United States or Aruba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was a hovel rather worse than better than that in which we had dined; but its little windows were lighted up, voices were heard from within, and all intimated a prospect of food and shelter, to which we were by no means indifferent. Andrew was the first to observe that there was a peeled willow-wand placed across the half-open door of the little inn. He hung back and advised us not to enter.
Then they drank, whilst the damsels retired and were succeeded by other ten, as they were sparkling stars, clad in flowered silk, embroidered with gold, and girt with jewelled zones. They sat down and sang various airs; and the Khalif said to one of them, who was like a willow-wand, "What is thy name, O damsel!" "My name is Reshaa, O Commander of the Faithful," answered she.
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that quoth the man, "So I turned aside with the donkey and stood still awaiting the dispersal of the crowd; and I saw a number of eunuchs with staves in their hands, followed by nigh thirty women slaves, and amongst them a lady as she were a willow-wand or a thirsty gazelle, perfect in beauty and grace and amorous languor, and all were attending upon her.
"Purely so!" she answered earnestly. "Then it's the most wonderful recovery I ever saw. Why, at Cannes, she was hollow-eyed, pale, and thin as a willow-wand; now she looks well, she knows how she is herself but if she feels as spry as she looks, she's in first-rate training!" I laughed. "I DO feel spry, Colonel," I said. "Life seems to me like summer sunshine." "Brava!" exclaimed Mr. Challoner.
See not a Dulcinea, in every slipshod girl, who, with blue eyes, fair hair, a tattered plaid, and a willow-wand in her grip, drives out the village cows to the loaning. Do not think you will meet a gallant Valentine in every English rider, or an Orson in every Highland drover. View things as they are, and not as they may be magnified through thy teeming fancy.
God on thee, where is the boy beside the girl and who shall liken the kid to the wild cow? The girl is soft of speech, fair of shape, like a stalk of sweet basil, with teeth like chamomile-petals and hair like halters. Her cheeks are like blood-red anemones and her face like an apple; she hath lips like wine and breasts like double pomegranates and a shape flexile as a willow-wand.
The majority of the company were as rowdy a set of good-humored Bean-Feasters as ever drank thin beer in a ramshackle tavern. But there was one of them this is twenty-five years ago, reader! a girl as fragile as a peeled Willow-wand and teased by the rude badinage of our companions we sheltered as the friendly mists rose under a great Tarpaulin at the barge's stern.
The ferryman and his sister had yet to pull a fearful distance for the time they had to do it in, to get out of that part of the current leading to the breakers: and they accomplished it. The man had the bow oar, and we could see the tough ash bend like a willow-wand as he stretched out to keep the head of the boat partially up the stream.
"It's nothing important, so I won't trouble you," Keith replied, in a tone that matched hers for cool courtesy. "I'll see him to-morrow, probably." He helped Dorman reel in his line, cut a willow-wand and strung the three fish upon it by the gills, washed his hands leisurely in the creek, and dried them on his handkerchief, just as if nothing bothered him in the slightest degree.
I counted the days, and bore with me a peeled willow-wand, on which, as well as I could remember, I had notched the days that had elapsed since my wreck, and each night I added another unit to the melancholy sum. I had toiled up a hill which led to Spoleto. Around was spread a plain, encircled by the chestnut-covered Appennines.
Word Of The Day