Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 3, 2025
"Come up hither, good Jan," I cried to him. "I will run and open the gate!" But the Lubber Fiend only shook his head till his ears flapped like burdocks in the wind by the wood edges. "Jan will come none within that gate to tell where he has been," he said. "Jan may be a fool, but he knows better than that." "And where have you been?" I asked, eagerly.
A crop of very funny epitaphs sprung up here and there among the overgrown thistles and burdocks, and almost every tablet had a death's-head with cross-bones engraved upon it, or else a puffy round face with a pair of wings stretching out from the ears, like this: Cherub Graphic These mortuary emblems furnished me with congenial food for reflection.
Why didn't you import a few hollyhocks, or a sunflower or two, and perhaps a dainty slip of cabbage? A pumpkin-vine, now, would climb over the front-door deliciously, and a row of burdocks would make a highly entertaining border." The reader will bear me witness that I had met my first rebuff with humility. It was probably this very humility that emboldened him to a second attack.
"We have a wife for him," said the gnats; "at a hundred human paces from here there sits a little snail in her house, on a gooseberry bush; she is quite lonely, and old enough to be married. It is only a hundred human paces!" "Well, then, let her come to him!" said the old ones; "he has a whole forest of burdocks, she has only a bush!" And so they went and fetched little Miss Snail.
When for the third or fourth time during the spring or summer I take my hoe and go out and cut off the heads of the lusty burdocks that send out their broad leaves along the edge of my garden or lawn, I often ask myself, "What is this thing that is so hard to scotch here in the grass?" I decapitate it time after time and yet it forthwith gets itself another head.
It is all run down; she don't get much from it; it don't yield much but trouble and burdocks, but as little as she gets, she always will, as I say, do her full share, and more than her share, for the meetin' house. Some think it is on account of her inherient goodness, and some think it is on account of Samuel Danker. We all spose she hain't forgot Samuel.
Otto ran to the peasant's cottage and brought water. Peter Cripple himself hopped like a mountain-elf behind him through the high nettles and burdocks, which closed above and behind him again. The Kammerjunker took Eva in his strong arms and carried her to the cottage. Wilhelm did not leave hold of her hand. The others followed in silence.
Van Buren went back to Boston, while Aunt Barbara gave all needful directions to Betty with regard to the management of the house, and the garden, and plants, and cellar door, which must be shut nights, and the spot on the roof which sometimes leaked when it rained, and the burdocks and dandelions which must be dug up, and the grass which Uncle Billy Thompson must cut once in two weeks, and the old cat, Tabby, and the young cat, Jim, who had come to the door in a storm, and was now the pet of the house, and the canary bird, and the yeast, and look in the vinegar barrel to see that all was right, and be sure and scald the milk-pans, and turn them up in the sun for an hour, and keep the doors locked, and the silver up in the scuttle-hole; and if she heard the rat which baffled and tormented them so long, get some poison and kill it, but not on any account let it get in the cistern; and keep the door-steps clean, and the stoop, and once in a while sweep the low roof at the back of the house, and not sit up late nights, or sleep very long in the morning; and inasmuch as there would be so little to do, she might as well finish up all her new sewing, and make the pile of sheets and pillow-cases which had been cut out since March.
The wide verandahs, the ample steps were unpainted and falling into ruin; the lawn reaching from the front door to the orchard was spacious, but overgrown with burdocks, nettles and other noxious weeds; the orchard, which stretched from the lawn to the road on both sides of the lane, had been allowed to run sadly to wood.
Hawkweeds, some wild vetches, white yarrow, thistles, and burdocks conceal the flints yet further, so that the track has the appearance of a green drive. The slender birch and ash poles are hung with woodbine and wild hops, both growing in profusion.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking