"Midsummer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old lady when she saw the Vicar, the tears raining from her eyes, "it cannot be right that this oppression should fall upon us! We had just managed—Heaven knows how, for I'm sure I don't—to pay the Midsummer rent; and now they've come upon us for the rates, and have took away things worth ten ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... wholesale merchants finally refused to give further credit to the Buffalo headquarters and at the end of the first year of operation one of the office force confided to a friend that there was a ten thousand dollar deficit. When bankruptcy was finally declared in midsummer, the promoters were not to be found. The principal organizer, an ardent friend of labor for many years, had been completely duped by these promoters and was left penniless and alone to face hundreds of investors. Cooperation was put in disrepute for thousands of men and women in dozens of cities ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... turned a disgusted back upon them and retreated moodily to the Hall. But the sight was enough to throw the affair into a new perspective, and beget in me a sense of contempt for all the actors in that midsummer comedy. "A plague on both your houses," I muttered to myself, but I saw them no longer as the antagonists of a romantic drama. I was suddenly influenced to a mood of scorn. Jervaises and Banks ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... banks; but by this time travellers had reached the region of tropical rains; and Agatharcides said that the overflow in Egypt arose from the rains in Upper Ethiopia. But the Abyssinian rains begin to fall at midsummer, too late to cause the inundation in Egypt; and therefore the truth seemed after all to lie with the priests of Memphis, who said the Nile rises on the other side of the equator, and the rain falling in what was winter on that side of the globe made the Nile ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... faces in the stalls, representing Society, Art, Literature, Music, and Finance; its pit and gallery crowded with organised bodies of theatre-goers, one party certain to boo where the other applauded, riot and disorder the inevitable result, unless by a coincidence rare as snow at Midsummer the rival associations might be won upon to display a unanimity of approval, upon which the dramatic Press-critics would rapturously descant ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Duke of Marlborough. He was born midsummer-day, 1650, and died June 16, 1722. Bishop Burnet takes notice of the discovery of this intrigue. "The Duchess of Cleveland finding that she had lost the king, abandoned herself to great disorders; one of which, by ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... ILLORUM IBAT." These coins are very scarce, and remarkable as being the first impressed with the figure of a ship; this is said to have been done to commemorate the victory obtained by Edward over the French fleet off Sluys, on Midsummer-day, 1340, and which is supposed to have suggested to Edward the idea of claiming superiority over every other maritime power—a dominion which his successors have now maintained for nearly five hundred ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... servants and built a house on his lands. As the days lengthened out the apparitions became less, until at midsummer a ship sailed up the Hunavatn in which was a man named Thorgaut. He was a foreigner, very tall and powerful; he had the strength of two men. He was travelling on his own account, unattached, and being ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... the other, slightly smiling; "in opinions, too, and in tastes, and perhaps in knowledge. As to the latter essential, however, and practical things as well as in the commoner comforts, America may well claim to be in midsummer, when compared with other nations. I do not think you Americans, Miss Effingham, at the head of civilisation, certainly, as so many of your own people fancy; nor yet at the bottom, as so many of those of Mademoiselle Viefville and Mr. Sharp ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... under several heads, the debts of the state, amounting to thirty million nine hundred eighty-one thousand seven hundred twelve pounds, which the company was anxious to take upon itself, upon consideration of 5 per cent. per annum, secured to it until midsummer, 1727; after which time the whole was to become redeemable at the pleasure of the legislature, and the interest to be reduced to 4 per cent. It was resolved, on February 2d, that the proposals were most ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... was at a loss. It was now past midsummer, and in autumn the Northern Sea was wont to be wild and stormy, and on the skilful steering of the Royal bark ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... nature is very dear to us, and during long years have we closely observed its forms, its changing hues and expressions. We do like when we look at a picture to know whether the trees be oaks, elms, or pines; whether the rocks be granitic, volcanic, or stratified; whether the foliage be of spring, midsummer, or autumn; even whether the foreground herbage be of grasses or broad-leaved weeds; but is there no danger that minutiae may absorb too much attention, that the larger parts may be lost in the lesser, that while each weed tells its own story, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... (the yellow fever) in some portions of the Southern States, creating an emergency which called for prompt and extraordinary measures of relief. The disease appeared as an epidemic at New Orleans and at other places on the Lower Mississippi soon after midsummer. It was rapidly spread by fugitives from the infected cities and towns, and did not disappear until early in November. The States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee have suffered severely. About 100,000 cases are believed to have occurred, of which about 20,000, according to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... and offshore anchorages in Antarctica note: few ports or harbors exist on the southern side of the Southern Ocean; ice conditions limit use of most of them to short periods in midsummer; even then some cannot be entered without icebreaker escort; most antarctic ports are operated by government research stations and, except in an emergency, are not open to commercial or private vessels; vessels in any port south of 60 degrees south are