Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The women, most of them, wore only a sort of skirt, reaching from waist to knees; a few had circular discs covering their breasts. There were hardly any children to be seen, except occasionally a little face staring at them from a window, or peering down from a roof-top. Once or twice they passed a woman with an infant slung across her back in a sort of hammock.
She turned her head, and her great eyes smiled softly at them across the roof-top. A cry of terror rose from the people as she appeared. Most of those in the street ran in fright back into the field behind. Then, seeing her standing motionless with a gentle smile on her face, they stopped, irresolute. A few held their ground, frankly curious and unafraid. Others stood sullen and defiant.
But waiting as a mob always does for some leader to advance, that they might follow him upon us. We stood on the palace roof-top. I must confess that we were in a flurry for the moment. There were undoubtedly weapons at hand, but I at least did not have them, nor did I know where they were.
Nor was his activity due altogether to military ardor, although he never let pass an opportunity to serve the best interests of his commander; all the while his mind was on the strikingly beautiful girl whose saucy countenance had so dazzled him from the roof-top of the fort, what time she wrenched away the rebel flag.
The aged Jew often befriended the dolls' dressmaker, and she called him, in her fanciful way, "godmother." On his roof-top garden, Jenny Wren and her friend Lizzie were sitting one day, together, when Mr. Fledgeby came up and joined the party, interrupting their conversation. For the girls, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet.
From my roof-top, whither I am fled to snatch what cooler airs may drift into this cup of earth, I can see above the straggling tiles of gable and loggia the cupolas and belfries of many churches. I know they are all dead; for I have wound a devious way through the close inhospitable streets and met them or their ghosts at every corner.
Through the small lattice-work of the windows of the loghouse, lights blazed; from the roof-top smoke curled; from the hall on the other side of the dwelling, came the din of tumultuous wassail, but the intense stillness of the outer air, hushed in frost, and luminous with stars, contrasted and seemed to rebuke the gross sounds of human revel.
Save Elza here with me on Venus, that tiny red spot in the heavens, red like the tip of a lighted arrant-cylinder, held all that was dear to me! The funeral cortege a solemn line of panoplied boats, started from the palace. Boats hung with purple fabric. In single file they wended their way through the city streets. From every landing, balcony, window and roof-top, the people stared down at us.
"I may as well tell the guard now," he said. "Then we need not be interrupted again." The Syrian awoke from a dream that a myriad faces were looking into his own, eager, attentive and horrible, in his corner of the roof-top, and sat up sweating and gasping aloud for breath. For an instant he thought that he was really dying, and that the spiritual world was about him.
She, too, was as a drop in the tide, a leaf on the rippling face of the rushing torrent; her heart beat as wildly and her voice rang as clear as that of the rest of the throng, intoxicated with they knew not what, which crowded the colonnades by the roadway, and every window and roof-top, waving handkerchiefs, strewing flowers on the ground, and wiping the tears which this unwonted excitement had brought to their eyes.
Word Of The Day