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Updated: June 8, 2025
Where once was the enameled meadow, a dreary swamp extended its vapory surface; and the road which a happy peasantry no longer trod, lay choked up with thistles and rank grass; while birds and animals of chase would spring from its thickets, on the lonely traveler, to tell him by their wild astonishment that he was distant from even the haunts of men.
As these grew less in number and difficult to overtake, they set to work again to till the ground, and cleared away small portions of the earth, encumbered already with brambles and thistles. Some grew corn, and some took charge of sheep.
But give thim th' wurrud to git ap, an' they'd ate their thistles undher th' guns iv some ol' Morro Castle befure night. "Ye don't see th' diff'rence, says ye. They ain't anny i' th' leaders. As efficient a lot iv mules as iver exposed their ears. Th' throuble is with th' rank an' file. They're men. What's needed to carry on this war as it goes to-day is an ar-rmy iv jacks an' mules.
The windows on the first floor are half stopped up, so as to keep the rain out; they look out into a garden enclosed by a high wall. The grass is covered with thistles and wheat grows in the flower-beds surrounded by rose-bushes. A narrow path wends its way between a field where the ripe wheat sways in the breeze and a line of elm-trees growing on the edge of a ditch.
Look at them, the fools! stones and thistles thistles and stones: that is their notion of a field. Or, leaning over the gate of some field of rich-smelling soil, he will stretch out his arms as though to caress it: 'Brave lads! he will say; 'kindly honest fellows who loved the poor peasant folk. I fancy he has not got much sense of humour; or if he has, it is a humour he leaves you to find out for yourself.
The cows will eat the leaves of the burdock and the stinging nettles of the woods. But what cannot a cow's tongue stand? She will crop the poison ivy with impunity, and I think would eat thistles if she found them growing in the garden. Leeks and garlics are readily eaten by cattle in the spring, and are said to be medicinal to them.
Forced, at last, to admit the truth of the disastrous news, he dashed his hat upon the ground in a fury, uttering imprecations upon the Queen Dowager of France, to whose perfidious intrigues he ascribed the success of the enterprise, and pledging himself to send her Spanish thistles, enough in return for the Florentine lilies which she had thus bestowed upon him.
"Nothing," she said, making a flip-flop into the thistles and dancing among them without feeling their sharp points. "I could tell you in half a minute how to get over the thistles if I wanted to." "Tell us, Scraps!" begged Dorothy. "I don't want to wear my brains out with overwork," replied the Patchwork Girl. "Don't you love Ozma? And don't you want to find her?" asked Betsy reproachfully.
The copse is now filling up with undergrowth; the brambles are spreading, the briars extending, masses of nettles, and thistles like saplings in size and height, crowding the spaces between the ash-stoles. By the banks great cow-parsnips or "gix" have opened their broad heads of white flowers; teazles have lifted themselves into view, every opening is occupied.
The gathering of grapes from thorns and figs from thistles is a reasonable expectation compared with that! And happiness without happy daily work is impossible." "Most obviously true," said I: for I thought the old boy was preaching a little. "But answer my question, as to how you gained this happiness."
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