Moonshine

“ The land to port loomed [35] black against the moonshine, save where some slope or other catching the slanting beam showed the faint green of its herbage or wooded growths in a very phantasm of hue, like some verdant stretch of land dyeing an attenuated veil of vapour witnessed afar upon the ocean. ”

“ But by the sword of Brian Boru, you'll never get me to fall for the idea that a bunch of moonshine can handle a big woman such as you say Throckmartin's Thora was, nor a two-fisted man such as you say Throckmartin was, nor Huldricksson's wife—and I'll bet she was one of those strapping big northern women too—you'll never get me to believe that any bunch of concentrated moonshine could handle them and take them waltzing off along a moonbeam back to wherever it goes. ”

“ Moonshine glanced over his shoulder at the closely-printed page, and the light of her silver lamp so put to shame his miserable taper that he extinguished it, and began to write some verses in her praise.
At last, Moonshine peered down into a deep, dark dungeon, and saw a hapless human creature bound with chains. Pale and wan he was, from long years of imprisonment. For hours she remained to speak to him comforting words.
In the morning the pioneer came to his home on the mountain side, and told how he had been rescued by Moonshine from highwaymen who pursued him as he journeyed. ”

“ Wonderful moonshine this evening, light as day; and along with it aurora borealis, yellow and strange in the white moonlight; a large ring round the moon—all this over the great stretch of white, shining ice, here and there in our neighborhood piled up high by the pressure. And in the midst of this silent silvery ice-world the windmill sweeps round its dark wings against the deep-blue sky and the aurora. A strange contrast: civilization making a sudden incursion into this frozen ghostly world.
“To-morrow is the Fram’s birthday. How many memories it recalls of the launch-day a year ago! ”

“ It was all moonshine, apparently a reflection of light from our earth, when sixteen times the amount of light showered on us at full moon is then thrown by us on her! But a hole through the middle of the moon, perhaps twenty miles round! There is no air that we know of on the half of the moon that we see, and there is no water. There are ample traces of volcanic fires that once lighted her surface, but they are all long gone out, and have left nothing behind for us but insoluble problems and mysterious wonders—a world of craters, lava, precipices, and cinders. ”

“ PYRAMUS and THISBY, WALL, MOONSHINE, and LION
PROLOGUE. Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show;
But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.
This man is Pyramus, if you would know;
This beauteous lady Thisby is certain.
This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present
Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder;
And through Wall's chink, poor souls, they are content
To whisper. At the which let no man wonder. ”

“ The young moon set early in a glow of white that threw the jagged contours of a hill [Pg 111] to the south-east into strange, weird prominence. The patches of moonshine evaporated from the summits of the nearer hills, and left them hard and dark. Then there was nothing but a great soft black darkness below that jagged edge and above it the stars very large and bright. Somewhere under that enormous serenity to the south of us the hunted Boers must be halting to snatch an hour or so of rest, and beyond them again extended the long thin net of the pursuing British. ”

“ Sunshine climbed into a barrel of mangos, crouching down until they covered him, and Moonshine hid in a sack of grain. When the soldiers reached the red door, the hermit opened it willingly.
"Boys?" said he, in answer to their question. "I have no boys! I am an old man and have lived in this desert place many a long year without wife or child to bear me company. You must be mistaken!"
The soldiers pushed the hermit roughly aside and entered the cave.
"You had better not lie to the Khan's soldiers!" ”

“ Naturally enough the genial influence of moonshine is often supposed to be particularly beneficial to children; for will not the waxing moon help them to wax in strength and stature? Hence in the island of Kiriwina, one of the Trobriands Group to the east of New Guinea, a mother always lifts up or presents her child to the first full moon after its birth in order that it may grow fast and talk soon.391 So among the Baganda of Central Africa it was customary for each mother to take her child out at the first new moon after its birth, and to point out the moon to the infant ”

“ 'You demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make' (page 125) .
Ari. I'll fetch them, sir. [Exit.
Pros. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault ”

“ And though he went on all the way up over the top of Drundle Head, never a fairy did he spy; for he forgot that, in passing what he supposed to be the priest, he had let go [38] both his mouthful of silence and his capful of moonshine.
The next night, when he was coming to the ascent of the hill, he saw a little elderly man wandering uncertainly over the ground ahead of him; and he too seemed to have his hands full of courage and his cap full of moonshine. As Toonie drew near, the other turned about and said to him, "Can you tell me, neighbour, if this be the way to the fairies?" ”

“ The devil 's in the moon for mischief; they Who call'd her CHASTE, methinks, began too soon Their nomenclature; there is not a day, The longest, not the twenty-first of June, Sees half the business in a wicked way On which three single hours of moonshine smile— And then she looks so modest all the while. ”

“ MOON-SHEERED. A ship the upper works of which rise very high, fore and aft.
MOONSHINE. Illicit hollands, schiedam, and indeed smuggling in general; excused as a matter of moonshine. A mere nothing.
MOON-STRUCK. An influence imputed to the moon in the tropics, by which fish, particularly of the Scomber class, though recently taken, become intenerated, and even spoiled; while some attribute poisonous qualities to them in this state. Human beings are also said to be injured by sleeping in the moon's rays. ”

“ As there was no help for it, they took their first voyage to the West Indies; so there was a dispersion of an united family—two went west, one went east, coble went down, and mother, after waiting a month or two, and supposing father dead, went off with a soldier. All dispersed by one confounded gale of wind from the northward and eastward, so that’s the way that I went to sea, Bob. And now it’s time that Moonshine was back.”
But Moonshine kept us waiting for some time: when he returned it was then quite dark, and we had lighted candles, anxiously waiting for him ”

