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More "Twig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... From whom they might have issu'd. In amaze Fast bound I stood. He, as it seem'd, believ'd, That I had thought so many voices came From some amid those thickets close conceal'd, And thus his speech resum'd: "If thou lop off A single twig from one of those ill plants, The thought thou hast conceiv'd shall ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... abruptly, "Go!" and the poor thing did not choose to take such hints as fell out in the course of their conversation and quarrels. And so they kept on together, he treating her with simple insult, and she hanging on desperately, by whatever feeble twig she could find, to the rock beyond which all was naught, or death, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the crumbling fence. A dead twig snapped, and, startled by the sound, the girl began to rise; but, giving him one quick, sharp look, dropped her eyes to her ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... the slide, and adjusting the focus. "Would you like to examine it, Miss Darrow?" Gwen had scarcely put her eye to the instrument before she exclaimed: "Why, it's a piece of thin outside bark from a twig of alder." Maitland's face was a study... "Would you mind telling me," he said deliberately, "how you found that out so quickly?" She hesitated a moment, and then said methodically, pointing toward the water, "I know the alder well ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... telling him to eat. But the Tailor was far too weak to hold the tree down, and when the Giant let go, the tree flew up in the air, and the Tailor was taken with it. He came down on the other side, however, unhurt, and the Giant said, "What does that mean? Are you not strong enough to hold that twig?" "My strength did not fail me," said the Tailor; "do you imagine that that was a hard task for one who has slain seven at one blow? I sprang over the tree simply because the hunters were shooting down here in the thicket. Jump after me if you can." The Giant made the attempt, but could not ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... leafy light and shadow. 205 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, 210 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, 215 Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow; Ah! the singing, ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... where 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 this ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... the silence more intense, while all the time the air grew colder. All at once a dead branch snapped sharply. Estein looked round keenly, but in the dusk of the pine stems his eye could pick out nothing. For a minute everything was still, and then a twig cracked again. This time he could see plainly a man come from behind a tree and stand in the outskirts of the wood. For a minute they stood looking at each other. The man, so far as he could discern in the waning light, wore the native skin coat and ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... years, and there could be no longer any doubt of 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, ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... about and saw that there was come Wood-wise, and with him upwards of two score and ten of the bowmen of the Woodlanders and the Wolf—huntsmen, cragsmen, and scourers of the Waste; men who could shoot the chaffinch on the twig a hundred yards aloof; who could make a hiding-place of the bennets of the wayside grass, or the stem of the slender birch-tree. With these must needs be Bow-may, who was the closest ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... around the canary's cage. As soon as he ceased his tramp and the noise of his crunching, grinding footsteps died away, the silence, vast, illimitable, enfolded him like an immeasurable tide. From all that gigantic landscape, that colossal reach of baking sand, there arose not a single sound. Not a twig rattled, not an insect hummed, not a bird or beast invaded that huge solitude with call or cry. Everything as far as the eye could reach, to north, to south, to east, and west, lay inert, absolutely quiet and moveless under the remorseless scourge of the noon sun. The very ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... series of cascades, and there is a mighty roar of waters. For many yards I have for a companion a little wren, that flies from twig to twig through the well-nigh naked hedge along the wayside, now hidden behind a bramble's crimson-spotted leaf, now mingled with a tracery of twigs and thorns. I can almost believe it to be the same wren that kept up with me years ago in English ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... alleged schoolhouse, threatened, ordered, and by other felonious devices hazed three Swedes and the four Boyle kids out of the place and toward their several homes and then when the schoolmarm very discreetly locked the door and mildly informed him that she would brain him with a twig off a sage-bush if he burst the lock, he straightway forgot that he was old enough to have a son quite old enough to frighten, abduct and otherwise lighten the monotonous life of said schoolmarm, and became a bold, bad man. He bursted that ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... love of system; for she knows that order was made for the family, and not the family for order. Quietly she takes on herself what all others refuse or overlook. What the unwary disarrange she silently rectifies. Everybody in her sphere breathes easy, feels free; and the driest twig begins in her sunshine to put out buds and blossoms. So quiet are her operations and movements, that none sees that it is she who holds all things in harmony; only, alas, when she is gone, how many things suddenly appear disordered, inharmonious, neglected! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... with elongated tail, settled almost within reach. Then it would be a green barbet, with bristle-armed beak and bright blue and scarlet feathers to make it gay. Or again, one of the cuckoo trogons, sitting on some twig, like a ball of feathers of bronze, golden ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... blood-spotted leaves, stones and even saturated clay. Anything that had a blood stain upon it was seized upon eagerly, and hairs of the unfortunate woman were at a premium, men and boys, and even young women, examining every branch and twig of the bush in the midst of which the struggle took place, in the hope of finding one. The inherent, morbid love of the horrible the mass of humanity possesses was well illustrated in the scenes witnessed. The heavy rain which fell nearly all afternoon was not deterrent to ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... decidedly interesting, and at the same time trying to the hunters. The distance was fully a mile from the river. The noise which came from the slight rustling of the leaves and the occasional breaking of a twig was ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... 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 ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... practice if you tease Bobbie," Don said slowly. "He'll be edging away from you, not knowing what moment you'll twig him, and it will spoil the work. You can't give him a good fireman's ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... we begin to inculcate moral truths at an early age. Ideas of truthfulness and honesty, for instance, are graven so deeply on the young mind that they can never afterwards be erased. "Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined," said our forefathers, and it is true. "First impressions are the most lasting," is another true adage. This being so, we should see to it that the first impression the child gets on the subject in question is the one we wish him to keep. Many a life ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... 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 Red True Story Book • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... 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 ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... buried, and carried them home with her. As soon as she was in her room, she took the largest flower-pot she could find, and in this she placed the head of the dead man, covered it up with earth, and planted the twig of jasmine ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... couldn't even find a broken twig in any of the little clumps of outgrowing trees. There wasn't a sign of the sand having been disturbed anywhere down the face of the cliff, and I shouldn't think a human being had been on that beach during our lifetimes. I have had my ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 reflected ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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
... enough even faintly to see, the keen eyes of the Apaches had trailed the fugitives, and now with bounding feet they followed the sign, Tonio foremost, his mount discarded. Afoot, like his fellows, and bending low, pointing every now and then to half turned pebble, to broken twig or bruised weed, he drove ever eagerly forward, the stolid bearing of the Indian giving way with each successive minute to unusual, though repressed excitement. Thrice he signalled to Stannard and pointed to the crushed and beaten sand—to toe or heel or sole marks to which the ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... tiger. He has no dignified Mr. Asquith 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 ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... Silent as Death (who comes—we know— Unheard, unknown of all below;) Above that dark and desolate wave, The reflex of the eternal grave— Gigantic birds with flaming eyes Sweep upward, onward through the skies, Or stalk, without a wish to fly, Where the reposing lilies lie; While, stirring neither twig nor grass, Among the trees, in silence, pass Titanic animals whose race Existed, but has left no trace Of name, or size, or shape, or hue— Whom ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... And I'm gointer be de hawk. Lemme git myself a stick to mark wid. (The curtain rises slowly. As it goes up the game is being organized. The boy who is the hawk is squatting center stage in the street before the store with a short twig in his hand. The largest girl is lining up the other ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... after winter, and as tender as the rose flush in which swims yonder star. When I am with her, almost she persuades me to think ill of honest hatred, and to pine no longer that it was not I that had the killing of Ewin Mackinnon." He gave a short laugh, and stooping picked up an oak twig from the ground, and with deliberation broke it into many small pieces. "Almost, but not quite," he said. "There was in that feud nothing illusory or fantastic; nothing of the quality that marked, mayhap, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... incidentally—the 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 jealous. * ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Penobscot River. The clouds of steam rising into the cold air 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 closed for ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... 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 of ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... while the last words were scarcely 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 ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... this people we are reasonably safe. But if he should happen to be deposed, and murdered, the new king will most probably sacrifice us both to his fetish as a sort of thank-offering for his success. Twig?" ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... 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 cattle ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... low, slipped forward in utter silence—more silence than necessary. The American water keeper, Madrigal, and the Mexican guard were too profoundly busy with a crap game on the floor under the lantern to be disturbed by the mere breaking of a twig. ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... 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 ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... stopped in the tangled path to listen. There were green bladder-mosses which swam about the surface 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
... dark rich Portugal laurel foliage, arranged in stars at the end of each twig, is the Mango, always a beautiful object, whether in orchard or in open park. In the West Indies, as far as I have seen, the Mango has not yet reached the huge size of its ancestors in Hindostan. There—to judge, at least, from photographs—the Mango must be indeed the queen of trees; growing ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... habit, the forest was rarely approached, after night-fall, by the boldest woodsman, without some secret consciousness that he encountered a positive danger. It was the hour when its roaming and hungry tenants were known to be most in motion; and the rustling of a leaf, or the snapping of a dried twig beneath the light tread of the smallest animal, was apt to conjure images of the voracious and fire-eyed panther, or perhaps of a lurking biped, which, though more artful, was known to be scarcely less savage. It is ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the old voyagers; and I have no doubt but that the habits of this Virgularia explain one such case. Captain Lancaster, in his voyage [20] in 1601, narrates that on the sea-sands of the Island of Sombrero, in the East Indies, he "found a small twig growing up like a young tree, and on offering to pluck it up it shrinks down to the ground, and sinks, unless held very hard. On being plucked up, a great worm is found to be its root, and as the tree groweth in greatness, so doth the worm diminish, and as soon as the worm is entirely turned into ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... 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 addressed, different colored feathers and distinct methods of attaching ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... I fainted when it was done, and I think that I must have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig." ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... square-shouldered, big-breasted, good-natured specimen of the genus homo, a giant in physical strength, and were I a wolf, I would prefer letting him alone to any man in these parts. When he gets just the least grain "shiny" (and he never gets beyond that), and his oar goes a little wrong, or a twig brushes him ungently, or his seat gets a little hard, he will express his sense of its improper deportment by incontinently damning its eyes, and so forth, as if it were a sentient thing, and understood all his profane denunciations; but ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... Greenhow attempted to ambuscade him. Day by day the man would vary the method of approach until almost within rifle range, and then the wind would change or there would be the click of gravel underfoot, or the scrape of a twig on stiff overalls, and suddenly the long oval ears would slope forward, the angular lines flow into grace and motion and the game would ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... into it. Then for a moment the poles stand out from the log like the strings of a harp; a mighty "Ho!" from the gang, a short, tense haul, and it moves a trifle forward. A fresh grip, another shout, and forward again. It is like watching half a score of ants about a twig. And at last the freed log slides out and ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... 32; installment, dividend; share &c. (allotment) 786. debris, odds and ends, oddments, detritus; excerpta[obs3]; 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[obs3]. compartment; department &c. (class) 75; county &c. (region) 181. V. part, divide, break &c. (disjoin) 44; partition &c. (apportion) 786. Adj. fractional, fragmentary; sectional, aliquot; divided &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... foot, unnoted by the keen eyes, the two crept steadily on through the midnight of that sheltering ravine, dismounted, hands clasping the nostrils of their ponies, feeling through the darkness for each step, halting breathless at every crackle of a twig, every crunch of snow under foot. Again and again they paused, silent, motionless, as some apparition of savagery outlined itself between them and the sky, yet slowly, steadily, every instinct of the ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the same occupation. In order to approach within shot of these, we had to creep on all fours through the brushwood with the greatest caution; for gorillas are sharp-sighted, and they have a remarkably acute sense of hearing, so that sometimes the breaking of a dry twig under one's foot ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... play on the harp; she plays on the piano. Did you twig her hair?" Maurice whispered back; "it's ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... probably detect a point of prejudice, so I had better stop!—I look out upon a gray, northern sea, where 'the white horses fume and fret' under a cold, gray, northern sky. The oaks in the park are just thickening with yellow-green buds. And there, close to my window, perched on a topmost twig, a missel-thrush is singing, facing the wind like a gentleman. You look out upon a purple sea, I suppose, beneath clear skies and over orange trees and palms. I wonder if any brave bird pipes to you as my storm-cock to me? It brings up one's courage to hear his song, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... twig the cushioned seats in the stern, and see all the brass work round the sides! My eyes, how it shines!" exclaimed Charles, holding up both ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... just 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 ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Richard Hedges from 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 clothed with blue, governors ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... the last link with their beloved minister in the departure of his family; the sad farewell looks at all the well-known home objects, the flower-beds, the gravel walks, the shrubs and trees, every twig of which had such a familiar look. Many a time it seemed as if it must be only a sad dream, that all these things were about to pass from her daily life into a vision of memory. Happily it was winter. ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... 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 at her, ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... the same repairs. Nothing had changed there but the masters. And under that roof he had made his first feeble protest against life; he had dreamed those valiant dreams of youth that never come true, no matter how successful one may become in after life. Every waking means an illusion gone, another twig pruned from the tree of ardent fancy; and when one is old there is ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... children tell what happens to the trees, flowers, and different plants. Lead them to see the condition after the leaves are off. Then what will happen next Spring. Or we may take one specific tree or brush and talk of the twig where the leaves were in the summer, but have now fallen to the ground. The twig looks dead. But on opening the bud and removing the brown covering we find the tiny leaf inside waiting and preparing to ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... 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 position of ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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
... 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 ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Strong Man; Major Ching, the Chinese Giant; General Thumb, the Dwarf; Princess Zozo, the Serpent Charmer; Maggie, the Circassian Girl; and the rest of the side-show employees enter the tent. Then he removed his Number Eight mustache and put it in his pocket, and balanced his mirror against a twig. Mr. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... Marse 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 ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... along the edge of the woods. He had found something quite to his liking and was much absorbed, when suddenly a fresh puff of wind blew the strong body scent of a man full into his nostrils. He looked this way and that but could see no man. Then a twig snapped in the cover near at hand, and a squirrel hunter stepped into view, not fifty feet away. The hunter was probably much more astonished than was Black Bruin. The great shaggy brute was so close to him that he looked like a ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... catching sight of a low, flashing touch of red as a robin lighted upon a twig nearby. Her hand was up, and her eyes were ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... the boy could have done himself. The night was dark, but Tad was able to make out objects with more or less distinctness. He used his eyes and ears to good purpose. Once Tad thought he heard a twig snap a short distance ahead of him. He halted abruptly and sat steadily for fully ten minutes. There being no further sounds he ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... think it is 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 ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... feeble in act. The landlord himself wandered objectless, eternally taking off his cap to folk for want of thought; and the women, as they passed him in turn, thrust him quietly aside without looking at him, as we remove a live twig ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... handled and scrutinized at leisure by the child, pulled apart, and even wasted. This can be done with the objects discussed in this book; they are under the feet of childhood—grass, feathers, a fallen leaf, a budding twig, or twisted shell; these things cannot be far out of the way, even within the stony limits of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 17, March 4, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... to his assistance. 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... beside Moise, all of them Indians or 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 his ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... quite 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... 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 ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... look, of his 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 pure than her eyes; and in the marble paleness of her fair brow—in the divine ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... over thy child in the April of his understanding, lest the frost of May nip his blossoms. While he is a tender twig, straighten him; whilst he is a new vessel, season him; such as thou makest him, such commonly shalt thou find him. Let his first lesson be obedience, and his second ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... a lovely-looking bird as far as the tints of the plumage went; but his short hooked beak, with a tuft of feathers each side, and forward curved crest, gave him a droll aspect which delighted Jem, as the bird came and sat upon a twig, shrieking and chattering at them in a state of ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... 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, who is not willing that any should perish, but ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... specified 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 style; and after this prelude, by way of making sure that the ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... luxuriant fruit; intermingled with these waved 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, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... be likened to a twig which has fallen into a salt mine, to borrow an expression from Taine; every year adds fresh jewels to the crystals that form on it until at last the only resemblance to the original is in the general contour. We know that the nucleus of melody ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... opposite! Look, something is moving!" I followed her eyes and saw a strand of loose moss quiver and heard a twig break in the quiet round us. We both watched the undergrowth across the open space intently. For a second nothing moved, then the boughs parted in front of us, and through the great lichen streamers and rugged bands ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... 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 us. Shall ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... twigs of the pine. Just snapped them in two with nervous fingers. Here are pieces lying on the ground. Now, a man does that sort of thing almost unconsciously. He will not reach up for the twig or down for it, but he breaks it because it presents itself to him at the corner of his eye. This man was six feet in height or more and built very powerfully. I think I know him! Yes, I'm sure I know him! Nor is it at all strange ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... hatchets and 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 of stag ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... 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 that pays big dividends during ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... to it, they found a gloomy stone house, as ugly as eyes ever looked upon. Up stepped the servant's comrade and knocked upon the door—rap! tap! tap! By-and-by it was opened a crack, and there stood an ugly old woman, blear-eyed and crooked and gnarled as a winter twig. But the heart within her was good for all that. "Alas, poor folk!" she cried, "why do you come here? This is a den where lives a band of wicked thieves. Every day they go out to rob and murder poor travellers like yourselves. By-and-by ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... and got a big future. Handsome little rogue, too. He's none of your ordinary boys. He's a twig from ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... misty air; the cattle browsing in the lingering golden stillness; not a breath to fan the blue smoke of the weed-fires—and in the fields no one moving—who would disturb such mellow peace? And Winter! The long spaces, the long dark; and yet—and yet, what delicate loveliness of twig tracery; what blur of rose and brown and purple caught in the bare boughs and in the early sunset sky! What sharp dark flights of birds in the gray-white firmament! Who cared what season held in its arms this land ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... And what a menace seemed hidden behind every bush or spoke in every sound! The faint creak of a tree as the night wind stirred the branches; the rustle of leaves on the ground or the breaking of a twig as some prowling animal moved about; the flight of a bird, disturbed at its rest; the hoot of an owl on the hillside or the croak of a frog in the swamp were all magnified tenfold by the half-darkness and the sense of danger ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... New York and hence to Buffalo, and from Buffalo to the West, and then speak of the wisdom of separatism!"—What exists, exists. The facts will laugh at your reflections; they will tell you that, they cannot be undone. They will tell you that you are like Endymion, whom Diana made sleep until the twig on which he leaned his head had become a tree. They, will tell you that you could as well reduce Buffalo to the log-house of MIDDEAU and LANE; the mighty democrat the steam-engine to the horse on the back of which EZRA METCALF brought the first public mail to the sixteen ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... 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 so very long. The Walking Stick ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... 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 across his field of fire: ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... to twig now skips the lover, Filling the grove with accents kind, On all sides roams the harmless rover, Hoping ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... Salon of 1903 Mlle. Fould exhibited "La Chatouilleuse"—Tickling—and "Nasturtiums." The first shows a young woman seated, wearing a decollete gown, while a mischievous companion steals up behind and tickles her neck with a twig. It is less attractive than many of ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... weight for the race, and are greatly retarded in passing through a woody country. The moose, for instance, with horns extending five and a half feet from tip to tip, although so skilful in their use that he will not touch or break a twig when walking quietly, cannot act so dexterously whilst rushing away from a pack of wolves. "During his progress he holds his nose up, so as to lay the horns horizontally back; and in this attitude cannot see the ground ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... 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, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... 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 there no clover grew. But in the open ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... is something subtle and fantastic about these shadows. Here is a leafless larch-sapling, eight feet high. The image of the lower boughs is traced upon the snow, distinct and firm as cordage, while the higher ones grow dimmer by fine gradations, until the slender topmost twig is blurred and almost effaced. But the denser upper spire of the young spruce by its side throws almost as distinct a shadow as its base, and the whole figure looks of a more solid texture, as if you could feel it with your hand. More beautiful than either is the fine image of this baby hemlock: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... 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 artists have put ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... poplars, and from the window I could see the naked branches of the endmost. A gas-lamp suddenly blazed behind it in Acre Lane, and I descried a bird in the tree. And as the tree waved its plume in the night-wind, and the bird swayed on the moving twig, and the gas-lamp burned meekly and patiently beyond, I seemed to catch in these simple things a glimpse of the secret meaning of human existence, such as one gets sometimes, startlingly, in a mood of idle receptiveness. And it was so sad and so beautiful, so full of an ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... minutes the silence continued, with not so much as the crack of a twig to interrupt it. What's that? It's a cock crowing! There it is again! There's another! The laager's there right enough, ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... CASE BEARER winters in its case attached to a twig. When the buds begin to open in the spring it moves to them, carrying its case with it, and begins to feed on the young and tender buds. By the time the leaves are well open, it has fed a good deal on the tender buds and young leaves and is ready to make a new and larger case. ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... attention to a fresh caribou track in the hard earth. It was scarcely distinguishable, and I had to look very closely to make it out. Then he showed me other signs that I could make nothing of at all—a freshly turned pebble or broken twig. These, he said, were fresh deer signs. A caribou had passed toward the larger ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... Gertrude added a dime for Tim, the helper, who watered the horses. As George was about to start his team, a twelve-year old farm boy ran aboard the boat with a string of fine speckled trout strung on a willow twig. All the spring the boy's anticipations for "a day off" had now been fully realized. Since daylight the little fellow had tramped up and down the brook, his feet were bruised and sore, and his face and hands were bitten by mosquitos. But what of that? He had caught a string of fine fish and ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... nearer Billee 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 ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... ahead 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
... 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 seen him ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... hurriedly quitted the room. During his brief absence, while the two men resumed their watches beside the couch, Zulma carried a little table near the head, covered it with a white cloth, set upon it two lighted candlesticks, and a little vessel of holy water in which rested a twig of cedar. She did this calmly, methodically, with mechanical dexterity, as if it had been an ordinary household duty. Never once did she raise her eyes from her work, but, from the increased light in the room, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... 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 ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... us that Jeremiah was to plant and build up. Here he planted, and here he did build. He planted and built a throne, a college, and a religion. Turn to Ezekiel, chapter xvi., and read the famous riddle. Tea Tephi is the tender twig that was cropped off from the high cedar, King Zedekiah, and planted among the merchants by great waters on the mountain of Israel. She was the tender one that was to take root downward. To Jeremiah, the Lord said, "Verily it shall be well with ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... table. There was a quaint West Indian basket which I knew its owner had valued, and which I had once admired; there was an affecting provision laid beside it for my seafaring supper, with a neatly tied bunch of southernwood and a twig of bay, and a little old leather box which held the coral pin that Nathan Todd brought home ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... 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
... that wild fellow, the big one, broke my pot yesterday, whilst he was scrambling with Philip for what remained of the contents." I inquired for the eldest; and she had scarcely time to tell me that he was driving a couple of geese home from the meadow, when he ran up, and handed Philip an osier-twig. I talked a little longer with the woman, and found that she was the daughter of the schoolmaster, and that her husband was gone on a journey into Switzerland for some money a relation had left him. "They wanted to cheat him," she said, "and would not answer his letters; ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... 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
... plant did hold for the cat the same attraction those stimulants produced in human beings. He carefully broke off a small stem supporting three leaves and presented it to the Salarik, who stared at him and then, snatching the twig, raced from the hydro garden as if ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... animals had no sooner obtained their liberty, than some were seen hopping on the ground, others darting into the air, or sporting in the trees, from twig to twig, and some flying about the windows, chirping, as though out of gratitude to ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... 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. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Zozo, the Serpent Charmer; Maggie, the Circassian Girl; and the rest of the side-show employees enter the tent. Then he removed his Number Eight mustache and put it in his pocket, and balanced his mirror against a twig. Mr. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... 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 Lord Himself. He is the Vine, we are the branches. ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... the latter's strained ear caught the crackling of a twig, above the din of the rapids (which was much less there than below), and something was discerned moving among the trees on his right. His frightened glance in that direction gave him a glimpse of a dusky figure in the act of hurling ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... upon a twig, but wise men dread a bandit,"— Which I know was very clever; but I didn't ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... his own bow. Nor did he seem to take aim but let the arrow fly. And the arrow carried the twig and leaf ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... mamma," she continued, dropping anemones over her mother's hands, one by one;—"that is what Mr. Raleigh calls them. When may I see the snow? You shall wrap me in eider, that I may be like all the boughs and branches. How buoyant the earth must be, when every twig becomes a feather!" And she moved toward Mr. Raleigh, singing, "Oh, would I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... "two" Kahle fired, and the ball struck with a slight noise the bark of a beech tree, a step or two to the left of and above his adversary, while a small twig fell rattling from overhead. Kahle's unsteady hand had given his pistol a slight upward turn, so that he had missed ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... dangerously from his perch, he detached it from the twig on which it had caught, and then sat holding it in his hand and gazing at it. It was Squire Vane's white Panama hat, but there was no Squire Vane under it. Paynter felt a nameless relief in the very fact that ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... but the fire-warden cut in ahead, cantering forward up the trail, nonchalantly breaking off a twig of aromatic black birch, as she rode, to ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... grayish colored plumage, sometimes adorned with a slight crest or a coronal mark of orange, red, or yellow. Only two of the species found in North America are gaudy in plumage, the Vermilion, and the Derby Flycatchers. They all have the habit of sitting erect on a dead twig, and watching for passing insects, which they catch on ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... 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 ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... 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
... "Just twig 'em, Jimmy!" shouted one who had tipped over half a dozen of his companions in his enthusiasm. "Their tails is as long ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... to depart, 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
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... watched from the dock side were kind and said nothing. The old admirals who had come down to visit the ship were used to these things, or perhaps they did not twig it. After all, what did it matter, it was sailing day, we were all as proud as peacocks of our little ship, and from that day forward we pulled together and played ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... Once this part of China was a great forest region, but century by century the forests have been used, not rapidly, as in this country, for China is not a great industrial nation, but surely, until there is hardly a twig left. ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... engaged in the same occupation. In order to approach within shot of these, we had to creep on all fours through the brushwood with the greatest caution; for gorillas are sharp-sighted, and they have a remarkably acute sense of hearing, so that sometimes the breaking of a dry twig under one's foot is sufficient to ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... terror. She caught her breath with a sob, and, seizing the oar with two soft, childish hands, made a desperate attempt to turn the boat. The current resisted her weak effort, snapping the oar in twain like a slender twig and ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... such a pang that he could not answer, but with a twig played a game of tick-tack-toe in the dust, while he thought bitterly that no one could blame Helene Spenceley for preferring Canby to a person who seemed destined to ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... 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
... nervously and with contempt of the row. "Joe!" called Mrs. Minto. "Joe! Come upstairs. Don't get quarrelling like that. Ought to be ashamed of yourself. Come upstairs!" She looked over the rails at her husband, like a sparrow on a twig. He was a flight below. "Come ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... this, always carries a supply of castor, or bark-stone; and when he reaches a stream or any other water near which he believes beavers may be found, he sets his trap, about six inches under the water. He then chews the end of a twig, dips it in the castor, and sticks it in with the scented end uppermost, just a little above the water. The nearest beaver, on discovering the scent, hurries up to the spot; and, if a young animal, ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... went by and no sound broke the stillness saving that of the water in the brook as it flowed down over a series of rocks. Then came the faint crack of a single dry twig over upon his left. He turned around and blazed ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... but, at the same moment, Ring Finger Bill and Nimble Jack, two jet-black 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 arranged on the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Tiberius never failed to wear a wreath of the third when the sky threatened a thunder-storm.[592] These superstitions may be received without a sneer in a country where the magical properties of the hazel twig have not lost all their credit; and perhaps the reader may not be much surprised that a commentator on Suetonius has taken upon himself gravely to disprove the imputed virtues of the crown of Tiberius, by mentioning that a few years before he wrote ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... entrance, 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 ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... open 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 of Westermain, Are as others ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from their home in an old grove about nine miles away, and their visits were always a great pleasure to us. On this occasion I was particularly glad, because the birds had elected to settle on a tree close to where I was standing. But the blossoms thickly covering every twig annoyed the parrots, as they could not find space enough to grasp a twig without grasping its flower as well; so what did the birds do in their impatience but begin stripping the blossoms off the branches on which they were perched with their sharp beaks, so rapidly that the flowers ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... was over, the high noonday sun 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 flitted among ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... he may not care enough to put forth the tremendous effort necessary to break these habits and build up the opposite. From the standpoint of conduct this non-moral period is the most important one in the life of the child. In it the twig is bent. To urge that a child cannot understand and therefore should be excused for all sorts of conduct simply evades the issue. He is forming habits—that cannot be prevented; the question is, Are those ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... 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
... aside hastily, stooped for a little twig that lay on the roadside, and began assiduously breaking it up. And the silence was not interrupted again, till we came in sight of our friends in advance of us, leisurely walking to let us come up. Then Hugh and I plunged into conversation; ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... seemed! Sometimes a twig would snap, or a buzzing insect would pause, as if to look at her, but no one came to ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... this is 'bout whut's got ter be done, es near es I kin figger it out. You pick out maybe half a dozen good fellers, who kin keep their mouths shet, an' make Injuns out of 'em. 'Tain't likely she 'll ever twig any of the boys fixed up proper in thet sorter outfit—anyhow, she'd be too durned skeered. Then you lay fer her, say 'bout next Wednesday, out in them Carter woods, when she 's comin' home from school. I 'll kinder naturally happen 'long by accident 'bout ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... 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
... But what is that green plant up there? It looks as if the oak tree were all dead except that one sprig of green. Strange that it should keep only one twig alive." ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to cling upon her own. A ray of sunlight pierced the leaves to shine Where her half-opened bodice let be shown Her white throat fluttering to his soft caress, Half-gasping with her gladness. And her pledge She whispers, melting with delight. A twig Snaps in the hornbeam hedge. A cackling laugh tears through the quietness. Eunice starts up in terrible distress. "My God! What's that?" Her staring ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... 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 open. Why not ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... in the air 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, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... young birds are taught some of the lessons that are needful for their own safety! One day I heard a young redstart chirping for his dinner. I quietly thrust my head into the thicket, and soon espied the birdkin perched on a twig only about a rod away. He either did not see me, or else decided that I was not a bugaboo. A few minutes later the mother darted into the enclosure and fed her baby. She was too much absorbed in her duties to notice me until the repast was over; then she suddenly caught sight of her unwelcome caller. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... once? And anyhow you'd have been tripped up and jumped upon before you had run three yards. I tell you you've had a most extraordinary chance that there wasn't one of them regular boys about to-night, in the High Street, to twig your loaded cab go by. Ted here is honest . . . You are on the honest lay, Ted, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... 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; ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... dressmakers. We should start in Camberwell, or 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 make out that a dress we sold them ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... 'do like the rest, and show honour to Balder by throwing this twig at him, and I will direct thy arm toward the place ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 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 shown by Shu[u]zen. Now you lie—with ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... fastidious: their political existence was at stake: they must make 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 in order ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... when they came down, there was need of taking care lest they happened to touch the head, feet, or other parts of the body. For they fell with the point downwards, and in they stuck, or slit the continuum of some member, or lopped it off like a twig; either of which generally was enough to have killed a man, though he were a hundred years old, and worth as many thousand spankers, spur-royals, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... a time a little leaf was heard to sigh and cry, as leaves often do when a gentle wind is about. And the twig said: "What is the matter, little leaf?" And the leaf said: "The wind just told me that one day it would pull me off and throw me down to die on ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... there 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 cypher 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 primitive ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... signs by which they told each other what they were going to do. A twig bent down, a few stones strung along a path, or any other of a hundred small signs, served to tell every patriot when and where to meet his friends. A man riding about, breaking a twig here and there, or making some other sign of the kind, could call together a large force at a chosen spot within ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... can be fairly traced, Through many a branch and many a bough, From twig to twig, until it graced The snowy hand that wears ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... or the wood, in the garden or by the rustic wayside. We have seen him, on still winter-days, flitting from tree to tree, with the liveliest motions and in the most engaging attitudes, examining every twig and branch, and winding over and under and in and out among them, and, after a few lively notes, hopping to another tree to pass through the same manoeuvres. Even those who are confined to the house are not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... 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 when held in a pair of tongs! ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... assure you that in the little duchy of Nassau—where it is said the grand-duke is unable to 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 province. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... 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 ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... 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
