Dropsy

“ The sixth drop gathered, and fell; already the seventh was like a seedling pearl in its place. The dying wolf yanked affectionately at my hand, but I put her by and undid my tunic. Big and bright that drop hung to the spout lip; another minute and it would fall. A beautiful drop, I laughed, peering closely at it, many-coloured, prismatic, flushing red and pink, a tiny living ruby, hanging by a touch to the green rim above; enough! enough! ”

“ Between the vanishing of the drop and the vanishing of the man, what difference? A difference of words.... But ask yourself what becomes of the dewdrop?
By the great sun its atoms are separated and lifted and scattered. To cloud and earth, to river and sea they go; and out of land and stream and sea again they will be updrawn, only to fall and to scatter anew. They will creep in opalescent mists;—they will whiten in frost and hail and snow;—they will reflect again the forms and the colours of the macrocosm; they will throb to the ruby pulsing of hearts that are yet unborn. ”

“ Thou 'st got a skin o' dirt outside and all dry dust inside. Thou must moisten it, lad, with a good drink, and then thou 'lt have a real all-over coat o' clay."
"Hi," said the fool, "that's a good word."
So down he sat and began to drink. But it was wonderful how much liquor it took to moisten so much dust; and each time he got to the bottom of the pot he found he was still dry. At last he began to feel very merry and pleased with himself.
"Hi, yi!" said he. "I've got a real coat o' clay now outside and in—what a difference it do make, to be sure. I feel another man now—so smart." ”

“ If we keep to the same size of drop and increase the fall to something over a yard, no great change occurs in the nature of the splash, but the emergent column is rather higher and thinner and shows a tendency to split into drops. ”

“ Droop, drōōp, v.i. to sink or hang down: to grow weak or faint: to decline.—v.t. to let sink.—n. a drooping position.—adv. Droop′ingly, in a drooping manner. [Ice. drúpa, to droop. See Drop.]
Drop, drop, n. a small particle of liquid which falls at one time: a very small quantity of liquid: anything hanging like a drop: a fall: a trap in the gallows scaffold, the fall of which allows the criminal to drop: a device for lowering goods into a ship's hold.—v.i. to fall in small particles: to let drops fall: to fall suddenly: to come to an end: to fall or sink lower.—v.t. ”

“ Specimens of such patterns, obtained by letting drops of mercury, alcohol, and water fall on to smoked glass, are thrown on the screen, and the main characteristics are easily recognized. Such a pattern corresponds to the footprints of the dance that has been performed on the surface, and though the drop may be lying unbroken on the plate, it has evidently been taking violent exercise, and were our vision acute enough we might observe that it was still palpitating after its exertions. ”

“ AFTERWORDS. An Angel's Whisper.
he Soul—the Spirit of Man—apart from the Great Sun, becomes a teardrop. All is dark to it, when that All-glorious Source of Light and Love is away. Earth's sweetest songs cannot cheer it. But when the morning comes, and the Sun returns, the teardrop becomes a Dewdrop—gleaming like a diamond in [Pg 60] that peerless radiance. And at death, when it seems to be dissolved, and has apparently vanished from sight, it is exhaled—not annihilated. It passes upward to the Golden Gates, to be lost in the splendour of the Everlasting Light! ”

“ We see the dewdrop thrown forth to evaporate—so light a trifle is love. The words airy air are what the careless hand follows as it swings idly on the wrist. As there is a contrast in pictorial idea between the strong lion and the inert pendent dewdrop, so there is contrast between the forceful half of the gesture and the part that deals with air ”

“ Dry rot has set in, and so, though it looks stately and stable, it is like the towering mast of a ship, only held upright by a thin varnished skin, but rotten at the core. It will last as long as the weather is fine; when a storm comes, it will fall. ”

“ As you look down into a glass containing one fluid while drop after drop of another is falling, you perceive fresh currents and curves in every direction. Watching one of these, it has changed places with another, you lose trace of it, each drop is lost in the commingling of the whole. ”

