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Then the rain burst upon them like a waterspout, and, mingling with the flying dust overhead, came down in the form of mud, mixed with flying sticks and stones, and grass, and prickly thistle-heads. So fierce was the hurly-burly that it seemed as if man and horse must perish under it.
Then, if they guess aright the swain Their love's sweet fancies try to gain, 'Tis said that ere it lies an hour, 'Twill blossom with a second flower, And from the bosom's handkerchief Bloom as it ne'er had lost a leaf." Then there are the downy thistle-heads, which the rustic maiden names after her lovers, in connection with which there are many old rhymes.
Many of our most familiar birds, which are inseparably associated with one's walks and recreations in the open air, and with the changes of the seasons, are yet awaiting their poet, as the high-hole, with his golden-shafted quills and loud continued spring call; the meadowlark, with her crescent-marked breast and long-drawn, piercing, yet tender April and May summons forming, with that of the high-hole, one of the three or four most characteristic field sounds of our spring; the happy goldfinch, circling round and round in midsummer with that peculiar undulating flight and calling PER-CHICK'-O-PEE, PER-CHICK'-O-PEE, at each opening and shutting of the wings, or later leading her plaintive brood among the thistle-heads by the roadside; the little indigo- bird, facing the torrid sun of August and singing through all the livelong summer day; the contented musical soliloquy of the vireo, like the whistle of a boy at his work, heard through all our woods from May to September:
In the cages in which various predatory Hymenoptera whose warlike habits I am studying are confined, waiting until I have procured the desired prey not always an easy proceeding I have planted a few heads of flowers and a couple of thistle-heads sprinkled with drops of honey, renewed at need. On these my captives feed.
"It'll all come out in the washing." Fluffy thistle-heads, reminding him of Gwen's young chickens, stood up out of the gorse all about him. The bunched blackberries were ripening now: he almost expected to see Gwen's face, purple-mouthed, peering at him from a bramble. All about him the silver-downed gorse-pods were snapping like pistols.
Stunned by colliding with the walls of their glass or wire-gauze prison, they all perish within twenty-four hours. Swifter in their movements and apparently satisfied with their honeyed thistle-heads, the Spheges, huntresses of Crickets or Ephippigers, die as quickly of nostalgia. All I offer them leaves them indifferent.
No matter how melodious, how lovely, or how useful to the farmer a bird may be, no Italian, high or low, seems to have any sense or appreciation of its merits except as an article of food; it is merely a thing that requires to be caught, killed, cooked and eaten, and Providence has decreed its existence for no other purpose; even gold-finches in the eye of an Italian look better served on a skewer than when they are flying round the thistle-heads, uttering their bright musical notes and enlivening the dead herbage of winter with their gay plumage.
Crawfurd walked with his daughters to the great gate, and Joanna, looking back, saw him, on his return, switching the thistle-heads in the hedge, as she had never witnessed him attempt in her experience; she could almost fancy he was whistling, as Harry Jardine went piping along before he fell in love with her. It was a trial when Harry Jardine was introduced into the Crawfurds' company; but Mrs.
They all tumbled promiscuously into a mud hut, and then, clearing their eyes, found that the Gaucho-leader and a woman, apparently his wife, were smiling welcome beside them; that the short-lived storm was already passing away, after having done its worst, and that they were drenched to the skin as well as covered with mud and thistle-heads from top to toe.
It was the Limberlost's hour to proclaim her sovereignty and triumph. Everywhere she flaunted her yellow banner and trailed the purple of her mantle, that was paler in the thistle-heads, took on strength in the first opening asters, and glowed and burned in the ironwort.
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