... 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 artists ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... understand me," said he; "I will explain. When you plant a seed or little twig in the earth, It forms a root: you water it when it is dry; the sunshine, the dew, and the rain, all refresh and promote it's growth; so that at length it becomes a large and beautiful tree. So when any one receives the word of God Into his heart in faith, it will strike ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... and shade her with his outstretched wings. But in this case there was no perch for the male bird, had he been disposed to make a sunshade of himself. I thought to lend a hand in this direction myself, and so stuck a leafy twig beside the nest. This was probably an unwise interference: it guided disaster to the spot; the nest was broken up, and the mother bird was probably caught, as I never ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... noon, when they lie down, they are difficult to approach, as they are then on the alert, employing their wonderful faculties of scent and hearing to detect the faintest taint or sound in the air, which might indicate the approach of danger. The snapping of a little twig, the least collision of a rifle with a branch, or crunching of the snow under the mocassins, will suffice to arouse them. Curiously enough, however, they are not alarmed by any sound, even the loudest, to which they have been accustomed. The hunter has, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... with dwarf trees and mountain shrubs. It was waste land, uncultivated and uninhabited. Quest made a careful search of the shrubs and ground close to the spot which Horan had indicated. He pointed out to his two companions the spot where the grass was beaten down, and a few yards farther off where a twig had been broken off from some overhanging trees, as though a man ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... my kind and generous adviser—but as the twig was set, the tree must grow. I have not been without that ambition which, however vain and sinful, is the first passion to enter the wayward and tossing vessel of our soul, and the last to leave its stranded and shattered wreck; but mine found and attained its object at an age, when in ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... endow the 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 away ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... 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 ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... and stole on feet which seemed to stir every leaf and twig to loud complaint toward the captive pair. Tense, motionless, with burning eyes, they waited. There was a movement from Captain Magnus; he yawned, turned and muttered. I stood stricken, my heart beating with loud thumps against my ribs. But ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... still as a spring night can be. Unseen and unheard the life of the earth streamed upwards in twig and blade and leaf, pushing on to the miracle of the prophet Jonas, to be revealed in wealth of color and scent and sound a fortnight later. The wind had fallen; the last doors were shut, and the two figures standing here were as still as all else. To neither of them occurred ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... unknown of all below;) Above that dark and desolate wave, The reflex of the eternal grave— Gigantic birds with flaming eyes Sweep upward, onward through the skies, Or stalk, without a wish to fly, Where the reposing lilies lie; While, stirring neither twig nor grass, Among the trees, in silence, pass Titanic animals whose race Existed, but has left no trace Of name, or size, or shape, or hue— Whom ancient Adam ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... altogether mistaken, in fact, were only half wrong when they coupled my name with that of pretty Lucy Plonelle. She had captivated my heart, just as a bird-catcher on a frosty morning catches an imprudent wren on a limed twig, and she might have done whatever she liked ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... was a great deal of talk in the village. The I-told-you-so people were quite delighted. Old Mother Horn "always knew that boys couldn't be managed without switching. Didn't the Bible or somebody say: 'Just as the twig is bent the boy's inclined?' And if you don't bend your twig, ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... manner in the Journal, which gives all his hopes and fears during three busy years. He was pleased to find on his arrival in London how great a value was set on his friendship by both political parties: "The Whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay hold on me as a twig while they are drowning;" but Godolphin's coldness enraged him, so that he was "almost vowing vengeance." Next day he talked treason heartily against the Whigs, their baseness and ingratitude, and went ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... fallen thick, and neither sun nor wind had as yet made any impression upon it; the covering of the road was thick and well beaten, and on every exposed level surface lay the white treasure piled up. Every twig and branch of the trees still held its burden; every roof was blanketed; there had been no time yet for smoke and soil to come upon the pure surfaces; and on all this fell the pale moon rays, casting pale shadows and making the world ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... root tangled in sand, sea-iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken, and you print a shadow like a thin twig. ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... to the Southward," she said—and then, upon the edge of the tiny clearing, a twig snapped. The man whirled, his rifle jerked into position, there was a loud report, and Bob MacNair sank slowly down upon the grass mound that was ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... (Whence inspiration, pure as ever flow'd, And genuine transport in his bosom glow'd) His own shrill matin join'd the various notes Of Nature's music, from a thousand throats: The blackbird strove with emulation sweet, And Echo answer'd from her close retreat; The sporting white-throat on some twig's end borne, Pour'd hymns to freedom and the rising morn; Stopt in her song perchance the starting thrush Shook a white shower from the black-thorn bush, Where dew-drops thick as early blossoms hung, And trembled as the minstrel ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... was all he could say as he picked up a few freshly fallen leaves and a twig or two. "He's good at climbing anyway." He examined one of the leaves carefully with his flashlight. "Squint around," he said to Roy, "and see if you can find where he stuck his staff in ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... even he came but seldom to our house. His daughter Patience was a great favourite with my mother; and for that matter I did not dislike the child, and would oftentimes pluck her an apple from our trees or cut a whistle for her out of a twig of elder wood. ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... accustomed to midnight alarms, was supposed to sleep, to use an expressive phrase, "with one eye open." Boone, who had feigned sound slumber, cautiously awoke his companion who was asleep and motioned him to follow. The rustling of a leaf, the crackling of a twig, would instantly cause every savage to grasp his bow and arrow and spring from the ground. Fortunately the Indians had allowed their captives to retain their guns, which had proved so ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... scoured over much, and in danger of dying, a hazel twig the length of the calf was twisted round the neck like a collar, and it was ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... 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 ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... vast dome several hundred feet in diameter, and full a 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... 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 ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... immediately dispersed. The short 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 ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... his protege narrowly as they took their places against the forward rail of the ferry-deck, and the boat stood out into the crashing water traffic of North River. What Samson saw must be absolutely bewildering. Ears attuned to hear a breaking twig must ache to this hoarse shrieking of whistles. To the west, in the evening's fading color, the sky-line of lower Manhattan bit the sky with its serried line ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... 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 ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... creatures, the flow of the brook, the splashes of sunlight through the trees, the sigh of the wind, the shout of the rapid,—all these were there, distinctly to be felt in their most ethereal and beautiful forms. And yet it was all slight and tenuous as though the crack of a twig would break it through—so that over it continually like a grand full organ-tone repeated the notes of the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... said, and raised her to the saddle—if I may say raised, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to another than she sprung from the ground on ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... that type which has all too soon taken the place of the buckskin in the West,—a riding habit, with stout little shoes and leather puttees; her hair was drawn tight upon her head and encased in the shielding confines of a cap, worn low over her forehead, the visor pulled aside by a jutting twig and now slanting out at a rakish angle; her arms full of something pink and soft and pretty. Barry wondered what it could be,—then ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... 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 we give it suitable ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... smiling, 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 ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... 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, his friends crowding ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 this ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... course, that he might have been like us, a casual way-farer, and yet the suddenness of his appearance, the intentness of his watch, both had their effect upon me. I moved a few yards towards him, with what object I perhaps scarcely knew. A dry twig snapped beneath my feet. He became suddenly aware of my approach. Then, indeed, my suspicions took definite shape, for without a moment's hesitation the man turned and strode away in the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lots and auguries, they are addicted beyond all other nations. Their method of divining by lots is exceeding simple. From a tree which bears fruit they cut a twig, and divide it into two small pieces. These they distinguish by so many several marks, and throw them at random and without order upon a white garment. Then the Priest of the community, if for the public the lots are consulted, ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... the green twilight of the woods a gentle wind was blowing, laden with the scent of earth and hidden flowers. Dewdrops twinkled in the grass and hung glistening from every leaf and twig, and beyond all was the sheen of the ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... zealotry of a new order! His blood flamed as he thought of their manoeuvrings, and putting his hand to his holster, where hung a pair of silver-mounted pistols marked with his initial, he drew out one and took flying aim at a bird on a twig, pleasing himself with the foolish fancy that 'twas Ignatius Loyola. But though a sure marksman, he had not the heart to hurt any living thing, and changing with the swiftness of a flash he shot at the twig ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... 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
... Emerging, hath awaken'd earth and sky With one sensation, and those wakeful Birds Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy, As if one quick and sudden Gale had swept An hundred airy harps! And she hath watch'd Many a Nightingale perch giddily On blosmy twig still swinging from the breeze, And to that motion tune his wanton song, Like tipsy Joy that reels with ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... 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 at me vith all his eyes, bawls pout in a tantivy of a ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... burn for me. Summon the haunted beetle, From twilight bud and bloom, To drone a gloomy dirge for me At dusk above my tomb. Beseech ye too the glowworm To bear her cloudy flame, Where the small, flickering bats resort, Whistling in tears my name. Let the round dew a whisper make, Welling on twig and thorn; And only the grey cock at night Call through his silver horn. And you, dear sisters, don your black For ever and a day, To show how sweet a raven In his tomb is ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... stages of some of the more important depredators upon forest and shade trees, was exhibited in two double-faced frames attached to the top of this case. The more important insects included in this group were the following: Sugar maple borer, elm snout beetles, twig girdler or twig pruner, white marked tussock moth, gypsy moth, brown tail moth, bag worm, forest tent caterpillar, elm leaf beetle, oyster scale, scurfy bark louse, San Jose scale, elm bark louse, cottony maple scale. One plate was devoted to characteristic insects affecting oak, and another ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... a little leaf was heard to sigh and cry, as leaves often do when a gentle wind is about. And the twig said: "What is the matter, little leaf?" And the leaf said: "The wind just told me that one day it would pull me off and throw me down to ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... and he saw a high wall that was in places half broken down, and an old grey church on the inside of the wall, and about a dozen withered old trees scattered here and there round it. There was neither leaf nor twig on any of them, but their bare crooked branches were stretched out like the arms of an angry man when he threatens. He had no help for it, but was obliged to go forward. He was a couple of hundred yards from the church, but he walked on, and never looked behind ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... It was only a twig which just then collided with his eye. It inflicted no injury, and he still pushed forward as obediently as if it was his father who was driving him. The Indian said nothing, but he rustled the leaves with his moccasins, as if to prevent the lad ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... another's estimations fine. Thinks I, if Jackson Bird can now be persuaded to migrate, I 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
... terrorized you with the boning knife in the shrubbery, or sicked the giant tarantula on you at the dark end of the subway platform, or whatever it was, and the others are covering up for. She's going to smile the devil-smile and weave those white twig-fingers at you, all eight of them. And Birnam Wood'll come to Dunsinane and you'll be burnt at the stake by men in armor or drawn and quartered by eight-legged monkeys that talk or torn apart by wild centaurs or whirled through ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... to 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 boy ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... 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 ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... 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, and Grizzel ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... her, went to the door and opened it. Every blade, every twig was still. The air was yet thick with moisture, though somewhat less dense than during the afternoon, and a steady smack of drops upon the fallen leaves under the boughs was almost musical in its soothing regularity. It seemed better to be out of ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... more addicted to divination by omens and lots. The latter is performed in the following simple manner. They cut a twig [68] from a fruit-tree, and divide it into small pieces, which, distinguished by certain marks, are thrown promiscuously upon a white garment. Then, the priest of the canton, if the occasion be public; if private, the master of the family; after an invocation of the gods, with his eyes ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... 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 lapse into music of the raven. We wound through the scrub spruce and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... 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 ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... 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
... carried, doubtless by the mulatto and the coachman, he understood, as he heard the gravel grate beneath their feet, why they took such minute precautions. He would have been able, had he been free, or if he had walked, to pluck a twig of laurel, to observe the nature of the soil which clung to his boots; whereas, transported, so to speak, ethereally into an inaccessible mansion, his good fortune must remain what it had been hitherto, a dream. ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... at them valves, will you?—ever seen anything like 'em before? Of course you haven't. Don't look like valves, eh? Can you break 'em, can you warp 'em, can you pit 'em? D'ye twig how the mixture reaches the cylinder? None of your shoulders or kinks to choke it up—is there?—and the same with the exhaust. Would you ever have a mushroom valve again after you've once cast your peepers over this arrangement? Now, if I ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... that there 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 cypher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 snapped 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 ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... keeping behind the overhanging shore brush and exercising caution not to knock brush or clod into the stream, an hour's mediocre effort is rewarded by a dozen bass of uniform size, weighing about a pound each. Should you make an unusual noise, break a twig or cause the sandy bank to cave and ripple the water, you must pass on to the next ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... for the captive spirit! Those cursed Jesuits, zealous with the zealotry of a new order! His blood flamed as he thought of their manoeuvrings, and putting his hand to his holster, where hung a pair of silver-mounted pistols marked with his initial, he drew out one and took flying aim at a bird on a twig, pleasing himself with the foolish fancy that 'twas Ignatius Loyola. But though a sure marksman, he had not the heart to hurt any living thing, and changing with the swiftness of a flash he shot at the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... art, morality, and politics to 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 hand itself rambling ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... flew away, but soon came back with a twig six or seven inches long and an eighth of an inch thick. This was dropped before the poor little cripple, and at each end was picked up by a sparrow, and held so that the lame bird was able to catch the middle of the twig in ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... with mine host: as you may easily imagine, there is not much scenery to be found in a marsh bounded by a forest swamp, but the effect is very curious; all the trees are covered with Spanish moss, a long, dark, fibrous substance which hangs gracefully down from every bough and twig; it is often used for stuffing beds, pillows, &e. This most solemn drapery gave the forest the appearance of a legion of mute mourners attending the funeral of some beloved patriarch, and one felt disposed ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... noiselessly in circles, that grew ever and ever narrower, sure, and unfaltering to the final 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 nearer ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... neck and throat, body compressed as in a racing yacht, there could be no bottom life for Guinevere. Whenever she touched a horizontal surface,—whether leaf or twig,—she careened; when she sculled through a narrow passage in the floating algae, her fins bent and rippled as they were pressed bodywards. So she and her fellow brood lived in mid-aquarium, or at most rested lightly against stem or glass, suspended by ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... "there, again; 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 something,—shall ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... 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
... watched his protege narrowly as they took their places against the forward rail of the ferry-deck, and the boat stood out into the crashing water traffic of North River. What Samson saw must be absolutely bewildering. Ears attuned to hear a breaking twig must ache to this hoarse shrieking of whistles. To the west, in the evening's fading color, the sky-line of lower Manhattan bit the sky with its serried ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... 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
... Little Tom Twig bought a fine bow and arrow, And what did he shoot? why, a poor little sparrow, Oh, fie, little Tom, with your fine bow and arrow, How cruel to shoot ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... muss the practice if you tease Bobbie," Don said slowly. "He'll be edging away from you, not knowing what moment you'll twig him, and it will spoil the work. You can't give him a good fireman's lift if he's ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... to say, partaking of the nature of the other, in a similar manner to that which you must have seen in our Arabian carving! A moving flower, a bird growing on a branch, a fountain gleaming with fiery sparks, a singing twig—these are truly no hateful things!" "He must avoid temptation who does not wish to be overcome by it," said Heimbert very gravely; "I am for the desert. Will it please you to come out to visit me again?" Zelinda looked down somewhat displeased. Then suddenly bending her head still lower ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... replied. "Well, I made a mistake. Of course, it would be rather absurd to count the whole tree. I tell you what I will do. I will hang my cap on this little twig here, and if the ball hits that I am out. ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... from the bakehouse one can hear everything that is said in the kitchen," said Mother Barberin, "and when I knew that they were talking about you, I naturally listened. I got nearer and then I trod on a twig ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... universities. The word appears in various forms in different languages. The following are taken from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. "French, bachelier; Spanish, bachiller, a bachelor of arts and a babbler; Portuguese, bacharel, id., and bacello, a shoot or twig of the vine; Italian, baccelliere, a bachelor of arts; bacchio, a staff; bachetta, a rod; Latin, bacillus, a stick, that is, a shoot; French, bachelette, a damsel, or young woman; Scotch, baich, a child; Welsh, bacgen, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... 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 ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... too," said 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
... between the two Visions—the blossoming twig and the boiling caldron brewing tempests from the North. Unrelated as these seem, they symbolise together Jeremiah's prophesying throughout. For in fact this was all blossom and storm, beauty and terror, tender yearning and thunders of doom—up to the very end. Or to state the same ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Scotland in the antiquity of their descent. Nay, they have themselves boasted that their family is not to be seen or distinguished, like other great houses, until it is found at once in a certain degree of eminence. 'You may see us in the tree,' they say, 'you cannot discover us in the twig; you may see us in the stream, you cannot trace us to the fountain.' In a word, they deny that historians or genealogists can point out the first mean man named Douglas, who originally elevated the family; and true it ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the government officials looked upon it with jealous eyes, and usually snatched it away. The telephone thus became a part of the telegraph, which is a part of the post office, which is a part of the government. It is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction—a mere twig of bureaucracy. Under such conditions the telephone could not prosper. The wonder is ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... company, he broke out: 'Et moi, messieurs, je crois en Dieu. Je sors si vous dites un mot de plus.' That was not what he meant; neither was the First Discourse what he meant. He had still to find his language, and to find his language he had to find his peace. He was like a twig whirled about in an eddy of a stream. Suddenly the stream bore him to Geneva, where he returned to the church which he had left at Confignon. That, too, was not what he meant. When he returned from Geneva, Madame d'Epinay ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... winters in its case attached to a twig. When the buds begin to open in the spring it moves to them, carrying its case with it, and begins to feed on the young and tender buds. By the time the leaves are well open, it has fed a good deal on the tender buds and young leaves and is ready to make a new and ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... Solomon upon the agreement between the views of you two. However, I twig your intent: he means a wicked sinner; and of all forms of folly there is none so great as wicked sinning. For goodness is, in the end, more conducive to personal happiness—which is the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... topmost twig, that rises and falls with willowy motion, sits that ridiculous, sweet-singing bobolink, singing as a Roman candle ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... along the dry ditch with laborious care. They advanced no single inch without first taking care to move aside any twig the snapping ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... long afterward on a warm slope in the sun. Crickets hopped about them; Charles-Norton at intervals heard by his side Dolly's musical giggle as one of them struck her. A bird on a long twig balanced above them, and for a time a squirrel chattered at them in mock scolding from the top of a pine. Little by little Charles-Norton sank into a profundity of well-being. He could see ahead, now, his life stretching placid and colored, solved ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... instruction, both useful and ornamental, will be prosecuted under the immediate superintendence of Mrs. Wheelwright, who will spare no pains in the inoculation of the soundest lessons of virtue, while yet their young and youthful minds can be bent like the twig, and inclined like the tree, as the poet says. Those who desire it will receive instruction in the elements of moral philosophy, for which purpose they must be provided with Newtown's Principles, and ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... all he could say as he picked up a few freshly fallen leaves and a twig or two. "He's good at climbing anyway." He examined one of the leaves carefully with his flashlight. "Squint around," he said to Roy, "and see if you can find where he stuck his staff in ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... 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, ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... 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 of jasmine bowers! Chatter and chirrup, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... Thursday, after five days' travelling, 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... 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 anemones, and ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sky. The roots of an antique oak peep upon the flood as in the golden days of Arden. Apple blossoms fall upon the water like the snow of a more kindly winter. A gay leaf puts out upon the channel like a painted galleon for far adventure. A twig sails off freighted with my drowsy thoughts. A branch of a willow dips in the stream and writes an endless trail of words in the running water. In these evil days when the whole fair world is trenched and bruised with war, what wisdom does it send to the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... bleak? There is not wind enough in the air 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, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... only the dropping of a twig," she whispered, after a long holding of the breath. But they went into the ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... down, there was need of taking care lest they happened to touch the head, feet, or other parts of the body. For they fell with the point downwards, and in they stuck, or slit the continuum of some member, or lopped it off like a twig; either of which generally was enough to have killed a man, though he were a hundred years old, and worth as many thousand ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... description, I am 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 shoved through ...