“ One is so fully conscious, even while the drops are falling, that the sun is shining behind the light clouds. And the drops themselves come down so gently, tentatively offering themselves, as it were, to the welcoming earth—pattering lightly on the leaves, and softly rippling the surface of the little pool under the willows. ”

“ A second drop must be let fall in the same way, and be illumined by the spark not at the first moment of contact, but a shade later, say 1100 second later, when the drop will have spread itself out slightly on the plate; and similarly we must illuminate a third drop a shade later than the second, and so on. The observer can, after a little practice, draw from memory on each occasion the drop in the form in which he has seen it. ”

“ A drop from the sky falls into the pond, forms a little bubble for a while, then bursts, and mingles with the morass; another falls into the stream and becomes a part of the living billow. Is my existence like that of such a rain-drop? ”

“ These drops, which on falling glisten like points of gold and sound like the notes of a musical instrument, unite on the turf and murmuring, murmuring with a sound like that of bees humming about the flowers, glide on through the gravel, and form a rill and contend with the obstacles in their way, and gather volume and leap and flee and run, sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with sighs, until they fall into a lake. ”

“ Why, the Nightingale, on his way from the rose-leaf, had, perhaps somewhat inconsiderately, tapped at his door, to inform him that all he could get out of the Dewdrop was (a very incomprehensible sentiment to a sleepy bird) , that he was a tear wept by the Sky when it lost the Sun; and he was bound in all sincerity to add, [Pg 28] that it seemed rather a dull and uninteresting tear to boot.
"I know better," growled the Thrush. (I have used the word "growl," because I can find no better to describe the reality.) ”

“ There is a blooming flower, a shining star even in the most despicable of beings. A drop descends from the clouds and falls upon the dusty road. The drop and the dust uniting, become the mire of the highway ”

“ Beyond, lies a certain Slough of Despond, a concoction of mud and liquid filth, ankle-deep, leg-deep, neck-deep,—in a word, of unknown bottom,—on which the lamp-light does not even glimmer, but which I have occasionally watched, in the gradual growth of its horrors, from morn till nightfall. ”

“ As the drop descends the hollow becomes wider and deeper, and finally closes over the drop (Fig. 3) , which, however, soon again emerges as the hollow flattens out, appearing first near, but still below the surface (Fig. 4) , in a flattened, lobed form, afterwards rising as a column somewhat mixed with adherent water, in which traces of the lobes are at first very visible.
The rising column, which is nearly cylindrical, breaks up into drops before or during its subsequent descent into the liquid. ”

“ But although the drop has fallen from a greater height than in the previous splash, the energy of the impact, instead of being expended in raising the same amount of liquid to a greater height, is now spent in lifting a much thicker adherent column to about the same height as in the last splash. There was sometimes noticed, as seen in Fig. 9, a tendency in the water to flow up past the milk, which, still comparatively unmixed with water, rides triumphant on the top of the emergent column. ”

“ You've made me just hideous!'
"'I can't understand it,' he murmured. 'The middle vat used to be the black one, I know. They must have changed them. The blue one was always the one on the left.'
"'You're a stupid old duffer!' I said. And I left the dye shed in great anger and never went back to it again.
"Well, if I had been conspicuous before, now I was a hundred times more so. Against the black earth, or the green grass, or the white snow, or brown floors my loud, sky-blue coat could be seen as plain as a pikestaff. The minute I got outside the shed a cat jumped for me. ”

“ The splash of a drop is a transaction which is accomplished in the twinkling of an eye, and it may seem to some that a man who proposes to discourse on the matter for an hour must have lost all sense of proportion. ”

“ The rosiness died out of the sunset as embers fade into thick ash. In herself, too, the ruddy glow sank and went out. The earth was a cold dead heap, coloured drearily, the sky was dark with flocculent grey ash, and she herself an upright mass of soft ash. ”

