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More "Twig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be forced over one's own line. It seemed as if we could not bear the agony. And then, while we counted out the last seconds of the half, came a snap like that of a whip's lash, and the bowl of Richter's pipe lay smouldering on the grass. The noble had cut the stem as clean as it were sapling twig, and there stood Richter with the piece still clenched in his teeth, his eyes ablaze, and his cheek running blood. He pushed the surgeon away when he came forward with his needles. The Count was smiling as he put up his sword, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The ant at last met one of his companions, who was also carrying a burden. They stopped, took counsel for an instant, bringing their antennae together, and started for the hillock. The second ant then left his burden, and both together then seized a twig and introduced its end beneath the first load which had been abandoned because of its weight. By acting on the free extremity of the twig they were able to use it exactly as a lever, and succeeded almost without trouble in passing their booty ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... when summer is over 't will be white as snow. Leave it in a snowbank, or in a cellar under wet moss, and 't will turn again to rose-color. This I have seen. In the winter nights the Frost King hangs his ice-diamonds on every twig and rope and eave, and when they shine in the red sunrise they look like these crystals. And I have seen all the sky from the zenith to the horizon at midnight full of leaping rose-red flames above such a world of ice. 'Tis very beautiful ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... which has been lying on the ground in a damp situation will afford an opportunity of studying this phenomenon. The whole surface of the twig will be covered from end to end with little bright pink prominences, bursting through the bark at regular distances, scarcely a quarter of an inch apart. Towards one end of the twig probably the prominences will be of a deeper, richer colour, like powdered cinnabar. The naked eye is ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... until he is as weak as the broken reed and the withered grass? The spirit of the Lord will revive the grass, trampled down by the hoofs of war horses. Soon the bruised root shall redden into the rose and the fluted stem climb into the tree. And think you if God's winds can transform a spray and twig into a trunk fit for foundation of house or mast of ship, that eternal arms can not equip with strength the hand ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... paper citing many different causes of rupture of the tympanic membrane, mentions the following: A blow in sparring; violent sneezing; blowing the nose; forcible dilatation of the Eustachian canal; a thorn or twig of a tree accidentally thrust into the head; picking the ear with a toothpick. In time of battle soldiers sometimes have their tympanums ruptured by the concussion caused by the firing of cannon. Dalby mentions an instance of an officer who was discharged ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... equally keen after Vedius Molo, but all Vedians are eager to shield Molo and to help catch and convict Annius Largus, and all Satronians conversely doing all they can to shield Largus and get Molo. Oh, I twig! Moreover I realize that all Vedians regard the abduction of Greia as not so much a hot-headed folly of Largus as a Satronian retort to the abduction of Xantha; and conversely, all Satronians regard it as merely ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the memory of himself and his wife before his own death, and who left an island called Makenshawe "to the use of the poor of this parish on the Hammersmith side." This bequest is otherwise described as being part of an island or twig-ait called Mattingshawe, situated in the parish of Richmond in the county of Surrey. At the time the bequest was left the rent-charge on the island amounted to L3 yearly, which was to be distributed among twelve poor men and women the first year, and to be used for apprenticing a poor ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... I ventured out again, trembling at every bush I passed, and thinking each twig that touched me a savage. The next day I concealed myself in the same manner, and at night travelled forward, keeping off the main road, used by the Indians, as much as possible, which made my journey far longer, and more painful than I ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... silently, For, oh, the dawn is coming; I creep along, for I have heard A flint-tipped arrow, humming; And I have heard a snapping twig, Above the wind's low laughter; And I have known—and thrilled to know, That swift ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... person, he felt disinclined to go up to the house and demand to see Miss Chesterton. Yet see her he would—but how? He was frowning over this problem when it was resolved for him quite unexpectedly; roused by the sound of a snapping twig, he glanced up—and Hermione was before him. She was coming down a narrow path that wound amid the leaves, and because she wore no hat, the sunlight, filtering through the branches, made a glory of her hair as she passed. Her head was bowed, and she walked very slowly as one in ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... ask you to stay for dinner to-day," she said later, when the tangled mass of the Devoniensis had been separated, shoot from shoot, and pegged out to the last healthy-looking twig, and the two men stood, flushed but safe, on the pathway beside her. She stole a confidential little glance at Cai. "For I understand from Captain Hocken that you prefer to make your excuses separately. I have already forgiven him: ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the fresh-fallen snow was unbroken, and every crystal-coated branch and twig of the great trees upon it gleamed in the moonlight as though made of glass. In the distance the river between its low hills seemed a shining, winding path of silver, and over it the moon hung white and clear and passionless. The mystery of ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... curling foam-waves with hints of delicate rose-bloom in their white shining. The trees, that had stood all winter bare and patient, lifting up their dumb arms in dreary supplication, suddenly, to-day, clothed themselves, every trunk and limb and twig, in flashing ice, that threw back into the gray air the royal greeting of a thousand splendid dyes, violet, amber, and crimson,—to show God they did not need to wait for summer days to praise Him. A cold afternoon: even the seeds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... great ornithologist, says, "I have seen the humming bird, for half an hour at a time, darting at those little groups of insects that dance in the air, on a fine summer evening, retiring to an adjoining twig to rest, and renewing the attack with a dexterity that set all other fly-catchers at defiance." Their feet are small and slender, but having long claws, and, in consequence they seldom alight upon the ground, but perch easily on branches, ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown
... teetotum, made of a crust of rye-bread transfixed by a twig, silently spinning on the cover of a school-book, will give a correct enough image of the earth, which retains unmoved its original impulse, and travels along a great circle, at the same time turning on itself. Gummed on its disc, scraps of paper properly coloured will tell us of white ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go boom—boom—boom—twelve licks; and all still again—stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees —something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there. That was good! Says I, "me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to itself in that way, even when it stands alone in the middle of a pasture,) but grating their boughs against each other, as old horn-handed farmers press their dry, rustling palms together, dropping a nut or a leaf or a twig, clicking to the tap of a woodpecker, or rustling as a squirrel flashes along a branch. It was now the season of singing-birds, and the woods were haunted with mysterious, tender music. The voices of the birds which love the deeper shades of the forest are sadder than those of the open fields: ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sooner or later destined to a chief place amongst our ornamental flowering shrubs. P. japonica Maulei (syn Cydonia Maulei), from Japan (1874), is a rare shrub as yet, small of growth, and with every twig festooned with the brightest of orange-scarlet flowers. It is quite hardy, and succeeds well under treatment that will suit ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... Wamba, "that silken bonnet keeps out no steel blade!" So trenchant was the Templar's weapon, that it shore asunder, as it had been a willow-twig, the tough and plaited handle of the mace, which the ill-fated Saxon reared to parry the blow, and, descending on his head, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... the Equator', in more extended form. In that book he likens an ice-storm to his impressions derived from reading descriptions of the Taj Mahal, that wonderful tomb of a fair East Indian queen. It is a marvelous bit of word-painting—his description of that majestic vision: "When every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume." It will pay any one to look up that description and read it all, though ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... over some difficulty in his sketch, Lampron shuffled his feet; a twig broke, some leaves rustled-Jeanne turned round and saw me looking at her, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... forth to Him, and the strength and power of God coming back from Him. You know His own simile, "I am the Vine, ye are the branches." From the central Vine the life rises and flows to every farthest branch and twig and leaf, connecting them all in the one life. He the Sacred Vine is on earth with us and in Paradise with them. Some of the branches are in the shadow here, some of them are in the sunlight there, but we are all united through the Lord Himself. He is the Vine, we are the branches. Because ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... crows and squirrels. To start the oriole's nest successfully is quite an engineering feat. The birds inspect the branches many times before they make a decision. When they have decided on the site, the mother bird brings her first string or vegetable fiber and attaches it to a twig by winding it around and around many times, leaving one or both ends hanging free. I have nests where these foundation strings are wound around a twig a dozen times. In her blind windings and tuckings and loopings the bird occasionally ties a substantial knot, but it is never the result ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... currents of snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... at my watch; it was six o'clock, and thus wanted two hours to daybreak. Hurriedly I left the inn and went out again. A rimy frost had come upon every twig and bush and tree, and in the light of the moon the ice crystals sparkled as though the spirits had scattered myriads of precious stones everywhere. But I thought not of this. I made my way toward the spot from which I thought I had heard the sound come, and then listened intently. All ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... healthy as a wildflower, she is really very agreeable; and to look at her face is like being shone upon by a ray of the sun. She never walks, but bounds and dances along, and this motion, in her diminutive person, does not give the idea of violence. It is like a bird, hopping from twig to twig, and chirping merrily all the time. Sometimes she is rather vulgar, but even that works well enough into her character, and accords with it. On continued observation, one discovers that she is not a little girl, but really a little woman, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... air—a leafless bough, like a withered arm with its sinews ragged out, bent over across my path. The sea gulls screamed and screeched; they flocked out from the cliff-ledges, and with still wings they towered up into the sky. Every twig and leaf began to play a diabolic symphony. Where the hedge ended I was blown back upon my heels.—It was more than half a gale of ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... foot is cut on a sharp blade of grass, and my dress is caught on an amaranth twig. Wait for me while I ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... had once come to the office a blind man with a knotted twig, and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cipher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to eleven ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... A twig cracked sharply under Pollyanna's foot, and the man turned his head. With a cry of dismay Pollyanna ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... do that," said the bird, when she had returned to ask counsel. "Break off a twig, and plant it in your garden, and it will take root, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... do this, they must show themselves to be engineers of no small ability. Sometimes they fasten one end of a thread to a twig on one side of the stream, and, hanging on the other end, swing over until they can land on the other side. But this is not always possible, for they cannot, in some places, get a chance for a fair swing. In such a ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... meadow and the blue is in the sky; The chill of death is passing, life will shortly greet the eye. We shall revel soon in colors only Nature's artists make And the humblest plant that's sleeping unto beauty shall awake. For there's not a leaf forgotten, not a twig neglected there, And the tiniest of pansies ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... to him be satisfied? he wondered. The thought made him strangely silent. The trapper was the first to mention it as he and the Clown sat smoking with Billy in the dusk outside the latter's cabin the evening before Thayor's arrival. Holcomb, squatting on the ground, had been whittling a twig to a fine point—now he leaned forward and drove it out of sight in the cool earth with his heel. Then, closing his jack-knife, he gazed across the tidy clearing at the big camp, and the line of low-roofed cabins showing dimly in the twilight against the ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... twig broom and they swept the dirty ground. Mrs. Rugieri, next door, showed Grandma her beds, made of automobile seats put together on the ground. That night the Beecham men went to the nearest dumps and found enough seats to make a bed for Grandpa and Grandma and the baby. Fortunately ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... track. Gualtier followed. This path wound so much, and put so many intervening obstacles between him and the other, that he was forced to hurry up so as to keep nearer. In doing so he stepped suddenly on a twig which lay across the track. It broke with a loud snap. At that moment Lord Chetwynde was but a few yards away. He turned, and just as Gualtier had poised himself so as to dart back, he caught the eyes of his enemy fixed upon ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... olives overhead 25 Print the blue sky with twig and leaf (That sharp-curled leaf which they never shed) 'Twixt the aloes, I used to lean in chief, And mark through the winter afternoons, By a gift God grants me now and then, 30 In the mild decline of those suns like moons, Who walked ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... by supposing a person, under circumstances forbidding the use of the voice, seeking to call attention to a particular bird on a tree, and failing to do so by mere indication. Descriptive signs are resorted to, perhaps suggesting the bill and wings of the bird, its manner of clinging to the twig with its feet, its size by seeming to hold it between the hands, its color by pointing to objects of the same hue; perhaps by the action of shooting into a tree, picking up the supposed fallen game, and plucking feathers. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... comes a coal-black rider upon a coal-black horse, And he strives to save the new-born tree and drive the foe afar: Long they fight till the New Year's dawn—until black knight yields, And the foeman hews away the twig, and rides into the dawn, But there will come a time,'tis said, when the white knight must yield, And the twig will grow and its leaves will blow until the trunk is great: So great that a proud war horse 'neath its lower branch ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... very far before they became aware of a strange silence, if silence it could be called, for when they listened the silence was full of sound, innumerable little sounds, some of which they recognised; but it was not the hum of the insects or the chirp of a bird or the snapping of a rotten twig that filled Joseph with awe, but something that he could neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor touch. The life of the trees—is that it? he asked himself. A remote and mysterious life was certainly breathing about him, and he ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... shall find first," she thought, looking sharply on all sides as she went. Crickets chirped, grasshoppers leaped, ants worked busily at their subterranean houses, spiders spun shining webs from twig to twig, bees were coming for their bags of gold, and butterflies had just begun their holiday. A large white one alighted on the top of the ambulance, walked over the inscription as if spelling it letter by letter, then floated away from flower to flower, like one carrying the good ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... round. But it was strange—so strange as to cause the White Hawk to pause and gaze long and fixedly upon the ground—there was no path which led to this flowery circle. There was not even a crushed leaf nor a broken twig, nor the least trace of a footstep, approaching or retiring, to be found. He thought he would hide himself and lie in wait to discover, if he could, ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... the size, and features, and spots of Diana, her departed greyhound, in order that I might get her exactly such another. Don't you think my memory will return well stored, if it is littered with defunct lapdogs. She is so devout, that I did not dare send her word, that I am not possessed of a twig of Jacob's broom, with which he streaked ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... something for me in your turn. You both remember the fountain I call my favourite? Promise me that every morning before the sun rises you will go to it and clear away every stone that impedes its course, and every dead leaf or broken twig that sullies its clear waters. I shall take it as a proof of your gratitude to me if you neither forget nor delay this duty, and I promise that so long as the sun's earliest rays find my favourite spring the clearest and sweetest ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... the sieve,' thought she, and was about to give up in despair when there came a rush of wings through the air, and on every twig of the birch trees which grew by the bank was ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... sulphur match torn from a flat wood strip. She settled herself comfortably again full length. All around her were the innumerable tiny noises of the desert, the hum of countless insect life, the rustling of the sand and the occasional dry crackle of the camel thorns made by the slipping of a twig or the displacing of a branch, sounds that would have been incomprehensible some weeks before. For a few minutes a sand spider attracted her attention and she watched his hurried painstaking operations with wondering interest. Gradually a drowsy feeling stole over her and she realised ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... canst not looke a sconce, Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will, Nor hast thou pleasure to be crosse in talke: But thou with mildnesse entertain'st thy wooers, With gentle conference, soft, and affable. Why does the world report that Kate doth limpe? Oh sland'rous world: Kate like the hazle twig Is straight, and slender, and as browne in hue As hazle nuts, and sweeter then the kernels: Oh let me see thee walke: thou ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... as his soul was enriched with spiritual knowledge, he saw the whole world forming one vast symmetrical expression of God's power and love. Life became a divine gift for every moment and sensation of which, were it even the sight of a single leaf hanging on the twig of a tree, his soul should praise and thank the Giver. The world for all its solid substance and complexity no longer existed for his soul save as a theorem of divine power and love and universality. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... hard put to it to describe just what it was the hue of his face did remind them of, until one day a man brought in from the woods the abandoned nest of a brood of black hornets, still clinging to the pendent twig from which the insect artificers had swung it. Darkies used to collect these nests in the fall of the year when the vicious swarms had deserted them. Their shredded parchments made ideal wadding for muzzle-loading scatter-guns, and sufferers from asthma tore them down, too, and burned them slowly ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... wax and covered the bruises and broken places, and finally tied all up as carefully as I used to my boys' fingers when the cut them, sixty odd years ago. And now mark, my child; I had done all that I could do. I couldn't make the wounds heal or even a new twig start; and yet here is a stately young tree beginning to bear delicious fruit. Nature took my sorry-looking little case in hand, and slowly at first, but by and by with increased vigor and rapidity, she developed what you see. I have an affection for this tree, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... to go for'ard, mister, will you?" he said, turning his haggard eyes upon the trader's face. "I feel as 'ow I'm goin', an' I said I would make a clean breast of it. But I don't want 'er to 'ear; do ye twig, mister, though I'll tell ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... than turning tables to the savage use of inspired sticks for directing the inquirer to a lost object or to a criminal, is the modern employment of the divining-rod—a forked twig which, held by the ends, revolves in the hands of the performer when he reaches the object of his quest. He, like the savage cited, is occasionally agitated in a convulsive manner; and cases are quoted in which the twig writhes ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... through the night which hides things from us, who, in order to see their longed-for looks and to find the food wherewith she may feed them, in which heavy toils are pleasing to her, anticipates the time upon the open twig, and with ardent affection awaits the sun, fixedly looking till the dawn may break; thus my Lady was standing erect and attentive, turned toward the region beneath which the sun shows least haste;[1] so that I, seeing her rapt and eager, became such as he who in desire should wish for something, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... approached, crashing the underbrush and shouting lustily, the three stood motionless, guns ready: the suspense grew tense and the beaters grew silent as they hurried, unseen, from the line of fire. A moment of dead silence, then Lindsey heard to his right a dry twig snap and turning saw a big boar slip out from the brush and pause, its ugly tusks foam-flecked. His heavy gun crashed, the boar leaped convulsively across the clearing, falling at a second shot. As it dropped he whirled to cover a big buck which sped ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... with a view to their ultimately becoming professional stage dancers. They know the emoluments. They know that one daughter on the dancing stage is worth ten in the parlor—financially. They know, too, that old adage "as the twig is bent," and the rest of it, so they start their twigs straight and in fertile soil with faith that in this way their child's future is well and happily provided for. A knowledge of stage dancing is a life insurance policy ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... reveals the close observation which ultimately recorded its particular individuality. You feel that as a shepherd knows his sheep to call each by its name, so the artist must have become familiar with every separate leaf and twig before he had completed his task. The whole is broad and simple, and scarcely suggests the enormous patience which must have been needed to carry out the self-imposed toil. Nothing is shirked, nothing is scamped; from the stem to the outermost leaf, every part in succession reveals equal ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... hinders thought. The redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes, and more than half suppress'd. Pleas'd with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes From many a twig the pendent drop of ice, That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below. Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... her body, and swimming withal and fishing from the eyot by the witch's leave. And again by her own leave she went to seek Habundia in the wood, and spent a happy hour with her, and came back with a fawn which she had shot, and so but barely saved her skin from the twig-shower. Then yet again she went into the wood on the witch's errand as well as her own, and was paid by her friend's sweet converse, and by nought else save the grudging ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... continues: "As some rude resemblance is necessary for the first start," &c.; and a little lower he writes: "Assuming that an insect originally happened to resemble in some degree a dead twig or a decayed leaf, and that it varied slightly in many ways, then all the variations which rendered the insect at all more like any such object, and thus favoured its escape, would be preserved, while other variations would be neglected, and ultimately ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... persons, in loose striped gingham shirts and bare feet, with an attempt at a grave expression of thick-lipped coffee-coolers, the whites of their eyes turned up with becoming decorum, and preceded by the old twig of a clerk, who seemed to crackle in the sea-breeze as he again hung himself, stern on, to his stool of a trunk, entered the cool counting-house, bearing trays, fruits, and bottles, which they methodically ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... crept. Dick could see him picking his way like a dancer, so that he might step on no branch or twig which would break and give him away. Now he was almost at the side of the house. Dick saw him lean forward and cautiously peer in ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... answer. He went to the hedge and drew out a long supple twig of hazel, stripped it of its leaves, and once more tried, with it, to tie up his parcel. But the angle was too acute, and just as the twig tightened satisfactorily it snapped, and this time the razor slid out sideways ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... warnings to the men of Ulster. Cuchulain strode into the wood, and there, with a single blow, he lopped the prime sapling of an oak, root and top, and with only one foot and one hand and one eye he exerted himself; and he made a twig-ring thereof and set an ogam[b] script on the plug of the ring, and set the ring round the narrow part of the pillar-stone on Ard ('the Height') of Cuillenn. He forced the ring till it reached the thick of the pillar-stone. Thereafter Cuchulain went his way to his tryst ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... unaware of the existence of Eve, asserted himself in Rupert. He picked up his cap and stick without a word, and turned towards the door. There, however, he was confronted by Mrs. Carteret, tugging at a line of chairs attached to a plank, like a very small bird with a very large twig. To refuse the aid that she immediately demanded was impossible, and even before the future back row of the sixpennies had been towed to its moorings, he realised that hateful as it would be to stay and join in these distasteful revels, it would be better than going home and thinking ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... stripe the dried grass on which Mowgli and Bagheera were resting. It was the end of the cold weather, the leaves and the trees looked worn and faded, and there was a dry, ticking rustle everywhere when the wind blew. A little leaf tap-tap-tapped furiously against a twig, as a single leaf caught in a current will. It roused Bagheera, for he snuffed the morning air with a deep, hollow cough, threw himself on his back, and struck with his fore-paws at the nodding ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the children still played in their camp. One day, while all were gone on a play-search for food, Joseph was left on guard in a hollow tree with merely a peep-hole through which to watch. He heard the cracking of a twig; to his surprise, something moved cautiously through the bushes. It was a real Indian boy. He crept to the wigwam door, peeped in, and then thrust in his arm. Joseph could not tell whether it was to take or to leave something. As the lad turned, he proved to be Assacon. Before Joseph could scramble ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... birds began to reappear. A jay screamed somewhere deep in the yellowing woods; black-capped chickadees dropped from twig to twig, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Carmen, quickly, her large lustrous eyes gleaming with a dangerous light. "Do you know how you feel when you come in contact with a reptile, a snake? When I was a little girl, on my father's plantation, I saw one day, under an aloe-tree, what I thought was a green twig; and when I grasped it, it was a cold, clammy snake, which, in a moment, twined itself around my arm. I could not scream for terror; but Sarah, my mother's faithful slave, saw it. She tore the viper from my ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... so later, after a straight, swift drop, Carse landed on the hill, close to a particular, gnarled oxi-tree stump. The nearby ranch-house looked deserted, the whole place seemed desolate. The Hawk waddled over to the stump, pressed a crooked little twig sticking out from it, and a section of the seeming-bark slid down, revealing the hollow, metal-sided interior of ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... have pushed upward to the spring sunshine, and rose bushes are beginning to send out tender green shoots. "Pussies" have been reported by C. H. W., Mary M. R., Joe Ward, and many others; and Louis C. Vogt sends a twig of these pretty downy tokens of spring, which he accompanies with a very neatly printed letter. It is now time to begin to watch for violets and anemones, and ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and met at that one point. He said he didn't know, but Elam, after looking around a little, started up one with as much confidence as though he had seen Tom when he came out. After some questioning from Tom he showed him a little twig, not larger than a needle, which he had brushed off in his hurried flight after he had thrown down his gun; and a short distance farther on he found the weapon, which Tom, in his excitement, had tossed clear across the ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... upon his shoulder between the highway hedges, the new yellow of the rushes catching the eye of an occasional field-labourer as he glanced through the quickset, together with the wayfarer's hat and head, and down-turned face, over which the twig shadows moved in endless procession. It now became apparent that the direction of his journey was Weydon Priors, which he reached on the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... was bloomin' clever to twig we was English," he told the others of B Company; "but you wait till the lime-light's ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... great handicap to begin really serious work at seventeen or eighteen, when the flexible bones of childhood have hardened, and have not the pliability needed for violin gymnastics. It is a case of not bending the twig as you want the tree to grow in time. And those who study professionally are often more interested in making money as soon as possible than in bending all their energies on reaching the higher levels of their ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... live-oak with trunk full forty feet in girth, and branches spreading like a banyan. Though an evergreen, but little of its own foliage can be seen, only here and there a parcel of leaves at the extremity of a protruding twig; all the rest, great limbs and lesser branches, shrouded under Spanish moss, this in the moonlight showing ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... comes, and I'll be lying in the huts—boards on the ground, and good canvas, and everything comfortable—says I to the boys, 'Shut your faces, men, and let a poor chap sleep;' but they never twig the darkness of my meaning. I'll only be wanting a bit of quiet for thinking of.... with the stars atwinkling down.... She's looking at that one.... Shine ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... I regret to say, to see Eliza's eggs hatch out from the cocoon; but in other instances, especially in Southern Europe, I have noticed the little heap of well-covered ova, glued together into a mass, and attached to a branch or twig by stout silken cables. If you open the cocoon when the young spiders are just hatched, they begin to run about in the most lively fashion, and look like a living and moving congeries of little balls or seedlets. The common ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... wood smoke into the morning air. On the bricks sat a billy-can full of water just on the boil, and, as it bubbled up, Grizzel threw in a small handful of tea, giving it a stir round with a cherry twig. She let it bubble again while she counted ten, then lifted the can to one side and put the lid on. She had begged a cup of warm, frothy milk from the milk-boy's pail as he came up the hill. The damper was sitting on the hot bricks, and Grizzel ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... girl's mental world, which now reached from the cobbler's shop to the marsh, over a portion of the city, and back again. It was rosy-hued, bright, sparkling with the pennies and nickels she intended to earn. All her glory would come with the aid of that twig gatherer's leather strap. She looked down upon it with a proud toss of her head. Jinnie was recovering the independent spirit which had dominated her when she had wandered alone on the hills ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse of him ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... a twig caused him to turn suddenly round. Paul de Vaux was advancing through the ruins, with a loose cloak thrown over ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said Loki, 'do like the rest, and show honour to Balder by throwing this twig at him, and I will direct thy arm toward the place where ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... I—Tarrano—have almost lowered myself to admit this Jac Hallen my rival." He laughed harshly. "Not so! A rival? Pah! He shall live if you wish it—live close by you and me—as an insect might live on a twig by the rim of the eagle's nest.... Enough!... I was asking you, Georg Brende, of this ultimatum. Should I yield to it?" He had suppressed his other emotions; he was amusing himself with ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... are the stumps or scars of dead branches, which once represented its foremost growth; there are the branches with their needles spread out to the air; there are the buds at the end of each branch and twig, which carry the still closely packed needles which are the promise of the future. In like manner, the chrysalis has, as its past, the caterpillar; as its future, the butterfly. The man has, in his past, the animal; ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... everything was getting ready for the restoring slumber of evening and night-time. Everything seemed to be saying to man: 'Rest, brother of ours; breathe lightly, and grieve not, thou too, at the sleep close before thee.' I raised my head and saw at the very end of a delicate twig one of those large flies with emerald head, long body, and four transparent wings, which the fanciful French call 'maidens,' while our guileless people has named them 'bucket-yokes.' For a long while, more than an hour, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... morsel, particle &c (smallness) 32; installment, dividend; share &c (allotment) 786. debris, odds and ends, oddments, detritus; excerpta^; member, limb, lobe, lobule, arm, wing, scion, branch, bough, joint, link, offshoot, ramification, twig, bush, spray, sprig; runner; leaf, leaflet; stump; component part &c 56; sarmentum^. compartment; department &c (class) 75; county &c (region) 181. V. part, divide, break &c (disjoin) 44; partition &c (apportion) 786. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... "Aye, aye, sir, I twig," said Ben, going forwards and then down the main hatchway, slipping off the cover for ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... was clear and fine, a perfect example of early spring, with silvery pearls showing on the tips of the red-twig osiers, and pussy-willows gleaming gray along the margins of swampy places. Sylvia and Judith felt themselves one with this upward surge of new life. They ran to school together, laughing aloud for no reason, racing and skipping like a couple of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... up before him. In those leaves yonder is a battle—a bloody battle, and things are blistered into his boyish heart in that battle that never heal over; that tuft of sod is a girl's face—a little girl's face that he loved as a boy; there is his first lawsuit—that ragged pile of leaves by the twig at the log's end; and the twig is his first ten thousand dollars. All of it lies there before him, his victories and his defeats, his millions come, and his millions going—going?—yes, all but gone. Yonder that deep gash in the sod at the left hides a woman's face—pale, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the lofty and slender branches of the wild cherry, the berries of which, now ripe, and sweet as drops of honey, and black as polished jet, offered a delicious repast to clouds of little birds, that hopped chirruping from twig to twig: and lastly, I may mention a fine arbutus, which in its turn presented a tempting collation to the notice of many a hungry bullfinch. The soft turf around was strewed with the shining black and bright red berries, which the last breeze had ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... out of the wood; that's why you don't twig it. But see they get the holy vessels ready for worship—quick! Yes, and have a special lamb brought in, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... the size of the dried leaves should be noted. The smallest leaves are those which have grown nearest the tip of the twig and hence are the youngest. These make the choicest tea. The older and larger leaves make tea of less fine flavor. "Flowery Pekoe" and "Orange Pekoe" are choice India teas. These brands consist of the buds and ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... with fog that one could scarcely see a cow's length across a field. Every blade, twig, bracken-frond, and hoof-print carried water, and the air was filled with the noise of rushing ditches and field-drains, all delivering to the brook below. A week's November rain on water-logged land had gorged her to full flood, and she proclaimed ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... on the occasion of my last visit to Red Hall, you were pleased to express a wish that a' would send you up as arthentic a list as a' could conveniently make up of my qualifications for the magistracey. Deed, a'm sore yet, Sir Tomas, and wouldn't it be a good joke, as my friend Dr. Twig says, if the soreness should remain until it is cured by the Komission, which he thinks would wipe out all recollection of the pain and the punishment. And he says, too, that this application of it would be putting it to a most proper and legutimate use; the only use, he insists, to which ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Argus pheasant, noted for the extreme beauty of the male's plumage, was observed by H.O. Forbes in Sumatra. It is the habit of this bird to make "a large circus, some ten or twelve feet in diameter, in the forest, which it clears of every leaf and twig and branch, till the ground is perfectly swept and garnished. On the margin of this circus there is invariably a projecting branch or high-arched root, at a few feet elevation above the ground, on which the female bird takes its place, while in the ring the male—the male ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... different from that of New York, and some words in the one city may be unintelligible in the other, though well understood in that in which they are current. Nevertheless, slang may be said to be universally understood. "To kick the bucket," "to cross the Jordan," "to hop the twig" are just as expressive of the departing from life in the backwoods of America or the wilds of Australia as they are ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... planets; a peculiar and malevolent atmosphere surrounded him. Son of an obscure, patient, and submissive village priest, he also was patient and submissive, and he was a long time in recognizing the particular rancour of destiny. He fell rapidly and arose slowly. Twig by twig he restored his nest. Having become a priest, the husband of a good woman, the father of a son and a daughter, he thought that all was going well with him, that all was solidly established, and that he would remain thus forever. And ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... that walk! It was a clear, frosty evening. The moonlight was radiant. Every twig was tipped with silver. The smallest object could be seen distinctly. I watched the rabbits as they popped timidly in and out of the great gorse hedgerows. A hare went scurrying across the field. I felt all at once that I was an intruder. What right had I to be in the company of these ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... That is a Major, they grow like the Cedars of Lebanon. You don't see a winter-killed twig on a tree. They were full ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... came within fifty yards of each other, therefore, watchers along the ravine saw the quick exchange of significant glances between the young braves. "Twig that?" whispered Trooper Blaine, in low, emphatic tone. "Those fellows know 'Scotty' just as well ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... great creature like that. He was so evidently enraged and baffled by the uproar and dazzled by the floods of lightning that swept down into the deepest recesses of the forest, showing at one second every detail of twig, leaf, branch, and stone round you, and then leaving you in a sort of swirling dark until the next flash came; this, and the great conglomerate roar of the wind, rain and thunder, was enough to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... belt, and he gave him orders to let all the king's horses get before him, and as he should overtake one horse after the other, to take one of the twigs and strike the horse with it over the crupper, and then let that twig fall; and after that to take another twig, and do in like manner to every one of the horses, as he should overtake them, enjoining the horseman strictly to watch when his own horse should stumble, and to throw down his cap on the spot. ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... part of the fun," said I, turning the water out of my boots, and proceeding to toast my socks by the fire on the thorns of a twig. "Suppose we sing a song. What shall it be?—'The meeting ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... even in the mysterious countries governed by the Grail King, by the Fairy Morgana, by Queen Proserpine, by Prester John; nay, in the new Jerusalem, in the kingdom of Heaven itself, nothing but spring; till one longs for a bare twig, for a yellow leaf, for a frozen gutter, as for a draught of water in the desert. The green fields and meadows enamelled with painted flowers, how one detests them! how one would rejoice to see them well sprinkled with frost or burnt ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... the leaves on your boughs. Gather a small twig with four or five leaves on it, put it into water, put a sheet of light-colored or white paper behind it, so that all the leaves may be relieved in dark from the white field; then sketch in their dark shape carefully ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... when well out of sight of the boat-house; "we did that rather neat, eh? Hanged if Toddy wasn't smoking like a chimney. Did you twig his weed?" ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... wear," declared the girl gayly. With delicate fingers she detached a little luxuriant twig of the bloom from her breast, and set it in the place where the rose had been. Her face was close to his. He could feel her ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... from him. This was a faith which must fail that it might grow. Imperfection must fail that strength may come in its place. It is well for the weak that their faith should fail them, for it may at the moment be resting its wings upon the twig of some brittle fancy, instead of on a branch of the tree ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... to guide you, first, the map; second, sun; third, shadows; fourth, wind; fifth, compass; sixth, your bent-twig blazing, there will be little, if any, danger of being lost. But you must constantly keep on the alert and refer frequently to these guides, especially when deflecting from the course first taken after leaving camp. At every ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... piney and fragrant. The stems of the trees are trim and straight, and in many places all the ground is hidden for miles under a thick cushion of moss of a vivid green color, with not a decayed or ragged spot in its surface, and not a fallen leaf or twig to mar its immaculate tidiness. A rich cathedral gloom pervades the pillared aisles; so the stray flecks of sunlight that strike a trunk here and a bough yonder are strongly accented, and when they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a mocking tone. "We don't allow any weak creature such as you are to stay under our shelter. Go away!" he said angrily, and, taking a dry twig, he threw it at the ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... "Twig auld Tooralladdie, Don't he look immense? His watch and chain are no his ain His claes cost eighteenpence; Wi' cuffs and collar shabby, 0' mashers he's the daddy; Hats off, stand aside ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... soldiers and their traps. Look at them," continued Captain Oughton, turning to a party of the troops ordered for a passage, who were standing on the gangway and booms; "every man Jack with his tin pot in his hand, and his greatcoat on. Twig the drum-boy, he has turned his coat—do you see?—with the lining outwards to keep it clean. By Jove, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the little people who live up in the trees? Little twig people who dance and swing and bob about, who nod and bow and flutter hither and yon; some astride funny twig horses, others dangling head down, many waiting to run a race when a stiff breeze comes along, and all as ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... made up his mind to deviate to the side after a little; for I soon found myself running alone, and two or three men—to judge by their cries—keeping as close on me as they could by the sound of my plunging among twig and bracken. At last, by striking to an angle down a field that suddenly rolled down beside me, I found soft carpeting for my feet, and put an increasing distance between us. With no relaxation to my step, however, I kept ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... clear and adequate physical basis for appendicitis. A small, twisted, shriveling spur or side twig of the intestine, opening from a point which has become a kind of settling basin in the food-tube, its mouth gaping, as it were, to admit any poisonous or irritating food, infectious materials, disease-germs, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the last. Now hush indeed! The stream kisses the lake. We near the shrine. Stir no snapped twig. Let your foot - even yours - Fall like ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... world whom I wished most earnestly to avoid. She was standing on the edge of the cliff, her hands behind her, gazing seawards, and though I stopped short at the sight of her, and for a moment entertained wild thoughts of flight, it was not possible for me to carry them out. A dry twig snapped beneath my feet, and, turning quickly round, she had seen me. She came forward at once, and for some reason or other I knew that she was glad. She smiled ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his nose-bridle; but, if wild or frightened, he will assuredly struggle till the nose-stick be torn out of his nose, and he becomes free. It is, therefore, better to tie the bridle to a tuft of grass, or a slender twig, rather than to a tree or to the saddle-bags. Mounting an ox is usually a troublesome business, on account of his horns. To make ride-oxen quiet and tame, scratch their backs and tails—they dearly love it—and hold salt in your hands for them to ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Captain Cook remarks are so plentiful in Thirsty Sound. He says, 'We found also an incredible number of butterflies, so that for the space of three or four acres the air was so crowded with them, that millions were to be seen in every direction, at the same time that every branch and twig were covered with others that were not upon the wing.' The numbers seen by us were indeed incredible; the stem of every grass tree, which plant grows abundantly upon the hills, was covered with them, and on their taking wino, the air appeared, as ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the trees begin to bud and blossom, the sap rises and works its way up into every bough and branch and twig of the tree. Sap is a liquid which flows through the tree much in the same way that blood flows through our veins, and the sap is the life-giving element of the tree, just as the blood is of ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... as the weapons, and at seven o'clock on the morning of July 11, 1804, the two men faced each other on the heights of Weehawken, overlooking New York bay. Both fired at the word; Burr's bullet passed through Hamilton's body; Hamilton's cut a twig above Burr's head. Hamilton died next day, and Burr, his political career at an end, buried himself in ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... great load of the frozen fish. Besides what they had eaten for dinner, there were at least a hundred handsome fellows, and the boys had strung each fisher's catch on a birch twig which they had cut and trimmed while coming down to ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... the way, and all the men followed. Not a leaf rustled beneath their tread. Not a twig broke as they crept up the side of the deep ravine and looked out ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... the daffodils yellow diamonds, the violets sapphires, the corn-flowers turquoises, the tulips amethysts, opals and diamonds, so that the garden borders blazed like the sun. The Golden Branch itself had become as tall as a forest tree, and sparkled with ruby cherries to its topmost twig. No sooner had the Grasshopper and the Cricket touched it than they were restored to their natural forms, and their surprise and joy were great when they recognised each other. At this moment Florimond and the Fairy Douceline appeared in great ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... stalking through the woods, silent as an Indian, stealthy of foot, with eyes that glanced sharply in all directions. Once a twig snapped under foot, and after that he remained motionless through a long moment, shrinking against the trunk of a tree and scanning the forest anxiously in all directions. At length he ventured out again, grown doubly cautious. In this manner he worked his way up the course of the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... the whole firmament around me seemed to burn; a glow of fire passed over all things. Before me stood a tall aspen, whose leaves trembled and crackled, whilst sparks of fire darted forth from them. Upon one twig of the tree sate a huge black bird, looking on me with a fiery glance, and singing hoarsely and tunelessly, while the tempest and flame rioted around him. I heard the voices of my adopted mother and sisters anxiously calling on me from a distance ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... saucepan on the hearth, the pail on the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then, with professional movements, she closed the dead woman's large eyes, put a plate on the bed and poured some holy water into it, placing in it the twig of boxwood that had been nailed to the chest of drawers, and kneeling down, she fervently repeated the prayers for the dead, which she knew by heart, as a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... I heard the creak of a door opening, then the faint crack of a broken twig. In two bounds I got down from the ruin, and stood still, all aghast. Rapid, light, but cautious footsteps sounded distinctly in the garden. They were approaching me. 'Here he is ... here he is, at last!' flashed through my heart. With spasmodic haste, I pulled the knife out of my pocket; with ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... morning by the cheerful and persistent song of a robin, which had perched on a twig just outside her window. She had gone to bed in a discouraged frame of mind, and dreamed that her two cousins had turned into lionesses, and were fighting together over her prostrate body; but with the morning light ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... modification is limited, it begins when the artist takes one standpoint in preference to another. In figure composition, where modification is infinite, it begins with the first touch to bring the model into pose. When he bends a twig or turns a fold of drapery the spirit of art has come and is stirring within him. What matters the process! Surely it is time that ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... how the great hunter who sleeps with his gun at his pillow is awake in an instant, with all his faculties alert, when the sacred spider breaks a twig in the jungle? You remember how the handsome highwayman, at the first far clatter of hoofs on the great North Road, is up and out on the scullery roof of the inn before you have turned the page, and is deep in Lonely Copse (wearing the serving-wench's stomacher) before his first fat pursuer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... to speak, and renders one receptive of every influence. Through the little copse she walked slowly, with her cloak folded about her, lingering to imbibe the sense of shelter, the sunset filtered in purple through the mist of woven spray and twig, the companionship of growth not sufficiently dense to band against her the sweet home-feeling of a young and tender wintry wood. It was therefore just on the edge of the evening that she emerged from the place and began ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... Naples. They dress in plain clothes, go in twos and threes, are easily distinguished, and are permitted to carry larger walking-sticks than the Romans, whom the French commandant has forbidden to come abroad with any but the merest twig. Some of these spies wear spurs, the better to deceive and to succeed in their fiendish work. No disguise, however, can conceal the sbirro. His look, so unmistakeably villanous, proclaims the spy. These fellows will not be defeated in their purposes. They carry, it is said, articles of conviction, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... three varieties of the elm, namely, the broad-leafed, lime-leafed, and twisted elm, in which latter the fibres of the wood are twisted. Even with the heterophyllous hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), which bears on each twig leaves of two shapes, "several plants raised from seed all retained "the same peculiarity." (10/155. 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1841 page 687.) I will add only one other remarkable case of variation in foliage, namely, the occurrence of two sub- varieties ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... drought and heat of the climate are so much greater,' answered Sam Holt; 'and the preponderance of pines, loaded to the end of every leaf and twig with pitch and resin, affords uncommon ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... day was drawing to its close. The wind had gone down, but the snow was now falling in large, thick flakes. The evening twilight crept into the room. Antkowa was sitting in front of the fire; she broke off twig after twig of the dry firewood, and carelessly threw ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... only the vague figure of Sanchez pacing the sands, his lips muttering curses. I dared not move, scarcely indeed to breathe, so closely did he skirt my covert. To venture forth would mean certain discovery; nor could I hope to steal away through the bushes, where any twig might snap beneath my foot. What could I do? How could I bring warning to those sleeping victims? This heartless discussion of robbery and murder left me cold with horror, yet helpless to lift a hand. I had no thought of myself, of my possible fate ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... assure you; may I present you with this sprig of it," cutting off a small twig, and presenting it at the same instant ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... nearer or farther upon a horizontal arm. It is equivalent to so many ounces when it is close to the upright, and to so many pounds when it hangs from the farther end of the horizontal rod. Distance plays some such part with the twig or the bird in the upper corner of a Japanese composition. Its place is its significance and its value. Such an art of position implies a great art of intervals. The Japanese chooses a few things and leaves the space ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... gulf between these two origins. The notion is persistent and incurable in the human heart, that whatever variation there may have been from the original type, education and training can reshape the likeness of Adam to the likeness of God. "As the twig is bent the tree is inclined," says the popular proverb. True; but though a crooked sapling may be developed into the upright oak, no bending or manipulation can ever so change the species of the tree as to enable men to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. Here again the ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... drooped with its feather over his handsome features, and in his delicately gloved hand he held a slight cane, which, from time to time he rested on the point of his high-heeled shoes, bending the lithe twig with ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... painters (in spite of their exquisite pots and pans, and cabbages and carrots, their birch-brooms, in which you can count every twig, and their carpets, in which you can reckon every thread) do not interest me; their landscapes too, however natural, are mere Dutch nature (with some brilliant exceptions), fat cattle, clipped trees, boors, and windmills. Of course I ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... noun, completing a verb, and referring to or explaining the subject: "A bent twig ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... spoke I was startled by a sharp crackle followed by a stealthy rustle, as if some one had inadvertently stepped upon a dry twig and had then glided quickly away. I turned at once to the woods, and could almost have sworn I caught a fleeting glimpse of a copper-colored hand, and the flash of a rifle-barrel. But as I gazed longer I saw nothing but the dense foliage of the low scrub-oaks ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... or none that hinders thought: The redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes and more than half suppressed. Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes From many a twig the pendant drops of ice, That tinkle in the withered leaves below. Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the heart May give an useful lesson to the head, And learning wiser grow without his ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... covered with bushes of a year's growth see how the silvery dust lies on every seared leaf and twig, deposited in such infinite and luxurious forms as by their very variety atone for the absence of color. Observe the tiny tracks of mice around every stem, and the triangular tracks of the rabbit. A pure elastic heaven hangs over all, as if the impurities of the summer sky, refined and shrunk by ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... heart; but he gave no sign, threading his way among the camp-fires until he came to one where sat an old man. A young woman was kneading with skilful fingers the tired muscles of his legs. He raised a sightless face and listened intently as Negore's foot crackled a dead twig. ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... interminable duet, apparently unconscious that they were attacking it in different keys—a fact that, after a while, began to infuriate Mr Pickering. Mosquitoes added their reedy tenor to the concert. A twig on which he was standing snapped with a report like a pistol. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... easily visible, but also impeding its flight sufficiently to admit of the boy following it. The next was at the top of a large blue gum tree, about three feet in diameter, and sending up a smooth column for fifty feet without a branch or twig. Most people would have given up all thoughts of a honey feed for the day; not so Mr. Larry, whose movements we followed with considerable curiosity. Divesting himself of his clothing, he repaired to ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... eternity. Gradually, as his soul was enriched with spiritual knowledge, he saw the whole world forming one vast symmetrical expression of God's power and love. Life became a divine gift for every moment and sensation of which, were it even the sight of a single leaf hanging on the twig of a tree, his soul should praise and thank the Giver. The world for all its solid substance and complexity no longer existed for his soul save as a theorem of divine power and love and universality. So entire and unquestionable was ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... river Meuse runs through broad meadowlands, where the sun shines dimly for many months each year, and cold, rolling mists sweep down upon the earth in winter, coating each twig with silver. There, in the little village of Domremy, in the year 1412, was born a girl named Jeanne d'Arc, whose father, Jacques d'Arc, was ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... Here a twig fell to the ground just behind the man; he gave one blood-curdling yell, dropped the knife, and rushed past Hugh, screaming out, "Save me! Save me! They're after me! Look at 'em; look at 'em!" His hair stood perfectly erect with fright, and, as he ran, he glanced over ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... them in his belt, and he gave him orders to let all the king's horses get before him, and as he should overtake one horse after the other, to take one of the twigs and strike the horse with it over the crupper, and then let that twig fall; and after that to take another twig, and do in like manner to every one of the horses, as he should overtake them, enjoining the horseman strictly to watch when his own horse should stumble, and to throw ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... phenomenon. It is much more natural to attribute it to the cessation of vegetation, and the want of nourishment which the leaves experience at that season, when the course of the sap is interrupted. The vessels of the leaf contract, dry up, and soon after, that organ is detached from the twig on which it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... landscapes. The above illustration, may perhaps give a slight idea of his artistic skill as a modeller. I specially refer to this, which he called "The Family Tree," as he required each member of his family to assist in its production. We each made a twig or small branch, which he cleverly fixed into its place as a part of the whole. The model tree in question was constructed of wire slightly twisted together, so as to form the main body of a branch. It was then subdivided into branchlets, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... his face in great anger. The jackal's greatest asset and protection, when he meets with an enemy, is bluff. He raises his ugly mane, lifts his ungainly shoulders and assumes the look of a Jason, while in reality he is as harmless as a mouse, and the smallest child could drive him away with a twig. His bravery is all pose—a make-believe game—which he plays over and over again with ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... boxes had been split and spoilt, and half of it was left lying with the hollow part downwards. Under this shelter a toad had his house. Bevis peered in at him, and touched him with a twig to make him move an inch or two, for he was so lazy, and sat there all day long, except when it rained. Sometimes the toad told him a story, but not very often, for he was a silent old philosopher, and not very fond of anybody. He had a nephew, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... their traps. Look at them," continued Captain Oughton, turning to a party of the troops ordered for a passage, who were standing on the gangway and booms; "every man Jack with his tin pot in his hand, and his greatcoat on. Twig the drum-boy, he has turned his coat—do you see?—with the lining outwards to keep it clean. By ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... individual experience,—what are they? They are nothing more than the tiny bubbles, swirls, ripples, and breaks on the surface of the great volume of water that flows so inevitably onward. The bit of foam, the tiny wave caused by twig or branch or blade of water-grass, or the great rocks and cliffs that make the roaring whirlpools and rapids,—do they stay the waters, or turn the river back on its course, or in any way prevent its onward flow? No more can the twigs of circumstances, or the boughs of environment, ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... of the hands subsided, the lips ceased whistling and quivering, the head was bent forward as though listening. I came still nearer, examined him still more closely.... The stranger held in each hand a small flat cup, such as people use to tease canaries and make them sing. A twig snapped under my feet; the stranger started, turned his dim little eyes towards the copse, and was staggering away ... but he stumbled against a tree, uttered an exclamation, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... to feed. They were small marks at that distance but I rested my little Mannlicher on a stump and began to shoot while Yvette watched them with the glasses. One big fellow swung out on a branch and hung with one arm while he picked a cluster of leaves with the other. Yvette saw my first shot cut a twig above his head but he did not move, and at the roar of the second he dropped heavily into the vines below. A brown female ran along the branch a few seconds later and peered down into the jungle where the first monkey had fallen. I covered her carefully with the ivory head of the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... an interesting sight to see the old birds training their young ones to fly, by getting up above them and flapping their wings a few times until all the young ones imitate them. Then they hop from one twig to another, still flapping their wings, and the young ones follow suit and begin to find that their wings help them to balance; and finally they jump from one branch to another for some distance so that the wings support ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... some tangible thing upon which to transmit it. He regards his prayer as a mysterious, impalpable portion of his own substance, and hence he seeks to embody it in some object, which thus becomes consecrated. The baho, which is inserted in the roof of the kiva, is a piece of willow twig about six inches long, stripped of its bark and painted. From it hang four small feathers suspended by short cotton strings tied at equal distances along the twig. In order to obtain recognition from the powers especially ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... d'ye twig the two gossoons wagging a handkerchief at us? Holy smoke! I belave they've got a motor boat half under water, and do be havin' an accident of some sort. How now, Commodore, do we be after puttin' in ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... of a thick yew hedge at the side of the gardens. Suddenly, at a particular point, he stopped, and drawing something out of his towels, thrust it, at the full length of his arm, into the closely interwoven mass of twig and foliage at his side. Then he moved forward towards the house; a bushy clump of rhododendron hid him from my sight. Two or three minutes later I heard a door close somewhere near my own; Mr. Cazalette had evidently ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... stuck my toe in the stirrup, when down comes the fog like a wet blanket on everything. I couldn't see twenty feet—" Andy stopped and reached for a burning twig to relight his cigarette. The Happy Family was breathing hard with ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... with its prey in its talons they shot their arrows almost simultaneously. Amuba's arrow struck the hawk between the wings, and the creature fell dead still clutching its prey. Chebron's arrow was equally well aimed, but it struck a twig which deflected its course and it flew wide of ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... wall. Jenny Wren's old home had been in a hole in one of the old apple-trees. Looking over to it, Peter could see Mrs. Bully sitting in the little round doorway and quite filling it. She was shrieking excitedly. Hopping and flitting from twig to twig close by were Jenny and Mr. Wren, their tails pointing almost straight up to the sky, and scolding as fast as they could make their tongues go. Flying savagely at one and then at the other, ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... period elapsed, when he was back again upon his twig on the tall elm. He had certainly not exhausted his strength or conversational music-powers in that round of morning visits, for he renewed, then and there, his merriest notes, quite in the old ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... the place where the street divided a bush waved its bare twigs in the wind. The snow which had settled upon it early in the day had been blown away by the freshening wind, and just as Muller neared the bush he saw something white fluttering from one twig. It was a handkerchief, which had probably hung heavy and lifeless when he had passed that way before. Now when the wind held it out straight, he saw it at once. He loosened it carefully from the thorny twigs. A ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... race is an organic whole. The individual man is more intimately united to every other man, and to all past and coming generations, than the leaf which flutters on the twig of a great tree is connected with the tree itself, and with every other leaf that swells its foliage, or with the seed which was ages ago planted in the soil, and from which the noble plant has issued. That organic unity of the Church, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... nearly done, thrust a twig or wooden skewer into it, down to the bottom. If the stick come out clean and dry, the cake is almost baked. When quite done, it will shrink from she sides of the pan, and cease making a noise. Then withdraw the coals (if baked in a dutch oven), take off the lid, and let the cake ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... doing the following prayer is offered: "Mother Tulasi, be thou propitious. If I gather thee with care, be merciful unto me. O Tulasi, mother of the world, I beseech thee." This plant is worshipped as a deity,—the wife of Vishnu, whom the breaking of even a little twig grieves and torments,—and "the pious Hindus invoke the divine herb for the protection of every part of the body, for life and for death, and in every action of life; but above all, in its capacity of ensuring children ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... and said he had recognized my stuff as soon as he heard it, but hadn't said anything in hopes I wouldn't twig him. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... up the cheque, paused. He seemed to find himself at fault for a moment. The jungle beast, that hears the twig crack beneath the foot of the man with the express rifle, pauses like that over his bloody meal on the carcass of the ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... put the leaves on your boughs. Gather a small twig with four or five leaves on it, put it into water, put a sheet of light-colored or white paper behind it, so that all the leaves may be relieved in dark from the white field; then sketch in their dark shape carefully with pencil as you did the complicated boughs, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... turned and closed the door—in the instant when he lost sight of her—his disinclination to be associated with the private theatricals revived. At the foot of the house-steps he stopped again; plucked a twig from a plant near him; broke it in his hand; and looked about him uneasily, on this side and on that. The path to the left led back to his father's cottage—the way of escape lay ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... enough, I regret to say, to see Eliza's eggs hatch out from the cocoon; but in other instances, especially in Southern Europe, I have noticed the little heap of well-covered ova, glued together into a mass, and attached to a branch or twig by stout silken cables. If you open the cocoon when the young spiders are just hatched, they begin to run about in the most lively fashion, and look like a living and moving congeries of little balls or seedlets. The common garden spider lays ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... dupe us!" Ursus and Taurus also, Bull and Bear, Were eager in the game to take a share. Said Vulpus to the assembled quadrupeds, "Company Boards, like ships, need figureheads, Wooden but ornamental! Eh? You twig? Sweet are the uses of—the Guinea Pig! Dull, but respectable and decorative, That tribe, to whom credulity is native. They'll sit around our Board in solemn row, And never, never 'want to know, you know,' Beyond convenient limits. Their proud presence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... looked out the next morning, everything was covered in a gray coat of ice. A young maple grew directly under my window, and its poor head was bent over as though in sorrow at the treatment it had to endure, and its branches hung listlessly in their icy case, with a frozen raindrop at the end of each twig. The sidewalks were treacherous, and I found some amusement in watching the pedestrians as they warily proceeded along the slippery pavement, most of them treading as though walking on egg-shells. There went an old gentleman who must have had business down town, for I had ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... know nothin' 'bout that, I hear somethin' 'bout it but I never b'lieved in it. I b'lieve in h'ants, though. I ain't never see'd one but I'se heard 'em. When you walkin' 'long an' a twig snaps an' you feel like you want to run an' your legs won't move an' your hair feels like it's goin' to rise off your head, that's a ha'nt after you. That sho is the evil sperrit. An' if you ain't good somethin' bad'll happen ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... his death. A passionless manner of renewing his addresses seemed no longer out of place in Lord Uplandtowers. Barbara did not love him, but hers was essentially one of those sweet-pea or with-wind natures which require a twig of stouter fibre than its own to hang upon and bloom. Now, too, she was older, and admitted to herself that a man whose ancestor had run scores of Saracens through and through in fighting for the site of the Holy Sepulchre was a more desirable husband, socially considered, than one who could ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... stole away into the woods while his mother was sleeping. And when he went he took great pains not to disturb her. He was careful not to step on a single twig. For young as he was, he knew that the sound of a breaking twig was enough to rouse his mother instantly out of the deepest sleep. And he made sure that he didn't set his little feet on any stones. For he knew that at the merest click of a hoof his mother would bound up and discover ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... was so choked with fog that one could scarcely see a cow's length across a field. Every blade, twig, bracken-frond, and hoof-print carried water, and the air was filled with the noise of rushing ditches and field-drains, all delivering to the brook below. A week's November rain on water-logged land had gorged her to full flood, and ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... reeds, through which a rod runs, smeared all the way down with birdlime. This apparatus he disposes on a hedge or cover of any kind—the little owl (Civetta) sits opposite on his pole—the birds come to tease him, and fly on the birdlime twig, when, if it be a sparrow, he is effectually detained by the viscus only—if a blackbird, pop at him goes an old rusty gun. "We sometimes catch twenty tomtits before breakfast," said a modest-looking sportsman, modestly, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... two men coming toward him. They were outlined against the radiance from the motor-cars. Cautiously he stepped toward the south, hoping that they would pass him in the darkness, but he dared not move rapidly, lest a stumble or the breaking of a twig betray him. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... clutch and clasp his gold. The walls were thick, the screens sure. He alone had the key of this laboratory, where—so people declared—he studied the maps on which his fruit-trees were marked, and calculated his profits to a vine, and almost to a twig. ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Islands as late as November. Both in the Vale and on the Cliffs in the higher part of the Island the Stonechat is very common, and the gay little bird, with its bright plumage and sprightly manner, may be seen on the top of every furze bush, or on a conspicuous twig in a hedge in the wilder parts of the Island, but is not so common in the inland and more cultivated parts, being less frequently seen on the hedges by the roadside than it is here, Somersetshire, or in many counties in England. In Alderney it is quite as common ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... of the still pools like gigantic frog-broods. There were on the ridges warrior trees burning in the vindictiveness of a long forgotten cause—a blaze of crimson scimitar thorns from root to topmost twig; and down again in the cool hollows were lady-bushes making twilight of the green gloom with their cloudy ivory blossoms and filling the shadows with such a heavy scent that head and heart reeled with fatal pleasure as one pushed aside their branches. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... something was coming. Jack awoke with a start of expectation. There was no moon tonight, but he had left a candle burning in a distant corner. It was all he could do to keep back a chuckle when he saw a big gray rat dart across the floor with a good sized twig in its mouth. Jack kept perfectly still and the little fellow, not even seeing him, continued its way across the floor to the bunk on which sat Jack beside the doll clothes. It clawed its way up the side of the bunk, dropped ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster
... Like a young mole burrowing he wove his way under branches the larger man must have turned aside, and so his going was as silent as the air. Now and then he could hear the crash of a broken branch or the crackle of a twig, or the rolling of a stone set free by a heavy foot, but he went on like a cat, like a little wood shadow, till suddenly he felt he was almost upon his prey. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... flanked by five brave sons (such is polygamy, That she spawns warriors by the score, where none Are prosecuted for that false crime bigamy), He never would believe the city won While Courage clung but to a single twig.—Am I Describing Priam's, Peleus', or Jove's son? Neither—but a good, plain, old, temperate man, Who fought with his five children ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... chirped drowsily from mazy thicket where sullen shadow thinned, little by little, until behind leaf and twig was a glimmer of light that waxed ever brighter. And presently amid this growing brightness was soft stir and twitter, sleepy chirpings changed to notes of wistful sweetness, a plaintive calling that ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... obliged to use the word "shuttle," although, strictly speaking, the Navajo has no shuttle. If the figure to be woven is a long stripe, or one where the weft must be passed through 6 inches or more of the shed at one time, the yarn is wound on a slender twig or splinter, or shoved through on the end of such a piece of wood; but where the pattern is intricate, and the weft passes at each turn through only a few inches of the shed, the yarn is wound into small skeins or balls and ...
