United States or Djibouti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The last night-owls of the deceased German empire hurried in mournful silence from the session-hall at Ratisbon, where the old portraits henceforth watched alone over the grave of the German empire.
Having been at home, or at least guests, in many realms of the spirit, having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident of men and books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us, full of malice against the seductions of dependency which he concealed in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses, grateful even for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because they always free us from some rule, and its "prejudice," grateful to the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows and it is necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and midday solitude such kind of men are we, we free spirits!
On such nights as those gray, cloudy nights the hemp-beater narrates his strange adventures with will-o'-the-wisps and white hares, souls in torment and witches transformed into wolves, the witches' dance at the cross-roads and prophetic night-owls in the grave-yard.
The way to the wild forest was haunted with shadows and little fleeing things; and the night-owls called, but she remembered the look in Merlin's eyes, and conquered her fears. And there he was waiting, with the moonlight gleaming on his white satin; and his face turned to the path up which she came.
I listened so long to this ceaseless faint murmur that it began to bewilder me; it was surely a symphony from the rolling spheres above. Stars that intone a song.... "I am damned if it is, though," I exclaimed; and I laughed aloud to collect my wits. "They're night-owls hooting in Canaan!" I rose again, pulled on my shoes, and wandered about in the gloom, only to lay down once more.
He must flee from expiring lamps, and night-owls; from nervous impotence and spleen of spirit; he must rush out for new contacts and horizons; for new spaces, where there are fresh worlds which are free from the fifty defilements of past centuries. He concluded and took a seat. Kranitski had tears in his eyes, and after a rather long silence, he added: "Thou art going away I see!"
"Yes," she said, with a smile, "after that I should think you would be more than content." "I certainly ought to be," I replied, looking at her steadily. "Zillah's very grateful," Miss Warren continued. "She knows that you watched with her till morning." "So did other night-owls, Zillah, and they were quite as useful as I was." She reached up her hand and pulled me down. "Mother said," she began.
I would have given the world, had it been at my disposal, to have been safely at home; and it was only the dread of being laughed at, which prevented me from begging my brothers to take me there. And when darkness had entirely settled over the earth, and the night-owls set up their discordant screams, my fears reached a climax.
Forthwith she made a vicious grab at his ebony locks, with the pointed remark, "Down with you, you stinking weed!" But Mitsha interfered. "Mother," she said gently, "do not harm him. He was defending his brother and me. He is none of the others." "What!" the woman screamed, "was it you whom they were about to strike, these night-owls made of black corn? You, my child?
Few noble enterprises have ever been undertaken without numbers of people, like those hideous night-owls, endeavouring to hoot them down." Thus manfully cutting and hewing away, they at length came in sight of the dark and frowning, damp, and moss-overgrown walls of an ancient castle. Near it was a huge rock, still more damp and moss-covered than the castle-walls.
Word Of The Day