Diana's Short Stories

Three Walking-Sticks from the forest had come to live in the big maple
tree near the middle of the meadow. Nobody knew exactly why they had
left the forest, where all their sisters and cousins and aunts lived. But then, if one is a Walking-Stick, you know, one does not care so very much about one's family.

 

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Mexicans delight in holidays, and they celebrate a great many. The 2d of November, the day of the dead, is a great day. For several days beforehand, thousands of strange toys have been offered for sale. When the day of the dead comes children expect to receive these strange presents. When they rise in the morning their first cry is, “Papa, mamma, give me my death.” 

 

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"Snag’s lost two men and a lot of cows and maybe he’s seein’ a chance to get even.”

“Say it this way. ‘He thinks he’s lost cows,’” advises Hashknife, rubbing his thumb softly over the hammer of his cocked Winchester.

 

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It was necessary to be young, or else to forget, at any rate, to be valiant. But had she not had enough of excitement, adventure, the ragged seams of things, variety and burlesque, and been soul-sick through it all, and fled at last from its noise and passions? She shook her head, not so much at Helen as at the other side of her own inner argument.

 

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“Oh, dear!” breathed the little old lady, and shuddered as if all the
winds of heaven had entered the apartment. “Gentlemen sometimes do not
realize--” Her voice faded away, Lucy, not realizing either, was reduced
to literature. Taking up Baedeker’s Handbook to Northern Italy, she
committed to memory the most important dates of Florentine History.

 

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So it was with the Hermetic Teachings of the Gnostics and
Early Christians, which were lost at the time of Constantine, whose iron
hand smothered philosophy with the blanket of theology, losing to the
Christian Church that which was its very essence and spirit.

 

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They were no commonplace affairs, the ugly result of a union of cheap leather, newspaper clippings and paste, but sumptuous books resplendent in morocco and gilt tooling, the creations of an artist who was eminent among binders. These scrapbooks were chiefly devoted to living men,--men who were famous, or who were believed to be on the high road to fame. 

 

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“I'm not afraid that you're afraid. It's a sporting proposition if that's what you mean. A race for a million, and with some of the stiffest dog mushers, and travellers in the country entered against you. They haven't entered yet, but by this time tomorrow they will, and it will be worth what the richest man can afford to pay."

 

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So in the midst of this mental turmoil, came Houston and East St. Louis. At Houston, black soldiers, goaded and insulted, suddenly went wild and "shot up" the town. At East St. Louis, white strikers on war work killed and mobbed Negro workingmen.

 

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The captain suddenly sprang upon the railing of the lanai, held on to a pillar with one hand, and again picked up the two specks of heads through the glasses.  His surprise was verified.  The two fools had veered out of the channel toward Diamond Head, and were directly seaward of the kanaka surf.  Worse, as he looked, they were starting to come in through the kanaka surf.

 

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