United States or Belgium ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He began to dress slowly, at times almost forgetting himself in a new kind of pleasant apathy, which he attributed to the odor of the flowers, and the softer hush of twilight that had come on with the dying away of the trade winds, and the restful spice of the bay-trees near his window. He presently found himself not so much thinking of Yerba as of SEEING her.
He's not been privately practising his last new step behind the bay-trees, and taken a false one over the parapet?" The small space was easily searched. Baldassare was discovered sketched at full length and fast asleep under a bench on the other side of the bay-trees.
But he missed their voices, too, and their faces; the cheerful sounds of "talking at once"; the massing of fresh, lovely gowns, the scintillation of jewels, the smell of gardenias, the music of violins, hidden by screens of palms and bay-trees. What had he done to deserve exile and ostracism? He asked himself that question thousands of times.
Bay-trees are delightful things, no doubt, and we are all very fond of them off and on. But why must we pretend to enjoy them when we don't; why must we hide the fact that they sometimes irritate or bore us, and that every now and then we very much prefer well, weeping-willows, upas-trees, and all the livid or phosphorescent eccentricities of the various fleurs du mal?
The beauty is rich but tame valleys green with oats and corn, blossoming cherry-trees, and sweet bean-fields, figs coming into leaf, and arrowy bay-trees by the side of sparkling streams: here and there a broken aqueduct or rainbow bridge hung with maidenhair and briar and clematis and sarsaparilla.
Green slopes, dry vineyards with almond blossom among the criss-cross canes, brakes of reeds; here and there rows of little triumphal bay-trees in flower over the walls; great overhanging ornamental gateways, leading to nothing; and, at long intervals, mouldering little villas and trattorie, with mulberry-trees clipped into umbrellas.
I have lived longer than the common lot of man, and I have seen, in my time, many mutations and turnings, and ups and downs, notwithstanding the great spread that has been in our national prosperity. I have beheld them that were flourishing like the green bay-trees, made desolate, and their branches scattered. But, in my own estate, I have had a large and liberal experience of goodness.
He related the history of the island, and there was not a single particular concerning it on which he was not fully informed. After crossing the beach on the shell road, we came to the forest of live-oaks, magnolias, palmettos, bay-trees, and others that one never sees in Maine or Michigan. I walked with Mr. Tiffany, and we agreed that this was one of the most delightful places we had visited.
And there, on the brink of that weir, and all along that stream's shallow upper course among grass and brakes of reeds, are the bay-trees I speak of: groups of three or four at intervals, each a sheaf of smooth tapering boles, tufted high up with evergreen leaves, sparse bunches whose outermost leaves are sharply printed like lance-heads against the sky.
Sixty years ago, in modest crinolines, she might have made history; and duels would probably have been fought for her favour. But other times, other tastes, he reflected. For the rest of the dance, they sat sedately between two bay-trees in green tubs that occupied a corner of the room. Then "something nicer" started, a concession to Mrs.
Word Of The Day