Yawn

“ A little brunette head is nestled more comfortably on the soft pillows—two sleepy gray-blue eyes glance demurely but searchingly around the room. A tired yawn is suppressed by tiny rosy finger-tips—a small round arm reaches upward, and, presto—the lights go out. ”

“ It is the one word; another would sound forced and strained.
"Throughout the babel, there is a tendency for it to sink and rise in sudden accentuations and diminishments. Now there is a diminishment, and a bird in the tree next to mine gives a sleepy stretch out of one wing, which has all the appearance of a yawn. ”

“ They were leaning up against a deck cabin, staring at the sea and, as usual, saying nothing because there was nothing to talk about, when through the open window near them they heard a yawn, as some late sleeper turned in his berth, and then an answering yawn.
“Gad! I dreamed that sucker Cochran was talking to me in my sleep. Bad enough to have to sit up until three o’clock and listen to him. We certainly do have to work hard to earn our money. ”

“ The August Bank-holiday found me at Scarborough, {71} of all places in the world, spending the day there with the two schoolboy sons of my host at a country house in the East Riding. I recall, at the aquarium there, my interest on discovering a "fact not generally known"—namely that fishes can, and do, yawn. We saw a turbot yawn twice, and a cod once. The cod's yawn was remarkable chiefly for its width, but the turbot's was much more noteworthy. It begins at the lips, which open as if to suck in water ”

“ As soon as he makes his untimely appearance, the community begins to stir; a great clatter of drowsy voices and dozens of yawns are the symptoms of returning day; and in ten minutes the market is declared open, though it is still deep and tranquil starlight overhead, with not a trace of dawn as yet visible. ”

“ The hired yaks have lain tethered during the night, and now they are allowed to wander freely over the pasture. Sleepy yawns are heard in the tents, and men come out and make up the fires; the jug bubbles in which the morning tea is stirred up with butter, 40 and kettles are set on three stones over the fire. The puppies play in the open, and are glad that they have not to roll about to-day in a basket. ”

“ To almost any gentleman (especially from a foreign country) there would be little doubt as to the outweighing of the comparative attractions—a warm wife in the bed he had just left, or a naked-legged rush, through the snow, after a wild animal. The thinking that can be done in a second, however, by one of our prompt and unchance-losing Yankees, is wonderful to know. The mystery of a month of missing chickens and sucked eggs, was explained to Bell by that dark line drawn over the snow—a fox or a wild-cat, as he took it to be. ”

“ Again, it is nearly always concealed from sight by the foliage, and in winter it keeps mostly among the evergreens, and at all times haunts by preference pine, fir, and yew trees. In the pale light of a winter day, more especially in cloudy weather, it is hard to see the greenish, restless little creature in his deep green bush or tree. Standing under, or close to, a wide-spreading old yew, half a dozen goldcrests flitting incessantly about among the foliage in the gloomy interior of the tree look less like what they are than the small flitting shadows of birds. ”

“ All white men in the Solomons catch yaws, and every cut or abrasion practically means another yaw. Every man I met had had them, and nine out of ten had active ones. There was but one exception, a young fellow who had been in the islands five months, who had come down with fever ten days after he arrived, and who had since then been down so often with fever that he had had neither time nor opportunity for yaws.
Every one on the Snark except Charmian came down with yaws. ”

“ That day, when we climbed up in the supper-room to take our coffee, where they had already placed a number of chairs, benches, and rustic tables, the yew was more attractive than ever. A fresh breeze coming up from the estuary made the branches gently sway; the sun, striking full on the tree’s top, gilded it, and drew out that penetrating, somewhat resinous odor, which increases in our hearts the rapture of life. The height at which we found ourselves suspended might indeed make us fancy that we were birds ”

“ 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. ”

“ The yaks alone can find anything to do: so long as any vegetation remains they roam and eat it, still yielding milk, which the women take morning and evening, when their shrill whistle and cries are heard for a few minutes, as they call the grunting animals. No other sounds, save the harsh roar and hollow echo of the falling rock, glacier, or snow-bed, disturbed the perfect silence of the day or night. ”

