Dew point

“ Armed with these instructions and our thick sticks, Jem and I crept out of the house before the sun was up or a bird awake. The air seemed cold after our warm beds, and the dew was so drenching in the hedge bottoms, and on the wayside weeds of our favourite lane, that we were soaked to the knees before we began to force the hedge. ”

“ Not at first. After I crossed the river I went straight on for a good while; it was about like this,’ she waved her hand. ‘It was all right until it was dark—’ Then she stopped talking just at the most interesting place.
“‘Oh, go on, Merope!’ said Alcyone. ‘Where was it dark?’
“‘I don’t believe I can explain it. It came all at once—everywhere—as if I had walked off the edge—into the sea; only there wasn’t any sea. ”

“ Don't cry any more," said the lady as she put it down and handed it to Marjorie, kissing her little tear-stained face.
Marjorie clung to it with both hands and started for home. She wanted to put the umbrella back by the hall tree, and tell mother all about the runaway.—Written for Dew Drops by Flora Louise Whitmore.
THE ADOPTED BROOD.
"Oh, look, Bobby!" said Betty, as she jumped out of the swing, and went running down toward the hayfield. "Here comes Joe, and he has something to show us. I know it's a surprise." ”

“ A habit or bias in favor of a certain kind of inference has been set up. We infer from a bent ray of light that the hand, in touching the reflecting object, will, at a certain point, have to change its direction. This habit is carried over to a medium in which the conclusion does not hold. Instead of saying that light is bent—which it is—we infer that the stick is bent: we infer that the hand could not protract a straight course in handling the object. But an expert fisherman never makes such an error in spearing fish. ”

“ As for the Kitten, it was no trouble for her; real or make-believe, it was all alike.
“No, indeed,” said Phyllisy, explaining to Pat, and perfectly familiar with it. “Just the stars of him, and play the rest. When it’s night, we’ll look, and see if we can find them ourselves.”
“You can’t when it’s cloudy,” said Pat. “And it’s cloudy to-night—will be.”
“And the Star People will have a holiday,” said the Princess.
“Will they?” asked the Others, though she had just said it.
“Sure as sure. When it’s a cloudy night and the sailors couldn’t see them wherever they were, they may go where they like.” ”

“ DEW. There are few phenomena of common occurrence which have proved more perplexing to philosophers than those which attend the deposition of dew. Every one is familiar with these phenomena, and in very early times observant men had noticed them; yet it is but quite recently that the true theory of dew has been put forward and established. This theory affords a striking evidence of the value of careful and systematic observation applied even to the simplest phenomena of nature. ”

“ She led the way across the lawn towards an open window. It was a day of sunshine; the garden was bright with flowers, and about the windows rose-trees climbed the house-walls. It was a house of red brick, darkened by age, and with a roof of tiles. To Dewes' eyes, nestling as it did beneath the great grass Downs, it had a most homelike look of comfort. ”

“ So the Lark plunged down to the stream among the alders to bathe his wings and refresh himself. After the lustrations were duly completed, up again he rose like an arrow into the bright, blue sky. Says he to himself, [Pg 52] "I shall certainly be on the sharp out-look for that ascent of the Dewdrop. I can at all events be a silent spectator, if my services cannot otherwise be of use." ”

“ THE white crescent of the little new moon blinked at us through the yew boughs. As you walk up the churchyard you see thirteen yews on each side of you, and yet, if you count them up, they make twenty-seven, and it has been pointed out to me that neither numerical fact can be without occult significance. The jugglery in numbers is done by the seventh yew on the left, which hides a shrinking sister in the amplitude of its shadow. ”

“ He goes alone up on to the top of the Downs, and stays there alone for hours. I have seen him. I have come upon him unawares lying on the grass with his face towards the sea, his lips parted, and his eyes strained, his face absorbed. He has been so lost in dreams that I have come close to him through the grass and stood beside him and spoken to him before he grew aware that anyone was near."
"Perhaps he wants to be a sailor," suggested Dewes. ”

