United States or Marshall Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"But they all know you are with her," he said, "and there are all manner of curious conjectures floating round. Here are pillows, and wine, and I have brought Bettine back with me." "Oh, I am so glad," said Olive, with a sigh of relief, "I have been pondering what I would do if she should wake up. What did Uncle Ridley say?" "Say?
Friendly, cool, gentle, never flattering, Bettine asks him half sadly, as if for once those world-roving eyes were still: Do I speak to you or only speak in your presence? She answered her question by asking it. She speaks much of music.
The three human foster-children who have been taken nearest into Nature's bosom, perhaps, an odd triad, surely, for the whimsical nursing mother to select, are Wordsworth, Bettine Brentano, and Thoreau.
"I think the manager will be up here in a moment," said Roger, when Olive had taken her seat and Bettine had retreated to the corner, wiping her eyes on the rough little pillow-case; and even as he spoke, there came steps in the hall and a slight tap at the door, and Bettine admitted the doctor, followed by a tall, surly-faced man, who looked fiercely around the room, and scowled at Olive, who took her seat by the bed, with an instinctive feeling that the unconscious sleeper might need her protection.
She sat down on the floor and began to eat, lost to everything but icing and currants and pastry. William made for the door, then he paused, gazed wistfully at the feast, stepped back, and, grabbing a cream bun in each hand, crept quietly away. Bettine in her print frock was at the door of the school. "Hurry up!" she said anxiously. "You're going to be late. The others are all out.
All the village was to be invited. "Isn't it lovely for her to be May Queen?" said Bettine. "She's a rotten one," said William. "I'm jolly glad I've not to hold up her rotten ole train an' listen to her narsy squeaky voice singin' close to, an' I'll give you a present to-morrow." He did. He found a centipede in the garden and pressed it into her hand on the way to school.
They worked together affectionately until far into old age, and I have described their graves in the Matthai Kirchhof where they lie side by side. I found Hermann Grimm in the study which had been the workshop through long years of his father and uncle. He was a handsome man in his vigorous years and had married the daughter of Bettine von Arnim, the Bettine of Goethe.
At this time he went a good deal into literary society, and became intimate with several women-writers, among them the Graefin Hahn-Hahn, Rahel, and that amazing lady, Bettine von Arnim. With the last-named he struck up an intellectual friendship which roused the jealousy of Lucie, and was finally wrecked by Bettine's attempts to obtain a spiritual empire over the lord of Muskau.
For that which is remembered is often more vivid than that which is seen. The eye paints better in the presence, the heart in the absence, of the object most dear. "He who longs after beautiful Nature can best describe her," said Bettine; "he who is in the midst of her loveliness can only lie down and enjoy." It enhances the truth of the poet's verses, that he writes them in his study.
Out of the spirit blossom spirits, Bettine tells us, and we subject ourselves to their power: "Ah, wonderful mediation of the ineffable, which oppresses the bosom! Ah, music!"
Word Of The Day