subject to inspection ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... foundation, though it rests only on the authority of Charlevoix. No contemporary writer mentions it; and Vaudreuil says that the malady was caused by the long confinement of the English in their fort. Indeed, a crowd of men, penned up through the heats of midsummer in a palisaded camp, ill-ordered and unclean as the camps of the raw provincials usually were, and infested with pestiferous swarms of flies and mosquitoes, could hardly have remained in health. Whatever its cause, the disease, which seems to have been a malignant ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... "Midsummer night, not dark, not light. Dusk all the scented air, I'll e'en go forth to one I love, And learn how he doth fare. O the ring, the ring, my dear, for me, The ring was a world too fine, I wish it had sunk in a forty-fathom sea, Or ever thou mad'st ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... as saying that he baptised with water but that Jesus would baptise with fire (where the rains of winter and the heat of summer may be referred to); and (2) that the Christian Church in framing its calendar fixed upon what we call Midsummer day as the birthday of John the Baptist, and upon the clay which bears the same relation to the other solstice as the birthday of Christ, as if wishing to illustrate that other remarkable pronouncement of John, thus placed at the point where ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... very sad, no doubt, but it does not begin to be as sad as having no fairies at all. There must have been a few in England in Shakespeare's time, or he could never have written The Tempest or the Midsummer Night's Dream; but where have ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... What fast? I have been fasting too," he continued, with a coarse laugh, "twice a week, on bread and water; an excellent thing for the stomach. Fancy, a fast-day in midsummer. On such a long day, when the sun is up at three already, and at eight o'clock at night is still hesitating whether he 'll go to bed or not... what have I got to do with ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... Last midsummer I received a circular from a typewriting person, soliciting my custom; some one who had somehow got hold of my name, and fancied me to be still in purgatory. This person wrote: "If you should be in need of any extra assistance in the pressure of your Christmas work, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... Richville, is unsurpassed for rural beauty. Trending northward it then passes along towards Pembina, a border town on our northern boundary, through a plain of vast extent, dotted with groves of oak planted as if by hand. Voyaging down this noble river in midsummer, between its banks embowered with wild roses we breathe an air loaded with perfume and view a scene of wild but enchanting loveliness. Here summer celebrates her brief but splendid reign, then lingering for a while ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the spirit of the original American. He holds nature to be the measure of consummate beauty, and its destruction as sacrilege. I have seen in our midsummer celebrations cool arbors built of fresh-cut branches for council and dance halls, while those who attended decked themselves with leafy boughs, carrying shields and fans of the same, and even making wreaths for their horses' necks. But, strange to say, they seldom made a free use of flowers. ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Edited by Sarah W. Hiestand. Illustrations after Smirke and the Droeshout portrait. Paper, 15 ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... therefore, though they would not let me out of prison, as they let out thousands, yet they could not meddle with me, as touching the execution of their sentence; because of the liberty offered for the suing out of pardons. Whereupon I continued in prison till the next assizes, which are called Midsummer assizes, being then kept ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... conservatism and inequality, while discouraging all that was best in it. It is true that the ideal Englishman was too much of a squire; but it is just to add that the ideal squire was a good squire. The best squire I know in fiction is Duke Theseus in "The Midsummer Night's Dream," who is kind to his people and proud of his dogs; and would be a perfect human being if he were not just a little bit prone to be kind to both of them in the same way. But such natural and even pagan good-nature is consonant ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... it was midsummer instead of Christmas," the former was saying. "I don't want to go home. I'd much rather go to stay with Aunt Mab ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... was not so obsessed. To him, the area surrounding Chilblains Base was just so much white hell, and his analysis was perfectly correct. Mike wished that it had been January, midsummer in the Antarctic, so there would have been at least a little dim sunshine. Mike the Angel did not particularly relish having to visit the ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... nine days later, in the golden afternoon of Midsummer Day, George Clement Cottrell, a boy beautiful alike in face and in character, was killed in an instant by a blow from a ball, which struck him behind the ear when he was umpiring in the Sixth Form game. On the 29th of June his five ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Brandur. It's been a cold winter, and the end is not yet. The cold weather may not break up before the first of June, or even Midsummer Day. The summer will be cold, the hay crop small, and the cold weather will probably set in again by the end of August, then another cold ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... The midsummer air is cool and invigorating; hunting and fishing excellent; motor rides perfect; boating and bathing the finest in the land. Hotel and camping accommodations are splendid; the landscape is picturesque and a never-ending delight to the eye. This is one of the great ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... for not making home more pleasant for her brother, for "worrying and worrying at him until he had no peace of his life. Such a knowing boy as he was, too, with the ways and doings of beasts and birds at his tongue's end. As for the Swedish kings, he could tell stories about them all a long midsummer day, if a body had patience to listen. And he not do well at