“ And when the froth was stiff enough to stand alone, the Deev took his steel-wing arm for a ladle, and he began to spread the froth upon the earth. And he spread and spread until221 the whole earth was like an enormous chocolate cake, thick with white frosting—one layer, two layers, three layers, disgustingly extravagant, so that the little Deevs, if there had been any, would never have got the dish scraped. ”

“ Hallo! away down there in the dark, grim wood. Who is talking at this time of night? Hallo!
She went to sleep, so did Robert Jeffries, and the window was open.
The moon rose into the zenith and looked down from her pale face upon three different objects: a forest, a river, and a cabin.
In the forest a silent form lay cold, still and bloody, near a thick tree; a man stood over him, looking quietly down upon him.
The watcher spoke in a strange, far-away voice. ”

“ The Dewdrop was a tear that fell from the sky because the Sun was gone. But, as you have just told us, we are all parts of it—everyone of us are; and we are on our way again to the golden entrance to his Palace.
The army of misty globules rose and rose, higher and yet higher. They seemed, too, to get brighter and brighter in the ascent, the Lark rising with them, indeed till his little wings were tired. ”

“ Then the Deev’s will ran round and round in his own head like a fly trying to escape from a dark hole—that is the way of the will of all Deevs—and pretty soon his will got out and went buzzle-buzzle-buzzle, which is no proper sound for anybody’s will to make. And when it did that, the Deev went off and got a river, and he climbed up on top of Rhumbthumberland and he swung the river about his head like a ribbon and then let it fall from the heights like a lady’s scarf, and then he held down one end with his great boot and the other end he emptied into the horizon. ”

“ The comparison of a violet, bright with the dew, to a woman’s eyes, is as perfect as a comparison can be. Sir Walter’s lines are part of a song addressed to a woman at daybreak, when the violets are bathed in dew; and the comparison is therefore peculiarly natural and graceful. Dew on a bramble is no more like a woman’s eyes than dew anywhere else. There is a very pretty Eastern tale of which the fate of plagiarists often reminds us. ”

“ The gentle breeze went back to the river, and as she sighed around the rose where the discontented Dewdrop had rested she heard another drop say:
"Look at the river. Isn't it big? Here am I only a Dewdrop, so small no one can see me."
"Ah, that is where you are mistaken, my dainty Dewdrop," said the gentle breeze. "You can be seen now, but if you were to become a part of the river you would never be seen. You would lose your identity as soon as you mingled with the waters of the river. Be your own sweet self and be content with the part you play in this world. ”

“ Will ever after handsome be."
Encyclopedia of Superstitions.
A heavy dew on this morning presages a good "butter-year." You will find fateful initials printed in dew on a handkerchief that has been left out all the night of April thirtieth. ”

“ "YOU are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf, I am the smaller one on its upper side," said the dewdrop to the lake. ”

“ He just took breath, after the exhaustion and excitement, alike of both body and mind, which his aerial adventure had entailed; and then hastened straight to the home of the Nightingale and Thrush, to tell of the glorious ascent (what the old and learned creatures of the earth would have called [Pg 58] the apotheosis) of the Dewdrop on the rose-leaf; its severance into a million fragments; and how these, in the shape of a great army, had marched right within
The Sun's Golden Gates! ”

“ In Northumberland, down apparently to near the end of the eighteenth century, young people of both sexes used to go out early on May morning to gather the flowering thorn and the dew off the grass, which they brought home with music and acclamations; then, having dressed a pole on the green with garlands, they danced about it. The dew was considered as a great cosmetic, and preserved the face from wrinkles, blotches, and the traces of old age. A syllabub made of warm milk from the cow, sweet cakes, and wine was prepared for the feast ”

“ Each has been slowly evolved with reference to its fit employ in the entire function; and this evolution has been checked at every point by reference to its own correspondent. The carpenter has not thought at large on his building and then constructed tools at large, but has thought of his building in terms of the material which enters into it, and through that medium has come to the consideration of the tools which are helpful. ”

