| | 1 | Author: | Fox, John, 1863-1919 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come  | | | | Published: | 2001 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE days of that April had been days of mist and rain. Sometimes, for hours, there would
come a miracle of blue sky, white cloud, and yellow light, but always between dark and
dark the rain would fall and the mist creep up the mountains and steam from the
tops—only to roll together from either range, drip back into the valleys, and
lift, straightway, as mist again. So that, all the while Nature was trying to give lustier
life to every living thing in the lowland Bluegrass, all the while a gaunt skeleton was
stalking down the Cumberland— tapping with fleshless knuckles, now at some
unlovely cottage of faded white and green, and now at a log cabin, stark and gray. Passing
the mouth of Lonesome, he flashed his scythe into its unlifting shadows and went stalking
on. High up, at the source of the dismal little stream, the point of the shining blade
darted thrice into the open door of a cabin set
deep into a shaggy flank of Black Mountain, and three spirits, within, were quickly loosed
from aching flesh for the long flight into the unknown. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 4 | Author: | Haggard, H. Rider | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Montezuma's Daughter | | | | Published: | 2001 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Now glory be to God who has given us the victory! It is true, the strength of
Spain is shattered, her ships are sunk or fled, the sea has swallowed her
soldiers and her sailors by hundreds and by thousands, and England breathes
again. They came to conquer, to bring us to the torture and the stake--to do to
us free Englishmen as Cortes did by the Indians of Anahuac. Our manhood to the
slave bench, our daughters to dishonour, our souls to the loving-kindness of the
priest, our wealth to the Emperor and the Pope! God has answered them with his
winds, Drake has answered them with his guns. They are gone, and with them the
glory of Spain. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 8 | Author: | Lang, Andrew | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Angling Sketches | | | | Published: | 2001 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | These papers do not boast of great sport. They are truthful, not like the tales
some fishers tell. They should appeal to many sympathies. There is no false
modesty in the confidence with which I esteem myself a duffer, at fishing. Some
men are born duffers; others, unlike persons of genius, become so by an infinite
capacity for not taking pains. Others,
again, among whom I would rank myself, combine both these elements of
incompetence. Nature, that made me enthusiastically fond of fishing, gave me
thumbs for fingers, short-sighted eyes, indolence, carelessness, and a temper
which (usually sweet and angelic) is goaded to madness by the laws of matter and
of gravitation. For example: when another man is caught up in a branch he
disengages his fly; I jerk at it till something breaks. As for carelessness, in
boyhood I fished, by preference, with doubtful gut and knots ill-tied; it made
the risk greater, and increased the excitement if one did hook a trout. I can't
keep a fly-book. I stuff the flies into my pockets at random, or stick them into
the leaves of a novel, or bestow them in the lining of my hat or the case of my
rods. Never, till 1890, in all my days did I possess a landing-net. If I can
drag a fish up a bank, or over the gravel, well; if not, he goes on his way
rejoicing. On the Test I thought it seemly to carry a landing- net. It had a
hinge, and doubled up. I put the handle through a button- hole of my coat: I saw
a big fish rising, I put a dry fly over
him; the idiot took it. Up stream he ran, then down stream, then he yielded to
the rod and came near me. I tried to unship my landing-net from my button-hole.
Vain labour! I twisted and turned the handle, it would not budge. Finally, I
stooped, and attempted to ladle the trout out with the short net; but he broke
the gut, and went off. A landing-net is a tedious thing to carry, so is a creel,
and a creel is, to me, a superfluity. There is never anything to put in it. If I
do catch a trout, I lay him under a big stone, cover him with leaves, and never
find him again. I often break my top joint; so, as I never carry string, I
splice it with a bit of the line, which I bite off, for I really cannot be
troubled with scissors and I always lose my knife. When a phantom minnow sticks
in my clothes, I snap the gut off, and put on another, so that when I reach home
I look as if a shoal of fierce minnows had attacked me and hung on like leeches.
When a boy, I was--once or twice--a bait-fisher, but I never carried worms in
box or bag. I found them under big stones, or in the fields, wherever I had the luck. I
never tie nor otherwise fasten the joints of my rod; they often slip out of the
sockets and splash into the water. Mr. Hardy, however, has invented a
joint-fastening which never slips. On the other hand, by letting the joint rust,
you may find it difficult to take down your rod. When I see a trout rising, I
always cast so as to get hung up, and I frighten him as I disengage my hook. I
invariably fall in and get half-drowned when I wade, there being an
insufficiency of nails in the soles of my brogues. My waders let in water, too,
and when I go out to fish I usually leave either my reel, or my flies, or my
rod, at home. Perhaps no other man's average of lost flies in proportion to
taken trout was ever so great as mine. I lose plenty, by striking furiously,
after a series of short rises, and breaking the gut, with which the fish swims
away. As to dressing a fly, one would sooner think of dressing a dinner. The
result of the fly-dressing would resemble a small blacking-brush, perhaps, but
nothing entomological. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 13 | Author: | Smith, F. Hopkinson | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Tom Grogan | | | | Published: | 2001 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | SOMETHING worried Babcock. One could see that from the impatient gesture with
which he turned away from the ferry window on learning he had half an hour to
wait. He paced the slip with hands deep in his pockets, his head on his chest.
Every now and then he stopped, snapped open his watch and shut it again quickly,
as if to hurry the lagging minutes. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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