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In time of plenty a great American city like Chicago goes on showing a more or less cheerful face to the world while in nooks and crannies down side-streets and alleys poverty and misery sit hunched up in little ill-smelling rooms breeding vice.

We were left delightfully to ourselves in this pretentious country mansion with the soul of a villa. Frances took up her painting again, and, the weather being propitious, spent hours out of doors, sketching flowers, trees and nooks of woodland, garden, even the house itself where bits of it peered suggestively across the orchards. Mrs.

For a subtle influence, no doubt, penetrates to the heart of man from the mere form and disposition of inanimate things. I was prepared to be smothered in a profusion of local effects; of saddle-cloths, silk hangings, water-pipes, daggers and match-locks, dim nooks with divans, and those other decorations that suggest the glamour of the Orient to certain Western minds.

They are like those little nooks of still water which border a rapid stream where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current.

And the sun, blazing suddenly out of a cloud, shone on his black figure and the little gold cross, in the middle of Portland Place. Men, even if they are not artistic, who have been in strange places and known many nooks of the world, get the scenic habit, become open to pictorial sensation.

Thomas said no word, but lay looking at the third pathway as it twisted and twined in and out amid the cool, green nooks of the woodland. Tiny rills caught the sunlight and tossed it back to the cold, grey rock down which they trickled; tiny ferns waved a welcome from their sheltered crevices.

These curtains, when not looped up, are sufficient to keep out persons of the household or strangers, it being the custom always to speak, in place of knocking, before passing a curtain; but the little naked negro children, male and female, creep under these curtains without restraint, while parrots, pigeons, and fowls generally make common use of all nooks and corners of the house.

His mind was as full of queer nooks and tortuous passages as any mansion-house of Elizabeth's day or earlier, where the rooms are cosey, albeit a little low in the roof; where dusty stained lights are falling on old oaken panellings; where every bit of furniture has a reverent flavour of ancientness; where portraits of noble men and women, all dead long ago, are hanging on the walls; and where a black-letter Chaucer with silver clasps is lying open on a seat in the window.

Meanwhile he had halted, and for the last two minutes he had been feeling and fumbling in all sorts of nooks which his rags contained. At last he tossed his head with an air intended to be merely satisfied, but which was triumphant, in reality. "Let us be calm, young 'uns. Here's supper for three." And from one of his pockets he drew forth a sou.

The pastured cattle, which had sauntered forth from shaded nooks, ceased their grazing to stare with gentle curiosity at the hurrying figure. Of course they recognized a lover speeding to his tryst, and gave him passage, shaking their heads at one another and wagging their ears in knowing fashion.