United States or French Polynesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"We came out of the church," continued the earl, "and I felt sure of her; but when we came into the Piazza and she saw the life of the place, the fountain playing, the banners flying, the pigeons wheeling, and heard the band, she began to laugh and chaff. 'Bobby, she said, suddenly, 'did you mean it?
Six miles separate these headlands, but the channel between Tam o' Shanter and Dunk Island is little more than 2 1/2 miles, so that the pigeons here become concentrated to a certain extent. Early in the season they pass Dunk Island at the rate of about 300 per minute, during the hour and a half preceding sunset.
I killed three or four pigeons, and a squirrel, and snipe; but on and on, and round, I ranged, afore I could get a single crack at a turkey. But a flock flew up at last, and one proud old Tom taking a tall maple in sight, and swinging his red gorget as if to dare a shot, I fired, and plump he come to the ground, while the rest flew away.
While slowly riding by it I saw a lady come out from the front door young, good-looking, very pale and dressed in the deepest mourning. She had a bowl in her hand, and going a little distance from the house she called the pigeons and down they flew in a crowd to her feet to be fed.
They soon came back, with the report that the woods were "alive with pigeons," they could almost knock them down with sticks; and earnestly did they plead to be allowed to shoot at least enough for supper. But no the enemy might be nearer than we imagined the firing of a gun would betray our whereabouts it was most prudent to give no notice to friend or foe.
Only the pigeons, disregarding the changes of political geography, walked about as usual, wondering perhaps, if they ever wondered at anything, at the sudden change in the distribution of park humans. Yeovil turned his steps out of the hot sunlight into the shade of the Burlington Arcade, familiarly known to many of its newer frequenters as the Passage.
The multitudes of pigeons in our woods are astonishing; and, indeed, after having for years viewed them so often, under so many circumstances, and I may add in many different climates, I even now feel inclined to pause and assure myself that what I am going to relate is fact. In the autumn of 1813, I left my house in Henderson, on the banks of the Ohio, on my way to Louisville.
He smiled at her in a knowing manner, and Jeanne looked away to hide her disgust. "Your interest in sport," she remarked, "seems to be a sort of second-hand one, does it not?" "I do not know that," he answered. "I do not know quite what you mean. At Ostend last year I won the great sweepstakes." "For shooting pigeons?" she asked. "So!" he admitted, with content. She smiled.
Ingolby's eyes opened wide when he saw Marchand's ugly game. He loathed the dissolute fellow, but he realized now that his foe was a factor to be reckoned with, for Marchand had plenty of money as well as a bad nature. He saw he was in for a big fight with Manitou, and he had to think it out. So this time he went pigeon-shooting. He got his pigeons, and the slaughter did him good.
And spring will bring a new time and cover the trenches with green, and the pigeons will preen themselves on the shattered towers, and the lime-trees along the steps will grow taller and brighter, and happier men will sing in the streets untroubled by any War Lord; by then, perhaps, I may have told, to such as care to read, what such a war did in an ancient town, already romantic when romance was young, when war came suddenly without mercy, without pity, out of the north and east, on little houses, carved galleries, and gardens; churches, cathedrals and the jackdaws' nests.
Word Of The Day