United States or Curaçao ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Now," said Auntie Jean, when the slips had all passed around, and had returned to the hands of their respective artists, "each of you unfold your papers, and read the comments aloud for the benefit of the company. Cricket, you're the youngest. Suppose you begin." Cricket giggled. Her picture consisted of a scraggy tree, with several long wavy lines near its foot.
A much later enactment provided twelve ballots, and forbade any one to cast more than twelve, whether for or against a candidate or in blank. If a man held any one of his slips in reserve for a more satisfactory candidate, he had none for the teller, and thus the secrecy of the ballot was almost destroyed.
It would even be possible to conceive of emergencies in which these slips of paper would so affect some vital issue, as, for instance, the choice or removal of the janitor who will furnish the air for her children to breathe, that the father would stay with the children while the mother went out to thus express her opinion. Then, indeed, would the climax be reached!
He had close to his hand slips of paper, on which were written notes of the most trivial doings of those by whom he was generally surrounded; and the very spies who gave him the information were themselves the unfortunate subjects of similar notices from others.
Almost at the same moment she hears a strange cry in the bed, a blessed little voice; poor thing, poor little thing ... and now she cannot rest, but lifts herself up and looks down. What is it? Her face is grey and blank in a moment, without expression or intelligence; a groan is heard; unnatural, impossible a choking gasp. She slips back on the bed.
In entering on it, we part with the earliest pioneer the trader, who first opened the road for both the lone home seeker and the great land company. He dwindles now to the mere barterer and so save for a few chance glimpses slips out of sight, for his brave days as Imperial Scout are done.
Watching the tempest-swept valley, the tortured forest, where wild life was in panic, there came upon him the old impulse to put his thoughts into words, "and so be rid of them," as he was wont to say in other days. Taking from his pocket some slips of paper, he laid them on the table before him.
But soon the child slips the leading-strings of its guardian spirit, and comes into its own liberty; and now, unless it freely chooses to follow with willing and constant step in the same path wherein it has thus far been led, it will wander from side to side, increasing at each turning the distance that separates it from the way of life, until at last it may wander so far that it loses the desire and even the memory which might lead it to return.
Since so it must be, I will go, not reluctantly, nor dragged away from life, nor clinging desperately to it as it slips from my hands, nor dreading anything that may happen beyond; but always courageous, and prepared to go whithersoever the path may take me, since I am sure that it ends in His bosom. He is willing to go from the home of the body, because to do that is to go home to Christ.
The banks fade into shadow, the breeze sinks away, but still the tide flows free, and the schooner slips along like a spirit. Now comes up the white fog, the fog out of which she came gliding that first morning; and it receives her as a bride, and folds her in its arms, and she melts into the whiteness and is gone. Was it all a dream?
Word Of The Day