United States or Vanuatu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I mounted guard over them. And we were just beginning to feel a trifle uneasy about Professor Farrago, when he appeared, tramping sturdily through the forest, green umbrella and butterfly-net under one arm, shot-gun and cyanide-jar under the other, and his breast all criss-crossed with straps, from which dangled field-glasses, collecting-boxes, and botanizing-tins an inspiring figure indeed the embodied symbol of science indomitable, triumphant!
Where could those books be found? He had almost reached the door, when his eye fell on the two collecting-boxes. With a sudden thought he paused, drew a key from the pocket of his corduroys, and unlocked his own the Parson's box. A sovereign lay within. He picked up the coin and considered it, a dark flush growing on his face. Parson Jack had a temper, though few guessed it.
Indeed, the pair hung in so obscure a corner behind the font that at the first service only Parson Jack and the Widow Copping were aware of them. The Parson stumbled and hesitated so badly over the prayers that one or two worshippers felt sure he had been drinking; which was not the fact. The Widow Copping took no interest in collecting-boxes; and, besides, she could not read.
"Children's Day" is a school holiday, and the children dress in the old picturesque Danish costumes; they then go about the town and market-places begging alms for the sanatoriums in their collecting-boxes. In this way a large sum is collected for these charities. "Knocking-the-cat-out-of-the-barrel" is an old custom of the peasantry which takes place the Monday before Lent.
Here it was that we found flowers growing, and saw traces enough of insects to make us determine to bring collecting-boxes another time, on purpose to obtain the glorious beetles and butterflies that we saw here and there. "Look, uncle," I cried; "there's another, and another. Oh, if I had my butterfly-net!"
'No, I never remember seeing a copy of it in my life. I don't even know what it is about. 'Oh! said the girls, round-eyed with horror. 'Just think! And we all have collecting-boxes. 'It is a missionary periodical, said Marion. 'It has news in it from every corner of the mission-field, and every month a list of the stations that specially need our prayers.
As soon as it got dark I placed my lamp on a table against the wall, and with pins, insect-forceps, net, and collecting-boxes by my side, sat down with a book. Sometimes during the whole evening only one solitary moth would visit me, while on other nights they would pour in, in a continual stream, keeping me hard at work catching and pinning till past midnight.
The Quinze-Vingts were privileged to place collecting-boxes and to beg inside the churches. Since, however, the differences in the relative opulence of churches was great, the right to beg in certain of the richer ones was put up to auction every year, and those who promised to pay the highest premium to the funds of the hospital were adjudicated the privilege of begging there.
I only had to tell Uncle Joseph my wants and he was eager to help me. "Collecting-boxes, Nat?" he said, rubbing his hands softly; "why, I used to use pill-boxes when I was a boy: there are lots up-stairs." He hunted me out over a dozen that afternoon, and supplied me with an old drawer and a piece of camphor, entering into the matter with as much zest as I did myself.
One summer Uncle Joseph bought me a book on butterflies, with coloured plates, which so interested me that I began collecting the very next day, and captured a large cabbage butterfly. No great rarity this, but it was a beginning; and after pinning it out as well as I could I began to think of a cabinet, collecting-boxes, a net, and a packet of entomological pins.