— Navajo weavers • Washington Matthews
... slowly; anon one enters with a broom making ready the place. Then begins the Sight. Two men—thou sayest? Ay, ay. The Sun, leaving the House of the Bull, enters that of the Twins. Hence the two men of the prophecy. Let us now consider. Fetch me a twig, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... are not much differing from our broom in England. Amongst these trees night by night, through the whole land, did shew themselves an infinite swarm of fiery worms flying in the air, whose bodies being no bigger than our common English flies, make such a show and light as if every twig or tree had been a burning candle. In this place breedeth also wonderful store of bats, as big as large hens. Of crayfishes also here wanted no plenty, and they of exceeding bigness, one whereof was sufficient for ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty
... started. Passers-by on the sidewalk stopped and looked in through the lighted window to see the cause of the disturbance. A flame sputtered as it burned perilously near a resinous twig. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... practice, roughly asked what was the object which so constantly allured her from her bed, and was told that it was the sweet voice of the Nightingale. Having heard this he set all his servants to work, spread on every twig of his hazels and chesnut trees a quantity of bird-lime, and set throughout the orchard so many traps and springs, that the nightingale was shortly caught. Immediately running to his wife, and twisting ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... indeed, who, regardless of your harmonious endeavour to please him, can eye your elusive flights to discover your secret recesses, and to rob you of all the property nature gives you—your dearest comforts, your helpless nestlings. Even the hoary hawthorn twig that shot across the way, what heart at such a time but must have been interested in its welfare, and wished it preserved from the rudely-browsing cattle, or the withering eastern blast? Such was the scene,—and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and examining every thicket of bushes to see if it concealed an enemy, we made but slow progress. Yet trusting more to the dog than to ourselves, we at length came in sight of the scene of our former exploits. All was quiet and still in the vicinity. Not a twig moved, unless displaced by a gaudy-colored parrot, too lazy, under the withering influence of ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... of life. On high, bare, or snow-covered mountains the sense of oppression comes in great part from the absence of sound. But stand in spring under a broad, sapful Norway maple, leafless as yet, its every twig and spray clad in tender green flowerets, and listen to the musical murmur of bees above you, full of life and promise, a heavenly harmony from unseen choristers. Here is a symbol of the creative energy, unceasing, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... Sanchez pacing the sands, his lips muttering curses. I dared not move, scarcely indeed to breathe, so closely did he skirt my covert. To venture forth would mean certain discovery; nor could I hope to steal away through the bushes, where any twig might snap beneath my foot. What could I do? How could I bring warning to those sleeping victims? This heartless discussion of robbery and murder left me cold with horror, yet helpless to lift a hand. I had no thought of myself, of my possible fate when once delivered into the hands of this monster, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... college." I turned testily away from her. "Madam," says I, "because an eagle houses on a mountain, or soars to the sun, don't you be angry with a sparrow that perches on a garret window, or twitters on a twig. Leave me to myself: look, my beak is ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... give a direction to the policy of the young government that had arisen out of the storms of revolution,—a policy which must be carried out when the nation should become powerful and draw upon itself the eyes of the civilized world. "Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." It was the privilege and glory of Hamilton to be one of the most influential of all the men of his day in bending the twig which has now become so great a tree. We can see his hand in the distinctive features of our Constitution, and especially ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... the clue which Gipsies leave behind them on the road they go, that other Gipsies who travel in it may know they have gone before. It may be a piece of string, a thread of wool, a twig, or in the dust the ancient cross of the Romany, which preceded the Christian cross and belonged to the Assyrian or Phoenician world. The invocation that no patrins shall mark the road of a Romany is to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rapidity of tongue. It is the most grotesque of reptiles. With protruding and telescopic eyes, that move at will in the most opposite directions, with an ungainly head, a cold, dry, strange-looking skin, and a prehensile tail, the creature slowly steals along a branch or twig, scarcely distinguishable from the substance along which it moves, and scarcely seeming to move at all, until it has come within reach of its prey. Then suddenly, with a motion rapid as that of the most agile bird, the long cylindrical and readily extensile tongue is darted forth with unerring aim, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... was a twig twisted in the form of two rings, joined by one straight piece, as used for hobbling horses and cattle.] then before he went, and wrote an ogam on its ——, and threw it on the top of ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... still he cannot eat. At last a friend, to physic bred, Perceived his case, and thus he said: "Be ruled by me, you soon shall eat, With hearty gust, the plainest meat; A pint of milk each rising morn, Procure from cow of sable horn; Shake in three drops of morning dew From twig of ever-verdant yew; It must by your own hand be done, Your face turn'd westward from the sun. With this, ere half an hour is past, Well crumb'd with biscuit, break your fast; Which done, from food (or all is vain) For twice ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... there surpasses Tom Bigg.— For lam'd in one thigh, he is obliged to go zig- Zag, like a crab—for no dancer is Bigg. Those who think him a coxcomb, or call him a prig, How little they know of the mind of my Bigg! Tho' he ne'er can be mine, Hope will catch a twig— Two Deaths—and I yet may become Mrs. Bigg. Oh give me, with him, but a cottage and pig, And content I would live on ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... or exercise was impossible. The outpost was nearly always shrouded in dense mist. Insect pests abounded. Scorpions and snakes invaded the buildings. Outside, from every blade of grass, every leaf and twig, a thin and hungry leech waved its worm-like, yellow-striped body in the air, seeming to scent any approaching man or beast on which it could fasten and gorge itself fat with blood. Certainly a small ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... lovely it was! Poppy, child as she was, gasped at the sight before her. Road and river, houses and moor, lay bathed in the clear glow of the beautiful pure morning sunshine. Every leaf and twig sparkled with dew; even the little window-panes in the cottages glittered and looked beautiful. On the moor opposite great cloud-like masses of mist rolled away quickly before the advancing sun, leaving the old ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... finger up at some one, opens his eyes wide, and purses up his lips. There is a sound of a light snapping. The sportsmen look at each other significantly, and tell each other with their eyes that it is nothing. It is the snapping of a dry twig or a bit of bark. The shadows of evening keep growing and growing, the patches of crimson gradually grow dim, and ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... ses the dark man, shaking his 'cad; "if they was all as fly as you, I might as well put the shutters up. How did you twig I was ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... in which his hopes were stow'd And with the which, well-pleased and confident, He traversed the open sea; now he beholds it In eminent jeopardy among the coast-rocks, And hurries to preserve his wares. As light As the free bird from the hospitable twig Where it had nested, he flies off from me: No human tie is snapp'd betwixt us two. Yea, he deserves to find himself deceived Who seeks a heart in the unthinking man. Like shadows on a stream, the forms of life Impress their characters on the smooth forehead, Nought sinks into the bosom's silent depth; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... goes—in his dressing-gown upon the public place, picking up quaint stories from the cattle-drivers off the Cevennes, and the villagers who came in to sell their olives and their grapes, their vinegar and their vine-twig faggots, as they do unto this day. To him may be owing much of the sound respect for natural science, and much, too, of the contempt for the superstition around them, which is notable in that group of great naturalists who were boys ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... all his attitudes are free and unstudied. The favorite position of the deer—his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, among the lily-pads, his antlers thrown back and his nose in the air at the moment he hears the stealthy breaking of a twig in the forest—is still spirited and graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures of him which the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... world of the rose-garden. Here a golden beetle crept across the lawn; there the air seemed full of gayly colored butterflies. On the edge of the fountain sat a golden-green lizard in the sun. Over on the hedge a great variety of wonderful insects swarmed on every leaf and twig! What a harvest he could gather! He ran about in every direction; he was beside himself with delight; discovering every moment something new and unexpected. Nor was this in the garden only. Down by the river, under ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... wings. Did gems turn to flowers, flowers to feathers, in that long-past dynasty of the Humming-Birds? It is strange to come upon his tiny nest, in some gray and tangled swamp, with this brilliant atom perched disconsolately near it, upon some mossy twig; it is like visiting Cinderella among her ashes. And from Humming-Bird to Eagle, the daily existence of every bird is a remote ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... triumphant swoop! Or no—Rather a coiled and quiescent father, horrible-eyed, lying in slimy rings at the foot of the tree, basilisk gaze fixed upward, while the enthralled bird fluttered hopelessly down, twig by twig, ever ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Greys departed, but that the lady had refused to go; and he felt how groundless was her confidence: not that he had pretended to more professional merit than he had believed himself to possess; but that, amidst this disease, he was like a willow-twig in the stream. He became so impressed with his responsibilities now, in the presence of the small and sad-faced congregation, that he could not refrain from whispering to Hester, that he could never be thankful enough that Mr Hope had not left Deerbrook long ago, and that ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... 'You must come and get it. I can't come to you, it isn't proper,' said she, as sweet as honey. He tried to climb over the hedge, but it seemed to grow higher and higher. Then he tried to push through, but it grew thicker and thicker, and he was in despair. So he patiently broke twig after twig till he had made a little hole through which he peeped, saying imploringly, 'Let me in! Let me in!' But the pretty princess did not seem to understand, for she picked her roses quietly, and ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... it longed to console him in his misery.It went on before Pinocchio, flying from one branch to another, stopping when the marionette stopped, and moving every time the marionette moved. Pinocchio said to himself: "Does his dear little bird wish to be eaten? I'll pluck its feathers, stick a twig through it, put it in the sun, and in half an hour it will be ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... watch; it was six o'clock, and thus wanted two hours to daybreak. Hurriedly I left the inn and went out again. A rimy frost had come upon every twig and bush and tree, and in the light of the moon the ice crystals sparkled as though the spirits had scattered myriads of precious stones everywhere. But I thought not of this. I made my way toward the spot from which ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... Sir Philip in every part, did these tears I speak of have their free way. All things wakening into life, buds swelling on the stately trees he loved; birds singing, for the time to pair is come; dew sparkling like the lustre of precious stones on every twig and blade of grass, daisies with golden eyes peeping up between. Life, life, everywhere quickening life, and he who loved life, and to see good days, can walk no more in the old dear paths of his home, which he trod with so graceful and alert a step, his smile like the sunshine lying ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... have said and it shall be so. I will buy the dog from Bois if he speaks of the matter. Take good care of him, little one," and McElroy turned down toward the gate. As he moved away, free of step and straight as an Indian, he filliped away a small budding twig of the saskatoon which one of the youths had brought in to show how the woods were answering the call of the warm sun, and which he had dandled in his fingers as he walked. It fell at the edge of the beaded ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... I was the only one to see a little commotion in the water, half hidden by the near branches, as of some tiny swimmer struggling to reach the shore. Rushing to its rescue in the canoe, I found a yellow-rumped warbler, quite exhausted, clinging to a twig that hung down into the water. I brought the drenched and helpless thing to camp, and, putting it into a basket, hung it up to dry. An hour or two afterward I heard it fluttering in its prison, and cautiously lifted the lid to get a better ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... they were some distance away, and that the bushes grew thick and long! And well for them, too, that it was night! The warriors looked keenly on every side as they passed, apparently seeking out the last little leaf and twig; but, acute as were their eyes, they did not see the boys in the bushes. And perhaps it was well for some of them that they did not find what they sought, as the wilderness furnished no more formidable antagonist than Henry Ware, ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... December day was drawing to its close. The wind had gone down, but the snow was now falling in large, thick flakes. The evening twilight crept into the room. Antkowa was sitting in front of the fire; she broke off twig after twig of the dry firewood, and carelessly threw ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... youthful correspondents. Crocuses have pushed upward to the spring sunshine, and rose bushes are beginning to send out tender green shoots. "Pussies" have been reported by C. H. W., Mary M. R., Joe Ward, and many others; and Louis C. Vogt sends a twig of these pretty downy tokens of spring, which he accompanies with a very neatly printed letter. It is now time to begin to watch for violets and ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... has been up just long enough to take the before-dawn chill from the air without having swallowed all the diamonds that spangle bush and twig and grass-blade after a night's soaking rain, it is good to ride over the hills of Idaho and feel oneself a king,—and never mind the crown and the sceptre. Lone Morgan, riding early to the Sawtooth to see the foreman about getting a man ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... whizzled behind him all over the cart. The dwarfs tumbled down from every twig, bough, spoke, and felloe, and vanished in one large pointed flame, that could be seen for a second ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... There is not wind enough in the air 45 To move away the ringlet curl From the lovely lady's cheek— There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, 50 Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of its high banks, stretched away to where, a mile below us, a sudden bend hid its lower course from view, and on the high green bluff which closed the vista were seen the white house and venerable overarching trees of some old estate. The morning air was crisp and pure; every leaf and twig stood out with clean-cut distinctness, to be mirrored with startling clearness in the stream; the sky was cloudless: no greater contrast could be imagined from the tender sweetness of yesterday. The birds, exhilarated by the sparkle in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... audible. He had seen the death-like pallor on his wife's face; not a new sight, and one which had been presented to him gradually enough, but which was now always giving him a fresh shock. It was a lovely tranquil winter's day; every branch and every twig of the trees and shrubs were glittering with drops of the sun-melted hoarfrost; a robin was perched on a holly-bush, piping cheerily; but the blinds were down, and out of Mrs. Hamley's windows nothing of all this was to be seen. There was even a large screen placed between her and the wood- fire, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... said Miss Vere, "you have always been esteemed a man of honour and probity, and a drowning wretch will always catch at the feeblest twig,—I will trust you—I will follow your advice—I will meet you at ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... evening the old man beckoned our hero to follow him into the little garden. He stopped in front of the old pear-tree and, removing a little twig that was growing out of its trunk, said: "Tomorrow you will go to your ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... Cooney, "so soft, and even, and small, and warm, that it's playin' the very devil. Nothin' could stand it. Why it ud make a rotten twig grow if it was put into ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... heard some parties talking in English. Then we pricked up our ears and listened mighty interested I tell you. Looking 'round, we seen the men tied to the trees and the wood piled against 'em, and then we knowed what was up. We had to be mighty wary, for if we snapped a twig even, it was all day with us and the prisoners too; so we dragged ourselves back, and after getting out of sound of the Ingins, we just got up and lit out mighty lively for the place we'd left our companions. We met them coming slowly on 'bout two miles from the Ingin camp, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... are younger than my blond head. Let me live and die as thou hast lived and died. I wish to plant in the soil over your grave the green branch of my young life, I will water it with my tears, and the God of orphans will protect that sacred twig nourished by the grief of youth and the ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Dry-Tree stories among the wonders of Buddhism; one is that of a sacred tree visited by the Chinese pilgrims to India, which had grown from the twig which Sakya, in Hindu fashion, had used as a tooth-brush; and I think there is a like story in our own country of the Glastonbury Thorn having grown from the staff ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... see me off, and gave me three cheers as I rode away. Perhaps no person ever departed from an inn with more eclat or better wishes; nobody looked at me askance, except two stage-coachmen who were loitering about, one of whom said to his companion, "I say, Jim! twig his portmanteau! a regular Newmarket turn-out, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... news came. "I didn't stir out yesterday, but sat and thought all day; not writing a line; not so much as the cross of a t or dot of an i. I imaged forth a good deal of Barnaby by keeping my mind steadily upon him; and am happy to say I have gone to work this morning in good twig, strong hope, and cheerful spirits. Last night I was unutterably and impossible-to-form-an-idea-of-ably miserable. . . . By-the-by, don't engage yourself otherwise than to me for Sunday week, because it's my birthday. I have no doubt we shall have got over our troubles ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... asked Cock Robin sitting on a twig. Cock Robin looked sideways at Lucie with his bright black eye, and he flew ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... Though down from ancestors divine Transmitted to the heroes line; Thence, thro' a long descent of kings, Came an HEIRLOOM,[6] as Homer sings. Though this description looks so big, That sceptre was a sapless twig, Which, from the fatal day, when first It left the forest where 'twas nurs'd, As Homer tells us o'er and o'er, Nor leaf, nor fruit, nor blossom bore. Sid's sceptre, full of juice, did shoot In golden boughs, and golden fruit; And he, the dragon never sleeping, Guarded each ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... people in the grove. Here the nightingales warble day and night until they get their young, when, finding that hunting for worms and grubs to put into other beaks than their own is very prosaic business, they only sing when they have time to fly to some topmost twig and ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... little distance could be seen a cluster of log cabins, with a water-mill over a dammed pool shaded by birch trees and looking bright as glass in the twilight. He approached her silently, his hatchet stuck in his iron belt, a thick cudgel in his hand; there were leaves and bits of twig in his tangled hair, in his matted beard; bunches of rags he had wound round the links fluttered from his waist. A faint clink of his fetters made the woman turn her head. Too terrified by this savage apparition to jump up or even ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... was skipping back and forth between a rough tea-table set near the fire and an open cupboard-door in the wall. She was carrying dishes to the table, and now and then stopping to stir something good-smelling which hung over the fire in a pewter pot, with a strong bent twig for a handle. ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... four shiners for you. Keep quiet— don't speak to a soul—don't put your foot in it, that's all I beg, and I'll find out whatever there is to be found. It is damnably out of my way embarking at ——-, but I had best keep clear of Lunnon. And I tell you what, if these youngsters have hopped the twig, there's another bird on the bough that may prove a goldfinch after all—Young Arthur Beaufort: I hear he is a wild, expensive chap, and one who can't live without lots of money. Now, it's easy to frighten a man of that sort, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was not a bit sure of himself now. He could find no self-possession, but still kept aloof, shy, as if ashamed of himself. How old could his wife be now? She couldn't be less than thirty—that is to say, she couldn't be more, of course. And Isak, for all that he was eating already, must pull up a twig of heather and fall ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Turnstile turnkruco. Turpentine terebinto. Turpitude hontindajxo. Turquoise turkiso. Turret tureto. Turtle-dove turto. Tusk dentego. Tutor guvernisto. Twain du. Tweezers prenileto. Twelve dekdu. Twig brancxeto. Twilight vespera krepusko. Twin dunaskito. Twine sxnureto. Twinkle brileti. Twist tordi. Twitter pepi. Two du. Tympanum oreltamburo. Type (model) modelo. Type tipo, preslitero. Typhoid (fever) tifa febro. Typhus tifo. Typical modela. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... action became close, and the opposing parties in two instances mixed together, and having no bayonets they struck at each other with the butts of their guns. In this strange contest several of the Tories were made prisoners, and others, divesting themselves of their mark of distinction, (a twig of green pine-top stuck in their hats), intermixed with the Whigs, and all being in their common dress, ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... circling about in rapid evolutions, and anon leaping above the surface, and displaying their brilliant sides in the rays of the setting sun. When we had watched for some moments their happy gambols, Mr. C. turned around and broke a twig from a bush that stood behind us; "there is a bush," said he, "which has committed many a murder." On requesting him to explain, he said, that the root of it was a most deadly poison, and that the slave women used to make a decoction of it and give ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... mind, Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined. 150 Boastful and rough, your first son is a squire; The next a tradesman, meek, and much a liar; Tom struts a soldier, open, bold, and brave; Will sneaks a scrivener, an exceeding knave: Is he a Churchman? then he's fond of power: A Quaker? sly: A Presbyterian? sour: ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... But I expected to be back in half an hour if all went well. It's easy to be wise after the event, isn't it? I've thought of that myself since." Nap picked up a twig and bit it viciously. "Anyway, there is some tea waiting for ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... in her turn, and loudly; but so sweetly that the sound of her voice mingled with the first song of a newly awakened wood-thrush sitting on a rowan twig on the edge of the Wood-lawn. But ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... beneath, and once more he shuddered violently. But the world was full of beauty that morning. The sun was a vast sheet of gold, giving a luminous tint to the snow, and two clusters of trees, covered to the last bough and twig with snow, were a delicate tracery of white, shot at times by the sun with a pale yellow glow like that of a rose. On the horizon a faint misty smoke, the color of silver, was rising, and he knew that it came from the cooking ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... by tickling his nose with a twig of wild honeysuckle. He said 'Bother the flies!' twice, and ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... to her Southern eyes, and far surpassing anything she had imagined of the splendor of Solomon's Temple. On the evening previous, the air had been full of mist, which, as it grew colder, had settled on the trees of the Common, covering every little twig with a panoply of ice. A very light snow had fallen softly during the night, and sprinkled the ice with a feathery fleece. The trees, in this delicate white vesture, standing up against a dark blue sky, looked like the glorified ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... on a hill. It was dark, except for one dim light in an upper story. In the shadow of the hedge, Craig silently vaulted the low fence and slipped up the terraces, as noiselessly as an Indian, scarcely crackling a twig or rustling a dead leaf on the ground. He paused as he came to a wing on the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... tickle Whiskers' neck with a twig and laughed lightly. "I don' know wot they'll say, an' I don' care, but I know wot they'll do. They'll take hold o' my hands an'—an'—Gor-swizzle! I shud oughta know the Sergeant. . . . No more I ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... hammers are skilfully pierced, and wooden or horn implements are often found. The vases are of various shapes, all provided with handles, and are covered with ornaments, some made with the fingers of the potter, others with the help of a twig or some fine string. On the other hand, there are no hatchets of foreign rock; commerce and intercourse with people at a distance had ceased, or at least become rarer. The tools are fixed into handles ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... the men of Ulster. Cuchulain strode into the wood, and there, with a single blow, he lopped the prime sapling of an oak, root and top, and with only one foot and one hand and one eye he exerted himself; and he made a twig-ring thereof and set an ogam[b] script on the plug of the ring, and set the ring round the narrow part of the pillar-stone on Ard ('the Height') of Cuillenn. He forced the ring till it reached the thick of the pillar-stone. Thereafter Cuchulain went his ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... forest. Presently, to my listless roving gaze, the varied outlines of the clumpy foliage began to assume or imitate—say rather SUGGEST other shapes than their own. A light wind began to blow; it set the boughs of a neighbour tree rocking, and all their branches aswing, every twig and every leaf blending its individual motion with the sway of its branch and the rock of its bough. Among its leafy shapes was a pack of wolves that struggled to break from a wizard's leash: greyhounds would ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... hundred and thirty feet high. It had no appearance of a tree, for neither trunk nor branches were visible. It seemed a mountain of whitish-green scales, fringed with long silvery moss, that hung like innumerable beards from every bough and twig. Nothing could better convey the idea of immense and incalculable age than the hoary beard and venerable appearance of this monarch of the woods. Spanish moss of a silvery grey covered the whole mass of wood and foliage, from the topmost bough down to the very ground; short ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... toward the trail drew a quick little cry of understanding from Celie. In a flash she had darted to the snowshoe tracks and was examining them with eager intensity. Then she looked up and shook her head. It wasn't Bram! She pointed to the tail of the shoe and catching up a twig broke it under Philip's eyes. He remembered now. The end of Bram's shoes was snubbed short off. There was no evidence of that defect in the snow. It was not Bram who had passed ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... every effort, and summon every resource at their command. Anyone who was in Athens at that time and saw the Cretan guards, often with the Premier's photograph pinned on their breasts, assault such citizens as displayed the olive-twig (emblem of the Opposition), or saw the gendarmes, who patrolled the streets with fixed bayonets, protect the excesses of Venizelist bravoes, would appreciate how far the Government was prepared to stoop ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... interested herself about, she accomplished with a finish and spirit that distinguished her performance as a title on a reputation distinguishes common clay. She threw over it the faithful ardor which is akin to miracle: the simplest twig in her hand budded; her dewdrops were filled with all the colors of the rainbow, because with her the sun always shone. She writes a description of our happy first Christmas in England, in which are these passages: "We had no St. Nicholas or Christmas-tree; and so, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... half-breeds. They were all of them talking and laughing eagerly, certainly not showing very much of the so-called Indian reserve, at the time the hunters peered over at them. Yet occupied as they were, their senses were always alert. One of them heard a twig snap, and turned ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... look at my piece of land. Not a twig on it—nothing. I planted some cabbages in the spring, just when the inspector came along. He said: 'What is this? Why have you not reported this? Why have you done this without permission? Dig them up, roots and ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig a-quiver? (Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.) Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river, Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize? Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... the ridge for no other reason than apparently that course was the one the savage had the least reason to take. He advanced hurriedly because every moment was precious. Not a crushed blade of grass, a brushed leaf, an overturned pebble nor a snapped twig did he find. He saw that he was getting near to the side of the ridge where the Delaware's trail had abruptly ended. Ah! what was there? A twisted bit of fern, with the drops of dew brushed off. Bending beside the fern, Wetzel ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... happened that none of them had mentioned, because they were not sure enough that it would. A brown thrush, catching the unusual atmosphere of the orchard that morning, selected the tallest twig of an apple tree and showed that orchard what real ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... glow-worm, and the exotic beetles Pyrophorus. Another order (Orthoptera) is made up of the earwigs, cockroaches, crickets, grass-hoppers, and their allies the locusts, with Bamboo-insects and the curious walking-leaf (so-called from their resemblance to a Bamboo twig and a foliage leaf respectively), the praying mantis, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... of a twig in the thicket caused him to sit erect, and reach out toward his rifle. His eyes moved among the dark openings in the thicket. In another moment a tall figure pressed the bushes apart. Jonathan let fall his rifle, and sank ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... many a home. At the root of a stately cedar, sprang up, twenty years ago, a shoot of that most hardy and beautiful of native creepers, the wild woodbine or American ivy. It crept steadily upward, laying hold of branch and twig, casting out, first, tendrils, then ropes, to make sure its hold—a thing of beauty all summer, a coat of many colors in autumn, until it reached the top of the tree. To-day, the only vestige of cedar-individuality that remains to sight, is in the trunk, the bare branches, stripped ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... simplicity. And there is surely no difficulty in believing that it should be so with human life when it is judged by the perfect knowledge of God. Life is like a great tree which casts forth on every side its far-spreading branches. Yet all that moving, breathing mystery of twig and branch and foliage springs from a single root. To us the mystery is baffling in its complexity: we have looked at the branches. To God it is simple, clear: He sees the hidden root from which it springs. So that, to go back to our former illustration, it is only our ignorance ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... was shining down into the clearing, and the rumble of Thor's hammer could be heard only faintly in the distance. In the trees overhead the birds were calling to one another, shaking the drops of rain from many a twig and leaf as they ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... reached up to a shelf, showing an arm like a brown twig, and took down a glass bottle covered with red and green lines. He removed the stopper, made Domini take off her glove, touched her bare hand with the stopper, then with his forefinger gently rubbed the drop of perfume which had settled on her skin till ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... pretty heads in Mary's cottage garden, and throughout all nature there came that inexplicable, indefinite, soft pulsation of new life and new love which we call the spring. Tiny buds, rosy and shining with sap, began to gleam like rough jewels on every twig and tree—a colony of rooks which had abode in the elms surrounding Weircombe Church, started to make great ado about their housekeeping, and kept up as much jabber as though they were inaugurating an Irish night in the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... and tear! winds of misfortune, shew all your tyranny! Twist and split bark and twig, And break the tree of hope in two Stem and leaves are struck by this hail and thunder, The root remains till storm and rain have ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... enchanted our venerable lady that there was nothing that she wouldn't do. 