— Navajo weavers • Washington Matthews
... himself, and drove her away in an indifferent manner, as if this interloper 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 there ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... describe to you the weird beauty of a moonlight night among the pines when the snow is sparkling and gleaming, the deep silence unbroken even by the snapping of a twig. We stood shivering and straining our ears and were about to go back to bed when we heard faintly a long-drawn wail as if all the suffering and sorrow on earth were bound up in that one sound. We couldn't tell which way it came from; it seemed ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... huge almost brilliant all over, and with a kernel playing freely in its shell. But if he soon discovered his mistake he did not consider it a reason for throwing the case away; on the contrary, he grasped it more tightly in his left hand, and dropped the cudgel, which broke off a dry twig ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... snap the seeds and toss 'em; The blue-tit hop, with pert delight, About the crab-tree blossom; The homely robin shall draw near, And sing a song most tender; The black-cap whistle soft and clear, Swayed on a twig top slender; The weasel from the hedge-row creep, So crafty and so cruel, The rabbit from the tussock leap, And splash the frosty jewel. I care not what the season be— Spring, summer, autumn, winter— In morning sweet, or noon-day heat, Or when the ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... 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
... red cloth; another accompanies him with a bundle of 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... green twilight of the woods a gentle wind was blowing, laden with the scent of earth and hidden flowers. Dewdrops twinkled in the grass and hung glistening from every leaf and twig, and beyond all was the ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... from a chicken), and thrown on to a pile of hot wood-ashes with no further preparation, and are greedily devoured red and bloody, and but barely warm. A lizard or iguana calls for a further exercise of culinary knowledge. First, a crooked twig is forced down the throat and the inside pulled out, which dainty is thrown to any dog or child that happens to be near; the reptile is then placed on hot coals until distended to the utmost limit that the skin will bear without bursting, then it is ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... 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 jolly coasters ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... does not produce the series of movements all by itself, but, as was explained in speaking of tendencies in general, cooeperates with sensory stimuli in producing them. Clearly enough, the nest-building bird, {111} picking up a twig, is reacting to that twig. He does not peck at random, as if driven by a mere blind impulsion to peck. He reacts to twigs, to the crotch in the tree, to the half-built nest. Only, he would not react to these stimuli unless the nesting ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... 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 this disease, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... what I 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 ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... young couple drove to their new home, the old mansion. Grandfather Locke went away in the same yellow-bottomed chaise a week after, and returned in a few days with a tall lady of fifty by his side—"Marm Tamor," a twig of the Morgeson tree, being his third cousin, whom he had married. This marriage was Grandfather Locke's last mistake. He was then near eighty, but lived long enough to fulfill his promises to father. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... that is brilliant in the extreme, when you consider the relative values of the colors composing it. Then you will discover that the charm is not confined to the color of the fruit, but to the delicate tracery of branch and twig, ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... There is something subtle and fantastic about these shadows. Here is a leafless larch-sapling, eight feet high. The image of the lower boughs is traced upon the snow, distinct and firm as cordage, while the higher ones grow dimmer by fine gradations, until the slender topmost twig is blurred and almost effaced. But the denser upper spire of the young spruce by its side throws almost as distinct a shadow as its base, and the whole figure looks of a more solid texture, as if you could feel it with your hand. More beautiful than either ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... take up his stand in a tree, and explore its branches till he has caught every worm. He sits on a twig, and with a peculiar swaying movement of his head examines the surrounding foliage. When he discovers his prey, he leaps upon it ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... 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 ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... purity of nature, all the world was a snare, a limed twig. Knowing that pleasure was everywhere, a fierce, mocking enemy, crouching and waiting at every corner of the road of life, in order to kill with its sweet sting the naked grandeur of the soul, he shielded himself behind pain. This also his followers do, but they ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... was now held by Wolfert Webber, while the doctor produced the divining rod. It was a forked twig, one end of which was grasped firmly in each hand, while the centre, forming the stem, pointed perpendicularly upwards. The doctor moved this wand about, within a certain distance of the earth, from place to place, but for some time without any effect, while Wolfert kept ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... first arising therein, in a gospel dispensation; whose benign influences caused the small grain of good seed, sown by the skill of the Great Husbandman, to grow up to a fruitful plant, the tender twig to spread itself into a noble vine, and the little cloud, like a man's hand, to cover the whole hemisphere of the visible church of Scotland, which long ago, as a church and nation, had enlisted themselves under the LORD JESUS CHRIST, as their Royal Prince; whose peaceful and righteous ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... 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 ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... screen of low hills with their creeping lines of masonry; but from south and west the softly encroaching thing crept up to the city walls, in through the gates, powdering every twig and leaf and lattice with the fine white dust of death. Shadeless and colourless, to the limit of vision, it rose and fell in long billowing waves; as if some wizard, in the morning of the world, had smitten a living ocean to lifeless sand, where nothing flourished but the camel thorn and the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... what do you learn about them?' She spoke all the while in a mocking, half teasing fashion, as if making game of the whole business. She picked up a twig of the catkin, piqued ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... 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 ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... trees are sometimes attacked by the twig girdler[24] (Fig. 11). This beetle lays eggs in the twigs, which are girdled so as to stop the flow of sap that would normally prevent hatching. The girdled twigs usually become detached from the trees and as a result the nut-bearing wood ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... 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 position of ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... 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 ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... moderately, versed in the secular arts of twig-liming, such flashes would have acted as an effective warning and deterrent. Not so upon Theresa. She barely noticed them, as blindly heroic, she pounded along leading her piteous forlorn hope. Her chance—her unique chance, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... broom into the corner by the cupboard, the sheet inside it, the pot on the hearth, the pail on the floor and the chair against the wall. Then, with professional movements, 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, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 cold that even ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... husband, much annoyed by this 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 bird's neck, he tossed it into her bosom so hastily that she was sprinkled ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... pound of sugar, and a pint of wine. Cover the dish, with a large sheet of brown paper tied on; set it in a moderate oven, and let them bake till tender all through which you may ascertain by sticking a broom twig through them. They will he done in about an hour, or they may probably require more time; but you must not let them remain long enough in the oven, to break or fall to pieces. When cool, put them up in a stone jar. In cold weather they will ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... caterpillar moves; it brings the feet of both extremities close together, and the intermediate part of the body rises like an arch, giving it the appearance of measuring the distance it performs. It is said to possess great muscular powers, for it will attach its posterior feet to the twig of a tree, and erect the rest of its body in a vertical position for hours ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... (1943) all 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 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mid-afternoon. The one on this day is the whirling log representation. After it is finished, feathers are stuck in the ground around it, and sacred meal is scattered on parts by some of the assisting singers. Others scatter the meal promiscuously; one of the maskers uses a spruce twig and medicine shell, applying meal to every figure and object in the painting. Then the medicine-men all gather up portions of the sacred meal, putting it in their medicine pouches. The patient soon enters and takes his seat in the centre of ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... Hermia, who was leading. Markham examined the bushes, the trees, and the fences. He stood for a moment looking down at a minute object by the side of the road, a twig, as Hermia saw, broken in the middle, the open ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... with his head bowed away from him; while near by, from the arched and overhanging rigging, where they had just been engaged securing a spar, a number of the seamen, arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung pendulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig. In various enchanted attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or running skeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the deck; but ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... crescent moon, I beheld a man walking in one of the alleys, not a hundred paces from where we stood. I had but time to seize Michelot by the collar of his pourpoint and draw him towards me. But as he trod precipitately backwards a twig snapped 'neath his foot with a report that in the surrounding stillness was like a ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... right to the thing you are doing—and just before sundown OLD-man saw the sleeping Lion. Carefully, lest he wake the sleeper, OLD-man crept close, being particular not to move a stone or break a twig; for the Mountain-lion is much faster than men are, you see; and if OLD-man had wakened the Lion, he would never have caught him again, perhaps. Little by little he crept to the stone where the Mountain-lion was ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... 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
... Stick 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 ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... with her 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 ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... 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 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
... sharp crack of a twig somewhere to the left of them in the woods, made them stop suddenly ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... Here, the rescuers might stumble upon them! Always she started at each unexpected shadow along the trail. Always she thrilled at a wisp of smokelike cloud beyond the canon edge. Always she felt a quiver of certainty at sudden break of twig or fall of stone. But the days passed and ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... (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 ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... and carried them home with her. As soon as she was in her room, she took the largest flower-pot she could find, and in this she placed the head of the dead man, covered it up with earth, and planted the twig of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... ochre had apparently sufficed for the dooryard; no weed grew here, no twig. It was tramped firm and hard by the feet of cow, and horse, and the peripatetic children, and poultry. The cabin was drawn in with careless angles and lines by a mere stroke or two; and surely no painter, no builder save ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... in mischief. Her grandmother, with whom she lives, lays the blame on 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... years, and they put forth their gnarled arms and grapple with the blast, when the lightning cleaves the inky sky with forked flame and the earth rocks neath the thunder's angry roar. When the dark clouds roll muttering unto the East and the evening sun hangs every leaf and twig and blade of grass with jewels brighter than e'er gleamed in Golconda's mines; when the mock-birds renew their melody and every flower seems drunken with its own incense, I look upon the irisate glory that seems to belt the world with beauty and my heart beats high with ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... cautious 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. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... wishes to show off his magnificence to his spouse—or when she asks him to show it off, we know not which—he makes a circle in the forest some ten or twelve feet in diameter, which he clears of every leaf, twig, and branch. On the margin of this circus there is invariably a projecting branch, or overarching root a few feet above the ground, on which the female takes her place to watch the exhibition. This consists of the male strutting about, pluming his ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... I present you with this sprig of it," cutting off a small twig, and presenting it at the same instant unseen ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... lived in a 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 ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... sprout 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 is grown and blown will come the world's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 on ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... pounding of our hearts. We grew quite stiff in our cramped positions, but feared to shift a limb and waited for three-quarters of an hour before we dared to worm our way cautiously in the other direction. The snap of a twig was like that of a rifle on ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... world, was a sort of sport to Harold, and he strode on, making his goal the highest point of the moor, whence, if it cleared a little, he would be able to see to a vast distance. He was curious, too, to look down into the railway cutting. This was a sort of twig from a branch of the main line, chiefly due to Lord Erymanth, who, after fighting off the railway from all points adjacent to his estate, had found it so inconvenient to be without a station within reasonable distance, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... did not." With a twig Bat pushed down the tobacco in his pipe. "I stayed up here, if you want to know, because we were on our way to the cow camp when the parson and his kid joined us. I guess every man has his limit. That cow-camp gang is mine. I want to live a little longer; and I don't want to know things that ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... I know is that 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 of him as ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... been 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 ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... 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 in all my meadows, ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... had a better bird to listen to—a redstart. A female flew down within fifteen yards of me; her mate followed and perched on a dry twig, where he remained a long time for so shy and restless a creature. He was in perfect plumage, and sitting there, motionless in the strong sunlight, was wonderfully conspicuous, the gayest, most exotic-looking bird of his family in England. Quitting his perch, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... and good, I shall live alone and faithful." The thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the too slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... present to me. My gardener showed it to me and said, "This is what they call a Clematis," evidently disbelieving it. So I put a little twig to the peduncle, and the next day my gardener said, "You see it is a Clematis, for it feels." That's the way we make out ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... blessed effects it should produce on individuals, families, and nations. It closes with a view of the second coming of Jesus to conquer the last of his enemies, and take possession of the earth as his inheritance. I can only lop off a twig or two from this blessed tree of life, in the hope that the fragrance of the leaves may allure you to take up the Bible, and eat abundantly of its life-giving promises. As I have in the previous chapters abundantly proved the veracity ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... 'bout whut's got ter be done, es near es I kin figger it out. You pick out maybe half a dozen good fellers, who kin keep their mouths shet, an' make Injuns out of 'em. 'Tain't likely she 'll ever twig any of the boys fixed up proper in thet sorter outfit—anyhow, she'd be too durned skeered. Then you lay fer her, say 'bout next Wednesday, out in them Carter woods, when she 's comin' home from school. I 'll kinder naturally happen ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Sometimes a twig snapped overhead, and then he would next be surprised by stepping upon what proved to be a rolling stone, that would slip from under his foot, and go rattling on ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... 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 of the water, the other ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... "As the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." This is an old adage of the English language and the principle it expresses has been generally accepted throughout the world. "Spare the rod and spoil the child"—is another old adage which has been almost as universally accepted. Still another ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... into the cold air 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
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... tree, never forgets itself. Cheat it of its root, and the stem remains faithful. The minutest twig, put out to nurse upon the arm of a foreign mother, feels the thrill of the great primal law in its filmiest fibre, and breathes in every expression of its life its fidelity. If you will walk with me into the garden, I will show you a mountain-ash ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... surveillance by 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 everything occurred before ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... and looked straight before him, apparently at a bluebird balanced on a twig, but it was not the bird ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... afternoon was passing into night, the air was cold and still, so still that not a single twig of the naked beech-trees stirred; on the grass of the meadows lay a thin white rime, half frost, half snow; the firs stood out blackly against a steel-hued sky, and over the tallest of them hung a single star. Past these bordering firs there ran a road, on which, in this evening of the opening ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... by tickling his nose with a twig of wild honeysuckle. He said 'Bother the flies!' twice, and ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... such a start that he proceeded with even greater caution. He was crouched close to the ground. Every inch of it he scanned carefully before he set down a foot, fearful of the cracking of a fallen twig. Like most men when they hunt, he began to feel that something followed him. He tried to argue the thought out of his brain, but it persisted, and grew stronger. Half a dozen times he whirled suddenly with his revolver poised. At last he heard a stamp which could ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... in their hands. There were several logs scattered about the beach, and David made the rope fast to one of them and he and Bert dragged it into the cane. While Dan was wondering what they were going to do with the log a twig snapped near him, and he turned quickly to find his father ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... it was, dear old Patricia miss?" persisted Bones, and interrupted her ingenious speculation in his usual aggravating manner: "The sound of a footstep breakin' a twig a ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... 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 dry ditch with laborious care. They advanced no single inch without first taking care to move aside any twig the snapping ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... she walked), came quietly a tall white Lady in a dark cloak. Hey! powers of earth and air, but this was not to be doubted! Evenly forward she came, without a footfall, without a rustle or the crackling of a twig, without so much as kneeing her skirt—stood before them so nearly that they saw the pale oval of her face, and said in a voice like a muffled bell, "I am hungry, my friends; have you any meat?" She had a face like the moon, and great round eyes; within her cloak, on the bosom of her white dress, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... sulphurous sputter of flame,—the next moment, with the lighted lantern in her hand, she was out in the sheeting blackness of the rain!—running!—running!—toward that still figure by the deadened fire. Just before she reached it a twig rolled under her foot, and she said, "A snake,"—but she did not flinch. As she gained the circle of stones, a flash of lightning, with its instant and terrific crack and bellow of thunder, showed her a streak of blood on Maurice's face.... ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... my dear," I said, and raised her to the saddle—if I may say raised, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to another than she sprung from the ground on ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... he pressed on it with his foot and put his whole weight on it, just as he had seen his father do to the other tree,—snap went the tree like a twig, and Salar tumbled head over heels and went ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... thing more that was necessary for her home, besides sunshine and peace and good hunting. It must be where she could sit and not show; where she could hide by just looking like what was near her, like a sand-colored grasshopper on the sand in the sun,[2] or a walking-stick on a twig,[2] or a butterfly on the bark ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... the snow 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
... 10 feet on to the floor of the verandah. In this respect all birds behave alike. They never attempt to reclaim that which they have let fall. A bird will spend the greater part of half an hour in wrenching a twig from a tree: yet, if this is dropped while being carried to the nest, the bird seems to lose ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... foliage 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 air, sang ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... it and the river, night gathers in the gardens; and there, amid serious greens, passes the black stain of a man's coat, and, in a line with the coat, in the beautifully swaying branch, a belated sparrow is hopping from twig to twig, awakening his mates in search for a satisfactory resting-place. In the sharp towers of Temple Gardens the pigeons have gone to sleep. I can see the cots under ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... to a lever, was gradually forcing back his head. Rodrigo groped for a knife, but half way to his waist the fingers clutched vainly in a sharp spasm, and all involuntarily flew up and gripped at the vise under his chin. Yet another ounce of pressure, and it seemed his neck must snap like a dry twig. Suddenly his spine bent limp. Muscles relaxed. The whole body capitulated. Then the man behind stooped a little, and Rodrigo began to rise. Slowly at first, and next, as from a catapult, the brigand shot backward over the man's ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... 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, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... from one side of her mouth protruded a bit of wood with the slivered bark on it. One versed in the science of forestry might have recognised the little stub of switch as a peach-tree switch; one bred of the soil would have known its purpose. Neither puckered-out lip nor peach-tree twig seemed to interfere in the least with her singing. She flung the song out past them—over the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... of fruits and nuts gathered without labour; the stalled ox and a world of trouble for the dinner of herbs and leisure therewith. Are we so far removed thereby above our little brother, who, having swallowed his simple, succulent worm, mounts a neighbouring twig and with easy digestion carols thanks to God? The square brick box about which we move, hampered at every step by wooden lumber, decked with many rags and strips of coloured paper, cumbered with odds and ends of melted flint ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... Kahle fired, and the ball struck with a slight noise the bark of a beech tree, a step or two to the left of and above his adversary, while a small twig fell rattling from overhead. Kahle's unsteady hand had given his pistol a slight upward turn, so that he ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... occasional visitors from their home in an old grove about nine miles away, and their visits were always a great pleasure to us. On this occasion I was particularly glad, because the birds had elected to settle on a tree close to where I was standing. But the blossoms thickly covering every twig annoyed the parrots, as they could not find space enough to grasp a twig without grasping its flower as well; so what did the birds do in their impatience but begin stripping the blossoms off the branches on which they were perched with their sharp beaks, so rapidly that the flowers came down in ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... 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