an examination!" and the housekeeper snapped her fingers in contempt of the ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... Preface acknowledging the advantage of his assistance. Captain Washington, R.N., Hydrographer of the Admiralty, says in the Preface, "Every word has now been revised from the lips of a native. In the Midsummer vacation in 1852 Kallihirua passed some days with me, and we went partly over the Vocabulary. I found him intelligent, speaking English very fairly, docile and imitative, his great pleasure appearing to be a pencil and paper, with which he drew ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... That the terms of the bequest were imperfectly known, did not deter the opposition press from malevolent insinuations which stung Douglas to the quick. It was fatal to his political career to allow them to go unchallenged. In the midsummer of 1850, while Congress was wrestling with the measures of compromise, Douglas wrote to his friend, the editor of the Illinois State Register," It is true that my wife does own about 150 negroes in Mississippi on a cotton ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... little before Midsummer, Walter heard that there were a great many wolves in the wood, and that pleased him. He was wonderfully brave when he was in the midst of his companions or at home with his brothers and sister, then he used often to say 'One ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... The midsummer madness that had seized Telfer passed and for a time he walked in silence. Suddenly, putting his arm on the boy's shoulder, he stopped and pointed to where a faint light in the sky marked ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... risen from pleasant dreams. The tender flush of yesterday's walk on the banks of the Lairet lingered on her cheek all night long, like the rosy tint of a midsummer's sunset. The loving words of Pierre floated through her memory like a strain of divine music, with the sweet accompaniment of her own modest confessions of love, which she had so ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... The heat of midsummer came, when the blistering sun shone, and a hot blast blew across the sand, and the furious storms made floods in the washes. Day and night Shefford was always in the open, and any one who had ever known him in the past would have failed to recognize ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... Tancred, attended by Baroni, passed the gate of Sion. Not a human being was visible, except the Turkish sentries. It was midsummer, but no words and no experience of other places can convey an idea of the canicular heat of Jerusalem. Bengal, Egypt, even Nubia, are nothing to it; in these countries there are rivers, trees, shade, and breezes; but Jerusalem ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... mysterious glory of the grave. It seems metaphysical to say so, but yet it is true that I knew him, speaking scholastically, through a priori ideas—I remember him transcendenter—and, were it not for the midsummer night's dream which glorified his return, to me he would have remained forever that absolute stranger, which, according to the prosaic interpretation of the case, he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... that came to Edward were these. Sir Philip Mowbray, governor of Stirling, hotly pressed by Bruce, and seeing no hope of succor, had agreed to deliver the town and castle to the Scotch, unless relief reached him before midsummer. Bruce stopped not the messengers. He let them speed to London with the tidings, willing, doubtless, in his bold heart, to try it once for all with the English king, and win all or lose ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... talking, a little hound came running across their way; never man saw hound so gay; it was of all colours of flowers that bloom between May and midsummer. ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... the steep winding path the air became warmer, and when I reached the valley I found that it was already midsummer there, and the fruit was ripening on ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... to a hill with "rings" undertaken on a long midsummer day looked fully more enjoyable to the common mind: John, and even the footman approved of that, and another individual, who had become a frequent visitor at the hall, approved of it very highly indeed, and joined such a party ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... near by, Claudia lay weeping. She, too, was broken- hearted. Her daughter, her ambitions, all those things which formed her life had vanished as suddenly as the dew dries upon the green grass in midsummer. ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... man whose own soul had enough of spirituality to respond to hers, and whose eye could appreciate the subtlety of a beauty which is of the mind as well as of the body, there was not in all wide London upon that midsummer day a sweeter girl than Maude Selby, as she sat in her grey merino dress with the London sun tagging her brown curls ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... peril of the writer who admittedly uses facts, but uses them so clumsily or with so little conscience, so out of their real relations, as to convey a false impression and an untrue view of life. This quality of truthfulness is equally evident in "The Three Guardsmen" and in "Midsummer Night's Dream." Dumas is as conscientious about his world of adventure as Shakespeare is in his semi-supernatural region. If Shakespeare did not respect the laws of his imaginary country, and the creatures of his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... swiftly than the wind, or go off on a long journey to find the water of youth and life, or do anything else that happens to be very dangerous and troublesome. If he doesn't like work, it is again just the place to suit idle people, because it is all Midsummer holidays. I never heard of a school in Fairy Land, nor of masters with canes or birch rods, nor of impositions and long lessons to be learned when one gets home in the evening. Then the weather is so delightful. It is perpetual sunshine, so that you may lie out ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... reason. A look decided it. They were clad in pronouncedly cool costumes, dresses that would make a full ball toilet in Canada, but which exposed much prettiness to the ruthless action of the sun and wind on this hot midsummer afternoon. They were using their lips and tongues in a violent manner, accompanying commonplace remarks with the most exaggerated varieties of facial expressions I ever saw. But they were only harbingers of what one meets on landing. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... time—the time being a little past midsummer—the man came back to his cabin, bringing supplies. It was a long journey between the cabin and the settlements, and he had to make it several times during the brief summer, in order to accumulate stores enough to last ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... falling, so that I had no fear of being drowned as long as I kept my position. With some trouble I fastened my pistols and ammunition on the brim of my hat; the rifle I was holding between my knees. There I sat hour after hour. Fortunately, being pretty near midsummer day, the water was not cold. I had at least the consolation of knowing what a state of fury the Boers must be in. They would have seen by my footsteps where I had entered the river, just below where I had been standing. No doubt they would have gone along the ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... "the blossoming of the water" takes place in the Hudson River; the water is full of minute vegetable organisms; they are seasonal and temporary; they are born of the midsummer heats. By and by the water is clear again. Life in the universe seems as seasonal and fugitive as this blossoming of the water. More and more does science hold us to the view of the unity of nature—that the universe of life and ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... to note signs of distress upon the part of the soldiers, during this march in the midsummer heat. It was she who would suggest a halt in the noontide, in some wooded spot, that "her children" might rest and refresh themselves, and it was she who, never tired herself, would go amongst them, asking them of their well being, and bringing with her own hands some luscious fruit ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... prodigality of life, arising from an exuberance of animal spirits: we see them before us, their number, and their order of battle, poured out upon the plain "all plumed like estriches, like eagles newly bathed, wanton as goats, wild as young bulls, youthful as May, and gorgeous as the sun at midsummer," covered with glittering armour, with dust and blood; while the Gods quaff their nectar in golden cups, or mingle in the fray; and the old men assembled on the walls of Troy rise up with reverence as Helen passes by them. The multitude of things in Homer is wonderful; their splendour, their ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... waving of trees, as in the Notturno in Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and Schubert's exquisite beckoning song of the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... carry over in cellars or in the window. The plants themselves may look very well in pots, but when they are turned out of doors, they have a sorry time for a month adapting themselves to the sun and winds, and it is generally well on towards midsummer before they begin to cover the earth. During all these weeks they have demanded more time and labor than would have been needed to care for a plantation of much greater size and which would have given flowers every day from the time the birds began to nest in the spring until the last ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... evicted this mornin', as I've towld ye. Six years I've hung me hat up in those same apartments in Bloomsbury; and, till last year, aisy enough I found me landlord over a quarter's rent or two overjue. But last midsummer year the house changed hands; and bedad it began to be 'pay or quit.' This day it was 'quit.' The new landlord came up the stairs at the head av the ejectin' army: I got up from breakfast to open the door to um. I'd never set eyes on um since I'd been his tenant. ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... about the sea from on shore, another the finest poem about the sea from at sea, and the other the finest poem about the earth from the heart of the woods. Even in Swinburne's work the series of nine ballades in long lines which bears the name of A Midsummer Holiday stands out as a masterpiece of its kind, and of a unique kind. A form of French verse, which up to then had been used, since the time when Villon used it as no man has used it before or since, and almost exclusively in iambic measures, is suddenly transported from ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... It is midsummer, and the corn which the Indians have planted needs hoeing. They take him into the field, put a hoe into his hands ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... taught, by a terrible experience, that neither skill nor valour can fix the inconstancy of fortune. The battle began before noon; and part of the Prussian army maintained the contest till after the midsummer sun had gone down. But at length the King found that his troops, having been repeatedly driven back with frightful carnage, could no longer be led to the charge. He was with difficulty persuaded to quit the field. The officers of his personal staff were under ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... twelve miles south of old Fort Laramie. The North Platte was very similar to the South Canadian,—a wide sandy stream without banks; and our experience with the latter was fresh in our memories. The stage of water had not been favorable, for this river also had its source in the mountains, and as now midsummer was upon us, the season of heavy rainfall in the mountains, augmented by the melting snows, the prospect of finding a fordable stage of water at Forty ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... puzzle to physicians and scientists. Very early it was believed that it might be transmitted through the air, and the fact that infection usually occurred in the vicinity of the water and in the tropics or in midsummer led to the belief that the disease was due to fermentation. This theory received strong support in the fact that serious outbreaks of the fever often followed the coming into port of vessels from the tropics with the water in their holds in an offensive condition. When it was discovered that ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... midsummer Hetta entered the room with her veil down. She adjusted it as she followed Ruby up the stairs, moved by a sudden fear of her rival's scrutiny. Mrs Hurtle rose from her chair and came forward to greet her visitor, putting