United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We must remember that at this time belief in witchcraft, fairies, sprites, ghosts, hobgoblins, magic and supernatural powers was common. Men who believe in miracles make rather poor scientists. There were books about "Magic," written by so-called scientific men, whose standing in the world was quite as high as that of Galileo.
A white mist from hidden falls blurred the green of a hand's breadth of tree tops half-way down the gorge. Youth made merry hand-in-hand with young summer. Nothing on Broadway like that. The villagers gathered to see the city folks pursue their mad drollery. The woods rang with the laughter of pixies and naiads and sprites. Gaines caught most of the rings.
Englishmen allied to them had to learn that they were dealing with broomstick witches and irresponsible sprites. Irishwomen were models of propriety beside them: indeed Irishwomen might often be patterns to their English sisterhood. Mr.
Like the Greeks, the red men endowed the woods and waters with tutelary sprites, and many of the springs that are now resorted to as fountains of healing were known long before the settlement of Europeans here, the gains from drinking of them being ascribed to the beneficence of spirit guardians.
Before me at this moment is the nest of one of these little sprites, which I watched till the last dumpy infant had taken flight, and then secured with the branchlet it was built upon. It was in a young oak, not more than twelve feet from the ground, occupying a perpendicular fork, where it was concealed and shaded by no less than sixteen twigs, standing upright, and loaded with leaves.
I know not what comical sprites sit astride the cider-barrels ranged along the walls. The feeble flicker of the tallow-candle does not at all dispel, but creates, illusions, and magnifies all the rich possibilities of this underground treasure-house.
On the little azure winds of dawn they flashed away. Jimbo, Monkey, and certain of the Sprites alone held on, but the tree-tops to which they clung were growing more and more slippery every minute. Mother, loth to return, balanced bravely on the waving spires of a larch. Her sleep that night had been so deep and splendid, she struggled to prolong it. She hated waking up too early.
Then she began to dance the very same dance with which she used to entertain me in those happy days. I advanced from my stone, dodging and slipping behind her, unobserved even by Snap, so intent were these two friends upon this entertainment, got up, one would think, for whatsoever sylphs or gnomes or water sprites might be looking on.
The sun was hot and there were no berry-bushes to be seen. Aggie's fairy glades in the woods were filled, not with dancing sprites, but with gnats. I wanted a glass of iced tea, and some chicken salad, and talcum powder down my neck.
She would be there; nay, when he looked at the dial from a different angle, was there. As he drew nearer, there rose out of the void her presence beside him which he had daily tried to summon since that autumn afternoon her voice and her eyes, and many of the infinite expressions of each and both. Sprites that they were, they had failed him until to-day, when he was to see her again!
Word Of The Day