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It takes the bloom off the freshness of young writers if they are determined to exhibit the last new words that are in, or out of season. New words have a doubtful position at first. They float here and there like thistle-down, and their future depends upon where they settle. But until they are established and accepted they are out of place for children's use.
Great, therefore, were the wrath and dismay of the enamored thistle-down, when the father of his love mildly objected to seeing her begin the world in a balloon with a very tender but very inexperienced aeronaut for a guide. "Laura is too young to 'play house' yet, and you are too unstable to assume the part of lord and master, Philip.
In calm it clung to her head like a pale-gold mist; in breeze it floated away like a pale-gold nimbus. It seemed as though a shake of her head would send it drifting off a huge thistle-down of gold. Her eyes reflected the tint of whatever blue they gazed on, whether it was the frank azure of the sky or the mysterious turquoise of the sea. And yet their look was strangely intent.
'But where shall I ever get thistle-down enough for so many neckerchiefs, and shirts, and coats? asked Snow-white and Rosy-red. 'We'll soon show you', said the Princes; and so they took her with them to a great wide moor, where there stood such a crop of thistles, all nodding and nodding in the breeze, and the down all floating and glistening like gossamers through the air in the sunbeams.
But in spring-time the oleander can but display long greyish leaves and pods of snowy fluff, which is blown hither and thither like thistle-down on the air; and it is only in flaming summer that these regions are brightened by St Joseph’s flower, or by the still more gorgeous masses of the mesembryanthemum, which clambers on all sides over the lava rock and hangs in crimson festoons from tufa cliffs, making impossibly splendid splashes of colour in the landscape.
For even as he looked, one of her hands crept up to her cheek the small, soft hand that had touched his face and hair as lightly as a bit of thistle-down and he knew that two hands like that could not have killed a man who was fighting for life when he died.
Athwart the path a huge boar rushed, turning his head but for one instant to glance at them, and then hurling on down the valley again. And at that all three stopped and sat in their saddles, staring into the thickening haze that was coming upon them. "If it were not for this thistle-down " began the leader. But now a big globe came drifting past within a score of yards of them.
But when he came back to her again, he saw nothing but a composed, expectant Eleanor; dressed, in these wilds, with a dainty care which would have done honour to London or Paris, with a bright colour in her cheeks, and the quiver of a smile on her lips. Ill! He thought he had seldom seen her look so well. Had she not always been of a thistle-down lightness?
These he expected as a matter of course; he was going to have that other thing, too the thing she had clung to as a man clings to life; and that now, parting from, she would give up not without a struggle as sharp as that with which the body gives up breath. She wrestled. He seemed all hands. He put aside her struggles, her pleadings, as if they were thistle-down.
Appearance of a green level land Cardoon and giant thistles Villages of the Vizcacha, a large burrowing rodent Groves and plantations seen like islands on the wide level plains Trees planted by the early colonists Decline of the colonists from an agricultural to a pastoral people Houses as part of the landscape Flesh diet of the gauchos Summer change in the aspect of the plain The water-like mirage The giant thistle and a "thistle year" Fear of fires An incident at a fire The pampero, or south-west wind, and the fall of the thistles Thistle-down and thistle-seed as food for animals A great pampero storm Big hailstones Damage caused by hail Zango, an old horse, killed Zango and his master.
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