United States or Hong Kong ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As he went on over the hills, in the rude pioneer country of Northern Ohio, thirty-six or seven years ago, he thought sad-colored thoughts of the past, or, rather, he recalled sombre memories of the, to him, far-off time, when, with his mother and brothers, he formed one of a sobbing group around a bed whereon a gasping, dying man was vainly trying to say some last words; of afterwards awakening in the deep nights, and listening to the unutterably sweet and mournful singing of his mother, unable to sleep in her loneliness; of the putting away of his baby brother, and the jubilee when he was brought back; of the final breaking up of the family, and of his own first goings away; of the unceasing homesickness and pining with which he always languished for home in his young boy years; of the joy with which he always hurried home, the means by which he would prolong his stay, and the anguish with which he went away again.
Our dresses were alike, as the generous Edith had willed. They were of the most exquisite India muslin, simply but elegantly decorated with the finest of lace. I had never before been arrayed for an evening party, and as the gauzy fulness of drapery fell so softly and redundantly over the form I had been accustomed to see in the sad-colored robes of mourning, I hardly recognized my own lineaments.
In that old day, the English settler on these rude shores—having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence were strong in him—bestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of age; on long-tried integrity; on solid wisdom and sad-colored experience; on endowments of that grave and weighty order which gives the idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of respectability.
"She must have her free choice of religion. Having tried both," and Bessy gave a dainty smile, "I like my own Church the best. If she should grow up and fall in love with a Friend, she can do as she likes. There are not many as manly and handsome as was Philemon. Indeed I think they make their lives too sad-colored, too full of work.
Why, Solon Slade, you ain't walked way over to Tiverton Street!" "Yes, I have," asserted Solon. He was a slender, sad-colored man, possibly of her own age, and he spoke in a very soft voice. He was Susan's widowed brother-in-law, and the neighbors said he was clever, but hadn't no more spunk'n a wet rag. Susan had risen and laid down her knitting.
The young man "falls in love," and finds ways to make his passion known to its object; he no doubt enjoys all the delights of courtship, intensified by the difficulties which his prudent brethren put in his way; and he marries the object of his affection, in spite of her black hood and her sad-colored little shawl, whenever he has reached the age of twenty-four.
"Isn't that Reuben Camp, now, over there by that house?" she asked, as if we had been talking of him; that is another way some women have. "Yes, ma'am," said the driver. "Oh, well, then!" and "Reuben!" she called to the young man, who was prowling about the door-yard of a sad-colored old farm-house, and peering into a window here and there. "Come here a moment won't you, please?"
With him, physically, it was quite the other way about. He was a short spare man, very gentle in his movements, a toneless sort of man of a palish gray cast, who always wore sad-colored clothing. He would make you think of a man molded out of a fog; almost he was like a man made of smoke.
Cuddled on the hill to the north was the village of the colored folks, who lived in three- or four-room unpainted cottages, some neat and homelike, and some dirty. The dwellings were scattered rather aimlessly, but they centred about the twin temples of the hamlet, the Methodist, and the Hard-Shell Baptist churches. These, in turn, leaned gingerly on a sad-colored schoolhouse.
Sad-colored mantles the goodmen wore, but their doublets were scarlet, and with their green waistcoats and red caps, surely the Puritan men were sufficiently gayly dressed to suit any fancy save that of a cavalier.
Word Of The Day