United States or Mongolia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
What we shall do to-day is an echo of Druidical ceremonial of the time when the Druid priests cut the yule-oak and with their golden sickles reaped the sacred mistletoe; but old Jan here, who is so stiff for preserving ancient customs, does not know that this custom, like many others that he stands for, is the survival of a rite."
Her dress of soft white wool suggested, like Lloyd's, the Yule-tide season, for in the belt and shoulder-knots of dull green velvet were caught clusters of mistletoe, the tiny waxen berries gleaming like pearls. "Everything is so lovely!" she sighed, happily, picking up her camera to admire it once more. It was her godmother's gift, and the thing she had most longed to own.
"The courage to do what?" As she did not answer he took her by the hand. "What were you thinking of doing?" he inquired. "Of putting an end to myself." "When?" She writhed under this inquisitorial manner of his. "Last night," she answered. "Where?" "Under your mistletoe." "My good ! How?" he asked sternly. "I'll tell you, if you won't be angry with me!" she said, shrinking.
To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it." "Touch my robe!" Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast. Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly.
All the foresters can do is to cut down the sick trees in order to save the ones that are sound. There is a big difference between tree damages caused by forest insects and those caused by forest fungi and mistletoe. The insects are always present in the forest. However, it is only occasionally that they concentrate and work great injury and damage in any one section.
Green and by exacting explanations from her daughter. This was a very bad time for Arabella, so bad, that had she known to what she would be driven, she would probably have repudiated the Duke and her mother altogether. "Now, my dear," she began, "you must tell me everything that occurred first at Rufford and then at Mistletoe." "You know very well what occurred, mamma."
"They call it," says Pliny, "by a word in their language which means 'heal- all, and having made solemn preparation for feasting and sacrifice under the tree, they drive thither two milk-white bulls, whose horns are then for the first time bound. The priest then, robed in white, ascends the tree, and cuts off the mistletoe with a golden sickle.
Easy to-day to sit for a laughing hour with poor Mary Lord, to go to late service, and dream through a long sermon, with the odor of incense and spicy evergreen sweet all about her, to set tables, to dust the parlor, to be kissed by Loretta's little doctor under the mistletoe, to sweep up tissue- paper and red ribbon and nutshells and tinsel, to hook Mary Lou's best gown, and accompany Virginia to evening service, and to lend Georgie her best gloves.
It is vain to dream of defining such vivid things; a national soul is as indefinable as a smell, and as unmistakable. I remember a friend who tried impatiently to explain the word "mistletoe" to a German, and cried at last, despairing, "Well, you know holly mistletoe's the opposite!" I do not commend this logical method in the comparison of plants or nations.
Two of the children of the house, attracted by Livingstone's story, had come and pressed against her as they listened with interested faces, and she had put her arms about them and drawn their curly heads close to her side. A spray of holly with scarlet berries was at her throat and one of the children had mischievously stuck a sprig of mistletoe in her hair.
Word Of The Day