United States or Trinidad and Tobago ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


So that the bird came upon me unexpectedly out from the shadow of the trees that overhang the water, past me, and on into the sunshine over the buttercups and sorrel of the field. This hollow at Long Ditton is the very place of singing birds; never was such a place for singing the valley is full of music. In the oaks blackbirds whistle.

The studio was deserted all that afternoon, for Psyche sat in the orchard drawing squirrels on the wall, pert robins hopping by, buttercups and mosses, elves and angels; while May lay contentedly enjoying sun and air, sisterly care, and the "pretty things" she loved so well.

It is wonderful to lie in one of these sunny pastures, when the buttercups have gilded the grass, and to watch the motionless red and white cattle as they solemnly let the hours drift past them. During a whole sunny afternoon, which I once spent in those pastoral surroundings, I can scarcely remember the slightest movement taking place among the somnolent herd.

Lovely walks into woods, starred with pale primroses, and fragrant with wild hyacinths; down green lanes, leading to quaint cottages, or over wide meadows full of pink-tipped daisies and dear familiar buttercups, the same all the world over.

"It looks too simple for the President it ought to have more flourishes to it and titles and things, shouldn't it, Ken? You copy it and we'll walk straight down to the post office and mail it so that it will go on to-night's train." Tears were far from Keineth's eyes as she walked by Barbara's side down the white road between the fields of daisies and buttercups.

The purple melted into orange; the waving fields were set with dazzling buttercups; the buttercups became poppies. And then the mounting sun kissed the clouds again. They blushed scarlet, and the fields were red. The grim face gave no sign that he saw the glory and beauty of a wonderful Sabbath morning. His figure was rigid. His eyes set.

Then there are the bobolinks and the starlings and the meadowlarks, always interested spectators of the angler; there are also the marsh marigolds, the buttercups, or the spotted lilies, and the good angler is always an interested spectator of them.

We saw a field covered with buttercups, or some other yellow flower, and poppies burned along the roadside, as they did yesterday, and there were flowers of a delicious blue, as if the blue Italian sky had been broken into little bits, and scattered down upon the green earth.

We gathered them because Claude said you once told him that they reminded you of home; and then you told him of a shady place where they used to grow, and of the birch-tree by the burn. I had heard about the burn myself, but not about the buttercups." Coming as they did, the little tuft of wild flowers pleased Christie better than the fairest bouquet of hothouse exotics could have done.

Gold is but one kind of coloured clay, but coloured clay can be very beautiful. The modern idolater of riches is content with far less genuine things. The glitter of guineas is like the glitter of buttercups, the chink of pelf is like the chime of bells, compared with the dreary papers and dead calculations which make the hobby of the modern miser.