, where, in default of taverns, you may always venture to make yourself the guest of a planter, and will be thanked for your visit if you would bait at noon, and turn from the road to a hospitable-looking mansion among the pines, I'll wager that a basking Negro, without a shirt, will start up, and take charge of your horse, while the master of a thousand slaves gives you one open hand, but holds in the other the ubiquitous pages, which he has been reading in the cool of his piazza.
And basking in this glow, as he loves to do at the approach of winter nights, was an animal, the sight of which drew a sharp, excited cry from between Rod's lips. In an instant he had recognized it as a bear. The animal was taken completely by surprise and was less than half a dozen rods away.
The picture that these places offered, tropic, squalid, and fecund, often caused me to walk through them and watch the basking population; the intricate, broken wooden galleries, the rickety outside stair cases, the red and yellow splashes of color on the clothes lines, the agglomerate rags that stuffed holes in decaying roofs or hung nakedly on human frames, the small, choked dwellings, bursting open at doors and windows with black, round-eyed babies as an overripe melon bursts with seeds, the children playing marbles in the court, the parents playing cards in the room, the grandparents smoking pipes on the porch, and the great-grandparents stairs gazing out at you like creatures from the Old Testament or the jungle.
But Tom's interest was chiefly centred on the huge animals the crocodiles and hippopotami which sprawled or floated about. Not far from the bush from behind which he gazed, two large crocodiles lay basking on a mudbank rugged and rough in the hide as two ancient trees the one using the back of the other as a pillow.
These woods lay cornerwise with the main road, a sandy lane following the angle they described. On the grassy border of this lane a flock of geese were tranquilly basking, and, as Ted approached, a vigilant and pugnacious gander rushed towards him, flapping its wings and extending its long neck with portentous hisses.
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