United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Through that long distance, though I had slanted southwestward across a multitude of States and vegetations, and the Mississippi lay eleven hundred miles to my rear, the single event is my purchasing some cat's-eyes of the news-agent at Sierra Blanca. Save this, my diary contains only neat additions of daily expenses, and moral reflections of a delicate and restrained melancholy.
"Your judge and I," she said, "consider not only your beautiful twins worthy of a prize, but also the mother and father that can so proudly claim them." She put her hand in my pocket. "These cat's-eyes," she said, "you will wear, and think of me and the judge who presents them." She placed a bracelet on each twin, and the necklace upon Mrs. Smith's neck.
And I, glad to possess the jewels of my country, chose two bracelets and a necklace of them, paying but twenty dollars for fifteen or sixteen cat's-eyes, and resolved to give them a setting worthy of their beauty. The diary continues with moral reflections upon the servility of our taste before anything European, and the handwriting is clear and deliberate.
And it is a song, and a very successful one, for a visit to the same pond a week or two later, will show you not the Cat's-eye or his mate, they have gone a-tunnelling but a swarm of little black pin-like tadpole Cat's-eyes, born and bred in the glorious sunlight but doomed and ready, if they live, to follow in their parents' tracks far underground.
It abruptly becomes hurried, and at length well-nigh illegible. It is best, I think, that you should have this portion as it comes, unpolished, unamended, unarranged hot, so to speak, from my immediate pencil, instead of cold from my subsequent pen. I shall disguise certain names, but that is all. Friday forenoon, May 5. I don't have to gaze at my cat's-eyes to kill time any more.
At Neuera-ellia it is a favourite amusement for picnic parties to go out gem-hunting, and frequently they meet with very large and valuable stones by the riverside or near deserted pits, large garnets, cinnamon-stone, splendid cat's-eyes, amethysts, matura diamonds, moonstone, aquamarine, tourmaline rubies, and sapphires.
"My dear young fellow, never do you buy trash in these trains. Here you are with your coat full of what's Gadsden's absurd razor concoctions strut strop bother! And Chinese paste buttons. Last summer, on the Northern Pacific, the man offered your cat's-eyes to me as native gems found exclusively in Dakota.
Quite a large number of Singhalese are employed by dealers at Colombo to hunt the beds of small streams, and to dig in the mountains in search of gems, such as sapphires, cat's-eyes, moon-stones, topazes, and rubies, which, after being cut, are sold to European and American travelers, and also exported to the Paris and London jewelers.
The low crotch of the vest revealed a stiff shirt bosom of white and pink stripes. From his coat sleeves protruded a pair of linen cuffs of the same pattern, fastened with large, gold plate buttons, set with the common yellow agates known as "cat's-eyes."
But I just sat and mentioned to him that I was on my way home from a holiday in China, and he went right out of the car. The last day I was in Canton I bought a box of those cat's-eyes at eight cents a dozen." After this we spoke a little on other subjects, and now she's busy writing again.
Word Of The Day