out both her hands to do so. She was dressed with ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... who had been away returned and all settled down for the winter, they found the "American" as they called him, in his old place. He had not been away at all; he had worked as hard as ever through midsummer heat and autumn rain; he was frailer in figure, his clothes were more worn, his face was thinner and his eyes far too hollow and bright, but he did not look either ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... below the thirty-eighth parallel, and consequently the morning broke early, for it was January and midsummer. I arose from the transom and went on deck at dawn, and found that the fog had lifted. Andrews met me as I came from below, and gave me a nod as I took in the horizon ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... like herself, Wollaston Lee, for instance, who went to the same school, and was only a year older. Maria had made sure that he was there, by a glance, directly after she had entered, then she never glanced at him again, but she wove him into her dreams along with the sweetness of the midsummer night, and the morally tuneful atmosphere of the place. She was utterly innocent, her farthest dreams were white, but she dreamed. She gazed out of the window through which came the wind on her little golden-cropped head (she wore her hair short) in cool puffs, and she saw great, plumy masses ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... God knows where he is for me! What the devil have I to do with your son? My daughter is out, for the matter of that; I might ask you where she is, and what would you say to that? But this is all midsummer madness. Name your business distinctly, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I forget to mention the fte patronale—a kind of annual fair, which is held at midsummer, in honor of the patron saint of Auteuil. Then the principal street of the village is filled with booths of every description; strolling players, and rope-dancers, and jugglers, and giants, and dwarfs, and wild beasts, and all kinds of wonderful shows, excite the gaping curiosity ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... terrifying experience A mysterious experience The circus parade you saw in your boyhood A servant girl A dude An odd character you have known The old homestead Your boarding house A scene suggesting the intense heat of a midsummer day Night on the river The rush for the subway car The traffic policeman Your boss Anything listed in the first part of Activity 9 of EXERCISE ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... herself to be tempted for the first time by the delicious intoxication of the mortal sin of loving, on the evening of Midsummer Day. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Pet[vr]in looking out over Prague from its terraced gardens and its bower of fruit-trees. It is always beautiful, this haunt of old-world peace, whether the garden and the orchard be all a mass of blossom creamy white in the sunshine, pale purples in the shadows, in the shade of midsummer foliage when Golden Prague below glitters in the midday heat, or in autumn when the valley is all a blaze of gold and russet, and the distant hills stand out in strong blue masses. Winter also brings fascination. Strahov, its many windows severely closed and reflecting ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... Italian greyhound, or a shot silk. Now the breeze blew so fresh that the white clouds dashed along the sky as if they bore a band of witches too late for their Sabbath meeting, or some other mischief; and now, lulled and soft as the breath of a slumbering infant, you might almost have fancied it Midsummer Eve; and the bright moon, with her starry court, reigned undisturbed in the light blue sky. Vivian Grey was leaning against an old beech-tree in the most secluded part of the park, and was gazing on ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... lamented the concessions made by the Crown to the people; Bismarck had the courage to say so. When reaction came there were naturally many, and among them King Frederick William, who were interested in the man who in the heyday of constitutional enthusiasm had treated the whole movement as so much midsummer madness, and had remained faithful to monarchical authority as the one thing needful for the Prussian State. Bismarck continued to take a prominent part in the Parliaments of Berlin and Erfurt; it was not, however, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... view of Empson Island, within a space cleared out of a dense jungle, we made our last camp before reaching the coveted Mississippi. Our stay here was marked in red by the most vindictive attack from mosquitos in all the cruise. No one unacquainted with the Northern Minnesota wilderness in midsummer, or with a region having a similar insect population, can at all imagine the number and fierceness of the ravenous aerial hosts that had beset us all the way from White Earth. In mid-day they keep one constantly alert, while at night they are beyond credible report. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the midsummer holydays came on, and I returned home. My mother, as usual, inquired into all my school concerns, my little pleasures, and cares, and sorrows; for boyhood has its share of the one as well as of the others. I told her all, and she was indignant at the treatment I had experienced. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... As, for instance, the festival of John the Baptist in June took the place of the pagan midsummer festival of water and bathing; the Assumption of the Virgin in August the place of that of Diana in the same month; and the festival of All Souls early in November, that of the world-wide pagan feasts of the dead and their ghosts ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... he lived here: he always speaks of it differently—he always has a gentle look, a particular tone of voice, I've noticed. He must have been very fond of it. It must have been a lovely place: everybody must have been so jolly. From the way he talks, you'd think life here then was just one long midsummer serenade. He declares it was always sunshine, that the air wasn't like the air anywhere else—that, as he remembers it, there always seemed to be gold-dust in the air. I doubt it! I think it doesn't seem to be duller air to him now just on account of having a ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... On a midsummer's eve she lay down to