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In due time they entered upon the great desert of Gobi, where the grassy plain is covered by a countless multitude of mole-hills, which render locomotion very difficult. This apparently boundless desert, notwithstanding its lack of trees and shrubs and flowers, and its monotonous uniformity, is not without a certain charm, as many travellers have acknowledged.
On a nearer inspection, however, they proved to be swampy places, and hundreds upon hundreds of little acclivities, sometimes resembling mole-hills, at others small graves, and covered with grass and moss. I could see over an area of at least thirty or forty miles, and yet could not descry a tree or a shrub, a bit of meadow-land or a friendly village. Every thing seemed dead.
To my expression of mild wonderment that he should tax his time and energies to such an extent without pecuniary gain, he replied: "My dear sir, you are a traveller. You have sailed the seas and crossed the mighty main; you have dashed over mountains, and sweltered 'mid tropical suns on sandy desert-wastes. To you our Rockies are mole-hills our great lakes mere ponds.
Greek he might expect from her but not business. He opened one or two. Yes, there was no doubt she was a clever woman unpardonably and detestably clever. Affairs which had been mountains for years had suddenly become mole-hills. In this new phase he felt himself more helpless than ever to deal with them.
I am making a mountain out of ten million mole-hills. And that is what life does. It is the little but continuous causes that have great effects. I repeat: Why not deliberately adopt a gentle, persuasive tone just to see what the results are? Surely you are not ashamed to be wise. You may smile superiorly as you read this.
'It was certainly very silly, said Lady Merton; 'but you know, Anne, that when people have once accustomed themselves to get into a habit of making mountains of mole-hills, they cannot see anything as it really is.
Her mole-hills, those humble mounds any two of which would go easily into a Hen's egg, rise innumerous in my path, the path by the almond-trees which is the happy hunting-ground of my curiosity to-day. This path is a ribbon of road three paces wide, worn into ruts by the Mule's hoofs and the wheels of the farm-carts. A coppice of holm-oaks shelters it from the north wind.
Joe's remark that it resembled "a colony of big moles" was not inappropriate, for the huts, of which there were about forty, were not unlike huge mole-hills.
How long he never said, for ere he had time to give utterance to the thought, he stumbled over one of the surrounding mole-hills, and staggering forward several paces with extended arms, he ultimately fell prostrate on the ground, close by the side of the innocent yet moving cause of his misadventure, and with such force, as to bury the whole of his countenance in the soft heavings of a similar hillock to the one he had so inadvertently tripped over.
My groping gaze discovers the tiled floor, the conference of chairs backed side by side against the wall, the motionless pallor of the window in the background above the low and swollen bed, which is like a heap of earth and plaster, the clothes lying on the floor like mole-hills, the protruding edges of tables and shelves, pots, bottles, kettles and hanging clouts, and that lock with the cotton-wool in its ear.
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