'Pao-yue,' she said to every one she met, 'is the one, after all, who shows me much attention. So much so, that he has even thought of bringing me a twig of flowers! And yet, the others bear me a grudge on account of the love that I lavish on him!' Our venerable mistress, you all know very well, has never had much to say to me. I have all along not been much of a favourite in the old lady's eyes. But on that occasion she verily ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... again. After a weary hour the son turned to Rikiu: "Father, there is nothing more to be done. The steps have been washed for the third time, the stone lanterns and the trees are well sprinkled with water, moss and lichens are shining with a fresh verdure; not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the ground." "Young fool," chided the tea-master, "that is not the way a garden path should be swept." Saying this, Rikiu stepped into the garden, shook a tree and scattered ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... the Doctor seated in it, slowly ascending the winding steps of the Table. Reaching the flat top at last, it halted and the Doctor stepped out upon the flowery carpet. So still and perfect was the silence that even at that distance above I distinctly heard a twig snap beneath his tread. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... like the Shires, it is well to acquire the habit of holding the whip in such a way that the handle of the whip will point directly backwards; for if it is inclined outwards, it will be apt to catch in a branch or twig, when going through a bullfinch ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... haystack. Uncle Jap confessed, later, that he was beginning to get "cold feet," as he expressed it, when he happened to meet an out-of-elbows individual who claimed positively that he could discover water, gold, or oil, with no tools or instruments other than a hazel twig. Uncle Jap, who forgot to ask why this silver-tongued vagabond had failed to discover gold for himself, returned in triumph to his ranch, bringing with him the wizard, pledged to consecrate his gifts to the "locating" of the lake of oil. In return for his services Uncle Jap agreed to pay ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded or unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above him conspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will scare him nearly to death, and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All you can see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched out straight and "streaking it" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shape—wouldn't you, aunt?—and poor mother'd cut out the paper or the cotton print for the dolls clothes, or the windmills, and I'd stick 'em on, or nail 'em on, and any of us 'ud paint the eyes an' mouth, even little Ben could do that. We used to live over beyond Bethnal Green, in a place called Twig Folly, and there was plenty of us children that used to work at lucifer match-box making about that part. When father took to the dolls and mills he bought his own wood and bits of wall-paper and that; but we worked night and day very often, so as to get a lot ready for ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... to hold a twig in the coals, that he might light a cigarette. "All right, I'm the guilty party. Let's have the consequences of my evil deed," he advised, settling back on his heels and lowering an eyelid at Manuel in behalf of this humorous ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... of the matches, which he transferred to the pocket containing the tobacco. Then, calmly selecting a dry twig from the pile of firewood, thrust the end through a hole in the broken stove, and after much noisy puffing at length succeeded in igniting the tightly ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... had a quiet sleep, there only remained of the farmhouse a few black charred beams leaning against the chimney, which was now its own master. Thick smoke still rose from the ruins, but the rose-bush stood yonder, fresh, blooming, and untouched, every flower and every twig being ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... hence, Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, Where the strawberry runs red, With white star-flower overhead; Cumbered by dry twig and cone, Shredded husks of seedlings flown, Mine of mole and spotted flint: Of dire wizardry no hint, Save mayhap the print that shows Hasty outward-tripping toes, Heels to terror on the mould. These, the woods ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Gerald, who was not so far gone as to be unable to speak; "and mighty glad I am to see you—only, as you love us, get us some grub, or we shall be after hopping the twig." ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... destruction. It was an immense pleasure to have seen the great creature like that. He was so evidently enraged and baffled by the uproar and dazzled by the floods of lightning that swept down into the deepest recesses of the forest, showing at one second every detail of twig, leaf, branch, and stone round you, and then leaving you in a sort of swirling dark until the next flash came; this, and the great conglomerate roar of the wind, rain and thunder, was enough to bewilder any ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... have observed cases in only four genera, though we have vainly observed the cotyledons of many others. The genus cassia seems to be pre-eminent in this respect: thus, the cotyledons of C. tora, when extended horizontally, were both lightly tapped with a very thin twig for 3 m. and in the course of a few minutes they formed together an angle of 90o, so that each had risen 45o. A single cotyledon of another seedling was tapped in a like manner for 1 m., and it rose 27o in 9 m.; and after eight additional minutes it had risen 10o more; the opposite ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... which myriads of small gold fishes were disporting—now circling about in rapid evolutions, and anon leaping above the surface, and displaying their brilliant sides in the rays of the setting sun. When we had watched for some moments their happy gambols, Mr. C. turned around and broke a twig from a bush that stood behind us; "there is a bush," said he, "which has committed many a murder." On requesting him to explain, he said, that the root of it was a most deadly poison, and that the slave women used to make a decoction of it and give ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... him who is so pure that he may find her. He will wander over the tree-tops looking for her, with the moon for his lamp, and some night he will hear her singing. The little minister drew a deep breath, and his foot snapped a brittle twig. Then he remembered who and where he was, and stooped to pick up his staff. But he did not pick it up, for as his fingers were closing on it the lady began ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver? (Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.) Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river, Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize? Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... and every twig spoke of this new language to her, proclaiming a kinship that made her rich in sympathy and comprehension of ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... o'clock on the morning of July 11, 1804, the two men faced each other on the heights of Weehawken, overlooking New York bay. Both fired at the word; Burr's bullet passed through Hamilton's body; Hamilton's cut a twig above Burr's head. Hamilton died next day, and Burr, his political career at an end, buried himself in ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... birdling, the blossom-bells' king, A waif of the sun-beams on quivering wing! O prince of the fairies, O pygmy of fire, Will nothing those brave little wings of yours tire? You follow the flowers from southern lands sunny, You pry amid petals all summer for honey! Now rest on a twig, tiny flowerland sprite, Your dear little lady sits near in delight; In a wee felted basket she lovingly huddles— Two dots of white eggs to her warm breast she cuddles! Whiz-z! whiff! off to your flowers! Buzz mid the perfume ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... have been in our work—running preliminary surveys! He just naturally knew the way across country, and he just naturally knew how to set it down. On hides, with a burnt stick—on the sand with a willow twig—in the ashes with a pipe stem—that's how his maps grew. The Indians showed ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... to deal with now. If Northcliffe, by any journalistic sensations, interferes in what in Lloyd George's opinion is the proper and efficient conduct of the war, Lloyd George will break him like a twig and without a second thought. Some people of Britain talk of what will happen to Lloyd George when Northcliffe throws him over. One can only smile. To stop the publication of the Daily Mail and the Times, wrecking a million pounds' worth of private property at least, ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... there. He knew that bodies lay beneath, and once more he shuddered violently. But the world was full of beauty that morning. The sun was a vast sheet of gold, giving a luminous tint to the snow, and two clusters of trees, covered to the last bough and twig with snow, were a delicate tracery of white, shot at times by the sun with a pale yellow glow like that of a rose. On the horizon a faint misty smoke, the color of silver, was rising, and he knew that it came from the ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... each commanded one of the runways indicated. How light it was, though the sun was hidden! Every branch and twig beamed in the sun like a lamp. A downy woodpecker below me kept up a great fuss and clatter,—all for my benefit, I suspected. All about me were great, soft mounds, where the rocks lay buried. It was a cemetery of ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... stretched away to where, a mile below us, a sudden bend hid its lower course from view, and on the high green bluff which closed the vista were seen the white house and venerable overarching trees of some old estate. The morning air was crisp and pure; every leaf and twig stood out with clean-cut distinctness, to be mirrored with startling clearness in the stream; the sky was cloudless: no greater contrast could be imagined from the tender sweetness of yesterday. The birds, exhilarated by the sparkle in the air, sang with a rollicking abandonment quite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... of revenge on Mr. Harley, and a physical conquest of Dorothy the beautiful, grew and broadened and extended itself like some plant of evil in Storri's heart. It worked itself out into leaf and twig and bud of sinful detail until the execution thereof seemed the thing feasible; with that the face of Storri began to wear a look ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... one desperate leap and landed beside Amy on the stump while Betty and Mollie stepped to one side out of the reptile's path. Then, almost miraculously—or so Betty thought when she looked back upon it afterward—her eye fell upon a forked twig lying at her feet. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... fruitfulness. Its trunk will grow up in majestic proportions—its wide-spreading branches will be clothed with a green luxuriant foliage, "goodly to look upon"—the most beautiful of blossoms will in due time, blush on every twig—and at length each limb and bough shall bend beneath the rich, golden fruit, ready to drop into the hand. Beneath its grateful shade you can find rest and repose, when the heat and burden of life come upon you. And of its delicious fruit, you can pluck and eat, and obtain refreshment ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... great anger. The jackal's greatest asset and protection, when he meets with an enemy, is bluff. He raises his ugly mane, lifts his ungainly shoulders and assumes the look of a Jason, while in reality he is as harmless as a mouse, and the smallest child could drive him away with a twig. His bravery is all pose—a make-believe game—which he plays over and over again with every one ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... Earl Hakon, of Norway, offered his son in sacrifice to obtain a victory over some pirates. The bodies were buried in groves, which thence were regarded as very sacred. One, called Odin's grove, near the temple of Upsal, was sacred in every twig and leaf. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... This process of propagation which Varro describes as "new" is still practised by curious orchardists under the name "inarching." The free end of a growing twig is introduced into a limb of its own tree, back of a specimen fruit, thus pushing its development by means of the supplemental feeding so provided. Cf. Cyc. ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... 8:00 a. m. or before. The start is made at 7:45. Road is fine—well-beaten yesterday by marketing convoys and by Russians bound for church to celebrate Saint Nick's Day. Between the pines our road winds. Not a breath of air has stirred since the fine snow came in the night and "ridged each twig inch deep with pearl." What a sight it would have been if the sun had come up. Wisconsin, we think of you as we traverse these bluffs. You tenth verst, you break a beautiful scene on us with your trail across the valley. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... me in your turn. You both remember the fountain I call my favourite? Promise me that every morning before the sun rises you will go to it and clear away every stone that impedes its course, and every dead leaf or broken twig that sullies its clear waters. I shall take it as a proof of your gratitude to me if you neither forget nor delay this duty, and I promise that so long as the sun's earliest rays find my favourite spring the clearest and sweetest in all ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... away; But there comes a coal-black rider upon a coal-black horse, And he strives to save the new-born tree and drive the foe afar: Long they fight till the New Year's dawn—until black knight yields, And the foeman hews away the twig, and rides into the dawn, But there will come a time,'tis said, when the white knight must yield, And the twig will grow and its leaves will blow until the trunk is great: So great that a proud war horse 'neath its lower branch may go. And when the branch ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... counted out the last seconds of the half, came a snap like that of a whip's lash, and the bowl of Richter's pipe lay smouldering on the grass. The noble had cut the stem as clean as it were sapling twig, and there stood Richter with the piece still clenched in his teeth, his eyes ablaze, and his cheek running blood. He pushed the surgeon away when he came forward with his needles. The Count was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... them, being so much unlike our own, or any I had seen elsewhere. I observed amongst the shrubs abundance of a fruit, or whatever else you may call it, which grew like a ram's-horn; sharp at the point next the twig it was fastened to, and circling round and round, one fold upon another, which gradually increased to the size of my wrist in the middle, and then as gradually decreased till it terminated in a point again at the contrary extreme; all which spiral, if ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... gliding dark and cold between its banks of rushes; the empty lodges, covered with crusted snow; the vast white meadows; the distant cliffs, bearded with shining icicles; and the hills wrapped in forests, which glittered from afar with the icy incrustations that cased each frozen twig. Yet there was life in the savage landscape. The men saw buffalo wading in the snow, and they killed one of them. More than this: they discovered the tracks of moccasons. They cut rushes by the edge of the river, piled them on the bank, and set them on fire, that the smoke might ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... brother's recurring cry, repeated with such regularity, seemed awful, and the deep low sigh uttered by Breezy sounded quite startling; but there was nothing else—no sound of the powerful cats coming cautiously round, winding in and out among the rocks and bushes, and not a twig was stirred. ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... to operate successfully, this branch of education must be early attended to. True it is, that, just as 'the twig is bent, the tree's inclined;' and true it is, that on the discipline of childhood depends the moral character of manhood. The tree in the forest, after it has grown to a considerable height, may yet be bent from ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... The extent to which humble-bees carry on the practice of biting holes is surprising: a remarkable case was observed by me near Bournemouth, where there were formerly extensive heaths. I took a long walk, and every now and then gathered a twig of Erica tetralix, and when I had got a handful all the flowers were examined through a lens. This process was repeated many times; but though many hundreds were examined, I did not succeed in finding a single flower which had not been perforated. Humble-bees ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... cub, he took courage and came growling at Wahb. He could climb as well as the little Grizzly, or better, and high as Wahb went, the Blackbear followed, and when Wahb got out on the smallest and highest twig that would carry him, the Blackbear cruelly shook him off, so that he was thrown to the ground, bruised and shaken and half-stunned. He limped away moaning, and the only thing that kept the Blackbear from following him up and perhaps killing him ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... myrtle has been found in a grave in Ithaka. Other specimens from Greek and Roman graves are preserved in our museums. A golden crown of Greek workmanship, found at Armento, a village of the Basilicata (at present in Munich), is particularly remarkable. A twig of oak forms the ground, from among the thin golden leaves of which spring forth asters with chalices of blue enamel, convolvulus, narcissus, ivy, roses, and myrtle, gracefully intertwined. On the upper bend of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... best part of an hour. Then she got up, and according to her daily custom walked a certain number of times round the garden. Her mind was so full that she did not as usual observe every twig, almost every leaf, as she passed. Nor, now that she was alone, was that religious bias, which had so much to do with her daily life, very strong within her. There was no taint of hypocrisy in her character; but ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... weary the first, almost dead the second, tolerable the third, and well enough the rest; and am now glad of the fatigue, which has served for exercise; and I am at present well enough. The Whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay hold on me as a twig while they are drowning, and the great men making me their clumsy apologies, etc. But my Lord Treasurer received me with a great deal of coldness, which has enraged me so, I am almost vowing revenge. I have not yet gone half my circle; but I find all my acquaintance just as I left them. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... for as he knew, from the many hours he had passed at night upon guard, the hush is so intense—in these great forests—that one can hear the fall of a mountain stream, miles away; and the snapping of a twig, or almost the falling of a leaf, will catch the ear. The night, however, was windy; and the rustle of the pine forest would have deadened all sound, except anything sharp, ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... Chicago—stepped out, and they both stepped in front of the minister, who was from Jacksonville, wearin' a black robe with white sash around his neck; and the orchestra stopped playin'. But just then we heard a twig or somethin' snap and we looked around quick and there was Doc Lyon who read the Bible all the time and acted queer. My pa thought he was crazy. And he began to say: "She doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians, her neighbors, which were ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... look hinted that upon occasion the father leaned on the daughter more than she on him. He called again. His voice died away echoless, the silence seeming heavier than before. When one of the horses behind them, turning from the water, trod upon a dry twig, both man and girl started. Then Helen laughed and went ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... clear, cold, shining bright. A slight thaw the day before had left every bough and twig and pine-needle covered with a moisture that had frozen in the night into glittering crystal sheaths, which flashed like millions of prisms in the sun. The beauty of the scene was almost solemn. The air was so frosty ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... into a row," I said, "and they seem decent chaps. Let's hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that's coming along will think there's angels in ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... a mahogany table, with various stains of conviviality upon its polished surface. There was a fire on the hearth, and on the mantel stood some gilded vases and a glass case of wax-flowers, also a stuffed canary under a glass shade, pathetic on his little twig. Doctor Gordon pointed to the flowers and the canary. "Poor old man lost his wife, when he had been married two years," he said. "She and the baby both died. That was before I came here. Damned if I wouldn't have ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... indeed suffer, as being deprived of the proper development of a tree, and as involving a blank space that wants occupation; but the portions left are not made discordant or disagreeable. They are absolutely and in themselves as valuable as they can be, every stem is a perfect stem, and every twig a graceful twig, or at least as perfect and as graceful as they were before the removal of the rest. But if we try the same experiment on the imaginative painter's work, and break off the merest stem or twig of it, it all goes to pieces like a Prince Rupert's drop. There is ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... but autumn. The BEGGAR is sitting outside a chapel with a lime twig and a bird cage, in which is a starling. The STRANGER enters wearing the same clothes as in ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... time, the precipitous wall. Always the staff tugged at his grasp, seeking the earth, but he carried it still toward a clump of gnarled trees which appeared to him like the faces of long-lost friends. It seemed to him that in all the half century since he looked upon them, neither branch nor twig had altered. So had they been on that sad day when the last of the padres had brought him hither and shown them to him. Beneath their roots lay the secret he had ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... rustling sound, the breaking of a twig, disturbed the quiet and Bet sat erect with a gasp of surprise. She caught Joy by the arm. "S-sh! ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... elephant and began to creep through the long dry bramble-choked grass with his rifle in his hand. As he pushed his way through the thick jungle he fancied he heard an animal breathing and then something crackled. Intent on the deer before him, he concluded that he had broken a twig or a branch with the end of his rifle and pushed on. As he emerged from the thicket on the opposite side from where he had entered, he came face to face with a group of shepherds. They stared at him in amazement and then, recognising him as their Maharajah, ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... tall basswood made a sound like a sigh. But almost as quickly as Robert Robin returned, the buds of the big basswood swelled with the green of new leaves, and soon the great tree was no longer bare, but dressed from his foot to his highest twig in broad leaves that fluttered in the summer breezes and made a sound like the ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... Lynde followed on in silence, hardly able to realize the success of the ruse which had come so near being a failure. His companion was equally preoccupied. Once she stopped for Lynde to detach her dress from a grasping twig, and once to pluck one of those pallid waxen flowers which sometimes dauntlessly find a footing even among the snowdrifts of the higher Alps. The air was full of the resinous breath of the pines, whose boughs, meeting and interlacing overhead, formed an arabesqued ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... him, that is to say, to conceal his vices and defects, and by proper attention to put him into condition, to alter his whole appearance by hogging, cropping, and docking—by patching up his broken knees—blowing gun-powder in his dim eyes—bishoping, blistering, &c. so as to turn him out in good twig, scarcely to be known by those who have frequently seen and noticed him: besides which, at the time of sale one of these gentry will aid and assist your views by pointing out his recommendations in some such observations as ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... early, riding her best horse, and she took a sheep trail across country. The distance by road was much farther. The June morning was cool, sparkling, fragrant. Mocking birds sang from the topmost twig of cedars; doves cooed in the pines; sparrow hawks sailed low over the open grassy patches. Desert primroses showed their rounded pink clusters in sunny places, and here and there burned the carmine of Indian paint-brush. Jack rabbits and cotton-tails bounded ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... constantly consumed. The small boys seemed to be suffering from a fit of conscience. In vain we closed the blinds and shut ourselves up in the house to give them a fair field. Not a cherry was taken. In vain we went ostentatiously to church all day on Sunday. Not a twig was touched. Finally I dropped all the curtains on that side of the house, and avoided that part of the garden in my walks. The cherries may be hanging there to this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the death-like pallor on his wife's face; not a new sight, and one which had been presented to him gradually enough, but which was now always giving him a fresh shock. It was a lovely tranquil winter's day; every branch and every twig of the trees and shrubs were glittering with drops of the sun-melted hoarfrost; a robin was perched on a holly-bush, piping cheerily; but the blinds were down, and out of Mrs. Hamley's windows nothing ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fresh-water rivers and dark and lonely creeks. He leaves his retreat before sunrise to feed on the insects over the water; he returns to it as soon as the sun's rays cause a glare of light, is sedentary all day long, and comes out again for a short tune after sunset. He builds his nest on a twig over the water in the unfrequented creeks: it looks like ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... aconites, perked up their pretty heads in Mary's cottage garden, and throughout all nature there came that inexplicable, indefinite, soft pulsation of new life and new love which we call the spring. Tiny buds, rosy and shining with sap, began to gleam like rough jewels on every twig and tree—a colony of rooks which had abode in the elms surrounding Weircombe Church, started to make great ado about their housekeeping, and kept up as much jabber as though they were inaugurating an Irish night in the House of Commons,—and, over a more or less ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... maman," replied Lisa, and went towards her, but Lavretsky remained sitting on his willow. "I talk to her just as if life were not over for me," he thought. As she went away, Lisa hung her hat on a twig; with strange, almost tender emotion, Lavretsky looked at the hat, and its long rather crumpled ribbons. Lisa soon came back to him, and again took her stand ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... her nest," he said, "almost above our seat. Look, Lucy, it is made out of willow down and spider webs, bound round and round the twig. Don't you want to see the eggs? Look!" He bent the limb until the dainty white treasures, half buried in the fluffy down, were revealed—but still she did ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Indian, and that he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... Spencer and failed," because Spencer's method demands intelligence and patience, contend that the child must be taught to obey, that truth lies in the old rule, "As the twig is bent ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... French fleet. He told me, too, that he had the same object in view, when, the summer before, he refused my application, to go and see the grand review on Bagshot Heath. It was, however, at too late a period that he began to check my patriotic ardour; he had, himself, "bent the twig," and it had grown too powerfully in the direction which he had given to it to be directed to any other. Although I was no politician at that time, yet my bosom glowed with as sacred a love of country, with as strong a predilection for the rights and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... I mention these trivial occurrences? Not, Heaven knows, from the interest I can now attach to them; but because, like a drowning man who catches at a brittle twig, I seize every apology for delaying the subsequent and dreadful part of my narrative. But it must be communicated: I must have the sympathy of at least one friend under ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... invincibles. Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths on to get in the know all the time drawing secret service pay from the castle. Drop him like a hot potato. Why those plainclothes men are always courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... its hiss, its snap of sound, and sometimes rifle-shots like the crack of a ball on a cricket bat broke through the thickets. They separated, spreading like beaters in a long line: "Soon," Trenchard told me, "I was quite alone. I could hear sometimes the breaking of a twig or a stumbling footfall but I might have been alone at the end of the world. It was obvious that the regimental sanitars had been there before us because there were many new roughly made graves. There were letters ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... seemed to be getting exhausted, its tail dragged, the mouth foamed, and the tongue hung out, while it still moved on as if drawn by an unseen cord. I followed, going very close to it, but it took no notice of me. Sometimes it dug its claws into the ground or seized a twig or stalk with its teeth, and it would then remain resting for a few moments till the twig gave away, when it would roll over many times on the ground, loudly yelping, but still dragged onwards. Presently I saw in the direction we were ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... snoring, which kept them awake, Thor thrice dealt him fearful blows with his hammer. These strokes, instead of annihilating the monster, merely evoked sleepy comments to the effect that a leaf, a bit of bark, or a twig from a bird's nest overhead had fallen upon his face. Early on the morrow, Skrymir left Thor and his companions, pointing out the shortest road to Utgard-loki's castle, which was built of great ice blocks, with huge glittering icicles as pillars. The gods, slipping between the bars of the great gate, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... mighty arms to fondle willow-twig across the shady aisles, and maidenblush rubbed cheeks with Spitzenberg, all reddening in the sun. Under many of the trees the ground was as bare as if fire had devastated it, for the sun never fell through those ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... was told to the Jervis children, however, till after supper was over, when Grandmother invited the whole company to go into the room where it stood, lighted from the top twig to the pedestal it stood on, and hung full of ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... fisherman had adopted. He would perhaps have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore, and having fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, would show when he had a bite. These alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as you walked halfway ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... According to all laws, human and divine, the King ought to punish Madame de Montespan, and, instead of censuring her, he wishes to make her a duchess! . . . Let him make her a princess, even a highness, if he likes; he has all the power in his hands. I am only a twig; he is an oak. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... incredibly active, as were Grylli; and the great Cicadeae were everywhere lighting on the ground, when they uttered a short sharp creaking sound, and anon disappeared, as if by magic. Beautiful whip-snakes were gleaming in the sun: they hold on by a few coils of the tail round a twig, the greater part of their body stretched out horizontally, occasionally retracting, and darting an unerring aim at some insect. The narrowness of the gorge, and the excessive steepness of the bounding hills, prevented any view, except of the opposite mountain face, which ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the growth of honeylocust is seriously affected by a canker and twig fungus, Thyronectria austro-americana. The disease often kills many twigs and branches and sometimes results in death of the tree. In most areas it causes only slight injury. Bowen S. Crandall and Jesse D. Diller have made a few observations on the prevalence and damage by ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... exorcise this spirit of indifference that has settled down like a miasma upon clubdom we must find James's original germ of interest—the twig upon which our cluster of bees is ultimately to hang. Here we may introduce two axioms: Everyone is deeply interested in something; few are supremely interested in the same thing. I shall not attempt to prove these, and what I shall have to say will be addressed only to those who can accept ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... brilliant picture of vivid colour, and the shrub is sooner or later destined to a chief place amongst our ornamental flowering shrubs. P. japonica Maulei (syn Cydonia Maulei), from Japan (1874), is a rare shrub as yet, small of growth, and with every twig festooned with the brightest of orange-scarlet flowers. It is quite hardy, and succeeds well under treatment that will suit the ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... the insect rises a little and reaches the wire gauze, the equivalent of the twig which would be chosen for the site of the transformation in the open fields. It holds to this with the four anterior limbs. Then the tip of the abdomen is finally liberated, and suddenly, shaken by the final struggle, the empty ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... her homeward departure on the previous night—for the braves deemed it best to keep the knowledge of their military operations from the women—the girl crept away to the lake again and rowed to the accustomed place, but while waiting for the quail call a twig dropped on the water beside her. With a quick instinct that civilization has spoiled she realized this to be a warning, and remaining perfectly still, she allowed her boat to drift toward shore, presently discovering that her lover was standing waist-deep in the water. In a whisper he told ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... about to despair, and had almost made up her mind to turn back, when the golden note rose again and she stopped, entranced. There, over her head and not five feet away, swaying perilously on a slender twig, balanced the little songster, pouring out his joy to a ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... the Runic stroke, The harp began so sweet to ring, The wild bird on the twig that sat Forgot ...
