Bluebottle

“ Floods with light the dazzled heaven;
And the schoolboy groans on hearing
That eternal clock strike seven:—
Now the waggoner is driving
Towards the fields his clattering wain;
Now the bluebottle, reviving,
Buzzes down his native pane. ”

“ The head being the part most threatened, because of the mucus membrane of the throat and eyes, it would be sufficient, as a rule, to protect the head, in order to keep off the Flies and to thwart their attempts.
Let us continue to study the bluebottle, while varying our means of information. A tin, about four inches deep, contains a piece of butcher's meat. The lid is not put in quite straight and leaves a narrow slit at one point of its circumference, allowing, at most, of the passage of a fine needle. When the bait begins to give off a gamy scent, the mothers come. ”

“ Your noisy people generally grow taciturn in their cups—but Sir Blue-bottle, though he drinks deep draughts of your wine, particularly if it abound in sweetness, is never changed. He is naturally giddy, and according to entomologists, always sees more than double, while his head was never made to be turned. ”

“ The supernatural personage in question was no other than a ghostly putter, and his name was “Bluecap.” Sometimes the miners would perceive a light blue flame flicker through the air, and settle on a full coal-tub, which immediately moved towards the rolley-way, as though impelled by the sturdiest sinews in the working. Industrious Bluecap was at his vocation; but he required, and rightly, to be paid for his services, which he modestly rated as those of an ordinary average putter; therefore once a fortnight Bluecap’s wages were left for him in a solitary corner of the mine. ”

“ The people around stared and smiled, but he continued to gaze, in a mournful and approving way, at Bluebell, while his wife sat in a state of repressed endurance, calculating how many more minutes he would have for exposing himself before the tug separated friends from passengers.
After a playful feint to throw one of his children overboard, he became calmer, and relapsed into a maudlin monologue till the bell rang, when he was hustled off, much to Bluebell's relief as well as his wife's, whose set mouth relaxed as if a care had rolled away. ”

“ Cecil, paddling her canoe, with a trolling-line out at the end of it, and Bluebell rowing a boat, while Lilla fished with a very especial spoon-bait of her own devising. Despite, however, the seductions of the gaudy red cloth and tassel of long hair from a deer's tail, not a fish impaled itself on the circle of formidable hooks prepared for its reception, and the mid-day sun began to dart fiercely on them.
"All nature speaks of luncheon and repose," cried Lilla, beginning to wind up her line, after the frequent weed had repeatedly mocked her hopes with its dull, dead pull. ”

“ Whatever Bluewater Bill's failings might have been, he was no faint heart, and despite the shock of the gruesome discovery he continued his investigation of the silent ship. Apparently some attempt had been made when first the Buena Ventura was caught in the deadly embrace of the Sargasso to convey her treasure to the boats, for, at the head of the main companion-way, Bluewater Bill found a chest of antique pattern, the lid of which he ripped open without much opposition from the moldering lock. ”

“ Frenchman had given up defending himself and lost all hope of escape. Shortly before he fell, he made a motion with his hand, as if to say: let us go; we are conquered; we surrender. But what can you do in such a case, in the air? Then he started to volplane; I followed. My observer fired thirty or forty more shots at him; then suddenly he disappeared. In order not to lose him, I planed down, my machine almost vertical. Suddenly my observer cried, “He is falling; he is falling,” and he clapped me on the back joyously. ”

“ He lay down outside in the wheat, every muscle twitching. For him, he felt, life had ended, the world had come to a full stop.
Even the manœuvring of a small German plane around the big French observation balloon failed to draw his attention from himself. The little plane would draw away like some game-cock, and then dash for the balloon, spurting [212] a stream of incendiary bullets as it flew, then draw away again and repeat the operation. At last the basket of the balloon was located and the observer was struck by a piece of hot lead. ”

“ SEASONABLE GIFTS.
I. The Mottle.
A new and ingenious development of the old-fashioned development of the old-fashioned hot-water bottle. The ordinary hot-water bottle warms but a small portion of the bed. The Mottle, possessing a motor attachment, can be wound up and it will then travel all over the bed, diffusing an agreeable warmth everywhere. May be used as an engine in the nursery by day. 33s. 6d. The Chesterton, for large-size bed, 44s. 11d. This kind also makes an excellent gift for soldiers in the trenches. It will travel half-a-mile before requiring further petrol. ”