sleep, Wearied and toil-worn the maiden was then; How deep was that slumber, how quiet that rest, 'Twas the sleep from which no ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... College, for the graduates of the year to attend in the recitation-room on Mondays and Tuesdays, for three weeks, during the month of June, subject to the examination of all who chose to visit them. This was called the Sitting of the Solstices, because it happened in midsummer, or at the time of the summer solstice. The time was also known as the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... lines—yet no less a poet than Shelley is their author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal imagination will be appreciated by all; but by none so thoroughly as by him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved, to bathe in the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... a fine hot Midsummer day at Hollowdell station, that the porter had grown tired of teasing the truck-driver's dog, and fallen fast asleep—an example which the dog had tried to follow, but could not, because there was only one shady spot within the station-gates, and that had been ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... and motherless, but not unhappy; for no wish was ungratified, no idle whim denied. My boyhood,—with no shadows over it but those my own wayward will called up. My manhood,—when the great joy of my life arose, my love for Agnes, a midsummer dream of bloom and bliss, so short-lived and so sweet! I felt again the pang that wrung my heart when she coldly gave me back the pledge I thought so sacred and so sure, and the music of her marriage-bells tolled the knell of my lost love. I seemed to hear them still wafted across ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... were, indefensible, like "Rule Britannia" or like that superb song (I never knew its name, if it has one) that records the number of leagues from Ushant to the Scilly Isles. Also there is a tender love-lyric called "O Tarry Trousers" which is even more English than the heart of The Midsummer Night's Dream. But our greatest bards and sages have often shown a tendency to rant it and roar it like true British sailors; to employ an extravagance that is half conscious and therefore half humorous. Compare, for example, the rants of Shakespeare with the rants ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Africa, but in progressive degrees of virulence with the advance to warmer latitudes, and with the descent from the high table-lands to the coast levels. On the Transvaal high veldt, for example, a mild form is developed which, in midsummer, to a small extent, affects and kills sheep. It is called blaauwtong, and does not affect horses. Descending further, this danger to sheep increases and begins earlier. Below 5,000 feet altitude in the Transvaal the summer season is dangerous to sheep, and horses and mules are subject to horse ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... facility. The honey-dew on the upper surface of leaves is evacuated by these insects, as they hang on the underside of the leaves above; when they take too much of this saccharine juice during the vernal or midsummer sap-flow of most vegetables; the black powder on leaves is also their excrement at other times. The vegetable world seems to have escaped total destruction from this insect by the number of flies, which in their larva state prey upon them; and by the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... live and learn, Seeing Nature go astern. Things deteriorate in kind; Lemons run to leaves and rind; Meagre crop of figs and limes; Shorter days and harder times. Flowering April cools and dies In the insufficient skies. Imps, at high midsummer, blot Half the sun's disk with a spot; 'Twill not now avail to tan Orange cheek or skin of man. Roses bleach, the goats are dry, Lisbon quakes, the people cry. Yon pale, scrawny fisher fools, Gaunt as bitterns in the pools, Are no brothers of my blood;— They discredit Adamhood. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... imagined by Dante. The working life of one of these men is not over ten years, B—— says. A decade of this intense heat, compared to which a breath of outdoor air in the close mill-yard, with the midsummer sun in the nineties, seems chilly, wears a man out—"only fit for the boneyard then, sir," was the laconic estimate of an intelligent boss whom I ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... extraordinary man, time may exalt the image as well as confuse the likeness. The haze of years may magnify all the nobler outlines, while it conceals all that would enfeeble their dignity. To me, his eloquence now resembles those midsummer night dreams, in which all is contrast, and all is magical. Shapes, diminutive and grotesque for a moment, and then suddenly expanding into majesty and beauty; solitudes startling the eye with hopeless dreariness, and at a glance converted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... shall give the chambers up altogether at midsummer. At any rate, I mean to have the books packed ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... times two persons at least: the mover of the figures and the audience, the puppeteer and the puppetee, the letter-writer and the letter-reader. The play presented is, therefore, a play within a play: like the Mousetrap in Hamlet, like Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream, like the romantic drama of Gayferos and Melisandra which Don Quixote witnessed with a select company of acquaintance at an inn. The temperament of this presented spectator, himself or herself a person of the ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... do glow, While the screech-owl, sounding loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets out its sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... gave his word that, before he sailed for Iceland in the early summer, he would go up against this man and drive him from the lands, if he could. For Brighteyes might not come to Iceland till hard upon midsummer, when his three ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... did not go on the lecture circuit that winter. Redpath had besought him as usual, and even in midsummer had written: ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... whose panes Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness. Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed (Broom-clean I think they called it); the best room Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless, Save the inevitable sampler hung Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back; And, in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... than European affairs, for the former were little understood, and dependence was necessarily placed upon the man whose business it was to be familiar with them. Indeed there was little actual parliamentary or governmental interest, before midsummer of 1861, in the American question, attention in foreign affairs being directed toward Italian expansion, to the difficulties related to the control of the Ionian islands, and to the developing Danish troubles in Schleswig-Holstein. ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... making camp. They were so far up in the mountains that the night was cool, even though the season was midsummer. Unused to sleeping outdoors as yet, Roy lay awake far into the night. His nerves were jumpy. The noises of the grazing horses and of the four-footed inhabitants of the night startled him more ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... basking in the evening sunshine. Children were playing on the steps. Fathers were smoking at the lintel. Smiling faces looked out from the various and darkling draperies with which the warehouses were hung. Ringlets glossy, and curly, and jetty—eyes black as night—midsummer night—when it lightens; haughty noses bending like beaks of eagles—eager quivering nostrils—lips curved like the bow of Love—every man or maiden, every babe or matron in that English Jewry bore in his countenance one or ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to give the reader an account of the origin and history of Hallowe'en, how it absorbed some customs belonging to other days in the year,—such as May Day, Midsummer, and Christmas. The context is illustrated by selections from ancient and modern poetry and prose, related to ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... ages of eighteen and thirty-five, into the army; restricting "details" from the field within the narrowest limits of absolute necessity. It retained, of course, every man already in the field; and, had its spirit been vigorously carried out, would have more than doubled the army by midsummer. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... in the solitude of the woods imagine the moment of our meeting. On the eve of the third day I retired early to my room; I could not sleep but paced all night about my chamber and, as you may in Scotland at midsummer, watched the crimson track of the sun as it almost skirted the northern horizon. At day break I hastened to the woods; the hours past on while I indulged in wild dreams that gave wings to the slothful steps of time, and beguiled my eager impatience. My father ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... mad, and for fear ready to make away with themselves; [771]or landed in the mad haven in the Euxine sea of Daphnis insana, which had a secret quality to dementate; they are a company of giddy-heads, afternoon men, it is Midsummer moon still, and the dog-days last all the year long, they are all mad. Whom shall I then except? Ulricus Huttenus [772]nemo, nam, nemo omnibus horis sapit, Nemo nascitur sine vitiis, Crimine Nemo caret, Nemo sorte sua vivit contentus, Nemo in amore ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... uncertain shelter of a strange forest. "For my part," we gleefully heard Mrs. Grundy declare,—"for my part, I cannot understand why two people old enough to know better should make tramps of themselves and go rambling about a piece of woods that nobody ever heard of in the heat of the midsummer." Poor Mrs. Grundy! We could well afford to laugh merrily at her scornful expostulations; for while she was repeating platitudes to overdressed and uninteresting people at Oldport, we should be making sunny play of life with men and women whose thoughts were free ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... when the young husband sought him there, "I concluded to move because there will be a nurse in that house before midsummer. If I was deaf as I once was, it would make no difference. But a very slight cry would certainly pierce ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... unrecognizable to himself, half unconscious, half heedless of the fact that the garments of his carefully cultivated antagonism to the world and to his fellows had slipped very easily from his unresisting shoulders. The glory of a perfect English midsummer lay like a golden spell upon the land. The moors were purple with heather, touched here and there with the fire of the flaming gorse, the wind blew always from the west, the gardens were ablaze with slowly bursting rhododendrons. Every gleam ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said he, "midsummer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... shoulder. "Diogenes," he said, "your flame is still bright. I could wish you had not fallen in love with another man's wife, and if he were still living I should try to convince you of the folly of it. But I know this hot heart of yours is as pure as the snow we see on the Alps in midsummer. That is all I need to know." And they had ridden on in the darkness toward ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... Divinity, because the word Deus means (not "has been guessed to mean," but means) "Shining." That Shakespeare knew everything is much more certain than that miracles do not happen; and he certainly knew Mr Arnold's case if not Mr Arnold, when he introduced a certain main episode in A Midsummer Night's Dream. To frown on Oberon and caress Bottom is venial compared with the dismissal of the Bible as popular legend, and the implicit belief in as, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Andrea determined to accompany him, in order to reconnoitre the strange craft in person. Both the functionaries wore their cloaks, by no means an unusual thing in the cool night air of the coast, even in midsummer, which served them for all the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... motionless in the grip of a midsummer noon. As she floated earthwards in stately majesty, the sunlight flung its radiance round her, and her broad, white ribbon gleamed on its ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... account been true. The follies and profusion of a handsome minion pass lightly over the surface of a nation's life. Unluckily Villiers owed his fortune to other qualities besides personal beauty. He was amazingly ignorant, his greed was insatiate, his pride