Laurels

“ When they have grown as tall as a girl of fifteen, say to each of them, "My beautiful laurel, with the golden rake I have raked you, with the golden bucket I have watered you, with the silken towel I have wiped you." Then after that ask anything you choose, and the laurels will give it to you.' Michael thanked the lady in the golden dress, and when he woke he found the two laurel bushes beside him. ”

“ Those laurels that were a little scorched on the south sides were perfectly untouched on their north sides. The care taken to shake the snow day by day from the branches seemed greatly to avail the author’s evergreens. A neighbour’s laurel-hedge, in a high situation, and facing to the north, was perfectly green and vigorous, and the Portugal laurels remained unhurt. ”

“ There, among the laurels in bloom, they inaugurated an outing which from that time for twenty-one years became annual. All the early members of this small party were abolitionists, despised and in a sense ostracized. They sought a day’s recreation by woods and water where earth and sky welcomed them. There, forgetful of hardships past and to come, they gathered at will the mountain laurel, the blooming of which they had assembled to celebrate. ”

“ We counted no fewer than seven nests in the laurels, but, so far as could be gathered from appearances, in only two of the nests—placed on very thin boughs—had the birds been fortunate enough to rear their young ”

“ Bodily activity gave to this maiden, who, with more than common ease, knit together tones and colors and ideas, a peculiarly touching aspect of childlikeness and naive condescension. She braided the wreath, but with difficulty, confounded once the arbutus with the laurel that resembles it, put in one more blooming myrtle-twig, and decked his curled hair with it, but very seriously. "The garland becomes thee; the high laurels up on the summit thou wilt one day get for thyself," said she. ”

“ To-day the poor quivering refuse raked from the furnace knows all the bitterness of the laurels. Such pride as we retain makes it impossible for us to accept an illusory and transient glory. We know the falsity of attitudinising, and we have probed the emptiness of certain dreams. ”

“ Many Laurels were invited, but in this country they are so numerous, and of such rapid growth, and such flourishing plants, that it was absolutely impossible to collect as many of them as could be desired, and some old veterans declined attending. ”

“ There forests of age-old oaks and spruce, pines and poplars and hickory and ash would troop down and smother in the hillsides, and the rhododendron would be in bloom just now. The laurel bushes would be all a-glisten and the elder tops would be tossing sprays of foam-like blossom between towering sentinels of rock.
But the beauties of the rugged home country had for him another meaning. At the roots of the laurel a man can crouch unseen with his rifle cradled against his shoulder to "lay-way" an enemy who has over-lived his time. ”

“ In my travels among the mountains of our Virginia I have often seen the laurel holding out its evergreen but poisonous leaves in sprays of most enticing beauty. Miles and miles of road, in one unbroken stretch, may there be seen densely hedged on either hand by this beautiful emblem of sin and death. Herds of cattle and flocks of sheep are every year driven over these roads. Every herdsman and shepherd knows the danger to be apprehended from the inclination of some of either kind to "sidle" off from the plain and beaten track and pluck the green leaves of the laurel to their own destruction. ”

“ Sometimes a stem will incline downwards and run along the ground, followed by another. In the evening half-light they might be giant silver-scaled serpents, writhing and twisting and then springing aloft and becoming lost to sight in the dim masses of the crowning foliage. Seen thus one can hardly reconcile its identity with that of the poor, tamed, often-clipped bush of every garden. The Laurel is so docile, so easily coerced to the making of a quickly-grown hedge or useful screen, that its better qualities as an unmutilated tree in a mild district are usually lost sight of. ”

“ Along the dimmest and most distant ridges lay a violet mist that was all ash-of-dreams—but near at hand, whether on the upper levels of high hills or down in the shadowed recesses, where the small waters trickled, everything was color—color, bloom and song.
The rhododendron, which the mountaineer calls laurel, was abloom. The laurel, which is known in hill parlance as ivy, was gay with pink-hearted blossom. The mountain magnolia flaunted its great petals of waxen while and the wild rose nodded its frail face everywhere. ”

“ Most cattle know enough to let it alone; nevertheless some fall victims to it every year. Even the intelligent grouse, hard pressed with hunger when deep snow covers much of their chosen food are sometimes found dead and their crops distended by these leaves. How far more unkind than the bristly armored thistle's is the laurel's method of protecting itself against destruction! Even the ant, intent on pilfering sweets secreted for bees, it ruthlessly glues to death against its sticky stems and calices. ”

“ But the Laurel, on the other hand, maintains its ground, imperturbable and almost impassable, on every hill-side, takes no hints, suspects no danger, and nothing but the most unmistakable onset from spade or axe can diminish its profusion. Gathering it on the most lavish scale seems only to serve as wholesome pruning ”

“ It is a fact familiar to persons engaged in sheep husbandry in New England—and I have seen it confirmed by personal observation—that sheep bred where the common laurel, as it is called, Kalmia angustifolia, abounds, almost always avoid browsing upon the leaves of that plant, while those brought from districts where laurel is unknown, and turned into pastures where it grows, very often feed upon it and are poisoned by it. ”

“ For men have cut down the woods where the laurel grew
to build streets of frame houses,
they have dug in the hills after iron
and frightened the troll-king away;
at night in the woods no hunter puffs out his cheeks
to call to the kill on the hunting-horn. ”

“ One day the skilful hunter met deep in the thickest forest an old bear and killed him with a single shot. The great arrow’s sharp point pierced the mighty heart, and he fell dead at the hunter’s feet. It was summer, and the bear’s pelt was neither close nor even, still the archer drew it off, rolled it together into a hard bundle, and went on with the bear-skin on his back.
He had not wandered far before he perceived an extraordinarily strong smell of honey. It came from the little flowering plants that covered the ground. ”

“ To dream of a Laurel-bush is a token of victory and pleasure. If the dreamer is married it denotes an inheritance through the wife. If a married woman dreams of seeing or smelling Laurel, it is a sign that she shall bear children; if a maid, it denotes that she will be suddenly married. Astrologers consider the Laurel a tree of the Sun, under the celestial sign Leo.
The Roumanians have a legend that there was once a nymph, known as the Daughter of the Laurel, who dwelt in the midst of a Laurel-bush. ”

“ Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love on his breast of stone.
Toll! Let the great bells toll
Till the clashing air is dim.
Did we wrong this parted soul?
We will make it up to him.
Toll! Let him never guess
What work we set him to.
Laurel, laurel, yes;
He did what we bade him do.
[Pg 25] Praise, and never a whispered hint but the fight he fought was good;
Never a word that the blood on his sword was his country's own heart's-blood.
A flag for the soldier's bier
Who dies that his land may live ”

“ Their shores are dotted with homesteads, and at the mouth of the rivers are cities; but for the most part the country is very desolate. If the field birds follow my advice, they will move north immediately.'
"After the lark came the grouse, who had flown over the midlands.
"'I know neither what the lark means with his meadows nor the gull with his islands and points,' said he. 'I have seen only pine forests on this whole trip. There are also many rushing streams and great stretches of moss-grown swamp land; but all that is not river or swamp is forest. ”

“ The palm cast a quick, apprehensive glance around.
“It surprises me,” it said, “that the lions are not already out to hunt this prey, but I do not see a single one astir; nor do I see any of the desert robbers, but they’ll probably soon come.”
“A seven-fold death awaits these travelers,” thought the palm. “The lions will devour them, thirst will parch them, the sand-storm will bury them, robbers will trap them, sunstroke will blight them, and fear will destroy them.” ”

“ VII Eight years Adam Larey dwelt in the desert, growing daily stronger, finer, purer in its illimitable wilds—the abode of purity, silence and tarantulas. Climbing inaccessible heights, striding over impassable plains, stalking the savage antelope, the impatient grizzly, the querulous bob-cat, he acquired the eye of a mountain-sheep, the ear of a deer, the nose of a wolf and many other trophies of the chase. ”