“ The pattern of the first figure illustrates the wing of the common blue-bottle; here "vein 4" does not run at all straight in the last part of its course, but curiously bends very suddenly upwards at an angle and meets the margin very near to "vein 3." In the wing of a large blue-bottle it will be easy to recognise this plan.
The pattern of the second figure is rather similar, for the vein 4 likewise has a sudden bend upwards; it terminates practically contiguous with vein 3 at the margin. This pattern is characteristic of the "house-fly" ”

“ A smothered growl interrupted this monologue, and then a sharp bark. Bluebell looked round to see what was exciting him; she heard a distant tinkle of bells, and listened keenly; laughing voices were apparently approaching. From an impulse that she could not have explained, Bluebell darted into an empty woodshed, dragging Trove in after her, and holding him firmly by the muzzle to stifle his growling. Through an aperture in the boards she could observe, unseen herself. ”

“ Jerry hates to have his relatives look silly in public, but I thought Greg looked very nice.
We chucked the bottle overboard from the upper deck, just when the Wecanicut was halfway over. The nice Portuguese man shouted up, "Hey! You drop something?" but we told him it was just an old bottle we did n't want, and not to mind. We watched it go bob-bobbing along beside an old barrel-head that was floating by, and we wondered how far it would go, and if it would leak and sink. The tide was exactly right to carry it outside, if all went well. ”

“ Stooping down he slipped the line under the bags of ballast and made a timber-hitch with the end, hauling it well taut. With the other end he made a bowline round the thwart on which he was sitting, and on which he must sit to pull the bow oar in the evening. He tied the knot wide enough to admit of its running freely from side to side of the boat, and he stowed the bight between the ballast and the thwart, so that it lay out of sight in the bottom. The two sacks of pebbles together weighed, perhaps, from a half to three-quarters of a hundredweight. ”

“ The discomposing rocking of the vessel continued, and the moan of the winds mingled with the incessant complaints of Mrs. Butler on a distant sofa, who was as communicative respecting her anguish as her age.
Tea and the return of some of the gentlemen a little relieved the monotony. Bluebell was languidly experimenting on a piece of dry toast, when the loud crying of a child attracted her attention, and, the steward leaving the door open, a little girl of four plunged in. She recognised her as one of the children with the tipsy father. ”

“ Alec Gough and Bernard Lumley, both morally placarded "engaged," having, as a matter of course, plighted their troth to two neighbouring fledglings, were wild for an introduction; and no sooner did Bluebell's canoe leave Lyndon's Landing, than two corresponding ones were sure to shoot out, apparently actuated by the same persuasion that there was no more likely place for a fish than the snag round which she was trolling, and ready to gaff a maskinonge, or help to land an obdurate bass, if occasion offered. ”

“ The bottle was an ordinary bottle, of green glass, of narrow mouth, corked and sealed, and within it, miraculously, rode the little ship, with its tall fine spars, its cabin, capstan, shrouds and tiny pulleys, complete in every detail to the belaying-pins, its top sails bellying to some mysterious imprisoned breeze, while the other sails were furled. "Oh, Daddie," she cried, "look at the little ship! Look at the little ship in the bottle! It has sails, it has masts, it has everything! Oh, Daddie, wherever did you get the little ship in the bottle?" ”

“ Frank was saying, as he kept pushing with the sweep, so as to clear the shore more than ever.
“Sure it does,” echoed Bluff, enthusiastically. “Fact is, fellows, we’ve been through so many exciting affairs that nearly everything that happens is bound to make us remember some other adventure. Hey! me to sound the well here, and see if she’s taking water fast. Wouldn’t be a very nice thing to have our boat go down with us, before we’d been moving an hour.” ”

