United States or Poland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


There is a singular aptitude in the stomach of the dog to eject a portion of its contents; but, almost immediately afterwards, the food, or a portion if not the whole of it, is swallowed again. This is a matter of daily occurrence. There is a coarse rough grass, the 'cynosurus cristatus', or crested dog's-tail. It is inferior for the purposes of hay, but is admirably suited for permanent pastures.

Then under foot there were patches of woolly feather-grass and fragrant meadow-sweet, sheets of fescue, dog's-tail, creeping-bent, and meadow grass. Sainfoin reared its long fine filaments; clover unfurled its clear green leaves, plantains brandished forests of spears, lucerne spread out in soft beds of green satin broidered with purple flowers.

Then my mind reverts to the elm the elm on which Sir Algernon hanged himself. I remember it is not more than twenty yards from where I stand. I stare down at the soil, at the clumps of crested dog's-tail and stray blades of succulent darnel; I force my attention on a toadstool, whose soft and lowly head gleams sickly white in the moonbeams.

These pseudo-Titians were for Monsieur About his Alcibiades's dog's-tail. He spent one every month. Literary, picturesque, romanesque, historical, agricultural, Greek, and Roman questions were never subjects to him: he considered them merely advertisements to puff the transcendent merits of Edmond About. Before he left "Figaro" he determined to show me what a grateful fellow he was.