... ducks 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 ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... him," shouted half—a—dozen other voices, while each stuck his oaken twig through the handkerchief that held his bundle, and shouldered it, clapping his straw or tarpaulin hat, with a slap on the crown, on one side of his head, and staggering and swaying about under the influence of the poteen, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... analogous to the branches and twigs of an inverted little tree. If we place before us such a shrub, with the root upward and the branches pointing downwards, and then draw lines from the lowest point of the lowest twig to the outer ends of all the branches surrounding the main trunk, we shall see that our lines, instead of running in the general directions of the limbs, will, for the most part, run across the twigs. But, if we draw our lines from the outer extremities of the branches and twigs ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... friends 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 turning, ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... The incongruity of such imaginings here—here amidst omnipotent silence—rendered such thoughts impossible. A leaf rustled, and its rustling sounded to my ears like the gentle closing of some giant door. A twig fell, and I turned sharply round, convinced I should see a pile of broken debris. I love all trees, but I love them best by day—to me it seems that night utterly metamorphizes them—brings out in them a subtler, darker side one would little suspect. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... sight of the eucalyptus trees, two hundred feet high, with tough bark five inches thick. The trunks, measuring twenty feet round, and furrowed with foamy streaks of an odorous resin, rose one hundred and fifty feet above the soil. Not a branch, not a twig, not a stray shoot, not even a knot, spoilt the regularity of their outline. They could not have come out smoother from the hands of a turner. They stood like pillars all molded exactly alike, and could be counted by hundreds. At an enormous height they spread ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... gardens, he learns to distinguish plants by their forms. This is particularly true for trees and shrubs. Each species has its own "expression," which is determined by the size that is natural to it, mode of branching, form of top, twig characters, bark characters, foliage characters, and to some extent its flower and fruit characters. It is a useful practice for one to train his eye by learning the difference in expression of the trees of different varieties of cherries or ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... whut's got ter be done, es near es I kin figger it out. You pick out maybe half a dozen good fellers, who kin keep their mouths shet, an' make Injuns out of 'em. 'Tain't likely she 'll ever twig any of the boys fixed up proper in thet sorter outfit—anyhow, she'd be too durned skeered. Then you lay fer her, say 'bout next Wednesday, out in them Carter woods, when she 's comin' home from school. I 'll kinder naturally happen 'long by accident 'bout ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... 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 ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Halcyone carried a twig of freshly sprouting oak which she had brought from the tree, having broken it off in ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... different sides of the road in search of game, as they said, but, as I feared, with the purpose of robbing and perhaps murdering me at some darker spot in the forest. I had gone perhaps two miles farther, when I heard the breaking of a twig, and, looking on one side, saw a hand signaling me to stop. Presently an eye came out behind the tree, and then an arm, and I verily thought my hour had come. But, keeping straight on, I perceived, almost instantly, to my great relief, two fine deer, who appeared ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... and ready for any kind of an excursion. During the whole of this little flight, he uttered a loud, brisk, and melodious neigh, and finally came down at Bellerophon's side as lightly as you ever saw a sparrow hop upon a twig. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... safe from the sniping in front, which was going on more or less all the time we were there, and about thirty minutes had elapsed when, in the silence of the night, I thought I again heard the crackling of a twig. Blaisdell heard it too. "Hist! Did ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... the well-known 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, and other ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Hazelton declared dolefully. "We drew lots on the other side. Greg drew the shortest twig, so he had to stay at the camp. I got the next shortest twig, so ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... "Je twig—I tumble!" answered Milsom. "And a very pretty scheme it is, too, Jack—does you proud, old man; it ought to work like a charm. Now, before the Spanish Johnnies come aboard, I'll just hunt up Macintyre, and post him upon his share of the work, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... the quartet, has a way all his own. The elongated cocoon, looking like a silken finger, is woven about a leaf of sassafras. Even the long stem of the leaf is silk-girdled, and a strong band is looped about the twig to which the leaf is attached. Here, when all the leaves fall, he hangs, the plaything of every breeze, attracting the attention of all the hungry birds. But little does Prometheus care. Sparrows may hover about him and peck in vain; chickadees may clutch ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... stretching tattered sail-cloth on poles. It was market-day. The dealers were arranging their commodities, consisting chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which seemed to be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there was a much greater variety of merchandise: basket-work, both for fancy and use; twig-brooms, beehives, oranges, rustic attire; all sorts of things, in short, that are commonly sold at a rural fair. I heard the lowing of cattle, too, and the bleating of sheep, and found that there was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in another part of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... through the crowd looking for him in all directions. He was nowhere visible, though the whole area was lighted up, even to the edge of the forest, every tree and branch and twig and leaf of which was distinctly revealed ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... who have little or no Faith in the Abilities of a Quack will apply themselves to him, either because he is willing to sell Health at a reasonable Profit, or because the Patient, like a drowning Man, catches at every Twig, and hopes for Relief from the most Ignorant, when the most able Physicians give him none. Though Impudence and many Words are as necessary to these Itinerary Galens as a laced Hat or a Merry Andrew, yet they would turn very little to the Advantage of the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... his cheeks, his eyes were chill with momentary tears; he would have liked to move quite noiselessly, to steal along in secret. A cross gust of wind blew suddenly on him; he almost shuddered, and his heart stood still; a drowsy beetle fell off a twig and dropped with a thud on the path; Bersenyev uttered a subdued 'Ah!' and again stopped. But he began to think of Elena, and all these passing sensations vanished at once; there remained only the reviving sense of the night freshness, of ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... sometimes attacked by the twig girdler[24] (Fig. 11). This beetle lays eggs in the twigs, which are girdled so as to stop the flow of sap that would normally prevent hatching. The girdled twigs usually become detached from the trees and as a result the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... 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 ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... of the North, as the Brown Thrush has been called, arrives in the Eastern and Middle States about the 10th of May, at which season he may be seen, perched on the highest twig of a hedge, or on the topmost branch of a tree, singing his loud and welcome song, that may be heard a distance of half a mile. The favorite haunt of the Brown Thrush, however, is amongst the bright and glossy foliage of the evergreens. "There they delight to hide, although ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... found the track, he went in hot haste after Mr. Rabbit. And both ran hard, till, night coming on, Rabbit, to protect himself, had only just time to trample down the snow a little, and stick up a spruce twig on end and sit on it. But when Wild Cat came up he found there a fine wigwam, and put his head in. All that he saw was an old man of very grave and dignified appearance, whose hair was gray, and whose ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... and bits of wool, the Goldfinch, the Chaffinch and other masters of the builder's art construct an aerial bower in the fork of the branches. Herself a lover of high places, the Thomisus selects as the site of her nest one of the upper twigs of the rock-rose, her regular hunting-ground, a twig withered by the heat and possessing a few dead leaves, which curl into a little cottage. This is where she settles with ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... think he has; but I know as little about the matter as you do." He sat down beside her, and picking up a twig from the gravel, pulled the bark off in silence. Then, "Miss Vervain," he said, knitting his brows, as he always did when he had something on his conscience and meant to ease it at any cost, "I'm the dog that fetches a bone and carries a bone; I talked Don Ippolito over with you, the other ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... Year dressed herself in white, With crystal buttons shining, A spangled scarf, all lacy-light About her shoulders twining; A bunch of pearly mistletoe, A twig of ruddy holly, She tucked among her curls, and oh, She was so ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... that tree you're in," Kiddie Katydid informed him. Kiddie never moved as he spoke, but clung closely to a twig in the bush where he was hiding. Being green himself, he hardly thought that Mr. Nighthawk would be able to discover him amongst shrubbery of the ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... merely whispering with their leaves, (for every tree talks 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 ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... speed for his lair; but Michel is his match for stealth and swiftness, and when one sense fails, another is summoned to his assistance. The eye can no longer see the prey, but the ear can yet detect here and there a broken twig revealing the exact track it has taken. With gun carried low, and treading on in breathless silence and attention, the hunters follow, and soon a shot is heard, succeeded by another, and then a shout which proclaims poor Bruin's death. Alas, that gun which has done such good service for his ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... 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, unseen, and ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... subjeck. With our resunt grate triumps on the Mississippi, the Father of Waters (and them is waters no Father need feel 'shamed of—twig the wittikism?) and the cheerin' look of things in other places, I reckon we shan't want any Muslum of Harts. And what upon airth do the people of Concord, N.H., want a Muslum of Harts for? Hain't you got the State House now? & what ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... seven different men, which we followed to the spot where, whilst creeping about to watch us, they had been disturbed. From this point these children of the bush had disappeared, as it were by magic: not a twig was broken, not a stone was turned, and we could not perceive that the heavy drops of rain had been shaken from a single blade of grass. We made wide casts in different directions but, not being able to hit on their trail, I returned ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... preference being shown. It rears generally two, but sometimes three young, one at a time, during the long breeding season, which continues from the end of September until the end of January, and for each successive egg a fresh carpet of twig or leaves is spread. A rare nest was composed of fresh leaves of the Moreton Bay ash, with the petioles towards the centre, forming a complex green star. No doubt the arrangement of the leaves was accidental, but the white dumpy egg as a pearl-like focus completed a quaint device. Another ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... be propagated 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, ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... as he was thinking this a twig cracked sharply in the hedge. Then a dozen twigs rustled and broke, and something like a great black bird seemed to fly out at him and fold ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... almost obscured by heavy, slowly moving clouds. Now and then, however, it broke through a rift, flooding the lagoon with its silvery light and throwing the black sides of the Mariella into bold relief. Not a breath of air stirred leaf or twig. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... 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
... drove her away in an indifferent manner, as if this interloper 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 there was ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... there was a great deal of talk in the village. The I-told-you-so people were quite delighted. Old Mother Horn "always knew that boys couldn't be managed without switching. Didn't the Bible or somebody say: 'Just as the twig is bent the boy's inclined?' And if you don't bend your twig, what'll become of ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... 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 complex frame ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... natives. In the houses its propensities and habits are the same as those of the others; but I have observed that it frequents the trees more profusely, forming small paper cells for its young, like miniature wasps' nests, in which it deposits its eggs, suspending them from a twig. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... 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
... organism, like the heart and the liver. Mine, I know, are much nearer together. It all depends upon circumstances. I believe there is a certain group of circumstances possible for every man, in which his will is destined to snap like a dry twig." ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... you, Marse 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 ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... it is 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 ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... whenever he came to a break in the undergrowth. 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. Then he ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... decorative art, is without self-consciousness, and 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
... the windlass and the newly purchased rifle across my knees, I found that cowardice, like other base passions, may suddenly develop an infection. With nerves twittering and muscles tensely set, I was ready to become a homicidal maniac at the snapping of a twig or the rolling of a pebble ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... were all right—and the day was hot. Presently Pete became interested in a mighty battle between a colony of red ants which seemed to be attacking a colony of big black ants that had in some way infringed on some international agreement, or overstepped the color-line. Pete picked up a twig and hastily scraped up a sand barricade, to protect the red ants, who, despite their valor, seemed to be getting the worst of it. Black ants scurried to the top of the barricade to be grappled by the tiny red ants, who fought ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... again; 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 something,—shall ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... smoke signals were all around them and very close. It gave the boys a feeling that keen black eyes were peering at them from every bit of cover, and that lithe forms were slinking noiselessly from tree to tree, never turning a stone or breaking a twig to disturb the ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... our infancy to the natural decline of our intellectual powers, we are employed, during our waking hours, in the exercise of language;[8]—by conversation, often desultory, where we range through a variety of topics, as the bird sports from branch to twig; to the more deliberate act of composition, where the mind enduringly broods on the subject;—or when we read, and attentively consider the thoughts of others:—these occupations contribute to augment ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... 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 away to ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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 were ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... inches long, pointing in the general direction of the twig on which they grow, frequently curved at the tip, whitish-yellow when young, and brown at maturity; scales when mature without prickles, thickened at the apex; outline very irregular but in general oblong-conical. The open cones, which are usually much distorted, ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... at a single glance, make an accurate guess at the number of its inmates. He 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 of the water, the other end is planted between the jaws of the trap. The beaver, possessing ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... uttered when Assunta was heard running up the stairs; and the next moment she rapped. Being ordered to come in, she entered with a willow twig in her hand, from the middle of which willow twig (for she held the two ends together) hung a fish, shining ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... made one bound for her with her rake, and with such 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 wild eyes ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... common 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... these boilers here for the use of travelers. Not a stick or twig of wood grows within a circuit of many miles, and without fuel of course it would be impossible to cook food. Here a leg of mutton submerged in a pot can be beautifully boiled; plum-puddings cooked; eggs, fish, or any thing you please, done to a nicety. All this ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... of one of Dante's cold hells; we would mind any change in the mercury of the dream. The snow crunches under the feet; the chopper's axe rings funereally through the tragic air. At early morn the frost on button-bushes and willows was silvery and every stem and minutest twig and filamentary weed came up a silver thing, while the cottage smoke rose salmon-colored into that oblique day. At the base of ditches were shooting crystals, like the blades of an ivory-handled penknife, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... that in the little duchy of Nassau—where it is said the grand-duke is unable to 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 Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... road. Then there was a patch of kitchen-garden to cross, where the mud clung rather annoyingly to his instep, and, having gained the garden path, he very carefully wiped his boots and with a fallen twig dug away the clots of soil ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... fallen in the night, but at sunrise, the storm ceased. Miss Evelina had gone to sleep, lulled into a sense of security by the icy fingers tapping at her cobwebbed window pane. She awoke in a transfigured world. Every branch and twig was encased in crystal, upon which the sun was dazzling. Jewels, poised in midair, twinkled with the colours of the rainbow. On the tip of the cypress at the gate was a ruby, a sapphire gleamed from the rose-bush, and everywhere ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... and Charlotte came to the turn of the valley where the path spanned a little pond by means of a rustic bridge, and led straight to the corporal's house. They could now see Yeri Foerster, his large felt hat decorated with a twig of heather, his calm eyes, his brown cheeks and grayish hair, seated on the stone bench near his doorway; two beautiful hunting dogs, with reddish-brown coats, lay at his feet, and the high vine arbor behind him rose to the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... obedience as well as gardening during the hour they spend here. Pansies in bloom bordered the regular beds and trim walks, and some were watering them from little water-pots. The stone wall around the four sides of the enclosure was covered by a vine just bursting into leaf. This had been trained, twig by twig, against the wall, by tiny fingers under the guidance of the lady in charge. A rustic summer-house contained a table, and seats of different heights. Here were seeds and implements for immediate use. Every stray leaf and bit of waste was brought ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... line of shrubs which fringed the open space. A twig, snapped near the stem, dangled, its leaves brown and withered. It was a finger pointing where someone had forced a ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... they pass through the pathless wilderness on the hunt or on the war trail. No object within the range of vision is passed with indifference. Everything is carefully yet quickly noted—the breaking of a twig, the crushing of a blade of grass, or the footprint of man or beast. Hence the backwoodsman acquires the habit of turning all things in his path to account, or notes them in case they should, by any possibility, be required by him ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... ant-thrushes, hummingbirds, fly-catchers, and barbets flitting about the leaves and lower branches. The bustling crowd loses no time, and although moving in concert, each bird is occupied, on its own account, in searching bark or leaf or twig; the barbets visit every clayey nest of termites on the trees which lie in the line of march. In a few minutes the host is gone, and the forest path remains deserted and silent as before. I became, in ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... upon his body was very great. He did not really crawl, but edged himself forward with a series of muscular efforts. It was painfully slow, but it was necessary, because the Indian ears were acute, and the rustling of a bush or the breaking of a twig would ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... underneath with his tow-line, whereupon the earth gave way, precipitating him in water up to his middle; he tried crashing bodily through, and the line would invariably knot itself around the most inaccessible twig. The Flat-iron, too, seemed to rejoice in his discomfiture; and at every interruption of her progress took the occasion, in spite of Natalie's paddle, to turn about and stick her nose stupidly into the mud of the bank. Every bush in turn offered a different ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... circumference. Some distance above the ice-floor on the right was a small fir-tree, which had been fixed in the ground, and had become completely covered so that the tree itself had disappeared, its crystal incrustation showing every elegance of variety in form. From each twig of the different boughs, complicated groups of icicles streamed down. The mass to the left, however, was the grandest and most beautiful. It consisted of two vast heads, with several others of less ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... a winter for years. It came on in stealthy and measured glides, like the moves of a chess-player. One morning the few lonely trees and the thorns of the hedgerows appeared as if they had put off a vegetable for an animal integument. Every twig was covered with a white nap as of fur grown from the rind during the night, giving it four times its usual stoutness; the whole bush or tree forming a staring sketch in white lines on the mournful gray of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... A twig snapped in the adjacent grove. She sprang up. "Hush, Graydon," she whispered; "not yet. Please trust me. Oh, what am I thinking of to be out so late!—but could not resist. Come;" and she started ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... "You've lived in a 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 ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... 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. ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... I 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 ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... say that Mrs. Stiggs had told him that she had been sure that Carry would go. "I've been a waiting for it all along," she had said; "but when there came the law rumpus atop of the other, I knew as how she'd hop the twig." And now Carry Brattle had hopped the twig, and no one knew whither she had gone. There was much sorrow at the vicarage; for Mrs. Fenwick, though she had been obliged to restrain her husband's impetuosity in the matter, had nevertheless wished well for the poor girl;—and who could ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... under the arm-pit. With the force of his huge fist he swung him round and stretched him out at arm's length, all collar and shanks. The man hung like a mole from the twig. Yet, while Beppo poured out the tale of his iniquities, his eyes gave the turn of a twinkle, showing that he could have answered one whom he did not fear. The charge brought against him was, that for the last six ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Navajo loom with the blanket commenced. The two cords woven at the sides with the woof can be easily seen. Simple looms are suspended between two posts or trees, and the weaver sits upon the ground. A twig is used for a shuttle, and a reed, fork-shaped like a hand, is used to push down the woof threads. The blanket is made waterproof by pounding down the threads with a batten, a good picture of which is seen in Dr. Washington Matthews' article on Navajo weavers in the ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd
... here as wonders strike. Though the same sun with all-diffusive rays Blush in the rose, and in the diamond blaze, We prize the stronger effort of his power, And justly set the gem above the flower. 'Tis education forms the common mind; Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined. 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 ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... the present in Balyika Cave. Everything is provided there for our comfort, and we shall not suffer. We'll wait until the danger passes. Near the Balyika Gate we shall find a signal: a cord will be stretched from one rock to another, and a red rag hung on it if danger threatens, but a green twig if ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... Its gray walls never had seemed so picturesque as on that evening with the moon casting the shadows of pillar, cornice, roof, and tower upon the pure white snow that had fallen through the day. Beyond it were the young elms of Long Acre, twig and limb a mass of glittering diamonds. They stood at last beneath the portico of ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... branches of the 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 ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... "I fancied some one had been mixing up finely powdered glass in your chop. It's an old trick, and you don't twig it till the doctors cut ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... file they slipped over the moss, the leader clearing the path. Inch by inch they advanced. Tedious was this slow movement, difficult and painful this journey which must end in lightninglike speed. They rustled no leaf, nor snapped a twig, nor shook a fern, but passed onward slowly, like the approach of Death. The seconds passed as minutes; minutes as hours; an entire hour was spent in advancing ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... possession of their camp, we 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 ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... you're 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 ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... asked the elder, a black-browed, swarthy man, as brown and supple as a hazel twig. "Why shrink from us, then, as though we were the spawn ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... collop[obs3], slice, scale; lamina &c. 204; small part; morsel, particle &c. (smallness) 32; installment, dividend; share &c. (allotment) 786. debris, odds and ends, oddments, detritus; excerpta[obs3]; 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[obs3]. compartment; department &c. (class) 75; county &c. (region) 181. V. part, divide, break &c. (disjoin) 44; partition &c. (apportion) 786. Adj. fractional, fragmentary; sectional, aliquot; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... each tiny blade grew big And taller stood to hear, And every leaf on every twig Was ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... their accounts as to the position in which they had found the body. It was seated nearly upright, the back supported by a mass of matted brush, and one hand still grasping a broken twig of the alders. It was most probably owing to the former circumstance that the body had escaped the rapacity of the carrion birds, which had been seen hovering above the thicket, and the latter proved that ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... narrowly as they took their places against the forward rail of the ferry-deck, and the boat stood out into the crashing water traffic of North River. What Samson saw must be absolutely bewildering. Ears attuned to hear a breaking twig must ache to this hoarse shrieking of whistles. To the west, in the evening's fading color, the sky-line of lower Manhattan bit the sky with its ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... pensile nests in the shape of a purse, deep and open at top; others with a hole in the side; and others, still more cautious, with an entrance at the very bottom, forming their lodge near the summit. But the taylor-bird will not ever trust its nest to the extremity of a tender twig, but makes one more advance to safety by fixing it to the leaf itself. It picks up a dead leaf, and sews it to the side of a living one, its slender bill being its needle, and its thread some fine fibres; the lining consists of feathers, gossamer, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... governors and priests determined to try the effect of visible symbols in keeping the conscience alive. People were set before the public gaze, in the stocks, whipped in public at the whipping-post, and imprisoned in the pillory. Malefactors had their ears cropped; scolding women had to wear a forked twig on the tongue; other criminals to carry a halter constantly around the neck. But that this was only a hellish device, after all; that the inflictors of such punishment were arrogating too much to themselves, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... cuddle, to con over, to caress and 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
... 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
... doubtless, to secure themselves against surprises from wandering tribes; and as the Persians seldom think of changing anything, the custom is still maintained. Bushes are now occasionally observed near the roadside, from every twig of which a strip of rag is fluttering in the breeze; it is an ancient custom still kept up among the Persian peasantry when approaching any place they regard with reverence, as the ruined mosque and imperial palace at Sultaneah, to tear a strip of rag from their clothing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... had that day. But we've had a lot since then. We picked our way up through the woods on the side of the ridge, using our compass, because we couldn't see far ahead. It was getting dark and the woods were awful still. Every time a twig cracked under us it seemed to make a loud noise. There were crickets chirping too. It kind of reminded me of Temple Camp after supper. We kept straight west because we knew that was where the tree was. I guess we all got sort of excited as we came ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... stood arranging the new pieces of embroidery. There was for him a charm about them. Accustomed as he was to seeing such things, he could not get tired of looking at these. They were far more beautiful than any of those which were really French, and had come from over the seas; and from every graceful twig and twining tendril, there looked up at him a pair of soft brown eyes, whose gentle glances went down, and made themselves a home in the boy's ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... v'y'ge, captin," he said admiringly; "don't tell me. I could twig that directly I see you. Ho, what's the use o' trying to come it over a poor 'ard-working man ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... had no very agreeable employment either for his moral or his physical perceptions. The day was dawning from a patch of watery light in the east, and sullen clouds came driving up before it, from which the rain descended in a thick, wet mist. It streamed from every twig and bramble in the hedge; made little gullies in the path; ran down a hundred channels in the road; and punched innumerable holes into the face of every pond and gutter. It fell with an oozy, slushy sound among the grass; and made a muddy kennel of every furrow in the ploughed fields. No living ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... minutes were pleasantly spent in catching the flies, and trying to make them kindle a green twig or two. "It's a lie to call them fire-flies when there isn't a fire in them," Nan said, throwing one unhappy insect away with scorn, though it shone its best, and obligingly walked up and down the twigs to ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... time the air grew colder. All at once a dead branch snapped sharply. Estein looked round keenly, but in the dusk of the pine stems his eye could pick out nothing. For a minute everything was still, and then a twig cracked again. This time he could see plainly a man come from behind a tree and stand in the outskirts of the wood. For a minute they stood looking at each other. The man, so far as he could discern in the waning light, wore the native skin coat and cap, and seemed to hold in his hands a ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... approach of something that it was beyond his power to prevent. Like an animal that knows death is near, he wandered restlessly hither and thither, to look for some quiet spot. The courtyard only irritated him, so he walked down to the river where yellow leaves were floating, and threw a dry twig into the stream. For a long time he watched the eddying circles on the water as the floating leaves danced. He turned back and went towards the house, stopping to look at the ruined flower-beds where the last red blossoms yet lingered. Then ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... seedling plants. We 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
... I walked softly about the grounds, taking note of every familiar tree and bush and stump. I could have sworn that not a twig, not a blade of grass, had been despoiled or had disappeared in the years that marked my absence. I paused reverently under the old willow tree and affectionately rubbed my legs, for from this tree my parents had cut the instruments ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... end he saw a stuffed canary, not perched on a twig, but lying prone on its side. Near it was a doll, with scorched face and limbs half-consumed. Next this, the broken pieces of a china bowl and what looked like the torn remnants of some very fine lace. Further along, his eye lighted on a young girl's bonnet, exquisite ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... beneath the fallen mass. His heavy shooting- boots had saved his feet from being crushed to pieces, but if his fractures were not as serious as they might have been, at least it was evident that he could not move from his present position till some one came to release him. The descending twig had slashed the skin of his face, and he had to wink away some drops of blood from his eyelashes before he could take in a general view of the disaster. At his side, so near that under ordinary circumstances ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... and Bungstarter, Attorneys and Counselors," glowed with an insufferable light; the two pine-trees still left in the clearing around the house, ineffective as shade, seemed only to have absorbed the day-long heat through every scorched and crisp twig and fibre, to radiate it again with the pungent smell of a slowly smouldering fire; the air was motionless yet vibrating in the sunlight; on distant shallows the half-dried river ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 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 the house. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... this is as beautiful a night as ever was; only it's so dark you can't see the pattern of it. One night is pretty much like another night in the dark; but it's a great advantage to a good-looking evening, if the lamps are lit, so you can twig the stars and the moonshine. The fact is, that in this 'ere city, we do grow the blackest moons, and the hardest moons to find, I ever did see. Lamps is lamps, and moons is moons, in a business pint of view, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... 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 ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... thick on the ground, and above them the pine boughs waved in the breeze, making a soft sighing sound, "like a giant breathing," Jean said. The silence deepened as they went farther and farther into the woods. There was only the purring of the water, the occasional snapping of a twig, or the lonely cry of a bird to break the stillness. It was dark, too, except where the sunshine, breaking through the thick branches overhead, made spots of golden light upon ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... each new camping-place with excitement. Here, the rescuers might stumble upon them! Always she started at each unexpected shadow along the trail. Always she thrilled at a wisp of smokelike cloud beyond the canon edge. Always she felt a quiver of certainty at sudden break of twig or fall of stone. But the days passed and gradually hope changed ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... times, until we got the bunt up to a perfect cone, and the whole sail without a wrinkle. As soon as each sail was hauled up and the bunt made, the jigger was bent on to the slack of the buntlines, and the bunt triced up, on deck. The mate then took his place between the knightheads to "twig" the fore, on the windlass to twig the main, and at the foot of the mainmast, for the mizen; and if anything was wrong,—too much bunt on one side, clews too taught or too slack, or any sail abaft the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... can never be trusted. Accidents happen so quickly that it is over before we know it and the terrible damage is done. Sometimes the trigger will catch on a coat button or a twig, and, bang! an unexpected discharge takes place and if you were careless just for an instant, it may cost some one his life. Especial care must be taken in loading and unloading a gun. It is at this time that a gun is most ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... that was necessary for her home, besides sunshine and peace and good hunting. It must be where she could sit and not show; where she could hide by just looking like what was near her, like a sand-colored grasshopper on the sand in the sun,[2] or a walking-stick on a twig,[2] or a butterfly on ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... breath of air against my cheek, the droop and bending of the nearer pine boughs. There was no audible or visible expression; I saw no figure breast-high in the bracken. Yet sound there was, a moment later. For, as I turned away, a bird upon a larch twig overhead burst into sudden ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... tree blazing with dark gold, passing into orange, and that to red; and on nearing it find it tiled all over with the flowers of a creeper, {118b} arranged in flat rows of spreading brushes, some foot or two long, and holding each hundreds of flowers, growing on one side only of the twig, and turning their multitudinous golden and orange stamens upright to the sun. There—I cannot describe it. It must be seen first afar off, and then close, to understand the vagaries of splendour in which Nature indulges here. And yet the Norantea, common in the high woods, is even more ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... scatters them over his pages with too prodigal a hand, and they suffer at times from over-elaboration and ingenuity.[508] Desire for originality has led him to such startling comparisons as that between a warrior drawn from his horse and a bird snared by the limed twig of the fowler,[509] surely as inappropriate a simile as was ever framed. More distressing still is the maudlin pathos of the simile which likens Medea to a dog on the verge of madness.[510] But such gross aberrations are rare; against them ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... rigging, where they had just been engaged securing a spar, a number of the seamen, arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung pendulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig. In various enchanted attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or running skeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the deck; but all ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... accident for somebody, sure. That give me an opening to ask him if the accident hadn't happened already, him having a bandage around his head not much different from this one our friend here is wearing. But he couldn't see it that way. A scratch he called it—just a scratch from a twig." ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... a many-bladed knife from his pocket, and plucking a twig from the root of a young cedar, began fashioning it into ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... upon the agreement between the views of you two. However, I twig your intent: he means a wicked sinner; and of all forms of folly there is none so great as wicked sinning. For goodness is, in the end, more conducive to personal happiness—which is the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the sign of the Cross in the first hint of the new spring's dawning? In many cases, as in the chestnut, before a single old leaf has faded, next year's buds may be seen, at the summit of branch and twig, formed into its very likeness: in others the leaf-buds seem to bear its mark by breaking through the stem blood-red. Back in the plant's first stages, the crimson touch is to be found in seed-leaves and fresh shoots, and ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... usually Finn, 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 ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... magnificent shock to him that he enjoyed it as a birthright. The repetition of "great"—"he was my great-great-grandfather;" "you can add another 'great' for yourself"— hummed in his ears. A full half a minute ticked by before he grasped at the remainder of his father's speech, and, like a breaking twig, it dropped ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of the 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 were in luck and burdened with game) the scalp ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... was brilliant and 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 ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... think of it, his face seemed thinner and whiter than it used ter, and so did his hands and wrists, which always stuck a long way out of his coat-sleeves; and there was blood on his face—but I thought he'd got scratched with a twig. (Dave used to wear a coat three or four sizes too small for him, with sleeves that didn't come much below his elbows and a tail that scarcely reached his waist behind.) And his hair seemed dark and lank, instead of bein' sandy and stickin' out like an old fibre ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... 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 ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... against that cursed quarter of an hour before the examining magistrate. And then, when you don't talk at all, you run no risk of talking too loud. That's no matter, as I can't see your face and as I don't know your name, you are wrong in supposing that I don't know who you are and what you want. I twig. You've broken up that gentleman a bit; now you want to tuck him away somewhere. The river, that great hider of folly, is what you want. I'll get you out of your scrape. Helping a good fellow in a pinch is what suits me to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... fronted him, and her feet were near his. He also 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
... up a twig that opportunely dropped at his feet, and getting out his knife to whittle it, "I suppose they were the first agnostics, and we who don't so much deny ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... smiled: 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
... aghast, with sore dismay, Attend, and conn their tasks with mickle care: By turns, astonied, every twig survey, And, from their fellow's hateful wounds, beware; Knowing, I wist, how each the same may share; Till fear has taught them a performance meet, And to the well-known chest the dame repairs; Whence oft with sugared cates she doth 'em ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Harry Hazelton declared dolefully. "We drew lots on the other side. Greg drew the shortest twig, so he had to stay at the camp. I got the next shortest twig, so my job ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... the low-hanging branches; the stocks in the central flower-bed diffused a heavy fragrance. The birds twittered only at rare intervals with somnolent voices. The trees stood motionless as though listening to the sunlit tranquility of that August day. Only now and then some leaf or withered twig would float down in a spiral line upon the lawns. The golden splashes of sunlight filtering through the branches formed a shifting mosaic upon the grass and gleamed ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... approach, as they are then on the alert, employing their wonderful faculties of scent and hearing to detect the faintest taint or sound in the air, which might indicate the approach of danger. The snapping of a little twig, the least collision of a rifle with a branch, or crunching of the snow under the mocassins, will suffice to arouse them. Curiously enough, however, they are not alarmed by any sound, even the loudest, to which they have been accustomed. The hunter has, therefore, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the 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 ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the common 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: ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... twist, no twig, no bough nor branch, therefore, The Saracens cut from that sacred spring; But yet the Christians spared ne'er the more The trees to earth with cutting steel to bring: Thither went Ismen old with tresses hoar, When night on all this earth spread ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... wilds at 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 ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... time to note that an irregular oval was traced in its center, with a crooked, wavering cross at one end. Then as he bent closer to the light a twig snapped treacherously behind him and a crushing blow upon his ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... toward the ultimate pacification of mankind as was never made before. But it was the work done in the years 1783-89 that created a federal nation capable of enduring the storm and stress of the years 1861-65. It was in the earlier crisis that the pliant twig was bent; and as it was bent, so has it grown; until it has become indeed a goodly and a ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... afterward on a warm slope in the sun. Crickets hopped about them; Charles-Norton at intervals heard by his side Dolly's musical giggle as one of them struck her. A bird on a long twig balanced above them, and for a time a squirrel chattered at them in mock scolding from the top of a pine. Little by little Charles-Norton sank into a profundity of well-being. He could see ahead, now, his life stretching ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... tree, and pretending to be dead. True enough, the crow came up and hopped around, as if waiting for the man to move, and so to see if he were really dead. After awhile, the crow, to make quite sure, perched on a branch above the man's head and dropped a piece of twig on to his face! It was at this stage that the man decided to be alive, and, taking up ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... 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 ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... cried 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
... for your room," continued Mr. Tredgold, severely, "was decorated with branches of an unknown flowering shrub, on the top twig of which a humming-bird sat eating a dragonfly. A rough calculation showed me that every time you opened your eyes in the morning you would see fifty-seven humming-birds-all made in the same pattern-eating fifty-seven ditto dragon-flies. The captain ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... matter, and I agreed on condition he allowed me to tie his handkerchief over his head. I was wearing his hat and tying the ends of a big silk handkerchief beneath his chin when the cracking of a twig caused me to look up and see Harold Beecham with an expression on his face that ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... ordered, and by other felonious devices hazed three Swedes and the four Boyle kids out of the place and toward their several homes and then when the schoolmarm very discreetly locked the door and mildly informed him that she would brain him with a twig off a sage-bush if he burst the lock, he straightway forgot that he was old enough to have a son quite old enough to frighten, abduct and otherwise lighten the monotonous life of said schoolmarm, and became a bold, bad man. He bursted that ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... 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 of stag horn, which are found in every stage of manufacture. The personal property ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... ashen twig? My son, tell me all the story about the 'young poaching churl' who was the cause of such deadly enmity ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... 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 ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... rid of a fever in the German manner, go and tie up a bough of a tree, saying, "Twig, I bind thee; fever, now leave me!" To give your ague to a willow tree, tie three knots in a branch of it early in the morning, and say, "Good morning, old one! I give thee the cold; good morning, old one!" and turn and run away as fast as you can ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... soldiers of the Temple," answered El Hakim, "whose vow limits them to know neither truce nor faith with the worshippers of Islam. May the Prophet blight them, both root, branch, and twig! Their peace is war, and their faith is falsehood. Other invaders of Palestine have their times and moods of courtesy. The lion Richard will spare when he has conquered, the eagle Philip will close his wing when he has stricken a prey, even the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... me flat down with a birch twig," said Uncle Volodia afterwards, when talking it over with Adam. "The idea of thanking us for what was nothing at all but a real pleasure! He's a good man, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... 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 across his field of ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... now got to a little copse-thicket at some distance from the ruins, where he affected busily to search for such a wand as would suit the purpose of his mystery: and after cutting and examining, and rejecting several, he at length provided himself with a small twig of hazel terminating in a forked end, which he pronounced to possess the virtue proper for the experiment that he was about to exhibit. Holding the forked ends of the wand, each between a finger and thumb, and thus keeping the rod upright, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 Beans, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... knees, wearing their hats; the women in their poke-bonnets kept their gaze upon their laps. The heads of all save three were averted, and they were Luke Claridge, his only living daughter, called Faith, and his dead daughter's son David, who kept his eyes fixed on the window where the twig flicked against the pane. The eyes of Faith, who sat on a bench at one side, travelled from David to her father constantly; and if, once or twice, the plain rebuke of Luke Claridge's look compelled her eyes upon her folded hands, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 he again mounted the burro and rode toward the hacienda ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... thing. I couldn't even find a broken twig in any of the little clumps of outgrowing trees. There wasn't a sign of the sand having been disturbed anywhere down the face of the cliff, and I shouldn't think a human being had been on that beach during our lifetimes. I have had ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... singing a mild sweet song, and this brown baby falls asleep. Then the stars come out and peep through the leaves at her. The birds, too, are all asleep in the tree; the mother-bird spreading her wings over the young ones in the nest, and the father-bird sitting on a twig close by with his head under his wing. Even the chattering monkey has curled ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... 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 smile. ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... into his eyes. Such manifestations are not common among gypsies, but I can remember how one, the wife of black Ben Lee, was thus surprised and affected. How well I recall the time and scene,—by the Thames, in the late twilight, when every tree and twig was violet black against the amber sky, where the birds were chirp-chattering themselves to roost and rest, and the river rippled and murmured a duet with the evening breeze. I was walking homeward to Oatlands when I met the tawny Sinaminta, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... 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 this ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the best use of his time, His twig he'll so carefully lime That every bird Will come down at his word, Whatever its plumage ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... 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 ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... with brass nails, was securely bolted, but not a cannon {158} had been loaded. The bushrangers then cast aside all clothing that would hamper, and, pistol in hand, advanced silent and stealthy as wild-cats. Not a twig crunched beneath the moccasin tread. The water lay like glass, and the fort slept silent as death. Hastily each raider had knelt for the blessing of the priest. Pistols had been recharged. Iberville bade his wild Indians not to forget ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... pomegranate flowers and eat insects therein too, as well as nectar. The young whydah birds crouch closely together at night for heat. They look like a woolly ball on a branch. By day they engage in pairing and coaxing each other. They come to the same twig every night. Like children they try and lift heavy weights ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... have often gone out with my Zulu masters to search for game, and sometimes to follow their enemies, and I know the signs on the ground which guided them. Here the grass pressed, there a twig broken off, or a stone moved, or the mark of feet on the ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... harmonious sound every time the wind gently impelled them against the branches. Charmed at the singularity of the adventure, he took them down, and after binding them to the two ends of his walking-stick, touched them with a small twig, by which he discovered that the sound was much improved. When he got home he fastened the staff to another piece of wood, which was hollow, and by the addition of a bow, strung with part of his ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... 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