“ They are a fine sight to watch. I know nothing more exciting to witness than a great narrow-waisted yawl, almost on her beam ends, hurling through an ocean of foam, jumping the seas until half her keel is out of water, then burying her bows in the storm of froth as if she were about to dive out of sight, her metal to windward looking like a sheet of polished gold, with the sunshine sparkling in the wet of it. But to be aboard! Decks that one can walk on may be an unsailorly prejudice, yet they are comfortable ”

“ The young yawp in the nest a little, with more breath than noise. It is seldom one finds a buzzard's nest, seldom that grown-ups find a nest of any sort; it is only children to whom these things happen by right. But by making a business of it one may come upon them in wide, quiet cañons, or on the lookouts of lonely, table-topped mountains, three or four together, in the tops of stubby trees or on rotten cliffs well open to the sky. ”

“ The yawl’s mast will be able to pass under the bridge, for the tide is low, and beyond it now we are in sunny green fields, and sailing on smoothly amid quiet villages, rich pastures, and the exuberant hop-grounds of thoroughly English Kent.
Three boys bathing from a boat came near, and for a treat we took them on board, while their hair dripped wet and their teeth chattered fast after too long a swim, but they had read the name on my white flag, and they had also read two canoe books, and so for miles they devoured all that was said and shewn on the yawl ”

“ Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl goes ahead, hunting the best water, and the steamer follows along in its wake. Often there is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding, especially if it is a glorious summer day, or a blustering night. But in winter the cold and the peril take most of the fun out of it. ”

“ How I love the jay! Its harsh gay laughter seems to me an integral part of spring—as much so as the sunny winds of March. No bird is so handsome. I have a friendship for its fierce, bold eye, its short, proud head of a winy grey, its breast and pinions so blue, spotted with black, with penfeathers of black and dazzling white. No creature seems more wild, and none, in fact, is easier to tame. This very summer I tried to rear a nestling which a wanton shepherd took. ”

“ Much I should have wished to stay and hear the hymn with which they greet the night, that is answered by the wolves on the heights of Mloon, but it was now time to raise the anchor again that the captain might return from Bar-Wul-Yann upon the landward tide. So we went on board and continued down the Yann. And the captain and I spoke little, for we were thinking of our parting, which should be for long, and we watched instead the splendour of the westering sun. For the sun was a ruddy gold, but a faint mist cloaked the jungle, lying low, and into it poured the smoke of the little jungle cities ”

“ Here we caught a number of very fine fish, mostly pike and cat, On the Rocky Mountain Sheep 18th, we crossed the Jaun, and passed up to the mouth of the stream, called by the Indians, La-ca-sha-newatu, or Crooked river, where, on the 19th, we encamped. The Jaun is a noble stream, somewhat rapid, the bottom sandy, and the water clear; excepting when rain falls, and then it becomes immediately thick from the earth that is washed into it from the barren hills. ”

“ She could only see the grey outline of trees and shrubs, obscured by the heavy mist; and on the lawn below, a thick cloud that seemed to hang over a dark space which she suspected to be a large pond.
‘There is very little to be gained by looking out here!’ Albinia soliloquized. ‘It is not doing the place justice to study it on a misty, moisty morning. It looks now as if that fever might have come bodily out of the pond. I’ll have no more to say to it till the sun has licked up the fog, and made it bright! Sunday morning—my last Sunday without school-teaching I hope! ”

“ A Red-headed Woodpecker, carrying a yellow butterfly, flew on a fence stake ahead of them and peeped around as they drew near. The setting sun on his bright plumage, the lilac stake and the yellow butterfly, completed a most gorgeous bit of colour and gave Yan a thrill of joy. A Meadow Lark on a farther stake, a Bluebird on another, and a Vesper Bird on a stone, each added his appeal to eye and ear, till Sam exclaimed:
"Oh, ain't that awful nice?" and Yan was dumb with a sort of saddened joy.
Birds hate the wind, and this was one of those birdy days that come only with a dead calm. ”

