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Longfellow has cast one of these homilies into poetic form: "O brother birds, St. Francis said, Ye come to me and ask for bread, But not with bread alone to-day Shall ye be fed and sent away. Oh, doubly are ye bound to praise The great Creator in your lays; He giveth you your plumes of down, Your crimson hoods, your cloaks of brown.
Pitchers and jars and woven carpets; queer Eastern scents; shuttered windows and flat roofs, mules and here and there a loaded camel, two Jews in black robes, a band of wild-looking desert wanderers in white with hoods and veils. Egyptian women carrying little brown babies; who would believe there could be such figures, such colour and picturesque compositions?
Meantime, in those days, Ireland had no adequate champion; the Hoods and the Grattans were not up to the mark. Refractory as they were, they moved within the paling of order and decorum; they were not the Titans for a war against the heavens.
The northern lights were more vivid than usual, making the sky quite luminous, and there was a sharp freshness in the air, which, while it induced the hunters to pull their hoods more tightly round their faces, also sent their blood careering more briskly through their veins, as they drove swiftly over the ice in the Esquimaux sledges.
"Make ready," he said, as he raised a revolver in his right hand and watched the second hand tick around. Forty-five hoods were thrown back from the parkas. Forty-five pairs of hands unmittened, and forty-five pairs of moccasins pressed tensely into the packed snow. Also, forty-five stakes were thrust into the snow, and the same number of mallets lifted in the air.
"Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars, A violent cross wind from either coast Blew them transverse. Then might ye see Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost, And flutter'd into rags; their reliques, beads, Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, The sport of winds." The mire was fully stirred up in which the hierarchy had enjoyed its sleep and sunshine for a thousand years.
After that they relapsed into silence. It was exceedingly difficult to try to keep up any sort of conversation while going at such a furious pace through the upper air currents. Besides, the night was cold at such an elevation, and consequently both boys had their heads well muffled up, making use of hoods with goggles for the purpose.
Among numerous other articles of which one might be the recipient in various seasons and circumstances, there are mentioned books, pictures, tablets of ivory, wood, or parchment, cushions, mufflers, hats, hoods, sponges, soap, rings, flasks, baskets, musical instruments, balls, pens, lamps, tooth-picks, dice, money-boxes, satchels, parrots, magpies, and monkeys.
As they went up, treading carefully, forms white as spirits came down the street in heelless babouches that made no more noise than the wings of a bat. These forms loomed vague in the shadow, then took shape as Arab men, whose eyes gleamed under turbans or out from hoods.
We average from four to six on a sortie, unless too many flights have been ordered for that day, in which case only two or three go out at a time. Now the east is pink, and overhead the sky has changed from gray to pale blue. It is light enough to fly. We don our fur-lined shoes and combinations and adjust the leather flying hoods and goggles.
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