... head. The very ghosts, in their fear of the terrible night, spoke in low voices. Occasionally the open shutters of the window flapped against the walls. Black owls hooted as they sat upon the house; sometimes a dog seeing another animal rushed after it; sometimes a twig or a fruit fell to the ground. In the distance the cocoanut palms waved their heads, the rustling of the leaves of the fan palm reached the ear. Over all the light streamed, and the insect troop came and ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... swarm and cover 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 ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 splendour, and the Fairy, as she descended from ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... 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 ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... one, and let me measure you. My, but you have grown tall, and keep slim, so there will be less for stays to do. 'As the twig is bent,' you know," laughing and showing her even teeth, of which she was very proud. "And a fine figure is a great advantage. Your hands are not ill-kept, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... lady-beetle 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, ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... the Master, "If thou break off a twig from one of these plants, the thoughts thou hast will all be cut short." Then I stretched my hand a little forward and plucked a branchlet from a great thorn-bush, and its trunk cried out, "Why dost thou rend me?" When it had become dark with blood it began again to cry, "Why dost ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... far away, and, when they came to it, they found a gloomy stone house, as ugly as eyes ever looked upon. Up stepped the servant's comrade and knocked upon the door—rap! tap! tap! By-and-by it was opened a crack, and there stood an ugly old woman, blear-eyed and crooked and gnarled as a winter twig. But the heart within her was good for all that. "Alas, poor folk!" she cried, "why do you come here? This is a den where lives a band of wicked thieves. Every day they go out to rob and murder poor travellers like yourselves. By-and-by they ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... the bush beyond moved. There came no sound, and the waiting man wondered if his eyes deceived him. No cat could have moved more silently upon its prey. Not a twig creaked. It moved on stealthily, inexorably, till it paused at the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... meet Miss Heydinger's renewed advances with invariable kindness. Yet something of the old relations were presently restored. He would talk well to her for a time, and then snap like a dry twig. But the loaning of books was resumed, the subtle process of his aesthetic education that Miss Heydinger had devised. "Here is a book I promised you," she said one day, and he ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... fell a silence between us, yet a silence that was full of leafy stirrings, soft night noises, and the languorous murmur of the brook. Presently Charmian reached out a hand, broke off a twig of willow and began to turn it round and round in her white fingers, while I sought vainly for something ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... a Peacock butterfly spread its brown velvet and gorgeously eyed wings to the sun's warmth; a blackbird with brilliant yellow bill stood astride a peach twig and poured out a bubbling and incessant melody full of fluted grace notes. And on the grass oval a kitten frisked with the ghosts of last month's dandelions, racing after the drifting fluff and occasionally keeling over to attack its own tail, after the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... order to acquire power 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 ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... several 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 of Joseph ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... lips. Slowly Asin raised the flowers, heavy with dew, above the two boys, and the clear, crystal drops fell upon their heads. Across the sky trailed a flock of white rice-birds; as they flitted across the clearing, their shadows leaped from one picturesque Moro to another; a twig snapped, startling a baby, who cried out. The spell ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... childer, dark!" says she, "and I can't rightly see, but do as I tell ye, and ye'll find out for yourselves. Go, all of ye, just afore the night gathers, put a stone in your mouth, and take a hazel-twig in your hands, and say never a word till you're safe home again. Then walk on and fear not, far into the midst of the marsh, till ye find a coffin, a candle, and a cross. Then ye'll not be far from your Moon; look, and m'appen ye'll ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... the dropping of a twig," she whispered, after a long holding of the breath. But they went into the ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... would 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, intercourse between ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... understandest not how it is to be repaired. 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 ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... merchant, born and bred within its limits. Yet you had but to notice his walk, and you saw at once that he was a mountaineer, for he threaded his way through the crowd as noiselessly as he did among his native forests, where the crack of a dead twig might mean his death ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... and the ball struck with a slight noise the bark of a beech tree, a step or two to the left of and above his adversary, while a small twig fell rattling from overhead. Kahle's unsteady hand had given his pistol a slight upward turn, so that he had ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... hells; we would mind any change in the mercury of the dream. The snow crunches under the feet; the chopper's axe rings funereally through the tragic air. At early morn the frost on button-bushes and willows was silvery and every stem and minutest twig and filamentary weed came up a silver thing, while the cottage smoke rose salmon-colored into that oblique day. At the base of ditches were shooting crystals, like the blades of an ivory-handled penknife, the rosettes and favors fretted of silver on the flat ice. The little cascades in the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... that it was beyond his power to prevent. Like an animal that knows death is near, he wandered restlessly hither and thither, to look for some quiet spot. The courtyard only irritated him, so he walked down to the river where yellow leaves were floating, and threw a dry twig into the stream. For a long time he watched the eddying circles on the water as the floating leaves danced. He turned back and went towards the house, stopping to look at the ruined flower-beds where the last red blossoms yet lingered. Then he ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... 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 on the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... sir," he replied, as a twig, cut off by a bullet, fell on his face. "You'd better lie down here, sir; you'll be shot if you don't. A lot of the wounded have been ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... backed up against a tree and stretched her arms out like this"—Havelock made a clumsy stage-gesture of aversion from Chantry, the villain. "And for an instant he thought she was afraid of a Jersey cow that had come up to take part in the discussion. So he threw a twig ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 girding ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... CIGAR CASE BEARER winters in its case attached to a twig. When the buds begin to open in the spring it moves to them, carrying its case with it, and begins to feed on the young and tender buds. By the time the leaves are well open, it has fed a good deal on the tender buds and young leaves and ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... Willoughby house, a sizable colonial 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 Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... forms Profusely scatter'd by autumnal storms; Ten thousand seeds each pregnant poppy sheds Profusely scatter'd from its waving heads; 350 The countless Aphides, prolific tribe, With greedy trunks the honey'd sap imbibe; Swarm on each leaf with eggs or embryons big, And pendent nations tenant every twig. Amorous with double sex, the snail and worm, Scoop'd in the soil, their cradling caverns form; Heap their white eggs, secure from frost and floods, And crowd their nurseries with uncounted broods. Ere yet with wavy tail the tadpole swims, Breathes with new lungs, or tries his ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Indian as a most objectionable practice. To retain, and to carry about with you in your bag an instrument which has been used for such a purpose, he feels to be an indication of great want of refinement. His own "toothbrush" is the first finger of his right hand, sometimes supplemented by a small twig taken from a certain tree, which twig he throws away after the operation. The process is carried out with immense energy, and it is accompanied by alarming guttural sounds. The manipulator has with him a brass vessel, from which he takes deep draughts of water, which he ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... smaller than the nutmeg, is quite similar in appearance, and, if possible, even more graceful and beautiful. The leaves are shaped like a lance, the blossoms pure white and deliciously fragrant, and they cluster thickly on every branch and twig almost to the summit of the tree. The cloves—"spice nails," as they are often called—are not a fruit, but undeveloped buds, the stem being the calyx, and the head the folded petals. Their dark color, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... Jerry. 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. ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... long ever, for he was a busy fellow. But once he swung on a twig for a little while. They saw that he was almost as big as a robin, with head and shoulders of black, the wings black too, and most of his tail. But the rest of his body was like the prettiest orange-coloured ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... girl once,—a little German girl she was, named Hannchen,—sit for half an hour listening with great delight to a bird which was singing away with all its might, perched on a neighboring twig. And what do you think the bird ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... tried a number of heartnuts, including the Gellatly and the Wright. Only a single Gellatly survives. Here again the cause was not winter injury so much as either the butternut curculio or other causes. The Gellatly, while suffering some terminal twig winter injury and deer damage by rubbing of horns, has ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... 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
... occasion, through this gate, and was put in a litter, carried, doubtless by the mulatto and the coachman, he understood, as he heard the gravel grate beneath their feet, why they took such minute precautions. He would have been able, had he been free, or if he had walked, to pluck a twig of laurel, to observe the nature of the soil which clung to his boots; whereas, transported, so to speak, ethereally into an inaccessible mansion, his good fortune must remain what it had been hitherto, a dream. But it is man's ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... their homes are made and their lives are lived we would all understand at last that wherever a heart beats it is very much like our own in the final analysis of things. To see a bird singing on a twig means but little; but to live a season with that bird, to be with it in courting days, in matehood and motherhood, to understand its griefs as well as its gladness means a great deal. And in my books it is my desire to tell of the lives of the wild things which ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... at evening came and laid Their cool black noses on my lowest boughs, And on my topmost branch the blackbird made A little nest of grasses for his spouse, And now and then a twittering wren would light On a thin twig which hardly bare the ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... of charm and beauty in the vicinity who went by the name of Mrs. Bo. They said she had gone well to hounds in her youth, but I had never observed her jump a twig. She often joined us when Peter and I were changing horses and once or twice had ridden home with us. Peter did not appear to like her much, but I was too busy to notice this one way or the other. One day I said to him I thought he was rather snubby ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... plum-pudding; and this, King Frost had hardened by his patent adamantine process, so that it might not cause any inconvenience to foot passengers or lose its virgin freshness; while, at the same time, he decked and bedizened each separate twig and branch of the poor, leafless, skeleton trees with rare festal jewels and ear-drops of glittering icicles; besides weaving fantastic devices of goblin castles and airy, feathery foliage on the window panes, fairy armies in martial array and delicate gnome-tracery—transforming their appearance ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... leg, is a newt's, and never by any accident more like that of a frog. What is true of the newt is true of every animal and of every plant; the acorn tends to build itself up again into a woodland giant such as that from whose twig it fell; the spore of the humblest lichen reproduces the green or brown incrustation which gave it birth; and at the other end of the scale of life, the child that resembled neither the paternal nor the maternal side of the house would be regarded ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... 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 ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... 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 ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... established a telephone service, the government officials looked upon it with jealous eyes, and usually snatched it away. The telephone thus became a part of the telegraph, which is a part of the post office, which is a part of the government. It is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction—a mere twig of bureaucracy. Under such conditions the telephone could not prosper. The wonder is ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... moment pricked his large ears, and Molly and Ruth both heard the snapping of a twig, and saw a figure slip behind a tree. Molly's spirits rose, and Ruth's went down in proportion. The woods were lonely, and they were ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... and his ladylove reached the top of a hill, whence they could look across a valley to a gigantic castle, perched on a rock, near which was a pine tree. Orgueilleuse now informed Gawain that the castle belonged to her mortal enemy, Gramoflaus. She bade him bring her a twig of the tree, and conquer the owner of the castle, who would challenge him as soon as he touched it, and promised that if he obeyed her exactly she would be his ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... of the woods a gentle wind was blowing, laden with the scent of earth and hidden flowers. Dewdrops twinkled in the grass and hung glistening from every leaf and twig, and beyond all was the ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... offered it. The joy of Piccolissima was so great at the sight of this mutual kindness, that she made one of her old leaps, and shook the frail stalk. Immediately there was a violent commotion among the ants, who in great crowds blackened the end of the twig. They ran hither and thither in the greatest terror, striking their antennae one against the other. Many of them caressed the grubs more eagerly, in a violent and impetuous manner, as if to urge them to some exertion. Some ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... that had been left behind, Ross snatched a small twig, poking it at the coal after he had rubbed it into a brush on the rough rock. He watched, all one ache of hope. The ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... fluttering bit of paper, by the smooth bit of board, by the rectangular block, by the brilliant quaint leaf. Look at the child that can scarcely keep himself erect, that can walk only with the greatest care—he sees a twig, a bit of straw; painfully he secures it, and like the bird carries it to his nest. See him again, laboriously stooping and slowly going forward on the ground, under the eaves of the roof (the deep eaves of the Thuringian peasant house). The force of the rain ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... place; the broom into the corner by the cupboard, the sheet inside it, the pot on the hearth, the pail on the floor and the chair against the wall. Then, with professional movements, 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 a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... th' hast Great reason to do as thou say'st, And so has ev'ry body here, As well as thou hast, or thy Bear. Others may do as they see good; 275 But if this twig be made of wood That will hold tack, I'll make the fur Fly 'bout the ears of that old cur; And the other mungrel vermin, RALPH, That brav'd us all in his behalf. 280 Thy Bear is safe, and out of peril, Though lugg'd indeed, and wounded very ill; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... well-proportioned branches, but presents the aspect of a tree closely trimmed, and with only a few twigs left at the very top. And when all his children are sent away, his family presents the aspect of a trunk without branch, shoot, twig or foliage, standing alone in an open field. This is unnatural, blighting to much of the comfort and cheerfulness of the parental abode, and is not the example which it is desirable to hold up before the eyes of the heathen. One important reason, ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... natural that this should be so. Those who betake themselves to the study of philosophy are men like other men. They have the same feelings, and the bending of the twig has the same significance in their case that it has in that of others. It is no small compliment to a teacher that he can thus spread his influence, and leave his proxies even ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... 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 limits. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... that thrilled through flesh and heart: "ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE!" Half-mad he clasped both hands upon his brow, Amidst the storm of voices, till they died, And all was silence, save the reckless song Of a young bird upon a twig without. Then a defiant, ghastly face he raised, And shrieked, "'T is false! I am no longer thine!" And through the windows open to the park, Rushed forth, beyond the sight ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... largest Christmas tree ever seen, and it should stand in the centre of the lawn, and every poor child for miles round should be invited to see it and to share the wonderful presents which should hang from every branch and twig. ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... A great number of birds frequented the valley, and the delightful notes of a few were strangely contrasted with the harsh and discordant croaking of others. "The modest partridge appeared in company with the magnificent Balearic crane, with his regal crest; and delicate humming birds hopped from twig to twig with others of an unknown species; some of them were of a dark shining green; some had red silky wings and purple bodies; some were variegated with stripes of crimson and gold; and these chirped and warbled from among the thick foliage of ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... required, and he went forward at a jog trot in the direction he had seen the figure disappear. He reached the pines and went softly. Every now and again he stopped, and once he could have sworn he heard the cracking of a twig ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... He would make his report to the capitalists who had sent him forth. His report!—the Seer groaned. Few words would be needed to sum up the work of the last two months but it would not be easy to frame them. His ear caught the snap of a twig and a whiff of cigarette smoke floated to him. He turned his head quickly. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... stand by the window and look out at the white fields, or watch the 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, ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... 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
... November storm was raging in the woods, with trees swaying to and fro, and branches crashing against each other and breaking in the gale, if the incautious hunter, hundreds of yards away, happened to step on a small dry twig that snapped under his foot, the moose at once detected the sound and was off like an arrow, never ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... 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 ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... capable of almost anything; and she feared everything from him. The Count's note reassured her. She hastened to read it to her daughter; and both of them, like two poor lost creatures who cling to the smallest twig, remarked with pleasure the tone of respectful abandonment with which he had reposed their destinies in their own hands. He spent his whole day at the session of the Corps Legislatif; and when he returned, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the world, not so much by doing services, as receiving them; you take a withering twig, and put it in the ground; and then you water it, because you ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... of this island of Sombrero we found a small twig growing up like a young tree, and on offering to pluck it up, it shrinks down to the ground, and sinks, unless held very hard. On being plucked up, a great worm is found to be its root, and as the tree groweth ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... to our subjeck. With our resunt grate triumps on the Mississippi, the Father of Waters (and them is waters no Father need feel 'shamed of—twig the wittikism?) and the cheerin' look of things in other places, I reckon we shan't want any Muslum of Harts. And what upon airth do the people of Concord, N.H., want a Muslum of Harts for? Hain't you got the State House now? & what more do ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... be the wind and blow through your rustling branches, to be your shadow and lengthen with the day on the water, to be a bird and perch on your top-most twig, and to float like those ducks ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... so as to run the least risk of being seen. Every one who passed he suspected had come for him; he started at every voice, thinking it to be that of some one searching for him: if a dog barked anywhere or a bird chirped, or a bush or twig was shaken by the breeze, he was thrown into a violent tremor. These sounds would not let him have rest, yet he dared not speak a word to any one of those that were with him for fear some one else might ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... flowers, and appeared to be in as flourishing 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 it might have ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... what I can do for you," promised the Rainbow's Daughter, and flying to the ground she took a small twig in her bill and with it made several mystic figures on each side of ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... formed; when the mind will be turned to things useful and praiseworthy, or to dissipation and vice. Fix on whichever it may, it will stick by you; for you know it has been said, and truly, that 'as the twig is bent so it will grow.' This, in a strong point of view, shows the propriety of letting your inexperience be directed by maturer advice, and in placing guard upon the avenues which lead to idleness and vice. The latter will approach like a thief, working upon your passions—encouraged, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... a predicate noun, completing a verb, and referring to or explaining the subject: "A bent twig makes a crooked tree." ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... Robin sitting on a twig. Cock Robin looked sideways at Lucie with his bright black eye, and he flew over ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... resistance in the willow-wand then, after all!" cried the king, half amused and half angry. "I warrant me tough boughs grow on the tree from which that slender twig has sprung. Tell me, fair rebel," he continued, "your name and lineage, and the place of ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... with clear ice, lay under a blanket of 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 crystal; domes of deep-coloured glass and towers of jasper ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... never describe to you the weird beauty of a moonlight night among the pines when the snow is sparkling and gleaming, the deep silence unbroken even by the snapping of a twig. We stood shivering and straining our ears and were about to go back to bed when we heard faintly a long-drawn wail as if all the suffering and sorrow on earth were bound up in that one sound. We couldn't tell which way it came from; it seemed to vibrate through the air and chill our ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... flank'd 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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... to show off his magnificence to his spouse—or when she asks him to show it off we know not which—he makes a circle in the forest some ten or twelve feet in diameter, which he clears of every leaf, twig, and branch. On the margin of this circus there is invariably a projecting branch, or overarching root a few feet above the ground, on which the female takes her place to watch the exhibition. This consists of the male strutting about, pluming ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... over, to caress and 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
... 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 ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... second, king of the 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 ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... mine is the revenge. I will make the stars of the west the sun of the east; and when ye next awake, ye will find the flower of joy upon your cold bed." And the dead took the twig of cypress, the sign of resurrection, into their bony hands, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... fly-catchers, and barbets flitting about the leaves and lower branches. The bustling crowd loses no time, and although moving in concert, each bird is occupied, on its own account, in searching bark or leaf or twig; the barbets visit every clayey nest of termites on the trees which lie in the line of march. In a few minutes the host is gone, and the forest path remains deserted and silent as before. I became, in course of time, so accustomed ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stood near our gun. It was trimmed, and chipped down, twig by twig, and limb by limb, by pieces of shell, until it was a lot of scraps scattered over the ground. Sam Vaden, as he passed me, with a shell, said "Dame, just look back over this field behind us. A mosquito couldn't fly across ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... 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
... had fallen. The whole heath was white, as the moon was reflected in all the little drops, which had collected on every twig. There Toenne and she would go to-morrow hand in hand to meet the most terrible dishonor. For, however the meeting with the peasant should turn out, whatever he might take or whatever he might let them keep, dishonor would ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... altered the appearance of the country and given me a new scene. The invisible air, as if charged with colour, has spread another tone broadly over the landscape. Omitting no detail, it has worked out afresh every little bough of the scattered hawthorn bushes, and made each twig distinct. It is ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... descriptive poem of considerable merit by David Millar. (Perth, Richardson, 1830.) 'When the boy, whose hobby leads him in that direction, has found out a "byke," he marks the spot well, and returns in the evening, when all its inmates are housed for the night. Pushing a twig into the hole as far as it will go, in case he should lose it by the falling in of the rubbish, he commences digging freely till the hum of the hive is distinctly heard, when he proceeds more cautiously to work. By this time, the more adventurous of the bees come out to ascertain what ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... blue eyes expanded wide with terror. She caught her breath with a sob, and, seizing the oar with two soft, childish hands, made a desperate attempt to turn the boat. The current resisted her weak effort, snapping the oar in twain like a slender twig and whirling it ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... James, so that she fronted him, and her feet were near his. He also 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 and ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... visionary ideas of that sect, even he came but seldom to our house. His daughter Patience was a great favourite with my mother; and for that matter I did not dislike the child, and would oftentimes pluck her an apple from our trees or cut a whistle for her out of a twig of elder wood. ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... a defence against the shivering Boreas; let the well-fed she-goats afford their udders to be pressed by the hand. Away with your nets, and your springes and snares and treacherous contrivances; deceive not the bird with the bird-limed twig; deceive not the deer with the dreaded feather foils;[52] and do not conceal the barbed hooks in the deceitful bait. If any thing is noxious, destroy it, but even then only destroy it. Let your appetites abstain from ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... somewhere amid that labyrinth of timber. Flower-gardens at least were there in plenty; for every limb was covered with pendent cactuses, gorgeous orchises, and wild pines; and while one-half the tree was clothed in rich foliage, the other half, utterly leafless, bore on every twig brilliant yellow flowers, around which humming-birds whirred all day long. Parrots peeped in and out of every cranny, while, within the airy woodland, brilliant lizards basked like living gems upon the bark, gaudy finches ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... he replied. "Well, I made a mistake. Of course, it would be rather absurd to count the whole tree. I tell you what I will do. I will hang my cap on this little twig here, and if the ball hits that I am out. Now, ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... healthy, and those who had hitherto been sickly quickly recovered their strength. The island was thickly wooded with trees of great height. Among them fire-flies in vast numbers were seen flitting, at night every twig on the trees appearing as if lighted up ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... recognition of any definite sight or sound, you become more and more conscious of some one skulking in the shadows behind. Finally, you hear, in one of those moments when the wind catches its breath, the breaking of a twig, the disturbance among the dry leaves that have blown in drifts over the path, and you know ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... 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 position ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... or twice 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 the ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... when he had flesh and little else to eat, he could broil it on the coals; and a Scotch collop is perhaps equal to a Turkish kebob. We wonder if in Australia the long-forgotten Scotch collop has been revived? It requires no cooking-vessels. It may be held to the fire on a twig, or laid on the coals and turned by a similar twig—bent into a collop-tongs—or ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... men to lay 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