“ There is an infallible way, which is by washing the hands in moonshine, but then the moonshine must be caught in a bright silver basin. You wash and wash in the basin, and a cold moisture will be felt upon the hands, proceeding from the cold and moist rays of the moon.”
“But what shall we do for a silver basin,” said little Daniel?
The Father answered, “a pewter dish might be tried if it were made very bright; but it is not deep enough. The brass kettle perhaps might do better.”
“Nay,” said Guy, who had now begun to attend with some interest, “the shape of a kettle is not suitable. ”

“ Not until they had gone far over the desert on their way to the Khan's city did the captain remember that he had been told there were two boys living with the hermit. He stopped abruptly, wheeled his horse and gave orders that the troop should return at once to the old man's cave. Sunshine guessed what was in the captain's mind, and his heart sank within him. "There will be no possible escape for my brother," he thought, "for the soldiers will come upon Moonshine unexpectedly before he has time to hide again!" ”

“ With a laudable economy, the oil-wicks are extinguished when the moon shines, and the result is, that sometimes an envious cloud leaves the whole city in Cimmerian darkness for the rest of the night, in consequence of five minutes' moonshine in the early part, as, once put out, they are not again relumed. ”

“ At last we heard a conversation at the gate, and Moonshine made his appearance with the two bottles of spirits, and appeared himself to be also in high spirits. The pork and peas-pudding soon were on the table. We dined heartily, and were sitting over the latter part of the first bottle in conversation, it being near upon the eleventh hour, when we heard a noise, at the gate—observed some figures of men, who stayed a short time and then disappeared. The door opened, and Moonshine went out. ”

“ Allegorical, indeed, some of his fancies notoriously are; but those who have attempted to "moralise" the "fierce wars and faithful loves" of his song, as many have done (and few more egregiously than sir John Harrington, in the quaint essay annexed to his barbarous translation) , might have employed their time as profitably in raking moonshine out of water, which flies off into millions of sparkles the moment it is disturbed, but is no sooner let alone than it subsides into the quiet and beautiful image of the orb above, which it showed before. ”

“ The C. O. fought frequently with Gobel for the purpose of prodding the adjutant until he started pounding the desk, which he frequently did.
“Washington has at last discovered that there’s a photographic section hidden away here,” the major told him. “You’re due for a sojourn in the back hills of Kentucky, where moonshine grows on bushes and rifle bullets flow like water.”
The orders were brief and to the point. Hemingwood was to make a mosaic of the Salters River between the villages of Laport and Herkimer. That would be about thirty miles, Hemingwood reflected. ”

“ But it is useless to inquire of any stupid joker, for he will idly say that there is no such man there, because, forsooth, a certain single woman who was sent to the moon came back again, which she would never have done if a man had been there with whom she could have married and remained, Nor should any one be misled by those blind guides who darkly hint that it is all moonshine. There is not an Indian moonshee, nor a citizen of the Celestial Empire, some of whose ancestors came from the nocturnal orb, who does not know better than that. ”

“ The man may be often seen near the Elle-moors, bathing himself in the sunbeams, but if any one comes too near him he opens his mouth wide and breathes upon them, and his breath produces sickness and pestilence. But the women are most frequently to be seen by moonshine; then they dance their rounds in the high grass so lightly and so gracefully that they seldom meet a denial when they offer their hand to a rash young man. It is also necessary to watch cattle, that they may not graze in any place where the Elle-people have been ”

“ The brown and green recesses of the grotto were at once murkier, and yet more distinctly visible, for the glow of the fire, flickering through the crevices of the metal door of the furnace, had begun to assert its luminous quality, which was hardly perceptible in the full light of day, and brought out the depth of the shadows. The figures and faces of the moonshiners showed against the deepening gloom. The sunset clouds were still red without; a vague roseate suffusion was visible through the falling water. ”

“ He slowly patrolled the bank below the broad, thin, crystal sheet, seeing naught but its rainbow hovering elusively in the sun, and its green and white skein-like draperies pendulous before the great dark arch over which the cataract fell. The log caught among the rocks in the spray at the base was still there, seeming always to rise while the restless water seemed motionless.
No trace that human beings had ever invaded these solitudes could he discover. No vague, faint suggestion of the well-hidden lair of the moonshiners did the wild covert show forth. “The revenuers war smarter'n me ”

“ By powdering the rock and washing away the lighter minerals in a stream of water the heavy minerals (zircon, anatase, rutile, magnetite, garnet, monazite, xenotime, &c.) may be collected. This separation has been effected naturally by the weathering and disintegration of the rocks and the accumulation of the heavier minerals in the beds of streams. Under these conditions monazite has been found as rounded water-worn grains in the alluvial gold-washings of the Urals, Finland, Siberia, the United States, Brazil, Colombia, New South Wales, &c., and in tin-gravels in Swaziland, South Africa. ”

“ One already had been partly shaped and hollowed, and resting on it for a moment, Le Moan followed its curves with her eyes, felt the ax marks with her hand, took in every detail of the work, saw it as, with outrigger affixed and sail spread to the wind, it would take the sea, sometime—sometime—sometime.
The ceaseless breakers casting their spindrift beneath the moon lulled her mind for a moment till trees, canoe, reef and sea all faded and dissolved in a world of sound, a voice-world through which came the chanting of stricken coral and, at last, pictures of the wind-blown southern beach. ”