The simile of the face of Glass in mentioning Jamie’s treachery and the poplar tree shaken by the first wind of a storm is true to nature, for a poplar turns the gray side of its leaves when shaken.
Define: fend, kenneled.
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1. From where the year’s last keelboat hove in view
The keelboat, shaped with keel and hence so called, from forty to sixty feet long, carrying as much as sixty tons and pulled by fifteen to twenty-five men, was used on the Missouri and other navigable rivers before the day of the steamboat.
10. Until the tipsy Bourgeois bawled for Glass
The head of a trading post in the fur trading period was called Bourgeois, a French word meaning tradesman.
12. The graybeard, sitting where the light was blear, etc.
The whole account of Hugh’s telling of this great tragedy is of the highest excellence. We already know that Hugh is a story teller; we have seen him composing this very tale (page [58]), and we know how his imagination sometimes carries him beyond the actual, as when he saw Jamie dead (page [60]). The effect of his face, with its changing expressions suiting all the moods associated with love and betrayal, his chanting songlike tones, is shown in the muscular responses of the listeners and their shudders when the story ends. The supreme touch comes when Hugh tells of the slaying of Jamie as if already done.
19. And his the purpose that is art’s, etc.