... sunshine. As they were gazing wistfully through the window, they saw their playful little kitten, Fanny, dart like lightning from her hiding-place in the garden, where she had long lain in ambush, and fasten her sharp claws in the back of a poor little ground-bird, which had been hopping from twig to twig, chirping and twittering very cheerfully. The little bird fluttered, gasped, and uttered wailing cries, as it ineffectually labored to free itself from the power of its captor, until Emma ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... with momentary tears; he would have liked to move quite noiselessly, to steal along in secret. A cross gust of wind blew suddenly on him; he almost shuddered, and his heart stood still; a drowsy beetle fell off a twig and dropped with a thud on the path; Bersenyev uttered a subdued 'Ah!' and again stopped. But he began to think of Elena, and all these passing sensations vanished at once; there remained only the reviving sense of the night freshness, of the walk by night; ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... wind had fallen, and absolute silence reigned under the great trees. The snapping of the smallest twig, a footstep on the dry leaves, the gliding of a body amongst the grass, would have been heard without difficulty. All was quiet. Besides, Top, lying on the grass, his head stretched out on his paws, gave no signs of uneasiness. At eight o'clock the day appeared ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... and scrutinized at leisure by the child, pulled apart, and even wasted. This can be done with the objects discussed in this book; they are under the feet of childhood—grass, feathers, a fallen leaf, a budding twig, or twisted shell; these things cannot be far out of the way, even within the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 15, February 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... attempt was not successful. When within a few feet of the summit, the adventurer grasped at a twig too slenderly rooted to sustain his weight. It gave way in his hand, and he fell backward down the precipice. His head struck against the less perpendicular part of the rock, whence the body rolled heavily down to the detached fragment, of which mention has heretofore been made. There ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... addicted to divination by omens and lots. The latter is performed in the following simple manner. They cut a twig [68] from a fruit-tree, and divide it into small pieces, which, distinguished by certain marks, are thrown promiscuously upon a white garment. Then, the priest of the canton, if the occasion be public; if private, the master of the family; after an invocation of the gods, with ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... hurried to say, 'the solitude has grown intolerable. I know what that means, I have lived so long in the eternal stillness sometimes that the first patter of a rain on the leaves came like the tramp of an army, and the snapping of a twig rang sharp ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... The cuckoo at five o'clock was still sounding his soft summer call with unabated energy, and even the common grasses of the hedgerows were sweet with the fragrance of their new growth. The foliage of the oaks was complete, so that every bough and twig was clothed; but the leaves did not yet hang heavy in masses, and the bend of every bough and the tapering curve of every twig were visible through their light green covering. There is no time of the year equal in beauty to the first week in summer: and no colour which nature gives, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... on a twig, listening to what was happening below. And there for some time a deep silence continued, but soon came a peculiar sound as though of lapping, smacking of torn-off pieces of flesh, together with the horses' heavy breathing and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... my bungalow is infested with swarms of huge robber ants, that make a most determined onslaught on the raisins and sweetmeats, invading the boxes and lugging them off to their haunts among the grape-vines. A favorite occupation of the bul-buls is sitting on a twig just outside the bungalow and watching for the appearance of these ants dragging away raisins. The bul-bul hops to the ground, seizes the raisin, shakes the ant loose, flies back up in his tree, and swallows the captured raisin, and immediately ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... of the earth!" cried Sancho at this, "O miserable, spiteful enchanters! O that I could see you all strung by the gills, like sardines on a twig! Ye know a great deal, ye can do a great deal, and ye do a great deal more. It ought to have been enough for you, ye scoundrels, to have changed the pearls of my lady's eyes into oak galls, and her hair of purest gold into the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 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 of him ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... 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 ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... stay there till near the dawn of day. Her husband, much annoyed by this 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 bird's neck, he tossed it into her bosom so hastily that ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... whose subtile properties Are such that if the point but prick the skin Death stays there. Like to that fell cruel shaft This slender rhyme was. Through the purple dark Straight home it sped, and into Wyndham's veins Its drop of sudden poison did distill. Now no sound was, save when a dry twig snapped And rustled softly down from branch to branch, Or on its pebbly shoals the meagre brook Made intermittent murmur. "So, 't is he!" Thus Wyndham breathing thickly, with his eyes Dilating in the darkness, "Darrell—he! I set my springe for other game than this; Of hare or rabbit dreamed ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... try to respond in kind—with her lips at least. She began teasing the youth about his crinkly hair. Breaking a twig as she spoke, she threw it carelessly at his hair, and it stuck in the closely curled locks. She laughed gayly at him. Perhaps in some way rather subtly than suddenly, as by a ghostly messenger from afar, he may have ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... "though we were obliged to travel on, and though the party tried to be friendly with us, our hearts were sore and our thoughts were centered on father, journeying on alone. But as we went on we found welcome surprises by the way. A note written by him, stuck on a forked twig by the wayside, feathers scattered over the path to show that he had killed a bird and was not hungry. When we had found such evidence of his being alive and well, mother would be light-hearted for a whole day. Then the signs ceased, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the mounting of the ball. As, however, nothing delighted the old man like bowling the wicket down with a shooting ball, he would sacrifice the other chances to the glory of that achievement. Many a time have I seen our General twig this prejudice in the old man when matched against us, and chuckle at it. But I believe it was almost the only mistake he ever made, professional or even moral, for he was a most simple ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the priestly soldiers of the Temple," answered El Hakim, "whose vow limits them to know neither truce nor faith with the worshippers of Islam. May the Prophet blight them, both root, branch, and twig! Their peace is war, and their faith is falsehood. Other invaders of Palestine have their times and moods of courtesy. The lion Richard will spare when he has conquered, the eagle Philip will close his wing when he has stricken a prey, even ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... fastening the lash of Sim's whip to his collar that he might not go too fast for them, told him to find Theodora. Instantly he pulled away through the brushwood, giving a little yelp now and then as the stiff remnant of some broken twig or ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... I'm gointer be de hawk. Lemme git myself a stick to mark wid. (The curtain rises slowly. As it goes up the game is being organized. The boy who is the hawk is squatting center stage in the street before the store with a short twig in his hand. The largest girl is lining up ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... litter, carried, doubtless by the mulatto and the coachman, he understood, as he heard the gravel grate beneath their feet, why they took such minute precautions. He would have been able, had he been free, or if he had walked, to pluck a twig of laurel, to observe the nature of the soil which clung to his boots; whereas, transported, so to speak, ethereally into an inaccessible mansion, his good fortune must remain what it had been hitherto, a ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... reached up and broke off a twig of the round, pink crab-apple buds and rolled the stem between ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... acknowledged to be the most trying part of any engagement, from a duel to a battle—the waiting for hostilities to begin. It seemed that an interminable time had elapsed from the moment that they heard the first "dip-dip" of the paddles to the sharp crack of a twig sounded in the jungle directly ahead of them. The snapped branch told them that the enemy's outposts were reconnoitering to see that the camp was actually, as it seemed ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... objected, for that would show cowardice. I picked my way through the woods, dipped my pail in the water and hurried back, always careful to make as little noise as a cat. Being only a boy, my heart would leap at every crackling of a dry twig or distant hooting of an owl, until, at last, I reached our teepee. Then my uncle would perhaps say: "Ah, Hakadah, you are a thorough warrior," empty out the precious contents of the pail, and order me to ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... mossy ditch at the foot of the bank. It was possible, of course, that he might have been like us, a casual way-farer, and yet the suddenness of his appearance, the intentness of his watch, both had their effect upon me. I moved a few yards towards him, with what object I perhaps scarcely knew. A dry twig snapped beneath my feet. He became suddenly aware of my approach. Then, indeed, my suspicions took definite shape, for without a moment's hesitation the man turned and strode away in the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I asked, somewhat surprised. I stepped back from the path, and Wilson stooped down awkwardly, and picked a twig from a low bush that grew by the fence. "Well," he began, drawing a long breath, "I've been thinking it over, and I've made up my mind to tell you. I expect I ought to have done it before, but my orders was so strict, and—you see I'm saving up to get married, ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... shady nooks of the woods whither the sun cannot penetrate; but she provides no shelter against her storms. It makes us shiver to think of those deep, umbrageous recesses, those overshadowing banks, where we found such enjoyment during the sultry afternoons. Not a twig of foliage there but would dash a little shower into our faces. Looking reproachfully towards the impenetrable sky,—if sky there be above that dismal uniformity of cloud,—we are apt to murmur against ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has; but I know as little about the matter as you do." He sat down beside her, and picking up a twig from the gravel, pulled the bark off in silence. Then, "Miss Vervain," he said, knitting his brows, as he always did when he had something on his conscience and meant to ease it at any cost, "I'm the dog that fetches a bone and carries a bone; I talked Don Ippolito over ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... of it, if we're inclined to make it longer," he replied. "Suppose now, a craft was to make her appearance in the south-east, we should have to make sail after her, and it might be many a day before we got back to port, do ye see. Do you twig, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... been Set, for a sign of wit within. And as ill neighbours in the night Pull down an alehouse bush for spite; The laurel so, by poets worn, Is by the teeth of Envy torn; Envy, a canker-worm, which tears Those sacred leaves that lightning spares. And now, t'exemplify this moral: Tom having earn'd a twig of laurel, (Which, measured on his head, was found Not long enough to reach half round, But, like a girl's cockade, was tied, A trophy, on his temple-side,) Paddy repined to see him wear This badge of ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... that shows there's Injuns round: a moccasin track, a smell of smoke, a twig bent, a village, one stone a-top of another or a white settlement scalped and burned—they all are Injun signs. They all mean something, and the Injuns read them an' make them, too, jest as you ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the bush another slight noise, too short, quick, and clicking, to be the crackle of a twig. Neither was that pleasing to the mind of Augustus. He turned, and with trembling hand made Virginia ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... fresh caribou track in the hard earth. It was scarcely distinguishable, and I had to look very closely to make it out. Then he showed me other signs that I could make nothing of at all—a freshly turned pebble or broken twig. These, he said, were fresh deer signs. A caribou had passed toward the larger lake that ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... a look out across the gullies from which Greenhow attempted to ambuscade him. Day by day the man would vary the method of approach until almost within rifle range, and then the wind would change or there would be the click of gravel underfoot, or the scrape of a twig on stiff overalls, and suddenly the long oval ears would slope forward, the angular lines flow into grace and motion and the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... 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 ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... Anglo-Saxon, Mistiltan) is derived, says Dr. Prior, from mistil, "different," and tan, "a twig," [346] because so unlike the tree it grows upon; or, perhaps, mist may refer to excrement, and the adjective, viscum, bear some collateral reference to viscera, "entrails." Probably our viscum plant differs from ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... bare branches and the old woman's bent back jogged in time with it She never once spoke or looked around at us. "It isn't the noise we make that'll give us away," I said at last; and just then the old woman turned her head and pointed silently with the osier-twig she used as a whip. Just ahead of us lay a heap of ruins: the wreck, apparently, of a great chateau and its dependencies. "Lermont!" Rechamp exclaimed, turning white. He made a motion to jump out and then dropped back into the seat. ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... down the pathway, Flecked with leafy light and shadow. 205 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, 210 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, 215 Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow; Ah! the singing, fatal ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the open sky, but it gave no answer, and she paused by the laurel tree with head bent down. Then, with a sudden, wistful little laugh, she held out the letter and fastened it to the laurel, tearing a hole in one corner to let a small bare twig go through. With a blunt pencil she scribbled on it in large letters: "Let Apollo read, if he ever wanders ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... "Let's start quick! And Pete, you look at these closely, and when you are hunting or going along the road, if one dangles under your nose, you cut off the little twig and save ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... issu'd. In amaze Fast bound I stood. He, as it seem'd, believ'd, That I had thought so many voices came From some amid those thickets close conceal'd, And thus his speech resum'd: "If thou lop off A single twig from one of those ill plants, The thought thou ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Rosy lay up in a tree, waiting for the sun to rise, she heard a great buzzing close by, and saw a fly caught in a cobweb that went from one twig to another. The big spider was trying to spin him all up, and the poor fly was struggling to get away before his ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... promise to make something of these unsophisticated "persons." If we can but succeed in impressing on their plastic young minds the principles which have hitherto guided us in our own glorious path, we shall have no idle fears of their future. They will be all right from the start. Just as the twig is bent, or rather straightened, the high old tree has ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... to is MR COADE in gala costume; at his mouth a whistle he has made him from some friendly twig. To its ravishing music he is seen pirouetting charmingly among the ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... laughed the friars, for they were lusty men with beards that curled like the wool of black rams; but loudest of all laughed the Tinker, and he sang more sweetly than any of the rest. His bag and his hammer hung upon a twig of the oak tree, and near by leaned his good stout cudgel, as thick as his wrist ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... 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 slip ashore, and see if I can't find snug quarters ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... the nest. I feel much righteous indignation against such imaginary aggressor. However, one must not be too chary of the lower forms. To-day I sat down on a tree- stump at the skirt of a little strip of planting, and thoughtlessly began to dig out the touchwood with an end of twig. I found I had carried ruin, death, and universal consternation into a little community of ants; and this set me a-thinking of how close we are environed with frail lives, so that we can do nothing without spreading havoc over all manner of perishable homes and interests and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... leaves and creepers, and 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 again, and the beast uttered a grunt of enjoyment, I pressed the ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... much for him; he had been keeping time with his tail to this declamatory crescendo. With the last effort he cocked it a shade too high, lost his balance, and landed, considerably ruffled, some four feet beneath his own reserved and particular twig. His eye was on me, and I felt it too serious a matter for laughter. He made what was evidently intended for a dignified ascent, choosing, with minute exactness, the steps he had originally employed on my approach. It was a full minute before he broke the silence, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... that he was wide awake, and ready for any kind of an excursion. During the whole of this little flight, he uttered a loud, brisk, and melodious neigh, and finally came down at Bellerophon's side, as lightly as ever you saw a sparrow hop upon a twig. ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... 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 ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... species. Mr. Collingwood (22. 'Rambles of a Naturalist in the Chinese Seas,' 1868, p. 182.) in speaking of the difficulty in collecting certain butterflies in the Malay Archipelago, states that "a dead specimen pinned upon a conspicuous twig will often arrest an insect of the same species in its headlong flight, and bring it down within easy reach of the net, especially if it be of the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... bird with a speckled breast, Under my window has built his nest; He sits on at twig and singeth clear A song that overfloweth with cheer: "Love! Love! Love! Let us be happy, ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... the Hazel twig Is straight and slender and as brown in hue As Hazel-nuts and sweeter than ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... correctly, they bore three crops a year. I learned quite a lesson from the nature of this fruit. Fig-trees do not bloom like most other fruit-trees, but the fig itself pushes out at the end of the twig, just as the leaves begin on a hickory-tree. The tree has no flowers, or bloom. I was told that as the fig grew and ripened it had all the appearance of a bloom. A careful examination proved this statement to be true. The inside of the fig looks like the petals of ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... 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 ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... blame on 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the pillars and arches of a Gothic cathedral 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 cold white moonshine, the cool green light of a ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... first glance, several of your propositions startled me as paradoxical. That the martial clangour of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime than the twingle-twangle of a jew's-harp; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a burdock; and that, from something innate and independent of all associations of ideas—these I had set down as ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... and flowers, might be able to rise with him, that they too might see this splendour, and experience this joy. The great majestic oak was not quite happy in his happiness, while he had not them all, great and little, about him; and this feeling of yearning trembled through his every twig, through his every leaf, warmly and fervently ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... supper, Dona Isabella played charmingly on the guitar, while amidst the shrubbery before the house the enormous fire-flies made long streaks of light or blazed like jewels on leaf and twig. With the graceful Pascal Charley chased and captured some. Pascal had a wicker cage partly full of them, and used it as a lantern. He lent it to Charley to go ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... astir,—the robins whistled, thief-like, over the cherry-trees; the killdeer, from some high twig, sent forth his sweet clear note; and now and then a pair of wheels rolled softly along the smooth road: the rush of the wind filled up the pauses. Anybody who was down by the Mong might have heard the soft roll of his blue ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the bank and disappeared on one side of the stump, Tom darted around the other side. Ruth, with the red cap in her hand, stumbled over a root and fell to her knees. She was right beside the hollow stump, and Helen's cap caught in a twig and ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... sun 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 ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... species, with their short thick petioles, seem but ill-fitted for any movement; and whilst twining up a vertical stick, no use is made of them. Nevertheless, if the footstalk of a young leaf be rubbed with a thin twig a few times on any side, it will in the course of a few hours bend to that side; afterwards becoming straight again. The under side seemed to be the most sensitive; but the sensitiveness or irritability is slight compared to that which we shall meet with in some of ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... 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 ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the sigh of the wind, the shout of the rapid,—all these were there, distinctly to be felt in their most ethereal and beautiful forms. And yet it was all slight and tenuous as though the crack of a twig would break it through—so that over it continually like a grand full organ-tone repeated the notes of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... five leaflets, one at the end of the stem and two pairs lower down. These leaf stems are long and tough, and it is chiefly by them that the plant can climb as it does; they twine round any branch or twig they touch, and give the Traveller's Joy a firm support. I have seen trees in woods covered with this plant to a height of twenty feet from ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... 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 hand itself rambling and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... It was like any other place on the great trail that had been made, dust and grass blades mingled together, and scratches made by the dragging poles. It did not seem possible that anything of his friend's body remained; yet he must search, and breaking a green willow twig he began carefully to work over the dust, stopping his crying, for the tears blinded his eyes so that he could ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... 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 case, they often wait until the wind is blowing across the stream ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... completely. billy: quintessentially Australian. It is like (or may even be made out of) a medium-sized can, with wire handles and a lid. Used to boil water. If for tea, the leaves are added into the billy itself; the billy may be swung ('to make the leaves settle') or a eucalyptus twig place across the top, more ritual than pragmatic. These stories are supposedly told while the billy is suspended over the fire at night, at the end of a tramp. (Also used in want of other things, for cooking) blackfellow (also, blackman): condescending for Australian Aboriginal blackleg: someone ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... 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 cattle ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... attaches to investigation in this spiritual field from investigation in any other. If a man baits a line for fish, the fish will come, even if he declares there are no such things as fishes. If a man limes a twig for birds, the birds will be caught, even if he thinks it superstitious to believe in birds at all. But a man cannot bait a line for souls. A man cannot lime a twig to catch gods. All wise schools have ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... wandering past the moon all flecked with pale gold?—that is Teresa. She is, small and slight as a child; she has rippling curls, and soft praying eyes, and tiny, weak, white hands, not strong enough to snap a twig in two. Yet she can do anything with Carmelo—she is the one soft ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Dane guessed that the plant did hold for the cat the same attraction those stimulants produced in human beings. He carefully broke off a small stem supporting three leaves and presented it to the Salarik, who stared at him and then, snatching the twig, raced from the hydro garden as if ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... beside a tiny fire, toasting bread on the end of a beech twig. He held the twig in one hand and an open book in the other. He looked up without changing his position when the tramp came charging ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
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