United States or Croatia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is detested by the farmers on the banks, as it has the habit of carrying off poultry, young calves, or any animal it can get within reach of. It is often seen coiled up in the corner of farm-yards, waiting for its prey. The statement that the anaconda kills its prey by its pestilent breath, is wholly fabulous. Waterton altogether denies the existence of any odour in the snake's breath.
Detachments of dragoons are sent to scour the farm-yards, arrest the farmers, and bring off in triumph whatever the restive housewives have amassed, to be more profitably disposed of. In this situation we remain, and I suppose shall remain, while the law of the maximum continues in force.
The direction of movement brought all the brigades of the first line in echelon, but Welsh soon fought his way up beside Christ, and they together drove the enemy successively from the fields and farm-yards till they reached the edge of the village.
It was necessary, for instance, with no other guide than pain, to learn to calculate the height of objects from the top of which you can jump into space; to convince yourself that it is vain to pursue birds who fly away and that you are unable to clamber up trees after the cats who defy you there; to distinguish between the sunny spots where it is delicious to sleep and the patches of shade in which you shiver; to remark with stupefaction that the rain does not fall inside the houses, that water is cold, uninhabitable and dangerous, while fire is beneficent at a distance, but terrible when you come too near; to observe that the meadows, the farm-yards and sometimes the roads are haunted by giant creatures with threatening horns, creatures good-natured, perhaps, and, at any rate, silent, creatures who allow you to sniff at them a little curiously without taking offence, but who keep their real thoughts to themselves.
Old villages, farm-yards, groups of stacks, queer chimneys, churches, gable-ended cottages, Elizabethan mansion-houses, and other old English scenes, he depicts with evident enthusiasm.
There had been extensive agricultural distress in England, which had shown itself in an outbreak of new crimes, the burning of ricks in the farm-yards, and the destruction of machinery, to which the peasantry were persuaded by designing demagogues to attribute the scarcity of employment.
His subjects are usually from low life, such as hog-sties, farm-yards, landscapes with cattle and sheep, or fishermen with smugglers on the sea-coast. He seldom or ever produced a picture perfect in all its parts, but those parts adapted to his knowledge and taste were exquisitely beautiful. Knowing well his faults, he usually selected those subjects best suited to his talents.
Esther could now see the outlines of farm-houses as the train glided on; snow-laden roofs and sheds; long stretches of field with fences buried to their top rails in sweeping snow-drifts; in the houses, lights showed that toil had begun again; smoke rose from the chimneys; figures moved in the farm-yards; a sleigh could be seen on a decided road; the world became real, prosaic, practical, mechanical, not worth struggling about; a mere colorless, passionless, pleasureless grayness.
"In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back-parlors; on board herring-smacks, canal-boats, and East Indiamen; in shops, counting-rooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, alehouses; on the exchange, in the tennis court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts.
The farm-yards were perfect pictures of disarray and slovenly administration of home affairs. Only one of these houses had a door opening on the road, and that was the meanest in the hamlet. A flight of narrow stone stairs ascended from the threshold to the second story.