— Ermeline - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... at Thornton Chase was perfect in its artificiality. It sloped down towards Richmond Park in a series of stately terraces with box-hedge borders trimmed so evenly that not a twig or leaf offended against the canons of symmetry. They were groomed like a racehorse. Centred in a square of barbered lawn was a fountain where Neptune drove his chariot of sea-horses. The Apollo Belvedere, ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... this latch is not so difficult to make as it may appear in the diagram. A and D (197) show, respectively, the wooden catch and the guard confining the latch. C is another guard made, as you may observe, from a twig with a branch upon it; the twig is split in half and fastened at the base with two screws, and at the upper end, where the branch is bent down, is fastened with one screw. A guard like the one shown by D (Fig. 197) ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... The pleasing shadows of the groves she spies, Her hated food she scatters with her feet, In yearning spirit to the woods she flies, The woods' delights do tune her accents sweet. When some strong hand doth tender plant constrain With his debased top the ground to meet, If it let go, the crooked twig again Up toward Heaven itself it straight doth raise. Phoebus doth fall into the western main, Yet doth he back return by secret ways, And to the earth doth guide his chariot's race. Each thing a certain ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... so choked with fog that one could scarcely see a cow's length across a field. Every blade, twig, bracken-frond, and hoof-print carried water, and the air was filled with the noise of rushing ditches and field-drains, all delivering to the brook below. A week's November rain on water-logged land had gorged her to full flood, and ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... but, please God, they will get weak and old whilst I shall grow in strength and power, and shall be, in my turn, avenged according to my desire." He was hardly twenty, when, one day, one of his barons seeing him gnawing, with an air of abstraction and dreaminess, a little green twig, said to his neighbors, "If any one could tell me what the king is thinking of, I would give him my best horse." Another of those present boldly asked the King. "I am thinking," answered Philip, "of a certain matter, and that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... odd-looking being, lean as a heron, wry-necked, but amazingly quick on his feet. Had not Mrs. Morran said that he hobbled as fast as other folk ran? He kept his eyes on the ground and seemed to be talking to himself as he went, but he was alert enough, for the dropping of a twig from a dying magnolia transferred him in an instant into a figure of active vigilance. No risks could be run with that watcher. He took a key from his pocket, opened the garden door and entered the verandah. For ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... citing many different causes of rupture of the tympanic membrane, mentions the following: A blow in sparring; violent sneezing; blowing the nose; forcible dilatation of the Eustachian canal; a thorn or twig of a tree accidentally thrust into the head; picking the ear with a toothpick. In time of battle soldiers sometimes have their tympanums ruptured by the concussion caused by the firing of cannon. Dalby mentions an instance of an officer who was discharged for deafness ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... also an incredible number of butterflies, so that for the space of three or four acres the air was so crowded with them, that millions were to be seen in every direction, at the same time that every branch and twig was covered with others that were not upon the wing. We found here also a small fish of a singular kind; it was about the size of a minnow, and had two very strong breast fins; we found it in places that were quite dry, where we supposed it might have been left by the tide; but it did not seem ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... Whiskers' neck with a twig and laughed lightly. "I don' know wot they'll say, an' I don' care, but I know wot they'll do. They'll take hold o' my hands an'—an'—Gor-swizzle! I shud oughta know the Sergeant. . . . No more I ain't ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... young men at college. Clara Durrant's letters were those of a child. Florinda—the impediment between Florinda and her pen was something impassable. Fancy a butterfly, gnat, or other winged insect, attached to a twig which, clogged with mud, it rolls across a page. Her spelling was abominable. Her sentiments infantile. And for some reason when she wrote she declared her belief in God. Then there were crosses—tear stains; and the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... was a mere twig on the Trans-Mississippi branch; and when the fall of Vicksburg severed the branch from the tree the twig ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... lofty and bulky; how then shall I pull it up?" and he made answer, "Pluck but a branchlet of the Tree and plant it in thy garden; 'twill at once take root and in shortest time be as gross and fair a growth as that in yonder copse." So the Princess broke off a twig, and now that she had secured the three things, whereof the holy woman spake to her, she was exceeding joyful and turning to the Bird said, "I have in very deed won my wish, but one thing is yet wanting to my full satisfaction. My brothers who ventured ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... bobolink. He comes amid the pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms of the freshest and sweetest meadows, and is most in song when the clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long, flaunting weed, and, as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich, tinkling notes, crowding one upon another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the same ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hurled his furious words. He was more angry in that moment than he had ever been in his life. The force of his anger carried him along as a twig borne on a racing current. Till that instant he had forgotten that he carried his riding-whip. The sudden remembrance of it flashed like a streak ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Tom did not consume much time in nearing the spot where he had last seen Bad Pete. The lad put two fingers up to his mouth, intending to whistle, when he heard a twig snap behind him. Tom turned quickly, then, warned by some instinct, stepped noiselessly behind high brush. The newcomer ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... myself as is your own dear Emerald Land, And that is why the Green Isle's case I've learned to understand. 'Tis the most disthressful country, yours, that ever yet was seen; But I'll right ye. Twig my glasses, dear! I'm Wearing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... of a sitting-room during her flying visit to town. It was a pleasant room, with book-cases all round it filled with green glass in a lattice of brass-work. The books were hidden by the glass, but it reflected every movement of a bird or a twig or a cloud outside like green waters. The ceiling was domed like a sky and painted in sunny Italian scenery. It was not dull in the book-room ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... the sustenance of their families; for we saw few of them doing any thing in the houses; whereas the women were occupied in manufacturing their flaxen or woollen garments, and in preparing the sardines for drying; which they also carry up from the beach in twig-baskets, after the men have brought them in their canoes. The women are also sent in the small canoes to gather muscles, and other shell-fish, and perhaps on some other occasions; for they manage these with as much dexterity as the men; who, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... hast thou pleasure to be crosse in talke: But thou with mildnesse entertain'st thy wooers, With gentle conference, soft, and affable. Why does the world report that Kate doth limpe? Oh sland'rous world: Kate like the hazle twig Is straight, and slender, and as browne in hue As hazle nuts, and sweeter then the kernels: Oh let me see thee walke: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a scream as certainly to scare little Black-and-white out of at least one of the nine lives to which she is supposed to be entitled. But pussy was too swift and swiftly scrambled to the very topmost twig that would hold her weight, while Tattine danced about in helpless rage on the grass beneath the tree. "Tattine is having a fit," thought little Black-and-white, scared half to death and quite ready to have a little fit of her own, to judge from her ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... good deal in that," commented Haigh, blinking at the shabby black steamer thoughtfully. "You'd better pop down below in case he has ventured his little self on deck, and should happen to twig you. But still it's best to be on the safe side." He chose a cigar, lighted it and puffed for a minute, and then took it out of his mouth and grinned at the glowing end. "Look here. The fellow doesn't know me from Adam. I'll ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... instants. He was within. She hesitated. Should she go forward, or should she go back? At length she went forward, and, finding in the hedge the gap which Clayhanger had made, forced her way through it. Her skirt was torn by an obstinate twig. Quite calmly she bent down and with her fingers examined the rent; it was not important. She was now in the garden of the Clayhangers, and he whom she sought was moving somewhere in the house. "Supposing I ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... She paused, with her twig broom raised and dripping, and scanned him eagerly. "Is it anything about the ship that came yesterday? I heard among the women that it is the war-vessel of Eric's kinsman, Thorkel Farserk, just come back from ravaging the Irish coast. Is his wife going ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... dead, blasted by lightning, or injured by the attacks of animals at its base, it does not therefore lose all its beauty; for it becomes immediately covered with a peculiar gray lichen of great length and luxuriance; occupying every branch and twig of the dead tree, and clothing it, as it were, with a second but a new kind of foliage. This lichen will sometimes hang down from the branches in strings of weeping vegetation to the length of five feet and more. You may sometimes ride under the living tree where this parasitical foliage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... sat there, letting thoughts happen dreamily rather than producing them of gray matter, he did not know. A slight sound, the snapping of a twig, brought his mind to alertness without causing the slightest ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... is taken. That is covered by the law. He need not be even a buyer, merely a prospective buyer. What I want to bring out is this. Suppose a nurseryman here in this state sells a tree,—he must have a permit before he can do it; he cannot send even a twig through the post office otherwise. I don't see if a bud is taken from a tree and put on a black walnut tree that it necessarily makes the bud that grows on the black walnut tree any better than ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... it. Oh! father, father! Give thy snowy locks to me, they are younger than my blond head. Let me live and die as thou hast lived and died. I wish to plant in the soil over your grave the green branch of my young life, I will water it with my tears, and the God of orphans will protect that sacred twig nourished by the grief of youth and the memory ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... thunderer, With all his might, slew The dwellers in Alfheim With that little willow-twig, And no shield Was able to resist The strong age-diminisher Of ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... camp-fire one afternoon looking out over the lake, I was the only one to see a little commotion in the water, half hidden by the near branches, as of some tiny swimmer struggling to reach the shore. Rushing to its rescue in the canoe, I found a yellow-rumped warbler, quite exhausted, clinging to a twig that hung down into the water. I brought the drenched and helpless thing to camp, and, putting it into a basket, hung it up to dry. An hour or two afterward I heard it fluttering in its prison, and cautiously lifted the lid to get a better glimpse of the lucky ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... drunk from gold? Can a silver dish the forest hold? A rocking twig is the finest chair, And the softest paths lie through the air. Farewell, farewell ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... cut on a sharp blade of grass, and my dress is caught on an amaranth twig. Wait for me ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... what happens in the case of the red coral of commerce. A minute polype, fixed to the rocky bottom of the deep sea, grows up into a branched trunk. The end of every branch and twig is terminated by a polype; and all the polypes are connected together by a fleshy substance, traversed by innumerable canals which place each polype in communication with every other, and carry nourishment to the substance of the supporting stem. It is a sort ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... pronasci potest."—WACHTER, Glossary (quoted in "Notes and Queries," 3rd series, vii. 157. In the same volume are several papers on the origin of the word). Dr. Prior derives it from mistl (different), and tan (twig), being so unlike ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the lonely isle of St. Helena without cutting a twig from the willow that drooped over the grave of Napoleon, prior to the removal of the body by the government of Louis Philippe. Many of them have since been planted in different parts of Europe, and have grown into trees as large as their parent. Relic-hunters, who are unable to procure ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Indian traversing the Montana never feels himself alone. Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of the wind, in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the bird—everything, even to the bending twig wet with dew—for him has language, distinct personality. The forest is alive in its depths, has caprices, periods of anger; it avoids the thicket under the tread of the huntsman, or again presses him more ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... it was an Indian, and that he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... old Parson True, lay in the great bed opposite the window. A thin little twig of a man, he was still animated, at times, by the power of a strenuous and dauntless spirit. His hair, brushed straight back from the overtopping forehead, had grown snowy white, and the eager, delicate face beneath wore a strange pathos from the ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... tickling his nose with a twig of wild honeysuckle. He said 'Bother the flies!' twice, and ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... snow lay thick upon the ground. Upon the branches of trees it persistently hung, each added layer clinging tenaciously because there was no breath of wind to send it to the ground. Occasionally a dead twig, weighted too heavily by the increasing fall of snow, broke suddenly and dropped noiselessly into a bed of feathery flakes, thus joining its sleeping companions, ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... life-long battle with the spirit of Spanish absolutism, and he was already girding himself for his life's work. He assumed at once for his device a fallen oak, with a young sapling springing from its root. His motto, "Tandem fit surculus arbor," "the twig shall yet become a tree"—was to be nobly justified ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... accommodation of travelers. There was a fine grove for picnic purposes within easy reach, which was also frequently used for camp-meeting purposes. Gnarly old live-oaks spread their branches like a canopy over everything, while the sea-green moss hung from every limb and twig, excluding the light and lazily waving with every vagrant breeze. The fact that these grounds were also used for camp-meetings only proved the broad toleration of the people. On this occasion I distinctly ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... whom I wished most earnestly to avoid. She was standing on the edge of the cliff, her hands behind her, gazing seawards, and though I stopped short at the sight of her, and for a moment entertained wild thoughts of flight, it was not possible for me to carry them out. A dry twig snapped beneath my feet, and, turning quickly round, she had seen me. She came forward at once, and for some reason or other I knew that she was glad. She smiled upon me ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on being one of the best pistol-shots in the army. While riding in the country, he would often put his horse into a gallop, and with a pistol in each hand, never fail to cut off, in passing, the heads of the ducks or chickens which he took as his target. He could cut off a small twig from a tree at twenty-five paces; and I have even heard it said (I am far from guaranteeing the truth of this) that on one occasion, with the consent of the party whose imprudence thus put his life in peril, he cut half in two the stem of a clay pipe, hardly three inches long, which ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... this we have from our own nature a great lesson of sweetness, that in such a death as this there is no pain nor any bitterness, but as a ripe fruit is easily and without violence detached from its twig, so our soul without affliction is parted from the body in which it has been. And just as to him who comes from a long journey, before he enters into the gate of his city, the citizens thereof go forth to meet him, so the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... fire was burning cheerfully, sending long streamers of wood smoke into the morning air. On the bricks sat a billy-can full of water just on the boil, and, as it bubbled up, Grizzel threw in a small handful of tea, giving it a stir round with a cherry twig. She let it bubble again while she counted ten, then lifted the can to one side and put the lid on. She had begged a cup of warm, frothy milk from the milk-boy's pail as he came up the hill. The damper was sitting on the hot bricks, ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... fetched along one of those hand-electric torches, did you, Jack?" he exclaimed. "Well, a flashlight never had a better chance to make itself useful than right now. It's going to be a picnic from here on. I can see every little twig and blade of grass; and as for our trail, a fellow could follow it with one eye shut. Thank goodness! our troubles for the day are ended; unless it comes on to rain cats and dogs ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... an ill-disposed woman, named Susy Martin, living in Salisbury. Mr. Pike, who dwells near this Martin, saith she is no witch, although an arrant scold, as was her mother before her; and as for the girl, he saith that a birch twig, smartly laid on, would cure her sooner than the hanging of all the old women in the Colony. Mistress Weare says this is not the first time the Evil Spirit hath been at work in Hampton; for they did all remember the case of Goody Marston's child, who was, from as fair and promising an ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in brown velvet with a tiny twig of holly perched among furry trimmings, hurried up the steps and into the vestibule. Richard met Ruth halfway, his face alight, his ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... tree to be desecrated?" "Has the idolater broken off dry bark, or green boughs; has he taken from it a staff, or a twig, or even a leaf—it is desecrated." "Has he trimmed it for the sake of the tree?" "It is forbidden." "Has he trimmed it, but not for the sake of the tree?" "It ...
— Hebrew Literature
... Shu[u]zen spoke—"'A twig broken on the flowering branch of plum, and the whole is to be cut off.' Such the words of Kuro[u] Hangwan Yoshitsune. Kiku, you are a vile, treacherous woman; undeserving of Heaven's favour and the kindness ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... disappeared, it would often suddenly dart out, and again vanish twenty or fifty yards further on. On one or two occasions the insect was detected{33} reposing, and it could then be seen how completely it assimilates itself to the surrounding leaves. It sits on a nearly upright twig, the wings fitting closely back to back, concealing the antennae and head, which are drawn up between their bases. The little tails of the hind wing touch the branch, and form a perfect stalk to the leaf, which is supported in its place by the claws ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... subdivided and re-subdivided into haunches, which again are divided and re-subdivided. Here between two limbs another branch is jammed, in a stationary fornication which is reproduced in diminished scale from bough to twig to the top of the tree. There it seems the trunk is a phallus which mounts and disappears into a skirt of leaves or which, on the contrary, issues from a green clout and plunges into the glossy belly ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... a thin reed and tipped with thorns of the nopal. Sometimes it is shot from a diminutive bow, like an arrow. But a more interesting way is to hurl it by means of a primitive throwing-stick, which is nothing but a freshly cut twig from a willow (jaria) about six inches long, left in its natural state except for the flattening of one end on one side. The spear is held in the left hand, the stick in the right. The flat part of the latter is placed against ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... often careened, repaired, and adorned since that time, I see nothing ridiculous in declaring that it is the same ship; any more than in saying the oak I planted an acorn thirty years ago, is the same tree I saw spring up then a little twig, which not even a moderate sceptic will deny; though he takes so much pains to persuade plain folks out of their own existence, by laughing us out of the dull notion that he who dies a withered old fellow at fourscore, should ever be considered as the same person whom his mother brought ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... to ride his master's horse to place them in his belt, and he gave him orders to let all the king's horses get before him, and as he should overtake one horse after the other, to take one of the twigs and strike the horse with it over the crupper, and then let that twig fall; and after that to take another twig, and do in like manner to every one of the horses, as he should overtake them, enjoining the horseman strictly to watch when his own horse should stumble, and to throw down his cap on the spot. All these things did the youth fulfil, giving a ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... this stuff jointed and moving. If I can do that, I will trouble you for style; anybody might write it, and it would be splendid; well-engineered, the masses right, the blooming thing travelling - twig? ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the wind especially caught everything in a throttling violence. The bright short grass lay all one way like brushed hair. Every shrub in the garden tugged at its roots like a dog at the collar, and strained every leaping leaf after the hunting and exterminating element. Now and again a twig would snap and fly like a bolt from an arbalist. The three men stood stiffly and aslant against the wind, as if leaning against a wall. The two ladies disappeared into the house; rather, to speak truly, they were blown into ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... me," he thought in his little round head as he tried to wriggle across the road and couldn't because his back was so stiff. "Now I am an old man and I shall never see another summer. Good-bye." And Fuzzy Caterpillar rolled himself up in a gray blanket and hung himself on the end of a dried twig. "This is the last of me," he said once more as the dried little grub he now was rattled around in ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Almost the clearest picture of Carl I have is the eager look with which he scanned the people stepping out of our car at the station, and the beam that lit up his face as he spied us. There is a line in Dorothy Canfield's "Bent Twig" that always appealed to us. The mother and father were separated for a few days, to the utter anguish of the father especially, and he remarked, "It's Hell to be happily married!" Every time we were ever separated ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... as much as an ox could, in fairness, be made to do. A ride-ox can be tied up by his nose-bridle; but, if wild or frightened, he will assuredly struggle till the nose-stick be torn out of his nose, and he becomes free. It is, therefore, better to tie the bridle to a tuft of grass, or a slender twig, rather than to a tree or to the saddle-bags. Mounting an ox is usually a troublesome business, on account of his horns. To make ride-oxen quiet and tame, scratch their backs and tails—they dearly love it—and hold salt in your hands for them to lick. They soon learn their names, and come to be ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... time passed, the winter came and was gone again, and another springtime was at hand, with its new life stirring in blade and twig and branch, and its mystical call ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... farther astray—swayed alternately by the spirit of the stoic and the spirit of the little child. But little Poosk was made of sterling stuff, and the two spirits had a hard battle in him for the mastery that wintry afternoon. His chase of the rabbit was brought to an abrupt conclusion by a twig which caught one of his snow-shoes, tripped him up, and sent him headlong into the snow. When snow averages four feet in depth it affords great scope for ineffectual floundering. The snow-shoes kept his feet near the surface, and the depth prevented ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... and carried them to sunny places; but at last she grew very impatient, and one morning, when she was all alone in the garden, very much provoked that they had not made their appearance, took a twig and explored; and the first poke brought to light the little seeds, as shiny and brown as when they left the apple. It was a great disappointment, and Polly caught them up, and threw them as far away as she could, and with tears in her ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... shape, with a colossal tree standing in its centre,—a live-oak with trunk full forty feet in girth, and branches spreading like a banyan. Though an evergreen, but little of its own foliage can be seen, only here and there a parcel of leaves at the extremity of a protruding twig; all the rest, great limbs and lesser branches, shrouded under Spanish moss, this in the moonlight showing white ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... still in the country of the Weezee, of whose curious customs they had an opportunity of seeing more. Both sexes are inveterate smokers. They quickly manufacture their pipes of a lump of clay and a green twig, from which they extract the pith. They all grow tobacco, the leaves of which they twist up into a thick rope like a hay-band, and then coil it into a flattened spiral, shaped like a target. They are very ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... answer, "Pluck but a branchlet of the Tree and plant it in thy garden; 'twill at once take root and in shortest time be as gross and fair a growth as that in yonder copse." So the Princess broke off a twig, and now that she had secured the three things, whereof the holy woman spake to her, she was exceeding joyful and turning to the Bird said, "I have in very deed won my wish, but one thing is yet wanting ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... renders one receptive of every influence. Through the little copse she walked slowly, with her cloak folded about her, lingering to imbibe the sense of shelter, the sunset filtered in purple through the mist of woven spray and twig, the companionship of growth not sufficiently dense to band against her the sweet home-feeling of a young and tender wintry wood. It was therefore just on the edge of the evening that she emerged from the place and began to cross the meadow-land. At one hand ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... bears the title of "Odes and Miscellaneous Poems, by a Student of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh," Edinburgh, 1790, 4to. These lucubrations, which attracted no share of public attention, were followed by "The Guinea Note, a Poem, by Timothy Twig, Esquire," Edinburgh, 1797, 4to. His next work is entitled, "An Introduction to the History of Poetry in Scotland, with Illustrations by David Allan," Edinburgh, 1798, 4to. This work, though written in a rambling ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... you can use, Mr. Mellowtone," I continued, removing from the twig some of the handsomest ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... it was six o'clock, and thus wanted two hours to daybreak. Hurriedly I left the inn and went out again. A rimy frost had come upon every twig and bush and tree, and in the light of the moon the ice crystals sparkled as though the spirits had scattered myriads of precious stones everywhere. But I thought not of this. I made my way toward the spot from which I thought I had heard the sound come, and ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... little bird has had its supper, and now it is getting ready to go to sleep here, quite secure and content, never troubling itself what its food will be, or where its lodging on the morrow. Like David, it 'abides under the shadow of the Almighty.' It sits on its little twig content, ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... before she became aware that she was very hot and tired and hungry. Her shoes were soaking wet, her skirts and stockings splashed with mud; one shoulder was being sunburned where a twig had caught and ripped her white flannel waist; and Seth's red silk handkerchief around her neck was scarcely a deeper ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... prosperity, he had added a wife and family to his cares, but the dawn was speedily overcast. Everything retrograded with him towards the verge of the miry Slough of Despond, which yawns for insolvent debtors; and after catching at each twig, and experiencing the protracted agony of feeling them one by one elude his grasp, he actually sunk into the miry pit whence he had been extricated by ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... an effort to better my position in the manner I had been directed. Mrs Reichardt had thrown a heavy stone into the water among the sharks, the loud splash of which had driven them away. Before they again made their appearance, I had caught a firm hold of the twig, and flung myself up into ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... them; it is one of Aunt Prue's favorite sayings: 'The Christian should be like a little bird, which sits on its twig and sings, and lets God ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... backs; look that your braw cradle at home be the fairer spread up. Not that I am wishing ill to little Harry, God forbid! So ride your way, for these are the last words ye'll ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last twig that I'll ever cut in the bonny woods ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... before the trees begin to bud and blossom, the sap rises and works its way up into every bough and branch and twig of the tree. Sap is a liquid which flows through the tree much in the same way that blood flows through our veins, and the sap is the life-giving element of the tree, just as the blood is of ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... would open his eyes and yawn, realize once more how good life was, and plunge forthwith upon his still sleeping brothers and sisters, tumbling them triumphantly into the midst of a new romp before they knew whether they were on their heads or their heels. A twig, a leaf, or a stone would be endowed with the attributes of some cunning and fierce quarry, to be stalked, run down, and finally torn in sunder with marvellous heroism, with reckless, noisy valour. The sun shone warm and sweetly over all, there beside the immemorial Sussex Downs; life and the ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Drechsler's money had gone a long way, and now those who had prepared it thought there never had been such a beautiful tree. True, every child in the Forest had had on former occasions a tree of their own at Christmas time—none so poor but some small twig was lit up, though the lights might be few; but this one, ah, that was a different matter—no such tree as this had ever been seen in ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... conquered the whole tree, and after stripping its huge limbs bare, clothed them with its own wan masses, they always looked to me like so many gigantic Druid ghosts, with flowing robes and beards, and locks all of one ghastly grey, and I would not have broken a twig off them for the world, lest a sad voice, like that which reproached Dante, should have moaned ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... him into a scraggly orchard, and he broke a crotched limb from a tree. With a "leg" of this twig clutched firmly in either hand he stumped about on the sward until ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... I think. We porochial pots is to pass all our time a-prospecting for Stink! Doctor DUDFIELD thinks WE should inspeck, periodical, all privit dwellings, Discover and show up defecks, sech as fumings and leakings, and smellings, As "lurk unsuspected about," which the tenants theirselves do not twig, And the landlords, in course, don't remove. Well, your tenant is mostly a pig, And your landlord is sometimes a 'og; still between 'em we jest slip along, But do dooty for both of 'em? Snakes! that is coming it slightly too ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... whenever Lenore's hair caught its rays, it shone like gold. The proud eye, the delicate mouth, the slender limbs of the noble girl took his fancy prisoner. She laughed, and showed her little white teeth—he was enraptured; she broke off a twig, and struck the shrubs with it as she passed—it seemed to him that they bent before her in homage ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... thou pleasure to be cross in talk; But thou with mildness entertain'st thy wooers; With gentle conference, soft and affable. Why does the world report that Kate doth limp? O sland'rous world! Kate like the hazel-twig Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels. O! let me see thee walk: thou ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... the watching Thomas, no distant clanging of the Chapel bell. How strange they all seemed, looking back from this safe harbour. The aunts, the Warlocks, Thurston, Mr. Crashaw, Caroline—all of them. There the imagination set fire to every twig—here the imagination was not needed, because ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... guide you, first, the map; second, sun; third, shadows; fourth, wind; fifth, compass; sixth, your bent-twig blazing, there will be little, if any, danger of being lost. But you must constantly keep on the alert and refer frequently to these guides, especially when deflecting from the course first taken after leaving camp. At every turning, stop and take your bearings anew; you cannot ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... was soberly walking down the path looking spindly in every way: long, thin legs and a long thin body that were for all the world like a stick. Probably you have seen the Walking Stick many times and thought him just a twig. If you hadn't been in such a hurry you might have seen something interesting. Each time he picked up a leg, he seemed to wave it in the air before he put it down again. That was, I suppose, because he had to, each leg was ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... Phil and Martin had developed an equal interest in outdoors. The Landis boy often came running into the Reist yard calling for Amanda and exclaiming excitedly, "I found a bird's nest! It's an oriole this time, the dandiest thing way out on the end of a tiny twig. Come on ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... think of that springtime homemaking, and then this poor little widow would give a little bird gasp. That was all. One day she had searched hard for food for her young, for as they grew bigger they demanded more and were more arrogantly hungry. As she perched to rest a moment upon a twig, beneath which in the grass were a few late dandelions, she felt coming over her a weakness she could not resist. As a matter of fact, the bird mother had been overworked and so killed. Birds, overpressed, die as human beings do. So the mother bird, after a few moments, fell off ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... oh, Paradise!" hummed Amy Raeburn that same Sunday morning as, the last to leave the Manse, she ran after her mother and sisters. The storm of the two previous days had newly brightened the landscape. Every twig and branch shone, and the red and yellow maple leaves, the wine-color of the oak, the burnished copper of the beech, were like jewels ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... in mid-lake, of the poisonous yew-tree in the middle of the wood, shedding its crimson cups on the dank earth. How he lingered by certain black waterpools hedged on every side by drooping wych-elms and