Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
I had stood before this upon the ridge of the hill, and looked forth over the battle field below. I had quitted my own carriage, and walked down; as I quitted now the diligence for the same purpose, and held converse with a stone-breaker by the wayside, whose cross, marked with the titles of many battles, told that, among others, he had borne his part in the fight of Kulm.
What did all those words matter, those professional patterings one way and the other; the professional jeers: 'My friend has told you this' and 'My friend will tell you that. The professional steering of the impartial judge, seated there above them all; the cold, calculated rhapsodies about the heinousness of arson; the cold and calculated attack on the characters of the stone-breaker witness and the tramp witness; the cold and calculated patter of the appeal not to condemn a father on the evidence of his little child; the cold and calculated outburst on the right of every man to be assumed innocent except on overwhelming evidence such as did not here exist.
"Yes, I have been in some near things," he went on, when the trunk of his cigar was fairly ignited. "Do you see these two front teeth?" The beach-comber opened wide a cavernous mouth. The late Mr. Macadam, who invented the system of making roads called by his name, allowed no stone to be laid on the way which the stone-breaker could not put in his mouth.
Now, when she stumbled on the horrors of the world, she would cry to herself, 'God knows! with a catching breath, and the feeling of a child that runs from darkness to protecting arms; and so escape her pain. Presently she came to sit by Eleanor again, trying to amuse her by the account of a talk on the roadside, with an old spaccapietre, or stone-breaker, who had fought at Mentana.
The philosopher may enter, the stone-breaker may enter. You must have passed it every day of your life; a plain, venerable building, unlike your glorious cathedrals." "I have seen the children playing near it," said the Traveller. "When I was a, child I used to play there. Ah, if I had only known! Well, the past is the past."
So he is a hard bird to name with a single name; he is a stone-breaker, coppersmith, and bung-starter, and even then he is not completely named, for when he is close by you find that there is a soft, deep, melodious quality in his thump, and for that no satisfying name occurs to you.
Tammas always held that this marriage turned out better than he had expected, though he had his trials like other married men. Among them was Chirsty's way of climbing on to the dresser to get at the higher part of the plate-rack. One evening I called in to have a smoke with the stone-breaker, and while we were talking Chirsty climbed the dresser.
For he was as wretched as a stone-breaker, as one of those poor devils who work and nearly break their backs over the hard flints the whole day long, under the scorching sun or the cold rain; and Marie Anne herself was not happy, for she was pining for the past and remembered their former love.
He had no more company that morning except an aged stone-breaker whom he convoyed for half a mile. The stone-breaker also was soured with the world. He walked with a limp, which, he said, was due to an accident years before, when he had been run into by "ane of thae damned velocipeeds." The word revived in Dickson memories of his youth, and he was prepared to be friendly.
"Proud and haughty to the last." He then embraced a passing steward, and demanded to be informed why the ship rolled. He never knew a ship to roll as our ship rolled. "Perfec'ly satisfact'ry ocean, but ship rolling like a stone-breaker. Take me some place in the ship where this ship don't roll." The steward led him away. When he had dropped the local pilot the captain beckoned me to the bridge.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking