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Updated: September 7, 2025
They climbed trees to peep into squirrel-holes and birds'-nests; they chased bees and butterflies to ask for news of the elves; they waded in the brook, hoping to catch a water-sprite; they ran after thistle-down, fancying a fairy might be astride; they searched the flowers and ferns, questioned sun and wind, listened to robin and thrush; but no one could tell them any thing of the little people, though all had gay and charming bits of news about themselves.
Perfumes were lit in the room, and the smoke of their burning made a violet haze through which quivered the heart-shaped candle flames. The music had a wild ring, and laughter as wild came easily to a man's lips. The English laughed for that their spirits were turned thistle-down, and the Spaniards laughed because a man's foe should not see his chagrin.
His pursuers, certain that he was hidden in some closet known only to himself, adjourned to the bar to discuss ways and means. The news of the trouble at the hotel spread like thistle-down in a high wind.
There came a climax when she tried to jump out of a window, and he had to save her by some perfunctary, unmeant wooing. Even I was shaken by the depths of the absorbing affection she showed. Home, friends, traditions, creeds went up like thistle-down in the scale against her love. It was really discomposing. One night again Pettit sauntered in, yawning.
He closed his eyes and dropped off into a doze, and then he had a confused vision of being at Remilly, married again and owner of a bit of land, sufficient to support a family of honest folks whose wants were not extravagant. But it was all a dream, lighter than thistle-down; he knew it could never, never be.
The tray itself was covered with a layer of silvery thistle-down; and on this, hovering above flowers, some of his loveliest butterflies spread their wings. So beautifully did their frail bodies fit into this airy bed, so carefully was the work done, that you might fancy only the glass which covered them kept them from escaping.
For thistle-down flies abroad on all winds and airs of wind.... Ship-loads of fashionable novels, sentimental rhymes, tragedies, farces ... tales by flood and field are swallowed monthly into the bottomless pool; still does the press toil,... and still in torrents rushes on the great army of publications to their final home; and still oblivion, like the grave, cries give! give!
So he flashed by, between me and my tent door, barely swerved aside for my fire, and gave me another beautiful run down the old road, rising and falling light as thistle-down, with the old trees arching over him and brushing his antlers as he rocketed along.
O'Mara had hinted that Nora had been seen with one of them on the hill, and he thought how on a day like this she might have been led away among the ferns. At that moment there came out of the thicket a floating ball of thistle-down. 'It bloweth where it listeth, he said.
What a marvelous instrument the piano was, to be sure, when its keys were moved by a touch that was at one moment all fire and flame, and the next smooth as velvet or soft and light as thistle-down. What had my home piano in common with this wonder? Why did all the efforts at piano playing I had hitherto listened to sink into oblivion when I heard this master? What was the reason of it all?
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