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Then he saw that it was the purple top of a fungus, a peculiarly poisonous-looking purple: slimy, shiny, and emitting a sour odour. He hesitated with his hand an inch or so from it, and the thought of poison crossed his mind. With that he picked the thing, and stood up again with it in his hand. The odour was certainly strong acrid, but by no means disgusting.

Raising the stick in the air, Dexter ran toward where the whole drove were trotting back, and gathering round their leader, who now began to sing its war-song, throwing up its muzzle so as to straighten its throat, and emitting a bellow that was, in spite of its size, but a poor, feeble imitation of the roar of a lion.

A dozen times he scrambled up the trunks like a huge cat only to fall back to the ground once more, and with each failure he cast a horrified glance over his shoulder at the oncoming brute, simultaneously emitting terror-stricken shrieks that awoke the echoes of the grim forest.

A river, clear as the air itself, sparkled at their feet, while in its clear depths could be seen gold and silver fish sporting in the bright water, and purple eels emitting sparks of fire at every moment, while the broad leaves of the water-lilies, that floated on its surface, flickered with all the colors of the rainbow.

It may also have been a cloud of smoke from a volcano in eruption, such as we saw on our arrival, though it is doubtful whether in that case it would have remained nearly stationary while going through its greatest intensity and fading, which would look as though the turned leaves had fallen off and been gradually replaced by new ones; and, in addition to this, the spot since it was first noticed has never entirely disappeared, which might mean a volcanic region constantly emitting smoke, or that the surface, doubtless from some covering whose colour can change, is normally of a different shade from the surrounding region.

All these floated in a soft, blue haze, and even the two craters shone in a violet hue. We waited for several hours, freezing in spite of the bright sun, between the damp, mossy walls of the gully where we sat, and the volcano remained quiet, merely hissing and roaring and emitting steam, but a real eruption did not occur then, nor for several weeks later.

But if our statesmen walk through the halls of Congress emitting from their garments the scent of burning human flesh, when they would put forth their souls as great magnets for mankind, the tender, sensitive world-heart will recede from their touch, and leave their hollow, resounding voices reverberating through space. Thus shall we lose our share of great world leaders.

Kiang-ti is an important stopping place, with but one forlorn street, with two or three forlorn inns, the best of which has its best room immediately over the filthiest stables, emitting a stench which was almost unbearable, that I have seen in China. It literally suffocates one as it comes up in wafts through the wide gaps in the wood floor of the room.

If the air had been filled with rockets they would have been but match strokes compared to the incessant play of brilliant dazzling meteors that flashed across the sky, furrowing it so thickly with golden lines that the whole heaven seemed ablaze until the morning's sun shut out the scene. One meteor of large size remained sometime almost stationary in the zenith, emitting streams of light.

She received him in a little parlour, which was precisely the parlour he had expected: a small unspeckled bower, ornamented with a desultory foliage of tissue-paper, and with clusters of glass drops, amid which to carry out the analogy the temperature of the leafy season was maintained by means of a cast-iron stove, emitting a dry blue flame, and smelling strongly of varnish.