United States or Burkina Faso ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But the vice-president won't say, and he's the one who has been doing all the dickering with the Honorable David. They quarrelled at first; I'd bet every dollar I've got on that. But I more than half-believe they've patched it up now, and I believe it was Mr. McVickar's quick swiping of Evan jerking him out from under his father's thumb the way he did that brought on the peace negotiations."
Louis Quillan had flung back the shutter. It was a tranquil evening in September, with no moon as yet, but with a great multitude of lesser lights overhead. "Incurious like the stars! They do dwarf one, rather. Yet just now I protest to you, infinitesimal man that I am, I half-believe le bon Dieu loves us so utterly that He has kindled all those pretty tapers solely for our diversion.
"The factor is a gentleman born," said I, "but he is past fifty. And think of the life! It is a sad pity for the girl." "She knows what is before her," replied the captain, "and she seems to be resigned. To tell the truth, though, I half-believe there is something at the back of it all that some deeper cause drove her out here. Nothing to her discredit, I mean." "What makes you think so?" I asked.
To tell the truth, the Armatage children had associated so much with the colored folks about the plantation that they were inclined to believe that there might be such things as "ha'nts." The little Bunkers had heard of "ghosts"; but they looked on such things as being like fairies something to half-believe in, and shiver about, all the time knowing that they were not real.
Now what the novelist does is to write the biographies of the people of his story; not usually from the cradle to the grave, but for that crucial period of their careers which marked some great success or failure; and he tries to make them so life-like and natural that we will half-believe they are real people, and that the things he tells about really happened.
Miss Foster herself was that reserved kind of a girl that you cannot always place. She struck me as being a girl that would die before she would confess a weakness or a troublesome feeling. And yet, without knowing how it came there, there was always a notion in the back of my head that made me half-believe that she did not come to the store with my cousin out of pure companionship.
I have always smiled at the idea of love, at first sight, but when I first saw your face, Elma, none ever was so welcome; yet if you had not proved all that your face and manner promised, I should not have fallen in love. I half-believe matches are made in Heaven ours will be Heaven-made, if any are. You think human beings are made for each other, as the saying is, do you not?"
But just as surely was it the design or law that there should be these colours, crimson, blue, and green, and that I should be affected by them. This affection was rolled up in the primal impulse which started the planet and is as necessary as its revolution. Zeal in proselytising is often due to an uneasy suspicion that we only half-believe.
If the ice had been rotten in the morning at the bend, it would be doubly treacherous now. Ah, but he had warned Strangeways! Surely he would be sufficiently cautious to half-believe him at least in that. When he came to where the river turned northwards, he would forsake the short-cut of the old trail and swing out into the middle stream, or work safely round along the bank.
"Thou hast fed one rose with dust of many men." He loved "To finger idly some old Gordian knot, Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave, And with much toil attain to half-believe." His verse would be forgotten if it expressed only such an uncertain note; but his greatest poem thus records his belief in the value of life's struggle and gives a hint of final victory:
Word Of The Day