“ At the end of the fifth day, just before sunset, I reached the source of the stream, for coming suddenly to a wall of rock above which the mountain rose precipitously, I beheld the brook bubbling forth from the bowels of the mountains. I decided to camp here for the night, and proceeded about my usual preparations for getting supper. I had no yams, but plenty of oranges; but presently I saw some yam vines growing a short distance away, and it was the work of a few minutes only to procure enough for supper and breakfast. ”

“ The Yankee temperament is occasionally depressing! I went outdoors again, eating my doughnuts as I walked, and strolled into the vegetable garden to survey the staked rows which denoted beets and peas. Then I went down the slope into my little stand of pines, into the cool hush of them, and unconsciously my brain relaxed in the bath of their peace, and for ten minutes I lay on the needles, neither asleep nor awake, just blissfully vacant. ”

“ A letter dated March 9, 1858, recounts a delightfully dangerous night-adventure in the steamer’s yawl, hunting for soundings in the running ice.
Then the fun commenced. We made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the yawl, and put the men (both crews) to it like horses on the shore. Brown, the pilot, stood in the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took the tiller. We would start the men, and all would go well till the yawl would bring up on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many tenpins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of the boat. ”

“ Following its tracks, Yvon confidently expected to catch sight of the buck within an hour and bring the animal down. In the ardor of the chase, the forester forgot his hunger. He had been on the march about an hour when suddenly in the midst of the profound silence that reigned in the forest, the wind brought a confused noise to his ears. It sounded like the distant bellowing of a stag. The circumstance was extraordinary. As a rule the beasts of the woods do not cry out except at night. Thinking he might have been mistaken, Yvon put his ear to the ground.... ”

“ The Yaoya was a poor hard-working man, but his daughter was the sweetest thing in Yedo. [277] You must know she was one of the five beauties of the city, that grew like five cherry-trees in the time of the spring blossoming.
In autumn the hunters lure the wild deer with the sound of the flute. The deer are deceived, for they believe that they hear the voices of their mates. So are they trapped and slain. For like calls to like. Youth calls to youth, beauty to beauty, love to love. This is law, and this law was the undoing of the Yaoya’s daughter. ”

“ Blue and pink hepaticas—or, as Christina called them, liver-krauts—had pushed up their starry heads, and had even been gathered by Sir Eberhard, and laid on his sister’s pillow. The dark peaks of rock came out all glistening with moisture, and the snow only retained possession of the deep hollows and crevices, into which however its retreat was far more graceful than when, in the city, it was trodden by horse and man, and soiled with smoke. ”

“ I can’t think how you could forget my two beautiful windows—one with a view of the back door for my dissipation, and the other with the garden, and the varieties of trees and the ever-changing clouds. I never look out without finding some entertainment; my last sight was a long-tailed titmouse, popping into the yew tree, and setting me to think of the ragged fir tree at Brogden, with you and Percy spying up, questioning whether golden-crest or long-tailed pye lived in the dome above. No, no; don’t waste anxiety upon me. ”

“ BEYOND THE FIELDS WE KNOW PUBLISHER'S NOTE Beyond the fields we know, in the Lands of Dream, lies the Valley of the Yann where the mighty river of that name, rising in the Hills of Hap, idleing its way by massive dream-evoking amethyst cliffs, orchid-laden forests, and ancient mysterious cities, comes to the Gates of Yann and passes to the sea. ”

“ The Yonne, bending gracefully, link after link, through a never-ending rustle of poplar trees, beneath lowly vine-clad hills, with relics of delicate woodland here and there, sometimes close at hand, sometimes leaving an interval of broad meadow, has all the lightsome characteristics of French river-side scenery on a smaller scale than usual, and might pass for the child's fancy of a river, like the rivers of the old miniature-painters, blue, and full to a fair green margin. ”