United States or Eritrea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Their figures hideously marked with paint, were visible from time to time; their long hair streaming in the wind, their cloaks of skins floating in their rapid course, and their piercing cries of defiance and bravado, giving them the appearance of demons, to whom they have justly been compared.
"'Tis right the thing I should have done myself, as a young maid," said she. "Ay, I loved dearly to make lordly, sober folks look foolish. Poor Father Jordan, howbeit, was scarce fit game for her crossbow. If she had brought Avena Foljambe down, I'd have given her a clap on the back. Now, maid, let us see how thou canst braid up this old white hair for the pillow.
The church stood against a cluster of ancient firs, in the midst of its quiet graves, yew shaded here and there. Beside it stood the manse, within its sweet old garden, protected by a moss covered stone wall. At its gate the minister stood, a dark man with silvering hair, of some sixty years, but still erect and with a noble, intellectual face.
His face was of a sickly paleness, his hair dry and disordered, his lips parted as if he could get no breath. His figure was spectre-thin. His actions seemed beyond his own control. Manston did not see him; Cytherea did. The healing effect upon her heart of a year's silence a year and a half's separation was undone in an instant.
Louis XV. was at this time a pretty child of nine or ten years of age, with long chestnut hair, jet-black eyes, and a mouth like a cherry, and a rosy complexion like that of his mother, Mary of Savoy, duchesse de Burgundy, but which was liable to sudden paleness.
The other friar, however, who was a Franciscan, talked a great deal and gesticulated even more. Although his hair was getting gray, he seemed to be well preserved and in robust health. His splendid figure, keen glance, square jaw and herculean form gave him the appearance of a Roman patrician in disguise. He was gay and talked briskly, like one who is not afraid to speak out.
"One word, dear boy," he said, turning suddenly to me. And when he had drawn me on deck, "That man," says he, "will carry sail till your hair grows white; but never you let on, never breathe a word. I know his line: he'll die before he'll take advice; and if you get his back up, he'll run you right under. I don't often jam in my advice, Loudon; and when I do, it means I'm thoroughly posted."
"Next year I'll weave it myself," said Shenac, coming back again. "You need not laugh, Shenac Dhu. You'll see." "Yes, I daresay. And where will you get your loom?" And Shenac Dhu put up both hands and made-believe to cut her hair. Shenac Bhan shook her head at her. "I can learn to weave; you'll see. Anybody can learn anything if they try," said Shenac.
But I met one woman in the Emerald Isle whose hair was snow-white, and whose face seemed to beam a benediction. It was a countenance refined by sorrow, purified by aspiration, made peaceful by right intellectual employment, strong through self-reliance, and gentle by an earnest faith in things unseen. It proved the possible.
Besides, he knew her only as a thing apart from all other human relations, as an isolated personality whose one point of contact was with himself. The society of a woman who parted her hair straight down the middle of her head and who quoted Job at breakfast was not a perfect preparation for modern domestic life.