black-stemmed alders, watching the faint waves widening to the banks as a leaf or a twig dropped ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... that's all I beg, and I'll find out whatever there is to be found. It is damnably out of my way embarking at ——-, but I had best keep clear of Lunnon. And I tell you what, if these youngsters have hopped the twig, there's another bird on the bough that may prove a goldfinch after all—Young Arthur Beaufort: I hear he is a wild, expensive chap, and one who can't live without lots of money. Now, it's easy to frighten ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Battle Plume,"' answered Helga, 'and "Gullfaxi" means "Golden Mane." I don't suppose, if you are to get on the horse at all, it would matter your taking the sword too. And if you take the sword you will have to carry the stick and the stone and the twig ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... a little leaf was heard to cry and sigh, as leaves often do, when a gentle wind is blowing. And the twig said, "What is ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... varied outlines of the clumpy foliage began to assume or imitate—say rather SUGGEST other shapes than their own. A light wind began to blow; it set the boughs of a neighbour tree rocking, and all their branches aswing, every twig and every leaf blending its individual motion with the sway of its branch and the rock of its bough. Among its leafy shapes was a pack of wolves that struggled to break from a wizard's leash: greyhounds would not have strained so savagely! I watched them with an interest that ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... still. But after they had listened for a while they discovered that it wasn't so still as it had seemed. Every bird and insect, each leaf and blossom, was busy, preparing its dinner, or else just growing. A twig rustled as a little garter snake squirmed into the thicket. A little gray nuthatch looked for its lunch on a locust tree, crawling over the trunk head-downwards, while, on a branch overhead, a crested flycatcher perched watching, watching, then ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... turned, in response to this diplomatic advance, and leant his right elbow on the back of the seat, and his chin on his right palm. He put his left leg over his right leg, and thus his left foot swayed like a bird on a twig within an inch of Helen's flounce. The parasol covered the faces of the just ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... the corner by the cupboard the sheet inside it, the saucepan on the hearth, the pail on the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then, with professional movements, she closed the dead woman's large eyes, put a plate on the bed and poured some holy water into it, placing in it the twig of boxwood that had been nailed to the chest of drawers, and kneeling down, she fervently repeated the prayers for the dead, which she knew by heart, as a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... must have been a twig sticking up in the ice," declared Cora, before Nancy could reply. "You can't ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... now goes to work to set his trap; planting it upon the shore, in some chosen place, two or three inches below the surface of the water, and secures it by a chain to a pole set deep in the mud. A small twig is then stripped of its bark, and one end is dipped in the "medicine," as the trappers term the peculiar bait which they employ. This end of the stick rises about four inches above the surface ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... stage no one was safe. The war party might at any moment find itself ambushed by the very ones it hoped to surprise. The snap of a twig; the dropping of a fruit from some tall tree; each sudden sound was interpreted as the twang of a hostile bow. Overwrought nerves peopled the jungle with spectral enemies; they found relief in ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... troops secretly long for them—but on the whole the "passive resistance" of the democrats seems to me only a seasonable expression for what is usually called fear. Yesterday I dined with the King. The Queen was amiable in the English fashion. The enclosed twig of erica I picked from her sewing-table, and send it to keep you from being ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... that had alighted and now set to singing on the topmost twig of a lofty pear-tree near by; and with his first note Jane reappeared. And while we listened, unstirring, to that rich, undaunted voice, I had good opportunity to observe her, and not, I think, without her knowledge, not even without ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... victory over the French fleet. He told me, too, that he had the same object in view, when, the summer before, he refused my application, to go and see the grand review on Bagshot Heath. It was, however, at too late a period that he began to check my patriotic ardour; he had, himself, "bent the twig," and it had grown too powerfully in the direction which he had given to it to be directed to any other. Although I was no politician at that time, yet my bosom glowed with as sacred a love of country, with as strong a predilection for ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the great Cicadeae were everywhere lighting on the ground, when they uttered a short sharp creaking sound, and anon disappeared, as if by magic. Beautiful whip-snakes were gleaming in the sun: they hold on by a few coils of the tail round a twig, the greater part of their body stretched out horizontally, occasionally retracting, and darting an unerring aim at some insect. The narrowness of the gorge, and the excessive steepness of the bounding ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... could see the fire clearly, and as he came across, I was thinking how animal-like he looked, when I fancied I saw a movement, and before I could be sure, there was a flash, a loud report, and a twig dropped from over my head upon one of ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... spring, summer or autumn. We all love the park in those seasons. Many do not know how beautiful the bare trees look in winter with their gray or brown branches. There is no more exquisite sight in the world than to see these trees coated with glistening ice out to the tiniest twig, or to see them ridged with pearly white snow. It is a merry sight to see the ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... heavily from side to side, drunk with gladness and plenty. Here the peach was beginning to droop over a wall. There, and yonder again, beyond, ranks of fig-trees, that had so muffled themselves in their foliage that not the nakedness of a twig showed through, had yet more figs than leaves. The crisp, cool masses of the pomegranate were dotted with scarlet flowers. The cape jasmine wore hundreds of her own white favors, whose fragrance forerun the sight. Every breath ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... wooden or horn implements are often found. The vases are of various shapes, all provided with handles, and are covered with ornaments, some made with the fingers of the potter, others with the help of a twig or some fine string. On the other hand, there are no hatchets of foreign rock; commerce and intercourse with people at a distance had ceased, or at least become rarer. The tools are fixed into handles of stag horn, which are found in every stage of manufacture. The personal property ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... or of hers, that could, for an instant, have allowed one to suppose that there had been anything in their intercourse which either could have wished to hide. As to her, I could as soon have suspected of impurity the pearly drops that hung lightly on each twig of the hawthorn bushes that we passed, as her young life of one evil action, or her young mind of one evil thought. The deep blue waters of the little lake that lay stretched at our feet, were not more calm and more ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... were interrupted by his eldest daughter who asked him for a leaf of the lime-tree, which she wanted for a sunshade for her doll. He stepped on the seat and raised his hand to break off a little twig, when a constable appeared and rudely ordered him not to touch the trees. A fresh humiliation. At the same time the constable requested him not to allow his children to play on the graves, which was ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... with golden and silvery spots. Hence the word chrysalis (Fig. 14, b), from the Greek, meaning golden, while the Latin word pupa, meaning a baby or doll, is indicative of its youth. In this state it hangs suspended to a twig or other object; while the silk worm, and others of its kind, previous to moulting, or casting their skins, spin a silken cocoon, which envelops ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... lived a girl named Toody. She was not very big, as you can believe when I tell you that all the shrubs in the garden were taller than she, and all the flowers nodded over her head. In this same house lived Toody's cousins, Kitty, and Crocus, and Twig, and Tiny—only Tiny was a little dog, not a little boy. And here, too, lived ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... dabbling my fingers in the spring down in the old stone spring house, and standing on the cold, wet rocks in my bare feet. And there's the winter mornings, Eliot, when the trees are covered with sleet till every twig twinkles like a diamond. And the frost on the window-panes—oh, if I could only lay my face against the cold glass now, how good ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... has omitted one of his definitions, coque qui enveloope le grain, that is, the husk, or hull. Mr. Wedgwood might perhaps found an argument on this in support of our old friend Rac and his relation to huskiness; but it seems to us one of those trifles, the turned leaf, or broken twig, that put one on the right trail. We accept Mr. Wedgwood's derivative signification of refuse, worthless, contemptible, and ask if all these terms do not apply equally well to the chaff of the threshing-floor? It is more satisfactory ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... now. Tearing a loose shred from his tattered trousers, he soaked it in a little puddle, then stuffed it in his mouth. He clasped his jack-knife in one fist and a twig in the other. He drew up his belt. He took that precious hat off and stuffed it in his pocket, campaign buttons and all. Ah, no, he did not throw it away. He ripped off another rag and tied it fast around his neck and he bound his scarf around his forehead. He knew all ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Clearly before her did she see that small picture: the hill, and the tree, and the winding road, imaged as if mirrored in the iris of an eye. And in her memory she was upon that road, and the hill rose beside her, and the little tree was outlined, every twig ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... hold upon life. While sitting one evening under the trees by the roadside, my attention was called to the unusual conduct of half a dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An elderly man was moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turned upward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that the shank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certain spot, the twig would gradually bend downwards until it had ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... "Twig the yellow beggar, will you, Gib?" said McGuffey; "one eye half open for all the world like he was winkin' at us ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... him on the edge of the jungle while I went into the forest to get some luscious twigs for his dinner. One has to have a very sharp hatchet to cut down these twigs; it takes half an hour to sharpen the hatchet because if a twig is mutilated an elephant will ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... his dug-out to the stake, while Ben, who informed him that his name was Toner, got a willow twig with a crotch at the thick end, and strung his fish on it ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... hole in the ground most of your life, and are pretty near ripe to be laid away in another one, smaller I grant you, but dark and deep, according. We'll never get Lahoma back the same as when we let her flutter forth hunting a green twig over the face of the waters. She may bring back the first few leaves she finds, but a time's going to come...." He broke off abruptly, his eyes wide and troubled, as if already viewing ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... natural to attribute it to the cessation of vegetation, and the want of nourishment which the leaves experience at that season, when the course of the sap is interrupted. The vessels of the leaf contract, dry up, and soon after, that organ is detached from the twig on which it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... that of one ready to flee, terrified but uncertain. As the noises within died down she relapsed from her tense pose and showed her face to Vaucher in the light of the lamp. It was Madame Bertin. She did not see him where he waited, and all of a sudden her self-possession snapped like a twig you break in your fingers. She was weeping, leaning against the wall, weeping desolately, in an abandonment of humiliation and impotence. But Vaucher was not moved when he told ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... may I present you with this sprig of it," cutting off a small twig, and presenting it at the same instant ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... respect to discovering the proper place to dig wells. There were certain persons, I do not remember what they were called, whether water doctors or water witches, who professed to be able, with the aid of a small hazel crotched twig, which was held firmly in both hands with the crotch inverted, to tell where a well should be sunk with a certainty of finding water. The process was simply to walk about with the twig thus held, and when the right place was reached, the forked twig would turn downwards, ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... a big iron cage, where the 'ose plays upon you like fun; A lawn, or a house a-fire, CHARLIE, could not be more thoroughly done. Sez I, "I'm insured, dontcher know, mate; so don't waste the water, d'ye 'ear?" But he didn't appear to arf twig. He seemed jest a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... distributed and the teacher asks the pupils to examine them and to describe all marks and projections that can be found on the twig. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... far as eye could reach, to sparkle in the sunshine. The sky was greenish grey and without a cloud. The stillness of the world was magical; in the miles of landscape which were visible, nothing stirred. The snapping of a twig sounded like the crashing ruin of a forest giant. The gliding of the sled across the snow, and the padding footsteps of the huskies, thundered down the tunnel of the river through the pines like the galloping of heavy artillery over ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... I am quite confident I heard a sound as of a broken twig outside the garden-wall. The doctor and the admiral are in deep discussion about ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Christmas, pure and crisp. Wherever one looks, one's eyes water cruelly. For my part, I am very thankful that it did not occur to God to make the world always white. I hate snow's blinding livery. Each tiniest twig on the dry harsh trees is overladen with snow. It is a wonder that they do not break under it; nor is there any wind to shake down and disperse it. Tempest is white; the church is white: the whole world colorless and blinding. I have been in the habit of looking ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... taller palm; on past the one long grave of the Rough Riders—along the battle-line of the first little fight—through the ghastly, many-coloured masses of hideous land-crabs shuffling sidewise into the cactus and shuffling on with an unearthly rustling of dead twig and fallen leaf: along the crest of the foothills and down to the little town of Siboney, lighted, bustling with preparation for the wounded in the tents; bustling at the beach with the unloading of ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... Stryte. Next door to a angel—that's wot you are. She's the angel. Tell 'er I said so—that's if you can, you twig? And say that when I 'eard that nearly all the gay old crowd o' pupils 'ad gone away, day before yesterday, I could 'a blooming well cut me throat, thinkin' she'd gone too. Becos' when I swore in for the Town Guard, it was with the idear—mind you rub that in!—of strikin' ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... tongue. Let this be about an inch long. Hold this to the ground with the cut side down. Bank soil over this. At and under the tongue the new shoots will start, and the new gooseberry bush grow from this. This new plant may be cut off from the parent. If the twig will not stay bent down in this position, cut a forked piece of wood which shall act as a pin. Do you picture this? A branch bent so that not far from the parent plant it is buried under ground with the rest of the root protruding from ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... maiden whose loveliness inspires the most impassioned expressions in Arabic poetry," Lane states, "is celebrated for her slender figure: She is like the cane among plants, and is elegant as a twig of the oriental willow. Her face is like the full moon, presenting the strongest contrast to the color of her hair, which is of the deepest hue of night, and falls to the middle of her back (Arab ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... among the serried tree-trunks. The slender birches had faded utterly, the stately beeches resembled dim ghosts of trees and only the spruces retained, imperfectly, their shape and form. Thurston was country bred, and, lifting high his feet to clear bramble trailer and fallen twig, he walked by feeling instead of sight. The beck moaned a little more loudly, and there was a heavy astringent odor of damp earth and decaying leaves. When beast and bird were still again it seemed as if Nature, worn out by the productive effort of summer, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... and night-time. Everything seemed to be saying to man: 'Rest, brother of ours; breathe lightly, and grieve not, thou too, at the sleep close before thee.' I raised my head and saw at the very end of a delicate twig one of those large flies with emerald head, long body, and four transparent wings, which the fanciful French call 'maidens,' while our guileless people has named them 'bucket-yokes.' For a long while, more than an hour, I did not take my eyes ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... in this starry night, a twilit avenue with two side aisles of pitch darkness. Here and there stone benches were disposed between the trunks. There was not a breath of wind; a heavy atmosphere of perfume hung about the alleys; and every leaf stood stock-still upon its twig. Hither, after vainly knocking at an inn or two, the Berthelinis came at length to pass the night. After an amiable contention, Leon insisted on giving his coat to Elvira, and they sat down together on the first bench in silence. Leon made a cigarette, which he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... people can find water with a forked hazel twig," said Olave. "They hold it loosely in their hands, and it jerks when the water's near. I wish I ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there—was invisible to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... superstitions, chief among which have been some connected with epilepsy. Blochwick[108] tells us how to prepare an amulet from an elder growing on a sallow. "In the month of October, a little before the full moon, you pluck a twig of the elder, and cut the cane that is betwixt two of its knees, or knots, in nine pieces, and these pieces being bound in a piece of linen, be in a thread, so hung about the neck, that they touch the spoon of the heart, or the sword-formed cartilage; and that they may stay ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... frontier bred, and although his progress was slower than the Texan's had been, he crept along as silently as one of the redskins themselves. Not a mesquite twig snapped under his body; not a pebble rattled. It seemed to take him hours to reach the hill which Kid Wolf had pointed out to him. As he did so, the moonlight again became so bright that it made the landscape nearly as white as day. For a time, he lay flat against the ground; ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... To move away the ringlet curl From the lovely lady's cheek— There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, 50 Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... not despising fruits and flowers when we insist upon the root from which they shall come. A man may take separate acts of partial goodness, as you see children in the springtime sticking daisies on the spikes of a thorn-twig picked from the hedges. But these will die. The basis of all righteousness is faith, and the manifestation of faith is practical righteousness. 'Show Me thy faith by thy works' is Christ's teaching quite as much as it is the teaching of His sturdy servant ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Said Pug: "they copy me and you, And clumsily. I'd like to see Them jump from forest-tree to tree; I'd like to see them, on a twig, Perform a slip-slap or a rig; And yet it pleasant is to know The ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... perked up their pretty heads in Mary's cottage garden, and throughout all nature there came that inexplicable, indefinite, soft pulsation of new life and new love which we call the spring. Tiny buds, rosy and shining with sap, began to gleam like rough jewels on every twig and tree—a colony of rooks which had abode in the elms surrounding Weircombe Church, started to make great ado about their housekeeping, and kept up as much jabber as though they were inaugurating an Irish night in the House of Commons,—and, over a more or less tranquil sea, the gulls poised ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... was also carrying a burden. They stopped, took counsel for an instant, bringing their antennae together, and started for the hillock. The second ant then left his burden, and both together then seized a twig and introduced its end beneath the first load which had been abandoned because of its weight. By acting on the free extremity of the twig they were able to use it exactly as a lever, and succeeded almost without trouble in passing their ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... once travelling with a black boy the latter produced from the lining of his hat a bit of twig about an inch long and having three notches cut on it. The black boy explained that he was a dhomka (messenger), that the central notch represented himself, and the other notches, one the youth sending the message, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... curious thing not to hear the rustle of a branch, the crack of a twig; only the muffled sound of their footsteps in the snow. Bill walked in front, breaking trail. He carried the ancient rifle ready in ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... and feelings take their colour from you! O! AEgiochus, the birch has often proved thou art still a thunderer; and, although thy twanging bow murmur no longer through the avenging air, many an apple twig still vindicates thy outraged dignity, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... to avoid everything which had the remotest likeness to a branch or twig of any kind, the sudden sharp snapping of which would be sure to attract attention, I thought, though the air was filled with the chirping of millions of ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... write more criticism, about Spenser &c. I think I could say something about him myself—but Lord bless me—these "merchants and their spicy drugs" which are so harmonious to sing of, they lime-twig up my poor soul and body, till I shall forget I ever thought myself a bit of a genius! I can't even put a few thoughts on paper for a newspaper. I "engross," when I should pen a paragraph. Confusion blast all mercantile transactions, all traffick, exchange of commodities, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... not countenanced in the North, and nothing would cause a fellow to be fired from Yale quicker than the knowledge that he had had anything to do with one while here. Do you twig?" ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... his notice. His faculties were sharpened by contact with these children of the wilds, whose only class-room was the forest, their only teacher, nature. As the crushed blade or broken twig were of deepest import to the Indian scout, so no incident of his life was now too trivial for Brock to dismiss as of ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... runaways as fast as possible. Now at day-break—"at the mouth of day," the story- teller says—the Giant's daughter said to her husband, "My father's breath is burning my back; put thy hand into the ear of the grey filly, and whatever thou findest, throw it behind thee." "There is a twig of sloe-tree," he said. "Throw it behind thee," said she; and he did so, and twenty miles of black-thorn wood grew out of it, so thick that a weasel could not get through. But the Giant cut through ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... were borrowed from the interlacing of the branches of trees planted at stated intervals, than this avenue, in which Nature has so completely succeeded in outrivalling her handmaiden Art, that not a single trunk, hardly even a bough or a twig, appears to mar the grand regularity of the design as a piece of perspective. No cathedral aisle was ever more perfect; and the effect, under every variety of aspect, the magical light and shadow of the ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... villanous misdeeds; but, please God, they will get weak and old whilst I shall grow in strength and power, and shall be, in my turn, avenged according to my desire." He was hardly twenty, when, one day, one of his barons seeing him gnawing, with an air of abstraction and dreaminess, a little green twig, said to his neighbors, "If any one could tell me what the king is thinking of, I would give him my best horse." Another of those present boldly asked the King. "I am thinking," answered Philip, "of a certain matter, and that is, whether God will grant unto me or ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... speaking, overcome by its emotion, whilst the little grumbler, silenced, but not convinced, turned sulkily away. It did not relish the kind advice of its true friend, nor did it at all intend to follow it, but still it settled down on its tiny twig so very quietly, that all its relatives firmly believed it had given up its foolish scheme of imaginary happy freedom; but they were mistaken, for a few days after a north wind came quite unexpectedly upon them. It bent the Aspen tree almost to breaking, still the loving little ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... Oberon) be dwelling! Your notion's lovely, winning, grand, The fiscal cat most bravely belling; Guileless NATHANIEL, too, affects World-hardened hearts—almost to weeping, Volunteer taxes who expects To draw from Mammon's harpy keeping. Go, lure the tomtit from the twig, Go, coax the tiger from his quarry, The toper from his thirsty swig, The swindler from his schemings sorry: "Persuade" the Sweater to be just, The 'cute Monopolist to be kindly; Tempt hunger to resign his crust, The niggard churl to lavish blindly: Make—by soft words—the ruthless wrecker Subscribe ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... their very life, as the malarias do that of the human being. Roses of the most choice varieties grow spontaneously by the roadside, or creep over the walls. Nature, the parent of architects, has here shaped all her trees upon the most exquisite models. The very twig planted in a hedge, if left to itself, grows up into a tree which gracefully inclines its head like a weeping willow; while a mammoth white bell, or trumpet flower, hangs pendent from the extremity of every limb, each ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... shadow. And his heart within him fluttered, Trembled like the leaves above him, Like the birch-leaf palpitated, As the deer came down the pathway. Then, upon one knee uprising, Hiawatha aimed an arrow; Scarce a twig moved with his motion, Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled, But the wary roebuck started, Stamped with all his hoofs together, Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow; Ah! the singing, fatal arrow, Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him! Dead he lay there in the forest, By ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... What are you afraid of?" cried the dwarf in a little, dry voice, that sounded like the cracking of a dry twig beneath ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... sentences, but could not unfold their meaning, so, at once discarding this press, he went over and opened the door of the press of the "Secondary Records" and took out a book, in which, on examination, he found a representation of a twig of Olea fragrans. Below, was a pond, the water of which was parched up and the mud dry, the lotus flowers decayed, and even the roots dead. At the back ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... night to try. I wanted to imagine the trees cosy. They seemed now in the underworld. Between the lemon trees, beside the path, were little orange trees, and dozens of oranges hanging like hot coals in the twilight. When I warm my hands at them the Signore breaks me off one twig after another, till I have a bunch of burning oranges among dark leaves, a heavy bouquet. Looking down the Hades of the lemon-house, the many ruddy-clustered oranges beside the path remind me of the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... the sheet inside it, the pot on to the hearth, the pail on to the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then with a professional air, she closed the dead woman's enormous eyes, put a plate on the bed and poured some holy water into it, dipped the twig of boxwood into it, and kneeling down, she fervently repeated the prayers for the dead, which she knew by heart, as ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Seeing the white man's appreciation of this form of wind and water erosion, Jim told of a greater bridge known only to himself and one other Indian, located on the north side of the Navajo Mountain, in the Paiute Indian reservation. Bending a twig of willow in rainbow-shape, with its ends stuck in the ground, Jim showed what his bridge ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... bite, and sculling indifferently past. It rather prefers the clear water and sandy bottoms, though here it has not much choice. It is a true fish, such as the angler loves to put into his basket or hang at the top of his willow twig, in shady afternoons along the banks of the stream. So many unquestionable fishes he counts, and so many shiners, which he counts and then throws away. Old Josselyn in his "New England's Rarities," published in 1672, mentions the Perch ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... and grunting, and snoring. Under him the straw makes a crackling sound, while the two women whisper together in the darkness, and the reeds of the dry thatch on the roof rustle (the wind is still drawing an occasional breath), and ever and anon a twig brushes against an outside wall. The scene is like ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... which consists of another set of small vessels. If, for example, we, early in the spring, cut a branch transversely, we will perceive the sap oozing out from numerous points over the whole of the divided surface, except on that part occupied by the pith and the bark; and if a twig, on which the leaves are already unfolded, be cut from the tree, and placed with its cut end in a watery solution of Brazil-wood, the colouring matter will be found to ascend into the leaves and to the top of the twig. In both these cases, a close examination with a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... exercise his soldiers at target-shooting without obtaining permission to place the target in some neighboring state—I found the garden-walks and public roads so fearfully clean, every leaf and twig being swept up daily, and preserved to manure the duchy, that during a pedestrian tour of three days I was absolutely ashamed to spit any where. There was no possible chance of doing it without expunging a soldier or a policeman, or disfiguring the entire ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... each tiny blade grew big And taller stood to hear, And every leaf on every twig Was like ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... "then you will know how to sing." The rain came, and glued the little bird's wings together. "I shall never be able to fly nor to sing," it wailed. Then, of a sudden, it had to blink its eyes; for a glorious light had spread over the world, catching every leaf and twig and blade of grass in tears, and putting a smile into every tear. The baby bird's breast swelled, it did not know why; and it fluttered from the ground, it did not know how. "The sun has come out after the rain," it trilled. "Thank you, sun; thank you, thank you! Oh, mother, did you hear ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... high. It had no appearance of a tree, for neither trunk nor branches were visible. It seemed a mountain of whitish-green scales, fringed with long silvery moss, that hung like innumerable beards from every bough and twig. Nothing could better convey the idea of immense and incalculable age than the hoary beard and venerable appearance of this monarch of the woods. Spanish moss of a silvery grey covered the whole mass of wood and foliage, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... fable about that in Paulson,' he said. 'A father gave his sons a broom to break. At first they could not break it, but when they took it twig by twig they broke it easily. And it's the same here,' and he gave a broad ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... at our weary backs; look that your braw cradle at home be the fairer spread up. Not that I am wishing ill to little Harry, God forbid! So ride your way, for these are the last words ye'll ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last twig that I'll ever cut in the bonny woods ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... pasture; then it descended into the valley of a stream, bordered with rich bottom-lands. I never saw the orange in a more flourishing state. We passed several orchards of trees thirty feet high, and every bough and twig so completely laden with fruit, that the foliage ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... hoof-prints of a horse, a twig broken from the branch of a tree, and some fresh leaves of sassafras laurel lying upon the ground, showed clearly the place where Don Rafael had ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... softy, neither, bet your buttons. That don't pay, For you're 'bliged to keep yer eyes peeled and to twig the time o' day; But I've got a mash on flowers; they are better than four 'arf, Them red blazers in my winder; so ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... death brings Restoration 1660-1685 And Charles Two lands 'mid acclamation. After his leaps from twig to twig He now has 'Otium cum Dig.' In merry Charles the Second's age Woman first acted on the stage; The King encouraged much this vogue He was a pleasure seeking rogue. 'He never said a foolish thing, Nor did a wise one'; this the King Countered with 'My words my own My acts my ministers' alone'; ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... suddenly self-assertive. The rustle of squirrels along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed each in turn with critical speculation, his ugly head cocked very much to one side. He instinctively mistrusted all wearers of petticoats, and had found the buffalo incident very much ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... in that," commented Haigh, blinking at the shabby black steamer thoughtfully. "You'd better pop down below in case he has ventured his little self on deck, and should happen to twig you. But still it's best to be on the safe side." He chose a cigar, lighted it and puffed for a minute, and then took it out of his mouth and grinned at the glowing end. "Look here. The fellow doesn't know me from Adam. I'll slip ashore, ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... thick legs. One moment it slumbered, the next it was afoot, warned by some slight sound or jar of the earth or—as some maintain—by a telepathic sense of danger. Certainly, as far as they knew, neither Kingozi nor Mali-ya-bwana had disturbed a pebble or broken a twig. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... a trained roping horse, stood, blown and panting, his feet braced, keeping the rope taut while Farrel dismounted and casually strolled back to the tree. He broke off a small twig and waited, while the hounds, belling lustily, came nosing across the meadow. Kay rode up, as the dogs, catching sight of the helpless cat, quickened their speed to close in; she heard Farrel shout to them and saw him ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... sunny, and the upper casements stood open, to let in the fresh autumn air, and the song of the robin balancing on a swaying twig of the ivy climbing the old walls. White clouds were blowing brightly across ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... bridges, and farm buildings, but all were ivy clad and time worn. The very trees themselves appeared to be laden with a mantle of ivy that was more than they could bear. Many a tall fir, from base to topmost twig, was completely robed with the smooth, five-pointed leaves of this rapacious evergreen. Through the thick foliage, of elm and ash and beech, I could just see an old manor house, and round about it, as if for protection, were clustered some thirty cottages. