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


The walls were lined with damask hangings, of a light blue, and the ceiling was arranged in the form of a tent, composed of cottons, which had probably been fabricated in the looms of England. There were tables in the room, and seats scattered about around them.

Your barn looms black in the near distance, the white mound close at hand is your wood-pile, the great trees stand like sentinels in the moonlight; snow has drifted upon the doorstep and lies there untracked. It is, indeed, a dim and untracked world: coldly beautiful but silent and of a strange unreality! You close the door with half a shiver and take the real world with you up to bed.

"Oh, don't utter any precocious wisdom. Certainly, one can get at the substance of things. True, there is enough mystery and perplexity about the system of the world, and at times all life looms up a terrible enigma, so increasing in difficulty of solution that Death's key to knowledge seems the one thing to be desired. But it is well for a man not to lose himself in labyrinths of conjecture, but to resolutely put aside his spirit of philosophical inquiry, and do something useful for himself and his fellow-men. For my own part, I don't think Hamlet a fine fellow. Don't ask conundrums. Your duty now is to finish your collegiate course respectably. Take honors or not as it happens, but be a man, and win yourself the place you ought to take, and keep it like a gentleman. Then we will travel, and I will remember you are young and let you do the foolish things youth loves to do. We will have famous times together. Not that I altogether approve of vagabondizing. Still, what is there for us to do? I am worn out: you are too young to have duties to society, and ought to try life, and examine, criticise and become enlightened. I suppose I shall catch the mania for bric-

To-day it looms over us, a black and threatening peril, and those who, ostrich-like, still hide their heads in the sand, are the men upon whose consciences must rest in the future the responsibility for those evil things which are even now upon us. Theories are evil things, but when theory and fact are at variance, give me fact.

Classes came and classes went, grilling him with eyes. Newcomers received the story of the crime in darkling whispers; and the outcast sat and sat and sat, and squirmed and squirmed and squirmed. A known punishment may be anticipated with some measure of equanimity; at least, the prisoner may prepare himself to undergo it; but the unknown looms more monstrous for every attempt to guess it.

"Yes," said Larry again, "the Tuatha De the Ancient Ones who had spells that could compel Mananan, who is the spirit of all the seas, an' Keithor, who is the god of all green living things, an' even Hesus, the unseen god, whose pulse is the pulse of all the firmament; yes, an' Orchil too, who sits within the earth an' weaves with the shuttle of mystery and her three looms of birth an' life an' death even Orchil would weave as they commanded!"

And how little mere labour, or the experience gained by labour, tends to improve the implements which the labourer uses is shown by the fact that the looms which wove Anne Boleyn's petticoats were practically the same as the looms which wove those of Semiramis.

At the head of this harbour there is a large olive tree, and at no great distance a fine overarching cavern sacred to the nymphs who are called Naiads. There are mixing bowls within it and wine-jars of stone, and the bees hive there. Moreover, there are great looms of stone on which the nymphs weave their robes of sea purple very curious to see and at all times there is water within it.

The Emperor now sent another officer of his court to see how the men were getting on, and to ascertain whether the cloth would soon be ready. It was just the same with this gentleman as with the minister; he surveyed the looms on all sides, but could see nothing at all but the empty frames.

And we feel that the more fantastic these thoughts are, the more do they reflect the deep truths of experience. Home naturally looms large, and some of the recollections of home take on a grim humour, strangely in contrast with the present environment of the soldier. I quite forgot to put the spigot in. It's just come over me.... And it is queer To think he'll not care if we lose or win.