Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
Beyond them, on other grass-stems, orange-hued flies took their pleasure, and the whole air was quick with the wings of butterflies and moths. The quiet little circle of turf was athrill with life; the air, the warm soil, the clumps of bracken whence the hidden crickets shrilled, the pinkish grasses which bore the tiny interlocked bodies of the mating flies everything told of life, life, life.
A crumbling bit of wall where the delicate ivy-leaved toad-flax hangs its light branches, or a bit of grey thatch with patches of dark moss on its shoulder and a troop of grass-stems on its ridge, is a thing to visit.
Then we carefully replanted the dead stick, taking its exact bearings between three trees, drew a few grass-stems together in a braid at the margin so that we should not lose what we had so accidentally gained, and then we left them. During this inspection of the nest, the "poet of the year" and his spouse were perched on two neighboring trees, utterly unmoved by our movements.
I walked up to them, and just as I was going to bend down and look at them, lo and behold, all my flowers opened before my eyes as by a concerted signal, spread wings of the richest blue, and fluttered away before my eyes. They were nothing more than a company of butterflies who, tired of play, had fallen asleep together with closed wings on the high grass-stems.
I did not notice this at first till I had grown wearied of stumbling and pushing through the grass, and Mr. Wardle was beginning to sit down very often and hang out his tongue very far. There was nothing but grass everywhere, and it was impossible to see two yards in any direction. The grass-stems held the heat exactly as boiler-tubes do.
But fear is the opposite of all this; it is the dread of the unknown, the ghastly doubt as to whether there is any goal before us or not; when we fear, we are like the butterfly that flutters anxiously away from the boy who pursues it, who means out of mere wantonness to strike it down tattered and bruised among the grass-stems.
The most hungry of his enemies would hardly have cared for the boy then, His naked hide made him seem more lean and wretched than any of his fellows. His hair was bleached to tow colour by the sun; his ribs stood out like the ribs of a basket, and the lumps on his knees and elbows, where he was used to track on all fours, gave his shrunken limbs the look of knotted grass-stems.
"Duane," she said, lowering her voice, "do you think all our misunderstandings are ended?" "Certainly," he replied gaily. "Don't you?" "But how am I going to make everybody think you are not frivolous?" "I am frivolous. There's lots of froth to me on top. You know that sort of foam you see on grass-stems in the fields. Hidden away inside is a very clever and busy little creature.
He recovered his cast and began to look for his victim. Without avail he searched the heather, and as the fateful seconds sped, at last laid down his rod and dropped on hands and knees to probe among the grass-stems. For a while he hunted in vain, then the sunlight showed a golden sheen among some stones.
They use the grass-stems for beds, but less carefully, and with no such obvious solicitude to compose their limbs in harmony with the lines of the plant. They also sleep with their heads downwards, but the body is allowed to droop sideways from the stem like a leaf. This, with their light colouring, makes them far more conspicuous than the blues.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking