Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers.
It is a foible of our human nature that when we have an extremely unpleasant experience, it gives us a peculiar satisfaction if it is __he biggest_ of its disagreeable kind that has happened since the world began. During a heat wave, for instance, we are very pleased if the papers announce that it is __he highest temperature reached since the year 1881,_ and we feel a little resentment towards the year 1881 for having gone us one better. Or if our ears are frozen till all the skin peels off, it fills us with a certain happiness to learn that __t was the hardest frost recorded since 1786._ It is just the same with wars. The war in progress is either the most righteous or the bloodiest, or the most successful, or the longest, since such and such a time; any superlative whatever always affords us the proud satisfaction of having been through something extraordinary and record-breaking.
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It is a foible of our human nature that when we have an extremely unpleasant experience, it gives us a peculiar satisfaction if it is __he biggest_ of its disagreeable kind that has happened since the world began. During a heat wave, for instance, we are very pleased if the papers announce that it is __he highest temperature reached since the year 1881,_ and we feel a little resentment towards the year 1881 for having gone us one better. Or if our ears are frozen till all the skin peels off, it fills us with a certain happiness to learn that __t was the hardest frost recorded since 1786._ It is just the same with wars. The war in progress is either the most righteous or the bloodiest, or the most successful, or the longest, since such and such a time; any superlative whatever always affords us the proud satisfaction of having been through something extraordinary and record-breaking.
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Just behind his jaw bones a tiny movement was perceptible, like the movement of gills in a fish.
Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger-skins and beautiful women. He was prepared, at a pinch, to forgo the tiger-skins. Unfortunately the beautiful women seemed equally rare and inaccessible. At his office and at his boarding-house the girls were mere mice, or cattish, or kittenish, or had insufficiently read the advertisements.
How happy I might be, if only she was less greedy, better tempered, not addicted to raking up old grudges, more affectionate, with slightly yellower hair, slimmer, and about twenty years younger! But what is the good of expecting such a woman to reform?
There are some young almond tress, which ordinarily look as if drawn by a childish hand. Now, as the wind sets their weak branches gibbering, they seem like shamanistic scratches on the white bone of the brittle bright night.