“ We have half a ton of ballast in bags of fifty pounds each, and a basket full of lighter ballast—no mere uninteresting, wasteful sand with which to sprinkle eyes and heads below, but neat little circulars, conveying information about a particular kind of whisky to thirsty souls who stare upward. We have also a long rope with a grapnel of great spikiness, with which to claw hold of the sinful world at such time as it may seem desirable to alight upon it. ”

“ The purple-blue flowers of the Bluebell droop gracefully at intervals along their slender stems and bloom all summer long. The plants grow but a few inches tall in the alpine regions where each bears but a single blossom, but they are sometimes 3 ft. high at lower altitudes, especially in the shade. They are found on foothills and in mountain meadows and aspen woodlands at 6000-13000 ft. This species is the true Bluebell of Scotland. ”

“ A half-circle of boats extended from the long Exhibition Wharf on the right, round to the warship Illinois on the left, and from the latter a search light, an omnipresent eye, swept the crowd with rapidly veering glance, till it concentrated its gaze on the dark balloon which rose so mysteriously from the water. Suddenly from this balloon was suspended the Stars and Stripes in colored lights. The crowd cheered like mad, the boats whistled, and sent up rockets galore. ”

“ Fact is, he said she was good for many years yet.”
“That sounds all right, Frank, but the best of boats will take water; and I can pump it up right now,” Bluff insisted.
“Well, suppose you keep at work,” the other continued, obligingly. “I like to have everybody satisfied when I’m sailing a boat. Pump away till you’re tired, if you feel that way. It’s silly to carry a cargo of water, when we’ve got such a lot of better things aboard.”
So Bluff amused himself with the pump as long as he could get any considerable stream to respond to his muscular efforts.
The other three hung about the sweep ”

“ There is, by the bye, a little blue butterfly whom the people call bluewing; you can see it in the summer sitting on the tall blades of the grass, and its wings resemble a flax blossom; a fluttering flax blossom with antenna instead of filaments.
Little Bluewing, the dragoon’s little bluewing, that is, was not like other children; she always talked very sensibly, but she often said queer things, and everybody was puzzled to know where she got them from. All living things loved her, even the animals; fowls and calves ran up to her when they saw her, and she even dared to stroke the bull. ”

“ Unhappily, the balloon, like the fancied inspiration of the poet, goes where the wind guides it; this every one knows; while the steam-engine, like prose, goes straight upon its road. Green and his balloon were soon overlooking Paris and all its horizon; long trails of sand, ballast that he threw over to raise himself higher, streaked the heavens with their white tracks, proving, by the time it took them to descend to the earth, the hight to which the intrepid aeronaut had mounted in a few minutes. ”

“ Two of the ladies held the agonized mother, to prevent her from leaping over the cliff. The gentlemen were shouting to the men in the boat to hasten their speed, for there was nothing else they could do. Bobtail saw the boat, and heard the rapid thumps of the oars in the rowlocks. The sight and the sound inspired him with new courage. ”

“ It is only by careful study that one can ascertain just the amount of ballast that is needed; but, once found, do not change it for light or heavy weather, but keep it intact, and you and your boat will soon understand each other much better than will be the case if it be continually changed. A happy medium is what must be sought for in the question of ballast ”

“ I determined to make my excursion to the Blue Mountain, and, sending Steve down to the post-office, a three-days' journey, I took the boat, with Carlo and my rifle, and pushed off. The outlet of the Blue Mountain Lakes is like all the Adirondack streams, dark and shut in by forest, which scarcely permits landing anywhere. Now and then a log fallen into the water compels the voyager to get out and lift his boat over; then a shallow rapid must be dragged over; and when the stream is clear of of obstruction, it is too narrow for any mode of propulsion but poling or paddling. ”

“ July 4.—The boat was now completed, except what was in fact the most difficult part,—the making her seams secure. Having been unsuccessful in all our attempts to procure tar, we have formed a composition of pounded charcoal with beeswax and buffalo-tallow to supply its place. If this resource fail us, it will be very unfortunate, as, in every other respect, the boat answers our purpose completely. Although not quite dry, she can be carried with ease by five men: she is very strong, and will carry a load of eight thousand pounds, with her complement of men. ”