United States or Czechia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"O ah yes:" another incident, thinks-I-to-myself, in the chequered life of my unhappy friend. "And a striking incident, too, according to the account of the Irish woman who lodged the complaint." "An Irish woman! Mischief in her proper shape again. But, my word for it, if it is my quondam friend Wheelwright, who is in the scrape, he has not struck any body or thing man, woman, or child."
The attachment of these illustrious personages to each other had been openly expressed, and had yielded neither to time, nor to the remarkable vicissitude of fortune with which the destinies of one of them had been chequered.
The life of this gentleman has been one of a very chequered description: he has undergone transitions—not from grave to gay, for he never was grave—not from lively to severe, for severity forms no part of his disposition; his fluctuations have been between poverty in the extreme, and poverty modified, or, to use his own emphatic language, ‘between nothing to eat and just half enough.’ He is not, as he forcibly remarks, ‘one of those fortunate men who, if they were to dive under one side of a barge stark-naked, would come up on the other with a new suit of clothes on, and a ticket for soup in the waistcoat-pocket:’ neither is he one of those, whose spirit has been broken beyond redemption by misfortune and want.
All without was life and sweetness; every bush had its little chorister; the sun brilliant, but not as yet high in the heavens, threw his bright rays in chequered light and shade between the trees, and made the pearly tears of night, which hung quivering on each bending blade of grass, sparkle like diamonds of the purest water.
My first feeling was one of disappointment; so great was the contrast betwixt the airy and sunlight beauty of the exterior, and the massive and sombre grandeur within. The marble of the floor was sorely fretted by the foot: its original colours of blue and red had passed into a dingy gray, chequered with the variously-tinted light which flowed in through the stained windows.
He broke from his thoughts with the strong effort of a man habituated to self-control, and advanced to the narrow window, opened the lattice, and looked out. The moon was in all her splendour. The long deep shadows of the breathless forest chequered the silvery whiteness of open sward and intervening glade.
As he himself whimsically expressed it, he had received ample correction during his own chequered career; but he had never been in a position to correct anyone else. He found Toby waiting for him in his shirt-sleeves, rather white but quite composed, his riding-switch all ready to his hand. "Ever been flogged before?" he asked him curtly as he picked it up.
No, my Constance," he added, warming into the sanguine vein that traversed even his most desponding moods, "no! let us not cherish this dark belief; there is no experience for the future; one hour lies to the next; if what has been seem thus chequered, it is no type of what may be.
He drew up, and sat, leaning back, watching her with one of his smiles of melancholy meaning, as she lightly sprang up the bank, and dived between the hazel stems; and there he remained musing till, like a vision of May herself, she reappeared on the bank, the nut-bushes making a bower around her, her hands filled with flowers, her cheek glowing like her wild roses, and the youthful delicacy of her form, and the transient brightness of her sweet face, suiting with the fresh tender colouring of the foliage, chequered with flickering sunshine.
The only trouble was to find enough ships and, harder still, enough men. Canadian sailing craft in the nineteenth century had a chequered career.
Word Of The Day