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In my boy-land, smudgy specimens of this were pinned, earnestly but asymetrically, in cigar-boxes, under the title of Danais archippus. At present no reputable entomologist would think of calling it other than Anosia plexippus, nor should I; but the particular thrill which it gave to-day was that this self-same species should wander along at this moment to mosaic into my boreal muse.
Behind the bar, on the shelves designed for a display of liquors, was a confused mingling of empty or half-filled decanters, cigar-boxes, lemons and lemon-peel, old newspapers, glasses, a broken pitcher, a hat, a soiled vest, and a pair of blacking brushes, with other incongruous things, not now remembered. The air of the room was loaded with offensive vapors.
The boilers were heated with wood aloewood out of which pencils and cigar-boxes are made. It made a very pleasant smell, but being piled up pell mell in the hold, against the furnaces, it caught fire several times in my presence, and the stokers would just throw a little water on it to put it out.
Some of our pictures had lovely frames to them, which Nat had carved out of old cigar-boxes that Patrick brought him. Sometimes he used to do nothing but carve for a week, and he would say, 'Dot, I do not believe drawing is the thing I want to do, after all. I want more; I hate to have everything flat. Then he would get discouraged and think all he had done was good for nothing.
No traces of yesterday's wrath were visible on his face, but a friendly smile lighted his bronzed countenance, as he too looked round the old room with its dingy curtains and prints and bookcases, its litter of proof-sheets, blotted manuscripts, and books for review, empty soda-water bottles, cigar-boxes, and what not.
Then there was a photograph or two, in little frames made from the red cedar of cigar-boxes, with decorations of putty, varnished, and a long panel screen of birch-bark of Indian workmanship. Some dresses hung behind the door. The bedstead was small, the frame was of hickory, with no footboard, ropes making the support for the husk tick. Across the foot lay a bedgown and a pair of stockings.
In this way, twenty thousand pounds' worth of silver was smuggled in under cover of night, in these old cigar-boxes; mixed with Silverado mineral; carted down to the mill; crushed, amalgamated, and refined, and despatched to the city as the proper product of the mine. Stock-jobbing, if it can cover such expenses, must be a profitable business in San Francisco.
The rounded grassy hill-heads setting off the horizontal curtains of dry stone, 'horticultural fortifications' which guard the slopes, and which rise to a height of 3,000 feet; the lower monticules and parasitic craters, Signal Hill, Race-course Hill, Sao Martinho and Santo Antonio, telling the tale of throes perhaps to be renewed; the stern basaltic cliff-walls supporting the island and prolonged in black jags through the glassy azure of the transparent sea; the gigantic headlands forming abutments for the upper arch; the chequered lights and shades and the wavy play of sunshine and cloudlet flitting over the face of earth; the gay tenements habited in white and yellow, red, green, and, not unfrequently, blue; the houses built after the model of cigar-boxes set on edge, with towers, belvederes, and gazebos so tall that no one ascends them, and with flat roofs bearing rooms of glass, sparkling like mirrors where they catch the eye of day; the toy-forts, such as the Fortaleza do Pico de Sao Joao, built by the Spaniards, an upper work which a single ironclad would blow to powder with a broadside; the mariner's landmark, 2,000 feet high, Nossa Senhora do Monte, white-framed in brown-black and backed by its feathery pines, distance-dwarfed to mere shrubs, where the snow-winds sport; the cloud-cap, a wool-pack, iris-tinted by the many-hued western sky, and the soft sweet breath of the serre-chaude below, profusely scented with flower and fruit, all combined to form an ensemble whose first sight Northern travellers long remember.
The servants were clearing away the coffee and the raki, and bearing off the open and half-emptied cigar-boxes. The Nabob, thinking himself alone, gave a sigh of relief. "Ouf! that's over." But no. Opposite him, some one comes out from a corner that is already dark, and approaches with a letter in his hand. Another!
Then there was a photograph or two, in little frames made from the red cedar of cigar-boxes, with decorations of putty, varnished, and a long panel screen of birch-bark of Indian workmanship. Some dresses hung behind the door. The bedstead was small, the frame was of hickory, with no footboard, ropes making the support for the husk tick. Across the foot lay a bedgown and a pair of stockings.
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