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... first, almost dead the second, tolerable the third, and well enough the rest; and am now glad of the fatigue, which has served for exercise; and I am at present well enough. The Whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay hold on me as a twig while they are drowning, and the great men making me their clumsy apologies, etc. But my Lord Treasurer received me with a great deal of coldness, which has enraged me so, I am almost vowing revenge. I have not yet gone half ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... his way among the camp-fires until he came to one where sat an old man. A young woman was kneading with skilful fingers the tired muscles of his legs. He raised a sightless face and listened intently as Negore's foot crackled a dead twig. ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... as if it had been made by footsteps moving lightly round and round. But it was strange—so strange as to cause the White Hawk to pause and gaze long and fixedly upon the ground—there was no path which led to this flowery circle. There was not even a crushed leaf nor a broken twig, nor the least trace of a footstep, approaching or retiring, to be found. He thought he would hide himself and lie in wait to discover, if he could, what this ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... Observation 23. A twig submerged in a ditch was scraped. Gemiasma verdans found abundantly with many other things, which if rehearsed would ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... The gnarled finger pointed to a twig of wild lilac eight feet off the ground. Caught on the twig were several coarse black hairs, six inches long. Jerry looked from them back to the Carvers, then down at the ground again. He didn't speak. What was there ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... purple grapes like the fabled fruit of Canaan in the Old Testament, a single bunch of which required two men to bear it, drooped heavily from twining vines, while from many a bough and twig swung golden, crimson, and cream-colored fruit, which ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... marched in a silent file through the undergrowth. Well for the two that they were some distance away, and that the bushes grew thick and long! And well for them, too, that it was night! The warriors looked keenly on every side as they passed, apparently seeking out the last little leaf and twig; but, acute as were their eyes, they did not see the boys in the bushes. And perhaps it was well for some of them that they did not find what they sought, as the wilderness furnished no more formidable antagonist than Henry Ware, and Paul Cotter, ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in, and no sooner had she passed beyond Frigg's sight than this same feeble old woman grew suddenly erect, shook off her woman's garments, and there stood Loki himself. In a moment he had reached the slope east of Valhal, had plucked a twig of the unsworn Mistletoe, and was back in the circle of the gods, who were still at their favourite pastime with Balder. Hoder was standing silent and alone outside the noisy throng, for he ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... moss has literally conquered the whole tree, and after stripping its huge limbs bare, clothed them with its own wan masses, they always looked to me like so many gigantic Druid ghosts, with flowing robes and beards, and locks all of one ghastly grey, and I would not have broken a twig off them for the world, lest a sad voice, like that which reproached Dante, should have moaned out of ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... gamma looks like an L}. See Lord Bacon, "Nat. Hist." Cent. v. 426: "When you would have many new roots of fruit-trees, take a low tree and bow it and lay all his branches aflat upon the ground and cast earth upon them; and every twig will take root. And this is a very profitable experiment for costly trees (for the boughs will make stock without charge), such as are apricots, peaches, almonds, cornelians, mulberries, figs, etc. The like is continually practised with ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... win. I recollect his promise about the pancake receipt, and I thinks I will persuade it from Miss Willella and give it to him; and then if I catches Birdie off of Mired Mule again, I'll make him hop the twig. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... a state as those that were sound. We found also an incredible number of butterflies, so that for the space of three or four acres the air was so crowded with them, that millions were to be seen in every direction, at the same time that every branch and twig was covered with others that were not upon the wing. We found here also a small fish of a singular kind; it was about the size of a minnow, and had two very strong breast fins; we found it in places that were quite dry, where we supposed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... every outflung limb and from every tiniest twig hung plumes and festoons and stalactites of gray moss. For perhaps a hundred years the moss had been growing thus on the giant oak, first in little bunches and trailers that were scarce noticeable and which affected the forest monarch's appearance and health ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... a common practice to send for so-called "water finders," who being usually shrewd observers would locate by the aid of a hazel twig the exact spot where water could be found. In searching for water one sometimes runs across these men even to-day. The superstitious faith in the power of the forked twig or branch from the hazelnut bush to indicate ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... literature. The profound depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful, and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself that he stirred not in his chair when old Roger Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hit it," replied Sorrel, "for it vere worry near 'Vare vhere it happened. I'd gone hout hearly, you know, and had jist cotched sight of a bird a-vistling on a twig, and puttered the vords, 'I'll spile your singin', my tight 'un,' and levelled of my gun, ven a helderly gentleman, on t'other side of the bank vich vos atween me and the bird, pops up his powdered noddle in a jiffy, and goggling ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... by five brave sons (such is polygamy, That she spawns warriors by the score, where none Are prosecuted for that false crime bigamy), He never would believe the city won While Courage clung but to a single twig.—Am I Describing Priam's, Peleus', or Jove's son? Neither—but a good, plain, old, temperate man, Who fought with his five children ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... started, and met me within a mile of the Indian camp. Dismounting, he and his men started on foot to the camp, and he told the soldiers to walk lightly, and when in sight of the camp to get down and crawl, but to be very careful not to break a limb or twig. I was very much disappointed in not getting to see this fight, for after I had sent my message to headquarters my horse fell with me and dislocated ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... were received by a church or monastery, it was a beautiful custom to lay them, or something to represent them, upon the altar: "a book, or turf, or, in fact, almost any portable object, was offered for property such as land; or a bough or twig of a tree, if the gift were a forest." King Offa's gift of churches to Worcester monastery in 780 was accompanied by a great book with golden clasps, with every probability a Bible.[1] A gift was made under similar circumstances in c. 1057, about the time Bishop Leofric was founding ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... The essieu is left on the spot, as the load is too heavy for the horses. Thy courage has evaporated. Thou beginnest to run. The heaven is cloudless. Thou art thirsty; the enemy is behind thee; a trembling seizes thee; a twig of thorny acacia worries thee; thou thrustest it aside; the horse is scratched till at length thou ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... green globes began to appear on every branch and twig; crowding, crowding, crowding till it seemed as if there could never be room for so many to grow; but the weaker ones fell from the boughs or were blown away when the wind was fierce, so the Plum Tree ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and sometimes hedges of this plant were trained round the garden. There are very few old gardens in country places in which are not still seen remains of the protecting elder tree. In my boyhood, I remember that my brothers, sisters, and myself were warned against breaking a twig or branch from the elder hedge which surrounded my grandfather's garden. We were told at the time, as a reason for this prohibition, that it was poisonous; but we discovered afterwards that there was another reason, viz., that ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... of a speedy and safe delivery; observing that she had been concerned in many a case of the same nature, where a fine child was found, even after all signs of the mother's pregnancy had disappeared. Every twig of hope, how slender soever it may be, is eagerly caught hold on by people who find themselves in danger of being disappointed. To every question proposed by her to the lady, with the preambles of "Han't you?" or "Don't you?" answer was made in the affirmative, whether agreeable ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... battle with the spirit of Spanish absolutism, and he was already girding himself for his life's work. He assumed at once for his device a fallen oak, with a young sapling springing from its root. His motto, "Tandem fit surculus arbor," "the twig shall yet become a tree"—was to be nobly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... stains of conviviality upon its polished surface. There was a fire on the hearth, and on the mantel stood some gilded vases and a glass case of wax-flowers, also a stuffed canary under a glass shade, pathetic on his little twig. Doctor Gordon pointed to the flowers and the canary. "Poor old man lost his wife, when he had been married two years," he said. "She and the baby both died. That was before I came here. Damned if I wouldn't have pulled them through. That was her bird, and she made those ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... twenty times a day, while others will not perhaps drink more than once or twice during the same time. I have found a very effectual preventive to thirst by drinking a large quantity of water before breakfast, and, on feeling thirsty on the march, chewing a small green twig or leaf. ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... no "giving up" in that smile of his. "I'll tell you what I'd do—I'd begin and break it, twig by twig, till I forced my way through, and got out ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... my eyes closed. The next morning I peeped with apprehension from my window, on what I presumed would prove a scene of devastation. All was fair and smiling, gaze where I would. Here was the trim and smoothly shaven lawn—there the blooming parterre—beyond the early flowering shrubs not a twig, not a leaf injured. I left my ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... dimly to fore-shadow the office of the evil archer Loki, who in the Scandinavian mythology shoots Balder with a mistletoe twig. The language closely resembles that ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... sudden attack which the savages were eager to make. The French had laid aside their weapons, or had left them behind in the canoes. They had no reason to expect an attack. They were at peace with the western tribes—even with those Ishmaelites of the prairie, the Sioux. Presently a twig snapped under the foot of a savage. Young La Verendrye turned quickly, caught sight of a waving plume, and shouted to his men. Immediately from a hundred fierce throats the war-whoop rang out. The Sioux leaped to their feet. Arrows showered down upon the French. Jean, Father Aulneau, and a ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... over the plains. The wolves were hiding in their holes. We came at length to a stream. It was skirted by a grove, into which we made our way, and there we kindled a fire, and prepared our breakfast. We filled our coffee kettle from the brook. A hazel twig served us for a toasting fork; and we were soon engaged in one of the pleasantest parts of a hungry traveller's work. We relished our bread and ham and coffee amazingly. The wolves might be snuffing the odor of our viands, and coveting our repast; but they remained within their hiding-places, and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... fire the world with fagots big That make a crackling racket, But I'm content with but a whispering twig To ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... residence set up on a hill. It was dark, except for one dim light in an upper story. In the shadow of the hedge, Craig silently vaulted the low fence and slipped up the terraces, as noiselessly as an Indian, scarcely crackling a twig or rustling a dead leaf on the ground. He paused as he came to a wing on the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... and lost not a moment in making an effort to better my position in the manner I had been directed. Mrs Reichardt had thrown a heavy stone into the water among the sharks, the loud splash of which had driven them away. Before they again made their appearance, I had caught a firm hold of the twig, and flung myself up into a ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... her twig broom raised and dripping, and scanned him eagerly. "Is it anything about the ship that came yesterday? I heard among the women that it is the war-vessel of Eric's kinsman, Thorkel Farserk, just come back from ravaging the Irish coast. Is his wife ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... elements which have contributed to the moulding of our country and our people, as we find them at the present day. But again, as in geology, so here, we find few traces in our own immediate neighbourhood of the earlier links in this series—the people who preceded the historic Britons. On Twig Moor, near Brigg, in the north of the county, a tract of ground very similar to our own Moor, many flint implements have been found. On an excursion of our “Naturalists’ Union” to that tract, one of the party found “a handful” of stone “knives and finely-chipped arrow heads.” {105a} The members ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... And it don't go with me, neither. I'm a-goin' to git Quintana. Then I'm a-goin' to git them two minks that robbed my girlie,—I am!... Jake Kloon, he done it in cahoots with Earl Leverett; and Quintana set 'em on. And they gotta die, O Lord of Israel, them there Egyptians is about to hop the twig.... I ain't aimin' to be mean to nobody. I buy hootch of them that runs it. I eat mountain mutton in season and out. I trade with law-breakers, I do. But, Lord, I gotta get my girlie outa here; and Harrod he walled me ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... serpent-bearing head, Lest the bare sand should harm it. Twigs marine He likewise strews, and rests Medusa there. The fresh green twigs as though with life endow'd, Felt the dire Gorgon's power; their spongy pith Hard to the touch became, the stiffness spread Through every twig and leaf. The Nereid nymphs More branches bring, and try the wonderous change On all, and joy to see the change succeed: Spreading the transformation from the seeds, With them throughout the waves. This nature still Retains the coral: hardness still assumes ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... had given place to a glorious day, abounding in varieties of light and shade; a slight shower had fallen, and the sparkling rain-drops hung from every leaf and twig; a rainbow spanned the Niagara river, and the leaves wore the glorious scarlet and crimson tints of the American autumn. Sun and sky were propitious; it was the season and the day in which to see Niagara. Quarrelsome drosky drivers, incongruous ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... foot in a twig," she explained, as they crowded around her, wild with excitement, "and I almost fell into the cave." So, as in the first place, the discovery had been made through ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... bowed down with their plumy panicles, and swayed heavily from side to side, drunk with gladness and plenty. Here the peach was beginning to droop over a wall. There, and yonder again, beyond, ranks of fig-trees, that had so muffled themselves in their foliage that not the nakedness of a twig showed through, had yet more figs than leaves. The crisp, cool masses of the pomegranate were dotted with scarlet flowers. The cape jasmine wore hundreds of her own white favors, whose fragrance forerun the sight. Every breath of air was a new perfume. Roses, an innumerable ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... hold a twig in the coals, that he might light a cigarette. "All right, I'm the guilty party. Let's have the consequences of my evil deed," he advised, settling back on his heels and lowering an eyelid at Manuel in behalf of this ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... other feathered people in the grove. Here the nightingales warble day and night until they get their young, when, finding that hunting for worms and grubs to put into other beaks than their own is very prosaic business, they only sing when they have time to fly to some topmost twig and forget that ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... tried to wriggle across the road and couldn't because his back was so stiff. "Now I am an old man and I shall never see another summer. Good-bye." And Fuzzy Caterpillar rolled himself up in a gray blanket and hung himself on the end of a dried twig. "This is the last of me," he said once more as the dried little grub he now was rattled around in ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake! Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morning. Every motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... modifications whose end I cannot see are certainly proceeding in everything, some of the cypresses which I met that day being immense beyond anything I ever heard of: and the thought, I remember, was in my head, that if a twig or leaf should change into a bird, or a fish with wings, and fly before my eyes, what then should I do? and I would eye a branch suspiciously anon. After a long time I penetrated into a very sombre grove. The day outside the wood was brilliant ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... a sharp frost overnight. Every branch and twig, every blade of grass, every crinkle in the road was edged with a white fur of rime. It crackled under his feet. He drank down the cold, clean air like water. His whole body felt cold and clean. He was aware of its strength in the hard tension of his muscles as he walked. His own movement ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... Oranges and Lemons, and Laura thought she'd like that; so we began to play, Miss Ashton and Miss Morris holding hands for the arch. But Laura didn't like me to hold her by her frock, and when I held her sash it came undone, and she was angry, and said I hit her with a little twig I had in my hand, but that wasn't true. So, as she was cross, we all sat down till it was tea-time, and after that we went away. Etty and I were glad to be ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... There was not a twig stirring or a shadow moving. All was dead quiet. The main Chinese camp on this side was placed in H——'s abandoned compounds—that we had discovered long ago—but the battalions there were now apparently asleep with not so much as a sentry out. So, gaining confidence, I pushed on, working ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the plant shows its capacity to act as a whole at various places of its organism. Otherwise, no plant could be propagated by cuttings; in any little twig cut from a parent plant, all the manifold forces operative in the gathering, transmuting, forming of matter, that are necessary for the production of root, leaf, flower, fruit, etc., are potentially present, ready to leap into action provided ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... and along these pads around the Stirling mob after mob of cattle came in in single file, treading carelessly, until each old bull leader, scenting the camp, gave its low, deep, drawn-out warning call that told of danger at hand. After that rang out, only an occasional snapping twig betrayed the presence of the cattle as they crept cautiously in for the drink that must be procured at all hazards. But after the drink the only point to be considered was safety, and in a crashing stampede they rushed out into the timber. Till long ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... more of me. Don't you see it would be just selfishness. Mary mightn't mind"—her forehead puckered—"Mary always was self-indulgent, and if Martha didn't watch her—" She threw the stripped twig away impetuously. "I am not going to get married, I'm not. I don't see why men always tag love in. Just as soon as I get to be real friends with a man and like him just—just as he is, he turns round and spoils it! Why can't they ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... litter, with the Doctor seated in it, slowly ascending the winding steps of the Table. Reaching the flat top at last, it halted and the Doctor stepped out upon the flowery carpet. So still and perfect was the silence that even at that distance above I distinctly heard a twig snap beneath his tread. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... is usually black or dull colored with red or yellow markings which make it very conspicuous. It runs about over foliage and is broad in front and tapers to a point behind. When the grub is full fed it attaches the top of its body to a leaf, twig or other object and pupates. In the pupal stage it is often protected with spines and is able to lift the front end of the body up and down when disturbed, producing a ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... handkerchief spread over a bent willow-twig, suddenly passed before him, like an angel in the moonlight. A soft, tender star sparkled in each shaded eye, a faint rose-tint flushed her cheeks, and her lips, slightly parted to inhale the clover-scented air, were touched with a sweet, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... spiritually-occupied look that paintings of the Huguenots and the old Crusaders had; and looking at him when he came to say good-by, and while he spoke solely and only of his mother, Sabre remembered that long-ago thought of Young Perch's aspect,—of his spirit being alighted in his body as a bird on a twig, not engrossed in his body; a thing death would need no more than to pluck off between ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... to him? The candle slipped from his shaking fingers and fell in the snow beside him. He made a grab for it, and caught it just before it went out. The sound was now clearer. Was that the crunch of feet upon the snow? Yes, he heard it plainly. A twig snapped somewhere back of the big rock, then another, then another. There was an answering of the whine. He felt for his pocket ax; but, alas! it was at the cabin—he had no weapon, not even a jack knife. Why ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... valley being their exercising ground. This morning a Russian soldier was flogged at parade. I was not in time to witness the punishment, but it was explained to me by one of the midshipmen. The whole regiment was drawn up in two lines facing each other, each man having in his hand a small twig or stick. The offender, stripped of his jacket and shirt, was made to run the gauntlet through the ranks, every man giving him a sharp cut as he passed, while the officers and sergeants stood by to see that the blows were sufficiently severe; and in case of any neglect, the delinquents ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... a new scheme in my head, too, that I just know would have made the fire come," he grumbled, as he hung the little bow on a twig of a tree near by, and produced flint and steel, and a little bag in which he kept tinder, in the shape of tiny shavings which he was always preparing at odd moments; "and before I get another chance to try it, I'll have forgotten the combination, sure. But that's always the way it goes; ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... to use the word "shuttle," although, strictly speaking, the Navajo has no shuttle. If the figure to be woven is a long stripe, or one where the weft must be passed through 6 inches or more of the shed at one time, the yarn is wound on a slender twig or splinter, or shoved through on the end of such a piece of wood; but where the pattern is intricate, and the weft passes at each turn through only a few inches of the shed, the yarn is wound into small skeins or balls and shoved ...
— Navajo weavers • Washington Matthews
... ex stercore avium pronascitur, nec aliter pronasci potest."—WACHTER, Glossary (quoted in "Notes and Queries," 3rd series, vii. 157. In the same volume are several papers on the origin of the word). Dr. Prior derives it from mistl (different), and tan (twig), being so unlike the ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... impressing itself on the people. It is the moral impact of a law that changes public sentiment, and to say that you cannot make men sober by law is as foolish as to say you cannot keep cattle from destroying the wheat by building a fence between them and it, or to claim you cannot make a crooked twig grow straight by tying it straight. Humanity can do anything it wants to do. There is no limit to human achievement. Whoever declares that things cannot be done which are for the betterment of the race, insults the Creator of us all, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... healthy as a wild-flower, she is really very agreeable; and to look at her face is like being shone upon by a ray of the sun. She never walks, but bounds and dances along, and this motion, in her diminutive person, does not give the idea of violence. It is like a bird, hopping from twig to twig, and chirping merrily all the time. Sometimes she is rather vulgar, but even that works well enough into her character, and accords with it. On continued observation, one discovers that she is not a little girl, but ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the thirteen short-styled plants under the net, which were not fertilised, produced twelve capsules, containing on an average 5.6 seeds. As some of these capsules were very fine, and as five were borne on one twig, I suspect that some minute insect had accidentally got under the net and had brought pollen from the other form to the flowers which produced this little group of capsules. The one uncovered short-styled plant which grew close to the uncovered long-styled ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... gold-beaders, or somewhere about that range of life,—looking so credulous, that, if any Second-Advent Miller or Joe Smith should come along, he could string the whole lot of them on his cheapest lie, as a boy strings a dozen "shiners" on a stripped twig of willow. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... friends. You'd sell a dozen of port at sixty shillings, do you see? half the cash down and half on delivery. We'd send your friend a dozen at twelve and six, and if he didn't shell out the other thirty bob on delivery, we'd still have the thirty bob he paid down to cover our loss. Do you twig?" ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the dark man, shaking his 'cad; "if they was all as fly as you, I might as well put the shutters up. How did you twig I was a ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... in idle thoughts! I was asking myself where this grew—on which branch, which twig; and it seemed strange to me that by no possibility could ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... hunters and Indian fighters, and are a match for the redskin in every move of forest war. They are true grit to the backbone, but they are rough outspoken men, and, on a service when a foot carelessly placed on a dried twig, or a word spoken above a whisper, may bring a crowd of yelping redskins upon us, and cost every man his scalp, they would speak sharply to the king himself, if he were on the scout with them, and you must not take offence at any rough word ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... attached to a twig no thicker than a steel knitting needle. 5. It seemed to have been made of cotton fibers, and was covered with the softest bits of leaf and bark. It had two eggs in it, quite white, and each about as ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... behind only the vague figure of Sanchez pacing the sands, his lips muttering curses. I dared not move, scarcely indeed to breathe, so closely did he skirt my covert. To venture forth would mean certain discovery; nor could I hope to steal away through the bushes, where any twig might snap beneath my foot. What could I do? How could I bring warning to those sleeping victims? This heartless discussion of robbery and murder left me cold with horror, yet helpless to lift a hand. I had no thought of myself, of my possible ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... wine-sap stretched out mighty arms to fondle willow-twig across the shady aisles, and maidenblush rubbed cheeks with Spitzenberg, all reddening in the sun. Under many of the trees the ground was as bare as if fire had devastated it, for the sun never fell through those close-woven branches from May to October, and ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... natural that after a time I should wonder what event of the day would be woven into a dream; as I performed certain acts I found myself wondering, will this appear tonight, and how? One Sunday I walked across lots to church and on the way picked a twig of balm of Gilead poplar keeping it with me through service for its fragrance. That night I dream that I am in a pasture looking for fertile fronds of the cinnamon fern which I fail to find. I see cows and am afraid.—This based on reality of a few days before.—At length by a stone I find a ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the high bending of a string of an instrument, which easily breaks in two pieces. Sobriety walks with a low sail, and creeps through under the wind, but the high mind is like the cedar, that moves with the wind, and falls when the bowing twig stands still. Some will think the aspiring of the spirit a sign of a better spirit than the humble mind, and so look down upon others. But oh, if they walk safely, they ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... doll-like men circling placidly round and round the rink. One bubble cloud rose and slowly swallowed up the sun. Suddenly I heard a sharp crack like the breaking of a twig. "What's that?" I said, stepping forward on to the balcony. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... fragrant palm Excelled the wilding daughters of the wood, That stretched unwieldly their enormous arms, Clad with luxuriant foliage, from the trunk, Like the old eagle feathered to the heel; While every fibre, from the lowest root To the last leaf upon the topmost twig, Was held by common sympathy, diffusing Through all ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... continued talking, while they went about a hundred paces. Then the old man stopped again and pointed to a twig that lay ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... back into the thicket, burying himself deep, and was careful not to break a twig or brush a leaf which to the unerring eyes of those who followed could mark where he was. Hidden well, but yet lying where he could see, he turned his gaze back to the bird. It was now pouring out an unbroken ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were: we could keep the ladies in plain sight, and I could not mistake "Washington Post" when the band came to it. Mr. Deering sank into one of the chairs with a sigh of satisfaction which seemed to complete itself when he discovered in the thick grass at his feet a twig from one of the tall, slim pines above us. He bent over for it, and then, as he took out his penknife and clicked open a blade to begin whittling, he cast up a critical glance at ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and its dark sides, exactly harmonized in color with the light and dark patches on the log; the color was as concealing, here in its natural surroundings, as is the color of our common wood-frog among the dead leaves of our woods. When I stirred it up it jumped to a small twig, catching hold with the disks of its finger-tips, and balancing itself with unexpected ease for so big a creature, and then hopped to the ground and again stood motionless. Evidently it trusted for safety to escaping observation. We saw some monkeys and ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... scraggly orchard, and he broke a crotched limb from a tree. With a "leg" of this twig clutched firmly in either hand he stumped about on the sward until the crotch ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... divine grace, of the silently formed moisture which, coming from no apparent source, freshens by night the wilted plants, and hangs in myriad drops, that twinkle into green and gold as the early sunshine strikes them, on the humblest twig. That grace is plainly not a natural product nor to be accounted for by environment. The dew of the Spirit, which God and God only, can give, can freshen our worn and drooping souls, can give joy in sorrow, can keep ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hedges of this plant were trained round the garden. There are very few old gardens in country places in which are not still seen remains of the protecting elder tree. In my boyhood, I remember that my brothers, sisters, and myself were warned against breaking a twig or branch from the elder hedge which surrounded my grandfather's garden. We were told at the time, as a reason for this prohibition, that it was poisonous; but we discovered afterwards that there was another reason, viz., ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... so that each commanded one of the runways indicated. How light it was, though the sun was hidden! Every branch and twig beamed in the sun like a lamp. A downy woodpecker below me kept up a great fuss and clatter,—all for my benefit, I suspected. All about me were great, soft mounds, where the rocks lay buried. It was a cemetery of drift boulders. There! that is the hound. Does ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... And yet it came into my mind as unconsciously as you broke off that twig just now. If I do not get what I lack, nothing can be accomplished—there can be no explosion! I shall abandon the whole thing and let ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... happened. Growing impatient over some difficulty in his sketch, Lampron shuffled his feet; a twig broke, some leaves rustled-Jeanne turned round and saw me looking ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... noise is here, or none that hinders thought. The redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes, and more than half suppress'd. Pleas'd with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes From many a twig the pendent drop of ice, That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below. Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... "upper-case" gamma looks like an L}. See Lord Bacon, "Nat. Hist." Cent. v. 426: "When you would have many new roots of fruit-trees, take a low tree and bow it and lay all his branches aflat upon the ground and cast earth upon them; and every twig will take root. And this is a very profitable experiment for costly trees (for the boughs will make stock without charge), such as are apricots, peaches, almonds, cornelians, mulberries, figs, etc. The like is continually ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... aside, now attempting to leap them, now to burst through them with his weight. The wall jetted flame through its crevices, and the boughs held him fast within twenty yards of it. He could reach it easily (he told himself) but for the staff he carried, against which each separate twig hitched itself as though animated by ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shuckworm Galls Spider mites Twig girdlers Fall web worm Pecan phylloxera Black pecan aphids Flathead ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... LION of Saxony and Welfdom, William THE LION of Scotland, were not, either of them, specially leonine men: nor had the PLANTAGENETS, or Geoffrey of Anjou, any connection with the PLANT of BROOM, except wearing a twig of it in their caps on occasion. Men are glad to get some designation for a grand Albert they are often speaking of, which shall distinguish him from the many small ones. Albert "the Bear, DER BAR," will do as well ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... Gray," spoke up Sam; "last time I trimmed away the branches from the sides of this here road, ole marse threatened if I cut off so much as a twig from one of the trees again he'd take off a joint of one of my fingers to see how I'd like to be 'trimmed', ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... ever will," ses the dark man, shaking his 'cad; "if they was all as fly as you, I might as well put the shutters up. How did you twig I was a detective ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... deal in that," commented Haigh, blinking at the shabby black steamer thoughtfully. "You'd better pop down below in case he has ventured his little self on deck, and should happen to twig you. But still it's best to be on the safe side." He chose a cigar, lighted it and puffed for a minute, and then took it out of his mouth and grinned at the glowing end. "Look here. The fellow doesn't know me ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse of him ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... them still slumbering, so I again lay down to think over our situation. Just at that moment I was attracted by the sight of a very small parrot, which Jack afterwards told me was called a paroquet. It was seated on a twig that overhung Peterkin's head, and I was speedily lost in admiration of its bright green plumage, which was mingled with other gay colours. While I looked I observed that the bird turned its head slowly from side to side and looked downwards, fist with the one eye, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... to a bough over my head or a twig quite near me where he would tilt daintily, taking his silent but quite responsive part in the conversations which always took place between us. It was I who talked— telling him how I loved him—how satin red his waistcoat was—how large and bright his eyes—how ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... brambles. But Molly was now past tenderness with any mount which would not do her will and Queenie was forced into the path she hated to tread. Already the brief delay had cost her the sound of the gray mare's progress. There was neither breaking twig nor footfall to tell her whither that tormenting Anton had vanished. There was only the bruised herbage to show which way he had ridden and she must follow; and for a long time she kept her eyes on that faint lead and steadily ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... somewhere about there, and fish in all the women who want to do the heavy on very little. There are thousands and thousands of them, and most of them'—she lowered her voice—'know as much about cut and material as they do about stockbroking. Do you twig? People like Mrs. Middlemist and Mrs. Murch. They spend, most likely, thirty or forty pounds a year on their things, and we could dress them a good deal more smartly for half the money. Of course we should ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... that she would not be cut, she took the end of the handle in her teeth and pulled it down as far as it would go. Still the edge of the blade remained balanced against the top of the sucker. So she rolled about until she found a pine twig, which she took in her mouth, rolling with it back to the razor. With one end of the twig in her mouth, she was able to push the blade open with the other end, and it fell back against the root of ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... the utmost precaution to avoid kicking a pebble or stepping on a twig, the noise of which might have revealed their presence. In this way they reached the door of the pavilion near which was the curtained window of the room in which the ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... I fancied I heard the creak of a door opening, then the faint crack of a broken twig. In two bounds I got down from the ruin, and stood still, all aghast. Rapid, light, but cautious footsteps sounded distinctly in the garden. They were approaching me. 'Here he is ... here he is, at last!' flashed through my heart. With spasmodic ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... these trivial occurrences?"—not, Heaven knows, from the interest I can now attach to them—but because, like a drowning man who catches at a brittle twig, I seize every apology for delaying the subsequent and dreadful part of my narrative. But, it must be communicated—I must have the sympathy of at least one friend under ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... from mazy thicket where sullen shadow thinned, little by little, until behind leaf and twig was a glimmer of light that waxed ever brighter. And presently amid this growing brightness was soft stir and twitter, sleepy chirpings changed to notes of wistful sweetness, a plaintive calling that was ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the Canadian woods he had now and then trusted to his rifle to supply his food, and tracking large game trains one's observation. One must guess an animal's movements by very small signs. A broken twig or a disturbed stone tells one much. Jim looked for some such clew that might help him, so to speak, ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... seeker's mind—like the air of a popular song he has heard whistled about the streets, but does not know well enough to reproduce. How he envies the light-hearted robins, whose house-hunting consists merely in a gay flitting from twig to twig. Yet, even in his disturbance and nostalgia of spirit, he comforts himself with the common consolation of his cronies—"Oh, well, one always finds something"—and thus (in the words of good Sir Thomas Browne) teaches his haggard and unreclaimed reason ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... intermarriages and connections, with quarterings, impalements, lozenges and augmentations by which the blazonry of the two families might be made to show a common origin. Back to the Conquest and before it there was not a noble family-tree every twig and bud of which was not familiar to the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... moment in making an effort to better my position in the manner I had been directed. Mrs Reichardt had thrown a heavy stone into the water among the sharks, the loud splash of which had driven them away. Before they again made their appearance, I had caught a firm hold of the twig, and flung myself up into a ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... mahogany table, with various stains of conviviality upon its polished surface. There was a fire on the hearth, and on the mantel stood some gilded vases and a glass case of wax-flowers, also a stuffed canary under a glass shade, pathetic on his little twig. Doctor Gordon pointed to the flowers and the canary. "Poor old man lost his wife, when he had been married two years," he said. "She and the baby both died. That was before I came here. Damned if I wouldn't have pulled them ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... and a fourth thought that silence, like honesty, as the copybooks used to tell us, was the best policy. And yet the name linden was writ large on those trees,—on the beautiful gray bark, the alternate method of twig arrangement, the fat red winter buds, which shone in the sunshine like rubies, and especially on the little cymes of pendulous, pea-like fruit, each cyme attached to its membranaceous bract or wing. Of course, if the pedestrians had been in the midst of rich woods ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... one—must Rabelais' lighter talk have had, as he lounged—so the story goes—in his dressing-gown upon the public place, picking up quaint stories from the cattle-drivers off the Cevennes, and the villagers who came in to sell their olives and their grapes, their vinegar and their vine-twig faggots, as they do unto this day. To him may be owing much of the sound respect for natural science, and much, too, of the contempt for the superstition around them, which is notable in that group of great naturalists who were boys in Montpellier ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... brown velvet with a tiny twig of holly perched among furry trimmings, hurried up the steps and into the vestibule. Richard met Ruth halfway, his face alight, his hand clasping ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... Holt—seems to be only just out of pin feather, is rather afraid of hopping off the twig; and needs sundry lessons in clerical flying before he will make much headway. He is good-looking, but not eloquent; precise in his shaving, but short of fire and originality; smart in features, but bad in his reading; has a very neat moustache, but a rather mediocre ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... out on a marsh eating raspberries. When he glanced up, a big black bear stood beside him. Robber Father broke off an osier twig and struck the bear on the nose. "Keep to your own ground, you!" he said; "this is my turf." Then the huge bear turned around and lumbered off in ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... to break a laurel-twig and pluck a blooming wall-flower. Albano sank away into musing: the autumnal wind of the past swept over the stubble. On this holy eminence he saw the constellations, Rome's green hills, the glimmering city, the Pyramid of Cestius; but all became Past, and on the twelve hills dwelt, as upon ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... say, and got a big future. Handsome little rogue, too. He's none of your ordinary boys. He's a twig from the cedar-top." ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there—was invisible to me until I was quite close ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... of us, as sure as you live. Oh, look! That little twig jumped up into place right before my very eyes. Don't you see what that means, Maurice? He passed along here only a minute or so ahead of us. That twig didn't have time enough to get back to its position up to now. Phew! Perhaps he's laying for us ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... bite of grass allowed on the Duke's lands? In his late Highness's day the poor folk were allowed to graze their cattle on the borders of the chase; but now a man dare not pluck a handful of weeds there, or so much as pick up a fallen twig; though the deer may trample his young wheat, and feed off the patch of beans at his very door. They do say the Duchess has a kind heart, and gives away money to the towns-folk; but we country-people who spend ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Professors enjoy, you could not furnish him. The Chair is a new one, or almost new, and for the present would seem to float in the void, like Mahomet's coffin. Wherefore, being one who (in my Lord Chief Justice Crewe's phrase) would 'take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it'; being also prone (with Bacon) to believe that 'the counsels to which Time hath not been called, Time will not ratify'; I do assure you that, had any legacy of guidance been discovered among the papers left by my predecessor, it would have been eagerly welcomed and ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... if you don't accept this offer, your life isn't worth—that!" With the word, Seguis snapped under his heel a twig from the little fire. "Either you stay with us, and know everything—or you go from us, to die with the secret!" The voice was monotonous in its emotionless calm, but it ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... munch, when the sight of the food so woke him up to the state of his own appetite that he opened his wallet, drew out some hastily-cut mutton and bread-cake sandwiches, and went on eating till there was the sound of voices close at hand, followed by the rustling of leaf and twig, with the dull tramp of soft feet telling that a large body of men were passing in Indian file, talking loudly; but the hidden pair were well concealed and satisfied that they were perfectly safe, till all at once a ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... wall; receive one's death warrant, make one's will, step out, die a natural death, go out like the snuff of a candle; come to an untimely end; catch one's death; go off the hooks, kick the bucket, buy the farm, hop the twig, turn up one's toes; die a violent death &c. (be killed) 361. Adj. dead, lifeless; deceased, demised, departed, defunct, extinct; late, gone, no more; exanimate[obs3], inanimate; out of the world, taken off, released; departed this life &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to Liverpool in the steamer, I became acquainted with a charming young lady, who proved to be a second-cousin of my father's. She belongs to the aristocratic branch of our family. Every family tree has an aristocratic branch, or bough, or little twig at least, I believe. She was a Todworth; and having always heard my other relations mention with immense pride and respect the Todworths,—as if it was one of the solid satisfactions of life to be able ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Meuse runs through broad meadowlands, where the sun shines dimly for many months each year, and cold, rolling mists sweep down upon the earth in winter, coating each twig with silver. There, in the little village of Domremy, in the year 1412, was born a girl named Jeanne d'Arc, whose father, Jacques d'Arc, ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... fell as he looked straight before him out of the library window, was all garlanded with the reasonings and questionings of this painful spring. To Frank's eyes, Gerald's attention was fixed upon the fluttering of a certain twig at the extremity of one of those broad solemn immovable branches. Gerald, however, saw not the twig, but one of his hardest difficulties which was twined and twined in the most inextricable way round that little sombre cluster of spikes; and so kept ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Law with the earnest research of a student, with the chastened subduement of devotion, with all the calm sentiments of reverie, Jacked something of its normal aspect. When a sudden stir of the leaves or the breaking of a twig recalled him to the world, and he would lift his head, it might hardly seem the same face, so heavy was the lower jaw, so insistent and coercive his eye. But if he took off his hat to place therein his cotton bandana handkerchief or (if he ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... those loose branches, you will see that it has no tendril of any kind, or other apparent means of support; but this, like all others of the clematideae or clematis tribe, possesses a power of twisting the leaf-stalk round a wire, twig, or anything else that comes in its way, so as to tie the plant to the support with as firm a knot as could be made with a piece of string; and after thus encircling the wire, it returns the leaf to its former position, with the upper side outwards, exactly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... her head alertly. A twig crackled under a tread, and the next moment a man came out of the bushes at the left, and without a word took the bridle of the old horse from her fingers and vaulted into the saddle. The hand that rested a ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... 50 deg. below zero there is the most complete silence. All animal life is hidden away. Not a rabbit flits across the trail; in the absolutely still air not a twig moves. A rare raven passes overhead, and his cry, changed from a hoarse croak to a sweet liquid note, reverberates like the musical glasses. There is no more delightful sound in the wilderness than this occasional ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... thy snowy locks to me, they are younger than my blond head. Let me live and die as thou hast lived and died. I wish to plant in the soil over your grave the green branch of my young life, I will water it with my tears, and the God of orphans will protect that sacred twig nourished by the grief of youth and ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... with a twig in his hand, got it ablaze, and lighted his cigarette. He did not look at Billy Louise until he had taken a whiff or two. Then he stared at her for a full minute, and ended by flipping the charred twig playfully into her lap, and laughing ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Balder?" Hother answered, "Because I do not see where he stands; besides I have no weapon." Then said Loki, "Do like the rest and show Balder honour, as they all do. I will show you where he stands, and do you shoot at him with this twig." Hother took the mistletoe and threw it at Balder, as Loki directed him. The mistletoe struck Balder and pierced him through and through, and he fell down dead. And that was the greatest misfortune that ever befell gods and men. For a while the gods stood speechless, then they ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... stories among the wonders of Buddhism; one is that of a sacred tree visited by the Chinese pilgrims to India, which had grown from the twig which Sakya, in Hindu fashion, had used as a tooth-brush; and I think there is a like story in our own country of the Glastonbury Thorn having grown from the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... she looked me suddenly in the face and stopped, as much as to say, "Well, well! here's a pretty go! A man spying upon me!" I wondered whether she would throw up the work, but in another minute she was back again with another twig. The nest, I should have said, was about four feet from the ground, and perhaps twenty feet from the cottage. Four days later, I found her sitting upon it. She flew off as I came up, and I pushed into the scrub far enough to thrust my hand into the nest, which, to my disappointment, was ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... forth into the world; a morning full of the thousand scents of herb and flower and ripening fruits; a morning glad with the song of birds. And because it was still very early, the dew yet lay heavy, it twinkled in the grass, it sparkled in the hedges, and gemmed every leaf and twig with a flaming pendant. And amidst it all, fresh like the morning and young like the sun, came Barnabas, who, closing the door of the "Coursing Hound" behind him, leapt lightly down the stone steps and, turning his back upon the ancient inn, set off towards that hill, beyond which ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... trees went into their winter's sleep in most excellent condition and the twigs are hard to the top buds. Signs on twig terminals indicate a large crop of nuts for the fall of 1944. Thus I hope to be able to have on display for the convention-to-be a most interesting show. Besides nuts of all the hardy varieties I always have a real big show of hardy ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... and fell like laughter, then like crying. It dropped closer, rushed headlong past the window, rattled and shook the sash, then dived away into the darkness. Its violence startled them. A deep lull followed instantly, and the little tapping of the twig was heard again. Odd! Just when the Night-Wind seemed furthest off it was all the time quite near. It had not really gone at all; it was hiding against the outside walls. It was watching them, trying to get in. The tapping continued for half a minute or more—a series of ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... his shoulder, was still following. Neither exchanged a word as they walked on, carefully and quietly, through the gloomy mystery of the silent bush. The howl of a dingo in the distance, the wail of a curlew, or the hum of a mosquito, were the only sounds beyond the occasional crackle of a twig trodden under foot, or the swish of a bent shrub swinging back ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... returning with the ferocity of a demon who had succeeded in getting his victim into his fangs, hoarsely whispered, "I have given your race this day much, I shall give them this also, surely now the debt is paid," when cutting the hazel twig with his sword, the intrepid youth was dashed from crag to crag until he reached the stream below, a bloody and misshapen mass. Macranuil again commenced his flight, but one of the Mackenzies, who by this time had come up, sent a musket shot after him, by ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... were of small account. The robin went, of course, but returned, and, perching close to the object of interest, leaned over and looked at it as long as she chose, while the owner stood calmly by on a twig and did not interfere. I know he was not afraid of the robin, as later events proved; and it really looked as if the pair deliberately delayed sitting to give the neighborhood a chance to satisfy its curiosity; as if they thus proclaimed to whom it might concern that ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... from the surface of the warmer water were tinged with gold by the newly-risen sun. A heavy frost rested on the spruces and balsams that fringed the banks of the river, and as the sunlight struck one twig after another, it covered them with millions of points like diamonds. Many cakes of ice were floating in the river, showing that its navigation would soon be ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... was high before she became aware that she was very hot and tired and hungry. Her shoes were soaking wet, her skirts and stockings splashed with mud; one shoulder was being sunburned where a twig had caught and ripped her white flannel waist; and Seth's red silk handkerchief around her neck was scarcely a deeper ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... Deer a black locust twig, of which rabbits gnaw the young shoots, which he had shaved off as well as ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... "As the twig is bent, the tree's inclined," Is an adage often recall'd to mind, Referring to juvenile bias: And never so well is the verity seen, As when to the weak, warp'd side we lean, While Life's tempests ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... something about fishermen and the stories they tell: that it is always the biggest fish that escaped. But in this case it seemed to be true, for strung on a willow twig was Injun's catch, about ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... in the drawing of a breath the head and fore quarters of the biggest bull elephant I had ever seen came into view. For a moment the huge beast stood looking about him, and then his immense trunk swung upward, the point twined itself tightly about an unusually leafy twig, there came a slight snapping and swishing sound as the twig was torn from its parent branch, and the next instant both stem and leaves vanished down a cavernous throat. Then, as the ponderous trunk swung downward ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... inroads. There has been a lot learned about the blight since that time and apparently it can be controlled by cutting out the blighted portions. I have seen filberts in certain sections of the country where the blight went half way around the twig. Apparently that can be controlled by cutting out that blighted portion. Or, if the worst came to the worst, by cutting off the limb. But there have been a number of filbert plantings made the last few years where that blight has not appeared at all. One of the greatest difficulties ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... talked together in low tones for a few minutes. Then they flew to the woods. They soon brought back a strong twig and dropped it in front of ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... occasion the father leaned on the daughter more than she on him. He called again. His voice died away echoless, the silence seeming heavier than before. When one of the horses behind them, turning from the water, trod upon a dry twig, both man and girl started. Then Helen laughed and ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... "certainly. As long as you please," and I tossed little pieces of twig over my shoulder, and prepared myself to listen. Oh, my dears, how defiant women will be, just for the fear ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... parasol had caught in the chain gear, and when the first attempt at drawing water was made, the little offering of a contrite heart was jerked up, bent, its strong ribs jammed into the well side, and entangled with a twig root. It is needless to say that no sleight-of-hand performer, however expert, unless aided by the powers of darkness, could have accomplished this feat; but a luckless child in the pursuit of virtue had done it with ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bred, and although his progress was slower than the Texan's had been, he crept along as silently as one of the redskins themselves. Not a mesquite twig snapped under his body; not a pebble rattled. It seemed to take him hours to reach the hill which Kid Wolf had pointed out to him. As he did so, the moonlight again became so bright that it made the landscape nearly ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... in their oars noiselessly, and told the coxswain to keep in well under the bushes on the left hand side; then he made his way forward, and joined Harry, telling the men to pull the boat forward by means of the branches overhead which were well within reach, but to avoid breaking even a twig. ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... a G, drill-sergeants who believe in black-boards and visible numerators, statistical fellows who judge of the future fate of the republic by the average attendance at the "Primaries," may not agree with me in my idea of bending the twig. I do believe, that, if Dame Nature herself should apply for a school, some of these wise Dogberries would report her "unqualyfide." I will not murder my pretty pet. So she be gentle, kindly, and loving, what care I if at sixteen years of age she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... snow. He hurried across the pond, his dog following. Near the far shore was a bare spot on the ice cut by one of the sleigh-runners. Up in the woods, opposite, was the Moss Trail. Sunlight fell on the hills above him. He halted, looking up at the tree-tops. Twig, branch, and trunk glowed with the fire of diamonds through a lacy necking of hoar frost. Every tree had put on a jacket of ice and become as a fountain of prismatic hues. Here and there a dead pine rose like a spire of ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... heavenly learning, how much she learned herself! Love poured from her, through voice and lips and eyes, and in return she drank it in thirstily from the little creature who sat there at her knee, a twig growing just as her bending hand inclined it; all the buds of his nature opening out in the mother-sunshine that surrounded him. Eleven thirty came all too soon. Then before long the kettle would begin to ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Madame de Montespan, and, instead of censuring her, he wishes to make her a duchess! . . . Let him make her a princess, even a highness, if he likes; he has all the power in his hands. I am only a twig; he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Stanislaus hulk, Woolwich, 18 May 1797.] on behalf of the sovereign whose clemency they enjoyed. Broken on the wheel of naval discipline, they "did very well in deep water." Nearer land they were given, like the jailbirds they were, to "hopping the twig." [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 2733—Capt. Young, 21 ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... by what are termed layers. To do this, nothing more is necessary than to select a shoot, as near the root as possible, and having partially divided it with a knife, make an upward slit in it, and then placing a bit of twig between the divided parts, press it down to the ground, burying the joint beneath the surface of the soil. To plant from cuttings, some care is necessary as regards green-house plants, but nothing is easier than to rear fresh stocks of roses, currants and ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... Lupus Cried, "We are with you, so you do not dupe us!" Ursus and Taurus also, Bull and Bear, Were eager in the game to take a share. Said Vulpus to the assembled quadrupeds, "Company Boards, like ships, need figureheads, Wooden but ornamental! Eh? You twig? Sweet are the uses of—the Guinea Pig! Dull, but respectable and decorative, That tribe, to whom credulity is native. They'll sit around our Board in solemn row, And never, never 'want to know, you know,' Beyond convenient ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... play on the harp; she plays on the piano. Did you twig her hair?" Maurice whispered ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... slopes stood out like lacework, but far down in the valley the light seemed to shimmer like waves on a sea of silver mist. It was all inexpressibly cold, and of a loneliness that was uncanny. Nothing stirred, not a twig, not a blade of grass. It seemed to Dick that if even a leaf fell on the far side of the mountain he could hear it. It was a great, primeval world, voiceless and unpeopled, brooding in a ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... proprieties than on being one of the best pistol-shots in the army. While riding in the country, he would often put his horse into a gallop, and with a pistol in each hand, never fail to cut off, in passing, the heads of the ducks or chickens which he took as his target. He could cut off a small twig from a tree at twenty-five paces; and I have even heard it said (I am far from guaranteeing the truth of this) that on one occasion, with the consent of the party whose imprudence thus put his life in peril, he cut half in two the stem of a clay ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... therefore given at once to fetch a forfeit drum, varnished black, and ornamented with designs executed with copper tacks. When brought, it was handed to the singing girls to put on the table and rap on it. A twig of red plum blossom was then obtained. "The one in whose hand it is when the drum stops," dowager lady Chia laughingly proposed, "will have to drink a cup of wine, and to say something or other ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... produce Stayman or Grimes Golden apples or a quince bush produce luscious Duchess pears? Is it not strange that the sap from the same root can produce red apples on one branch, yellow ones on another, and russets on a third? How does it come that one twig can be made to produce sour apples and the next Paradise Sweets? Strange! Wonderful!! but True!!! It is all owing to the fact that the sap of a tree is a homogeneous substance and that it is the bud through which it passes that stamps the individuality ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... them with a new hive; but I had never contemplated the possibility of the swarm being, like Haman's gallows, forty cubits high. I looked despairingly upon the smooth-bark tree, which rose, like a column, full twenty feet, without branch or twig. "What is to be done?" said I, appealing to two or three neighbors. At last, at the recommendation of one of them, a ladder was raised against the tree, and, equipped with a shirt outside of my clothes, a green veil over my head, and a pair of leather gloves on my hands, I went up with a saw at ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... principle that one never knows what may happen, is incontrovertible as far as it goes. No one would wish to assert dogmatically that Charlie will not ripen into a reader, but at the same time no one very seriously supposes that he will. "As the twig is bent the tree's inclined" is felt to be peculiarly applicable in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... had held and thought what a level storm of lead was indicated by this long white fringe, and what desperate charges of Hood's divisions they were that came through it, close up to the line of this abatis. Every twig was weeping with the cold pouring rain of the dark midwinter storm, and this did not lessen the gloomy effect of the scene. At the Carter house we learned from the family many incidents of their own experience during the battle ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... there was no 'giving up' in that smile of his. 'I'll tell you what I'd do: I'd begin and break it, twig by twig, till I forced my way through, and got out safe at ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... capital. The Column of Alexander, the bronze statue of Peter, with his horse poised in air on the edge of the rock, and the trees on the long esplanade in front of the Admiralty, were all similarly coated, every twig rising as rigid as iron in the dark air. Only the huge golden hemisphere of the Cathedral dome, and the tall, pointed golden spire of the Admiralty, rose above the gloom, and half shone with a muffled, sullen glare. A few people, swaddled from head to foot, passed rapidly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... general that he had either been carried off by a wild beast, or fallen into the water, and been drowned; and preparations were made for dragging the stream for the body, when one of the party saw a bit of cloth, which Tom recognized as torn from Bub's dress, flaunting from a twig on the tree-bridge. ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... trees Bent lower than in autumn 'neath their weight Of glossy fruit: the youthful pines that stood, With leafless beech and maple interspersed, To speak of summer when all else that laughed In balmy air with summer should depart, Were robed in white, save where some little twig Of deepest verdure timidly looked forth, Like gentle Spring reclining in the arms Of stern old Winter. Silence reigned abroad; There was no sun, no sky, but over all A dense dark mist which hid the ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... finished speaking when Wetzel intentionally snapped a twig. There was a crash and commotion in the thicket; branches moved and small saplings waved; then out into the open glade bounded a large buck with a whistle of alarm. Throwing his rifle to a level, Joe was trying to cover the bounding deer, when the ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... His presence. Here on earth, there in Paradise, is the love and prayer and praise going forth to Him, and the strength and power of God coming back from Him. You know His own simile, "I am the Vine, ye are the branches." From the central Vine the life rises and flows to every farthest branch and twig and leaf, connecting them all in the one life. He the Sacred Vine is on earth with us and in Paradise with them. Some of the branches are in the shadow here, some of them are in the sunlight there, but we are all united through ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... gipsies, resided in a sort of hut made of the branches of trees: the verger stooped, but did not stoop low enough, as he entered this temporary palace; and, whilst his body was almost bent double, his peruke was caught upon a twig. From this awkward situation he was relieved by the consort of the king; and he now beheld, by the light of some embers, the person of his gipsy majesty, to whose sublime appearance this dim light was so favourable that it struck a secret awe into our wise man's ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Robin sitting on a twig. Cock Robin looked sideways at Lucie with his bright black eye, and he flew over a ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... to flowers, flowers to feathers, in that long-past dynasty of the Humming-Birds? It is strange to come upon his tiny nest, in some gray and tangled swamp, with this brilliant atom perched disconsolately near it, upon some mossy twig; it is like visiting Cinderella among her ashes. And from Humming-Bird to Eagle, the daily existence of every bird is a remote and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... to maintain their place in the world, or to become supreme. It is the lion's good to devour an antelope. It is the dead-leaf butterfly's good to tell a foe a falsehood. For when the dead-leaf butterfly is in danger, it clings to the side of a twig, and what it says to its foe is practically this: "I am not a butterfly, I am a dead leaf, and can be of no use to thee." This is a lie which is good to the butterfly, for it preserves it. In nature every species of organic being ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... would ask something more of me. Don't you see it would be just selfishness. Mary mightn't mind"—her forehead puckered—"Mary always was self-indulgent, and if Martha didn't watch her—" She threw the stripped twig away impetuously. "I am not going to get married, I'm not. I don't see why men always tag love in. Just as soon as I get to be real friends with a man and like him just—just as he is, he turns round and spoils it! Why can't they ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... outflung limb and from every tiniest twig hung plumes and festoons and stalactites of gray moss. For perhaps a hundred years the moss had been growing thus on the giant oak, first in little bunches and trailers that were scarce noticeable and which affected the forest monarch's appearance and ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Leisurely he broke a twig from the cottonwoods, tore a strip from his bandanna, and cleaned his gun. Then he retraced his steps to the burro, mounted, and rode directly to his camp. After he had eaten he told his son to pack their few belongings. Then ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... back, he carefully searched among the trees and round the edge of the hill. But no, the man seemed to have come up quite alone; and, gaining confidence from this, he went softly back, taking care not to trample upon any dead twig, so as to give ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... Presently, to my listless roving gaze, the varied outlines of the clumpy foliage began to assume or imitate—say rather SUGGEST other shapes than their own. A light wind began to blow; it set the boughs of a neighbour tree rocking, and all their branches aswing, every twig and every leaf blending its individual motion with the sway of its branch and the rock of its bough. Among its leafy shapes was a pack of wolves that struggled to break from a wizard's leash: greyhounds would not have strained ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
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