“ And when he rose, staggering like a drunken man, and plunged wildly into the recesses of the wood, a cloud of dust followed him, and pieces and patches of his frayed and rotten garments clung to the impeding branches. Twice he fell, but, maddened and upheld by the smarting spices and stimulating aroma of the air, he kept on his course. ”

“ A LONG, long time ago there was a big drought on the earth. All the rivers dried up and the streams and wells, and the trees withered and the bushes and grass, and men and beasts died of thirst.
One night a little girl went out with a pitcher to find some water for her sick mother. She wandered and wandered everywhere, but could find no water, and she grew so tired that she lay down on the grass and fell asleep. When she awoke and took up the pitcher she nearly upset the water it contained. The pitcher was full of clear, fresh water. ”

“ What fearful tales of hopeless misery, despair, and lingering but welcome death, could those damp, dripping walls tell if they had tongues. The damp sea-air collects in the the roofs of all of them, and falls, year after year, with a steady, unceasing drip, drip, drip, to the paved floor. ”

“ Each droplet forms a gathering place for more condensing water vapor, and therefore grows. When the droplets of water in a cloud are very close together, some may be jostled against one another by the wind. And when they touch each other, they stick together, forming a larger drop. ”

“ Drop by drop, the rain would first come through a crack in the ceiling.... "Toc!... toc!... toc!" ... We would put a basin down for it. A second little streamlet would commence. Down would go our saucepan for that. Then other streamlets would begin, and we would follow them all up with receptacles. We changed the places of our mattresses. It was all in vain, as very soon the deluge began again. Among all this ceaseless spotting, each drop competed with the other in making the clearest sound and the quickest drip: "Ticlictacpictoctoc".... ”

“ I lowered myself down among the deep fur to avoid the pressure of the tearing wind. My groping hands touched something strange. It was the moon-bells. The giant in sending me down to the Earth had thought of the needs of the human. I grabbed one of the big flowers and held it handy to plunge my face in. Bad times were coming, I knew when we must cross the Dead Belt. There was nothing more I could do for the present. I would lie still and take it easy till I reached Puddleby and the little house with the big garden. ”

“ The rods that thinly stripe our landscape, long shafts from the clouds, if we had but agility to make the arrowy downward journey with them by the glancing of our eyes, would be infinitely separate, units, an innumerable flight of single things, and the simple movement of intricate points.
The long stroke of the raindrop, which is the drop and its path at once, being our impression of a shower, shows us how certainly our impression is the effect of the lagging, and not of the haste, of our senses. ”

“ Judas laughed, and lifting up the heavy rattling money-box with ease, went on:
“When a strong wind blows it raises the dust, and foolish people look at the dust and say: ‘Look at the wind!’ But it is only dust, my good Thomas, ass’s dung trodden underfoot. The dust meets a wall and lies down gently at its foot, but the wind flies farther and farther, my good Thomas.” ”

“ Even we, as we passed along, could not help stopping for a long while to admire the beauty of the lazy foam, for ever in motion, and never moved away, in a still place of the water, covering the whole surface of it with streaks and lines and ever-varying circles. ”

“ The splash is insignificantly small and of very short duration. [3] If the drying and polishing be not so perfect, the configurations of Series VII. are produced; while if the sphere be roughened with sandpaper, or left wet, Series VIII. is obtained, in which it will be perceived that, as was the case with the liquid drop, the water is driven away laterally, forming the ribbed basket-shaped hollow, which, however, is now prolonged to a great depth, the drop being followed by a cone of air, while the water seems to find great difficulty in wetting the surface completely. ”

“ 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! ”

“ When I climb the trees, and throw down the dusky fruit, Polly catches it in her apron; nearly always, however, letting go when it drops, the fall is so sudden. The sun gets in her face; and, every time a pear comes down it is a surprise, like having a tooth out, she says. ”