These great and beautiful ships, imperceptibly rocking like waddling ducks on tranquil waters, these robust ships, with their idle... and nostalgic air, aren't they telling us in a silent tongue: When are we leaving for happiness?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Where has it all gone? I remember that twenty years ago there were geese and cranes and ducks and grouse here, clouds of them!... ...And there are far fewer animals. Wolf and fox are rare, brother, not to mention bears or mink. There used even to be moose!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles ... but there is one order of beauty... which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief--a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are no such oysters, terrapin, or canvas-back ducks as there were in those days; the race is extinct. It is strange how thin...gs degenerate.... I passed, the other day, the deserted house of Mrs. Gerry, which I used to think so lordly. It stands alone now amid the surrounding sky-scrapers, and reminds me of Don Quixote going out to fight the windmills. It should always remain to mark the difference between the past and the present.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only ones who are really grateful for the war are the wild ducks, such a lot of them in the marshes of the Rhone and so peacef...ul ... because all the shot-guns have been taken away completely taken away and nobody can shoot with them nobody at all and the wild ducks are very content. They act as of they had never been shot at, never, it is so easy to form old habits again, so very easy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving; ducks by... the hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in the raw wind, just ready to rise, and now going off with a clatter and a whistling like riggers straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with reefed wings, or else circling round first, with all their paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you before they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them by that you know of, their labored homes rising here and there like haystacks; and countless mice and moles and winged titmice along the sunny, windy shore; cranberries tossed on the waves and heaving up on the beach, their little red skiffs beating among the alders;Msuch healthy natural tumult as proves the last day is not yet at hand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a country full of evergreen trees, of mossy silver birches and watery maples,... a country diversified with innumerable lake...s and rapid streams, peopled with trout ... salmon, shad, and pickerel, and other fishes; the forest resounding at rare intervals with the note of the chickadee, the blue jay, and the woodpecker, the scream of the fish hawk and the eagle, the laugh of the loon, and the whistle of ducks along the solitary streams; at night, with the hooting of owls and howling of wolves; in summer, swarming with myriads of black flies and mosquitoes, more formidable than wolves to the white man. Such is the home of the moose, the bear, the caribou, the wolf, the beaver, and the Indian.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Indian said that he had got his money by hunting, mostly high up the West Branch of the Penobscot, and toward the head of the ...St. John; he had hunted there from a boy, and knew all about that region. His game had been beaver, otter, black cat (or fisher), sable, moose, etc. Loup-cervier (or Canada lynx) were plenty yet in burnt grounds. For food in the woods, he uses partridges, ducks, dried moose-meat, hedgehog, etc. Loons, too, were good, only "bile 'em good." He told us at some length how he had suffered from starvation when a mere lad, being overtaken by winter when hunting with two grown Indians in the northern part of Maine, and obliged to leave their canoe on account of ice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »