Friday, January 20, 2012

whippowill

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885
Chapter 1. I Discover Moses and the Bullrushers

"Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use.  I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead.  The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me."