United States or Palestine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The pike ascended a long, slight slope leading west up to the Cross-Roads. From a thicket of iron-weed at the foot of this slope was thrust the hard, lean visage of an undersized girl of fourteen. Her fierce eyes examined the approaching cloud of dust intently. A redness rose under the burnt yellow skin and colored the wizened cheeks. They were coming.
The iron-weed had given up his purple crown, and yellow wheat, silver-gray oats, and rippling barley had fled at the sight of his banner to the open sunny spaces as though to make their last stand an indignant appeal that all might see.
The plough went not out; the herds wandered through broken hedges from field to field and came up with staring bones and shrunken sides; a frenzied mob of weeds and thorns wrestled and throttled each other in a struggle for standing-room rag-weed, smart-weed, sneeze-weed, bindweed, iron-weed until the burning skies of midsummer checked their growth and crowned their unshorn tops with rank and dingy flowers.
All down the brown roads white lady's-lace and yarrow and the stiff purple iron-weed have leaped into bloom; under its faded green coat the sugar-cane shows purple; and sumac and sassafras and gums are afire. The year's last burgeoning of butterflies riots, a tangle of rainbow coloring, dancing in the mellow sunshine.
Then she bids it take or the grace that belongs to all ruin; the grass creeps stealthily over the scarified sides of the embankments; the golden-rod, and the purple-topped iron-weed, and the lady's-slipper, spring up in the hollows on either side, and I am still thinking of that deserted railroad which runs through Charlesbridge hide with their leafage the empty tomato-cans and broken bottles and old boots on the ash-heaps dumped there; Nature sets her velvety willows a waving near, and lower than their airy tops plans a vista of trees arching above the track, which is as wild and pretty and illusive a vista as the sunset ever cared to look through and gild a board fence beyond.
Word Of The Day