“ They followed like starving wolves after a herd of deer, leaping from rock to rock, crowding every point of vantage, and running and yelling through the underwood until surely the Northmen must have thought the place in possession of a legion of devils.
But all this noise was as nothing to the frightful yell of savage joy which went up from us when we saw the raiders draw together on the shingle ridge of the beach, and knew instinctively by their pale, tideward faces and hesitation, that they were trapped—the sea was out, and their ships were high and dry! ”

“ The laager a most impregnable jam of waggons, strengthened with palisades, sandbags, etc., and surrounded by an entanglement of reims and barbed wire. It was full of women and children and Boers (two hundred of them) , from all the farms within a circle of twenty miles round. These farmers brought over two thousand oxen (one man told me seven thousand) to the laager when the rebellion broke out, and now there were but seventy left—such is Rinderpest.
The people in the laager lived on fresh meat very largely, the men going out daily to shoot game. ”

“ Thus the nettle and milfoil, when carried about the person, were believed to drive away fear, and were, on this account, frequently worn in time of danger. The laurel preserved from misfortune, and in olden times we are told how the superstitious man, to be free from every chance of ill-luck, was wont to carry a bay leaf in his mouth from morning till night. ”

“ The Young Lovell had with him fifty rievers mounted on little horses and fifty men-at-arms that he had taken from Cramlin, where he had left one hundred men under the command of the esquire La Rougerie, and that bleating of lambs aided those rievers to creep up to that tower door. ”

“ Must I go back again to the lepers in the wilderness?’
“But the man lifted her once more upon his horse, and said to her: ‘No, under no conditions shall you go out to the lepers in their mountain caves, but we two shall travel across the sea to another land, where there are no laws for clean and unclean.’ And they——”
But when the vineyard laborer had got thus far in his narrative, the slave arose and interrupted him. “You need not tell any more,” said he. ”

“ The wild geese thanked their good fortune that they had found a sand-strip large enough for them to stand upon, on a steep mountain wall. In front of them rushed the river, which was strong and violent in the snow-melting time; behind them they had an impassable mountain rock wall, and overhanging branches screened them. They couldn't have it better.
The geese were asleep instantly; but the boy couldn't get a wink of sleep. As soon as the sun had disappeared he was seized with a fear of the darkness, and a wilderness-terror, and he longed for human beings. ”

“ The perils of this sport may well give a reputation for boldness and hardihood to our western yeomanry, when we consider that these encounters always occur in most intricate thickets of stubborn tangled laurel, in which the bear must have greatly the advantage in progression,—the sharp form of his head, and its close proximity to the ground, making it perform, in relation to his huge muscular body, the office, it might be said, of the coulter to a plough. ”

“ This is the severest use to which a lariat can be put on mule or horse. The person using it, however, should be careful to see that it sets well back to the shoulder of the animal. I refer now to the part of the loop that is around the neck. The end of the lariat should always be held by a man, and not made fast to any part of the wagon, so that if the animal falls or throws himself, you can slack up the lariat and save him from injury. ”

“ My comrade to port, I to starboard, do not stir. If our fingers mechanically touch our eyelids or scratch our itching neck, our intent eyes never waver. They see nothing but blackness. The light of the stars is veiled in a thin mist, and there are no reflections on the water. We move in a darkness as of the tomb. Thus, in the forest, animals creep along on guard, bending the weeds [38] and crawling through the brush they do not even rustle. Our engines and screws drive us along, supple and furtive like groups of cats. Our prow cuts the water without stirring it. ”

“ Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Laurel was consecrated to every species of glory. The beautiful shrub grows abundantly at Delphi, on the banks of the river Peneus. There its aromatic and evergreen branches shoot up to the height of the loftiest trees; and it is alleged that, by means of some secret virtue, they avert lightning from the spots which they adorn.
According to ancient fable, Daphne was the daughter of the river Peneus. ”