“ Mrs. Dewey entered one day and found me with my feet on the window-trim and the rest of me crouched in the most substantial rocker. I was smoking and cogitating. It was so quiet and [Pg 244] I was so far out of sight that she did not know I was there until she started to dust the chair. The smoke had not suggested my presence, for old Dewey was always doing that—he had learned how when young, and so it was no trouble.
"Oh, excuse me, I didn't know you were in the room. You're always so quiet," she said.
"Sorrow makes a man quiet." ”

“ Wheresoever he goes he is beloved. With their soft, solemn music the pine-trees seek to detain him; the flowers of earth lift up their voices and cry, "Abide with us, dear spirit,"—but to all he answers: "The spring-time calls me in the North, and I must hasten whither she calls." But when the south wind came to the rose-tree he would go no farther; he loved the rose, and he lingered about her with singing and sighing and protestations.
It was not until late in the evening that Dewlove and the elf-prince appeared. ”

“ To him for whom they are signs of other things, [Pg 17] each has a definite individuality of its own, according to the meaning that it is used to convey. Exactly the same holds of natural objects. A chair is a different object to a being to whom it consciously suggests an opportunity for sitting down, repose, or sociable converse, from what it is to one to whom it presents itself merely as a thing to be smelled, or gnawed, or jumped over; a stone is different to one who knows something of its past history and its future use from what it is to one who only feels it directly through his senses. ”

“ While Deverell sat thus, returning thanks on an empty stomach, at the northern edge of the ridge, a man tramped into the pines from the south. The heavy sand muffled his steps; but he stopped long before he came near Deverell, and threw down his swag with an emancipated air. The man was old, but he held himself more erect than does the typical swagman. The march through life with a cylinder of blankets on one's shoulders, with all one's worldly goods packed in that cylinder, causes a certain stoop of a very palpable kind ”

“ The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms, as they spread the branches apart, but their shoulders are in the sun. The skin of their arms is like a blue mist, but their shoulders are white and glowing, as if the light fell not from above, but rose from under their skin. We watch the leaf which has fallen upon their shoulder, and it lies at the curve of their neck, and a drop of dew glistens upon it like a jewel. ”

“ On some nights there is no dew outside the tray, and on all nights the deposit on the inner is heavier than that on the outside. If wool is used in the experiments, we are reminded of one of the forms of the dewing of Gideon’s fleece—the fleece was bedewed when all outside was dry. ”

“ He had been sitting the whole evening on the old fool's blankets, and the old fool had been sitting on the ground!
"I say! Why on earth don't you come and sit on your own blankets?" asked Deverell, a little roughly; for to catch oneself in a grossly thoughtless act is always irritating.
"I am all right here, thank you," returned the swagman, mildly. "The sand is as soft as the blankets." ”

“ Dewey's beseeching and threats colliding with his will traveling against her purpose with counter-balancing velocity and mass. A hired man would have left her long ago under such tongue-lashing, but old Dewey could not leave, because to leave is an act. There were no verbs in his vocabulary comprehending possibilities of usefulness within range of the present tense. What an irony in names! I often thought.
A man who is employed in the Department of Health has a pass to the good wishes of a woman who rents a house in New York. ”

“ THEY WATCHED WITH HER
5“Look like a ‘W,’ don’t they, Pat?—But there’s another star—very pale—and another off here. Now, see—tipped up—so—Isn’t that a pretty good chair? How would you like to sit there and overlook things?”
“Cassiopeia wouldn’t let her,” said Prudence. “That’s Cassiopeia’s Chair, Pat. She doesn’t allow any one to sit in it.”
“I don’t want to.” Pat spoke in a loud whisper.
“That is where you’re mistaken, Miss Phyllisy,” said the Princess. “She wouldn’t mind a bit. But she is sitting there herself, this minute.” ”

“ They rushed in and lifted him up, the guide first. Taking him tenderly in his arms, he held the torch to his face; then he laid him gently down; then he shook his head slowly; then, with every muscle, feature and lineament of his face showing his earnestness, with wild eyes, with voice trembling and hollow in spite of himself, he said:
“Gentlemen, thar’s suthin’ wrong ’bout this cursed, ugly black hill; the strongest, coolest, bravest man in the world has fainted clean away—dead away!”
“And the girl—where is she?—she is gone,” muttered Cimarron Jack. ”