United States or Namibia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Cecilia could never bear to sit in that oasis; its colour in this wilderness was too precious to her spirit. "It's an east wind, father; aren't you terribly cold without a fire?" Mr. Stone came from his writing-desk, and stood so that light might fall on a sheet of paper in his hand. Cecilia noted the scent that went about with him of peat and baked potatoes.
Mind what you say," he whispered into the cowshed, "for she is really here! And be quick!" They went into the room, and Kalle went groping about to light a candle. Twice he took up the matches and dropped them again to light it at the fire, but the peat was burning badly. "Oh, bother!" he said, resolutely striking a match at last. "We don't have visitors every day."
It was after Christmas, but the winter had been mild, with just frost enough to make it safe walking over the peat bogs. One fresh morning Edie had been out early, and she came back to breakfast with a fleck of colour on her cheeks. "Has your friend the doctor's son come home, Jack?" says she. "I heard that it was expected." "Ah! then it must have been him that I met on the muir."
In Florida an immense plant is being built to manufacture electric power, using air-dried peat as fuel, the power to be transmitted to Jacksonville. Machine peat is supposed to have sixty-five per cent. the value of the same weight of Pocahontas coal, but on account of the lack of waste in peat its real value is higher than would appear from the comparison.
When he knew anything more, a voice at his elbow was saying out of a palpitating gloom, "The gentleman can't come, seemingly; he has sent a telegram." It was Jem-y-Lord holding a telegram in his hand. Philip tore open the envelope and read "Coming home by Ramsey boat to-morrow well and hearty tell Kirry Peat."
A young woman with a home must be a fool to tear her smock for a man like that." The speaker, a peat or turf-cutter, who had newly joined the group, carried across his shoulder the singular heart-shaped spade of large dimensions used in that species of labour; and its well-whetted edge gleamed like a silver bow in the beams of the fire.
His brothers and sisters walked about squinting at him, and their faces grew long with envy. But Anders cared nothing about that. He put his hands in his trousers pockets and went out for a walk, for he did not begrudge anybody's seeing how fine he was. The first person he met was a farm labourer walking alongside a load of peat and smacking at his horse.
Dixon, the English wife of the house-steward of Baron's Court, has charge of a woollen industry founded here, after a discourse on thrift, delivered at a temperance meeting of the people by the then Marquis of Hamilton, had stirred the country up to consider whether the peasant women might not possibly find some better and more profitable way of passing their winter evenings than in sitting huddled around a peat fire with their elbows on their knees, gossiping about their neighbours.
The air was heavy with a scent as of peat, and the sound of the whetstone seemed loud as I stood peering into the darkness. I moved forward, and somewhat rattled under my foot, and I started. Then my fear left me altogether, for I had trodden on dry bones, and shuddered at the first touch of them in that place.
And over and through everything an all-pervading reek of peat that brought water to the eyes of those not inured to such an atmosphere, and caused them to cough grievously. To the Highlander it was nothing; he had been born in such an atmosphere, and had lived in it most of his days. But to visitors it was trying, till Donald's Dew of Cheviot rendered them indifferent to the minor ills of life.
Word Of The Day