United States or Luxembourg ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Anthonys and Penelopes, Josephs and Rebecca Merlindy Johnsings. I'll apply the soft pedal to the fierce scream of passion and pull all the barbs from the arrows that whiz from the Love God's bow. Life will not then be quite so exhilarating, but it will be much better worth the living.
Without disloyalty to his friend, he hoped so, for he had something to tell her before the day was over that might lead to a temporary separation, and he hated to think of those lovely eyes swimming in tears all women were not Penelopes. "She can't care in that way," he reflected. "Ponsonby is tremendous in his own line, of course, but no woman could love him."
The judgment is, I think, a characteristic judgment of that man of formulas often so brilliant and often so mistaken who, in the famous History of English Literature, taught his English readers as much by his blunders as by his merits. He provoked us into thinking. And what critic does more? Is not the whole fraternity like so many successive Penelopes, each unraveling the web of the one before?
No one need go into extremes, and wish our middle-class gentlewomen to become Cinderellas sitting among the kitchen ashes, Nausicaäs washing linen, or Penelopes spending their lives in needlework only.
Meanwhile, amidst the constant murmurs of the trees, the nephew of Aragon was heard drawing the notes of some kind of amorous despair from the hollow of his melodious calabash. The examinador and Colonel Perez lulled themselves to sleep with a conversation about the beauties and beatitudes of their wives, now playing the part of Penelopes in their absence.
So they travelled by the accustomed route to the prettiest town of all places where Pleasure has set up her tents; and where the gay, the melancholy, the idle or occupied, grave or haughty, come for amusement, or business, or relaxation; where London beauties, having danced and flirted all the season, may dance and flirt a little more; where well-dressed rogues from all quarters of the world assemble; where I have seen severe London lawyers, forgetting their wigs and the Temple, trying their luck against fortune and M. Benazet; where wistful schemers conspire and prick cards down, and deeply meditate the infallible coup; and try it, and lose it, and borrow a hundred francs to go home; where even virtuous British ladies venture their little stakes, and draw up their winnings with trembling rakes, by the side of ladies who are not virtuous at all, no, not even by name; where young prodigals break the bank sometimes, and carry plunder out of a place which Hercules himself could scarcely compel; where you meet wonderful countesses and princesses, whose husbands are almost always absent on their vast estates in Italy, Spain, Piedmont who knows where their lordships' possessions are? while trains of suitors surround those wandering Penelopes their noble wives; Russian Boyars, Spanish Grandees of the Order of the Fleece, Counts of France, and Princes Polish and Italian innumerable, who perfume the gilded halls with their tobacco-smoke, and swear in all languages against the black and the red.
Among the ancient Romans, it was impossible that philters, or love-potions, should not be introduced amid the general depravity so common in every class; and hence we meet with frequent allusions to them in their writers. Thus, the emperor Julian, surnamed the Apostate, writing to his friend Callixines, observes "At enim inquies, Penelopes etiam amor et fides erga virum tempore cognita est.
Artists of all sorts, moving in their train, rack all the stores of ancient and modern art for the picturesque, the dazzling, the grotesque; and so, lest these Circes of society should carry all before them, and enchant every husband, brother, and lover, the staid and lawful Penelopes leave the hearth and home to follow in their triumphal march and imitate their arts.
"Not more than you puzzle me, dear aunt." My lady put away her colors and sketch book, and seating herself in the deep recess of another window, at a considerable distance from Robert Audley, settled to a large piece of Berlin-wool work a piece of embroidery which the Penelopes of ten or twelve years ago were very fond of exercising their ingenuity upon the Olden Time at Bolton Abbey.
The ground was damp, and the forest gloomy, but here and there glimpses of sunshine glanced through the trees, and enlivened the scene a little. The dry slopes of hills are their favourite feeding-places, and around Pena Blanca they are rather plentiful; and so, also, in their season, are the curassows and penelopes.
Word Of The Day