United States or Somalia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As yet Sundown had not especially noticed her, but returning from his third visit to the cooling olla, he caught her glance and read, or imagined he read, deep admiration, lacking words to utter. From that moment he became a changed man. He shed his weariness as a tattered garment is thrown aside. He straightened his shoulders and held his head high.
In the doorway, as we came in, was an antique, headless statue of Minerva; literally it was Minerva's gown standing up a pillar of drapery, nothing more, and drapery soiled, tattered, and battered; but then it was an antique, and that is enough. Now, when antique things are ugly, I do not like them any better for being antique, and I should rather have a modern statue than Minerva's old gown.
It was my inestimable privilege the other morning it was All-Saints' Day to see the archbishop in the old Frauenkirche, the ancient cathedral, where hang tattered banners that were captured from the Turks three centuries ago, to see him seated in the choir, overlooked by saints and apostles carved in wood by some forgotten artist of the fifteenth century.
At daylight we weighed anchor and steamed for many miles up the muddy, mangrove-fringed river Bernam, the mangroves occasionally varied by the nipah palm. We met several palm-trees floating with their roots and some of their fruits above the water, like those we saw yesterday evening out on the Malacca Straits, looking like crowded Malay prahus with tattered mat-sails.
"A remarkable man!" said Narcisse Dauphin. "There never was such a speech. Never in any courtroom was there such an appeal." "What did he do?" asked Mademoiselle Loisel, her hand in Rosalie's. "Everything," answered the Cure. "There he stood in his tattered clothes, the beard burnt to his chin, his hands scorched, his eyes bloodshot, and he spoke "
The local bookstore, of course, was closed. They won't let the oysters stay open on Sunday in that town. The only literature my fellow guests seemed interested in was mailorder tabs and price currents. Finally, when despair was about to claim me for her own, I ran across an ancient Fifth Reader, all tattered and stained and having that smell of age which is common to old books and old sheep.
"My dear husband," she said to him gently, "we are starving. You must go forth to seek work for the sake of our five little sons." "Yes, yes," he replied, sadly, "and for you, too, my devoted wife, but" and he pointed to his tattered garments "how can I go out in these? Who will employ a man so miserably clad?"
The latter, pre-occupied and absorbed, did not notice him; but when the carriage drove into the courtyard it was followed by the stranger, who was muffled in a worn and tattered cloak, and whose movements were unheeded amidst the bustle of the arrival. The porter's wife led the way to a second-floor, just left vacant, and the waiter began to arrange the fire.
But as she spun, her wheel made the only music for Polly Ann sang no more. Once I came on her as she was thrusting the tattered piece of birch bark into her gown, but she never spoke to me more of Tom McChesney. When, from time to time, the snow melted on the hillsides, I sometimes surprised a deer there and shot him with the heavy rifle. And so the months wore on till spring.
I fell on my knees before the old woman, I kissed the tattered hem of her garments and she ... spat in my face! Amen. And the meaning of it all is that no one knows what he says and does in this world, neither in the highest sense nor in the lowest. They utter oracles like the gods, and understand nothing of them. They are angry with each other, and know not why.
Word Of The Day