The Amateur Emigrant: The Silverado Squatters |
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Common terms and phrases
Alick already AMATEUR EMIGRANT America began bunks Caliban Calistoga called cañon CHIG UNIV cinnabar colour companion croquet dark deck Devonian door dump England eyes face fellow fellow-passengers forest gone green hand Hanson heard heart heaven hills hilltops hour human Irvine Joe Strong Jones Kelmar Lake County land lived look Lough Foyle Mackay madrona MICHI mind mine-a morning Mount Saint Helena mountain Napa Valley nature never night once passengers perhaps petrifactions pines pipe platform pleasant poison oak rattle road rough round RSITY Rufe saloon Schramberger sciatica Scots second cabin seemed ship ship's sick side silence Silverado SILVERADO SQUATTERS SITY SQUATTERS steerage stood story stowaway strong talk taste thing thought tion told Toll House trees UNIV UNIV veranda whole wife wind wine wonder wood word
Popular passages
Page 212 - The colour of that fog ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant, among the Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen something like it on the sea itself. But the white was not so opaline; nor was there, what surprisingly increased the effect, that breathless, crystal stillness over all. Even in its gentlest moods the salt sea travails, moaning among the weeds or lisping on the sand; but that vast fog ocean lay in a trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morning tremble...
Page 46 - ... an aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.
Page 96 - ... classes display the same appetite as they gorge themselves daily with the miscellaneous gossip of the newspaper. Newspaper reading, as far as I can make out, is often rather a sort of brown study than an act of culture. I have myself palmed off yesterday's issue on a friend, and seen him re-peruse it for a continuance of minutes with an air at once refreshed and solemn. Workmen, perhaps, pay more attention; but though they may be eager listeners, they have rarely seemed to me either willing or...
Page 152 - From the dim shieling on the misty island Mountains divide us, and a world of seas; Yet still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland, And we, in dreams, behold the Hebrides/'2 240 And, Highland and Lowland, all our hearts are Scotch.
Page 16 - This is the closet picture, and is found, on trial, to consist mostly of embellishments. The more I saw of my fellow-passengers, the less I was tempted to the lyric note. Comparatively few of the men were below thirty; many were married, and encumbered with families; not a few were already up in years; and this itself was out of tune with my imaginations, for the ideal emigrant should certainly be young. Again, I thought he should offer to the eye some bold type of humanity, with bluff or hawk-like...
Page 37 - Through this merry and good-hearted scene there came three cabin passengers, a gentleman and two young ladies, picking their way with little gracious titters of indulgence, and a Lady-Bountiful air about nothing, which galled me to the quick. I have little of the radical in social questions, and have always nourished an idea that one person was as good as another. But I began to be troubled by this episode. It was astonishing what insults these people managed to convey by their presence. They seemed...
Page 170 - These led us round the farther corner of the dump; and when they were at an end, we still persevered over loose rubble and wading deep in poison-oak, till we struck a triangular platform, filling up the whole glen, and shut in on either hand by bold projections of the mountain. Only in front the place was open like the proscenium of a theatre, and we looked forth into a great realm of air, and down upon tree-tops and hill-tops, and far and near on wild and varied country.
Page 141 - ... mentioned. It is very curious, of course, and ancient enough, if that were all. Doubtless, the heart of the geologist beats quicker at the sight ; but, for my part, I was mightily unmoved. Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment. " There's nothing under heaven so blue, That's fairly worth the travelling to." But, fortunately, Heaven rewards us with many agreeable prospects and adventures by the way ; and sometimes, when we go out to see a petrified forest, prepares a far more delightful curiosity...
Page 151 - It is no tie of faith, for we detest each other's errors. And yet somewhere, deep down in the heart of each one of us, something yearns for the old land, and the old kindly people. Of all mysteries of the human heart, this is perhaps the most inscrutable. There is no special loveliness in that grey country, with its rainy, sea-beat archipelago; its fields of dark mountains; its unsightly places, black with coal; its treeless, sour, unfriendly looking cornlands; its quaint...
Page 166 - I think, to a tree upon the farther side. On our arrival there followed a gay scene in the bar. I was presented to Mr. Corwin, the landlord, to Mr. Jennings, the engineer, who lives there for his health ; to Mr. Hoddy, a most pleasant little gentleman, once a member of the Ohio legislature, again the editor of a local paper, and now, with undiminished dignity, keeping the Toll House bar.