mounted to sheer midsummer madness. But he had no inconsiderable abilities. He was quick of wit and resolute of purpose; he shrank from no labour; his boldness and self-confidence faced any undertaking which was needful for the king's service; he was devoted, heart and soul, to the Crown. Over James his hold was ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... first midsummer morning at Lille in the Musee which has been installed in the Hotel de Ville. The Wicar collection of drawings there, I need hardly say, is of itself a 'liberal education' in art. During his long residence ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... come composers in whom the new tendency is more marked. Mendelssohn entered the domain of the romantic in 1826, with his overture to the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and directly after him came Schumann, with a luxuriant succession of deeply moved, imaginative, quasi-descriptive, or at any rate representative, pianoforte pieces. Schumann, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... that followed were brilliant links in a fierce sequence of gaiety; and this though the weather was so hot that the very candles in their sconces drooped, dripping their melted wax on egrette and lace, scarlet coat and scarf. A sort of midsummer madness attacked the city; we danced in the hot moonlit nights, we drove at noontide, with the sun flaring in a sky of sapphire, we boated on the Bronx, we galloped out to the lines, escorted by a troop of horse, to see the Continental outposts ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the same, Feb, 23.-Oxfordshire and Colchester elections. Sir John Bland's suicide. English Opera. "Midsummer Night's Dream." Walpole at a fire. Lady Herbert's ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... statute 4 and 5 W. and Mary, c. 23) 'to burn on any waste, between Candlemas and Midsummer, any grig, ling, heath and furze, goss or fern, is punishable with whipping and confinement in the house of correction'; yet, in this forest, about March or April, according to the dryness of the season, such vast heath-fires ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... conclusive. Many people fear still that they will alter the measure with a view to a compromise. But I hope we shall escape any further trouble upon the question.....I feel little doubt that I shall be able to pay a visit to your father at midsummer. At least nothing but the Lords throwing back the bill upon the country could prevent my going into Wales at the time, for I shall confidently expect them to decide one way or another by the 15th of June. I shall certainly vote and speak against ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... The great clock set in the center of the eastern facade had chimed the hour, and as its strokes died away on the midsummer air Marcia was conscious, as her mother had been the preceding afternoon, of an abnormal stillness round her. She was in her sitting-room, trying to write a letter to Mrs. Betts's sister about the boy mentioned in his mother's last ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... its domestic looking mountain ash, its orchard-like wild black cherries, its garden- like plots of huckleberries, raspberries, and strawberries, the patches of fragrant brakes like dense miniature forests through which one wades as through patches of green midsummer snow, its divine strains of the hermit thrush floating out of the wooded depths below you—all these things drew me as a boy and still draw ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... write cold where they say hot, and wet where they say dry, and always put the contrary to what they foretell; if he were to lay a wager, he would not care which side he took, excepting where no uncertainty could fall out, as to promise excessive heats at Christmas, or extremity of cold at Midsummer. I have the same opinion of these political controversies; be on which side you will, you have as fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to shock principles ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... her pale-blue bathing-dress, looked like one of those fairy-like creatures in Shakspere's "Midsummer Night's Dream," innocent and ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... squire did not assent. It was, however, allowed to pass over; and this much was fixed, that Frank was not to return home till midsummer. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... There were guard ships, old cruisers and what not, at certain ports, torpedo-boats roamed the horizons of Deal and Portsmouth, but the great fleet, the swift forts of sea-power, had gone, disappearing no one knew where, into the fine weather haze that brooded over the midsummer sea. There perhaps was an indication of what the decision would be, yet there was no certainty. At home there was official silence, and from abroad, apart from the three vital facts, came but the quacking of rumour, report after ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... puzzling," said Steve. "It took me some time to get it into my head, but I do pretty well understand it now. Why, Watty, if we stood at the North Pole at midsummer, we should see the sun go round and round in the sky, and then every day get a little lower and a little lower, till it was only just in sight; and then still ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Need—are pretty well forgotten; his one novel is very hard to read; there is far less in Up the Rhine than in Humphry Clinker after all; we have been spoiled for Lycus the Centaur and The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies by the rich and passionate verse of the Laureate, the distinction, and the measure of Arnold, the sumptuous diction and the varied and enchanting music of Atalanta and Hesperia and Erechtheus. We care little for the ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... How well I remember this Midsummer-day! I shall never pass such another. The sun was setting behind Caen Wood, and the calm of the evening was so exceedingly deep that it arrested Mr. Coleridge's attention. We were alone together in Mr. Gillman's drawing-room, and Mr. C. left off talking, and fell into an almost trance-like ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... a sudden spirit of conciliation, "thou must not heed a mother's fancies. To me the child is beautiful beyond compare. Are not thine own in thy sight beautiful as a midsummer's day?" she added with subtle hypocrisy, thinking of the ugly little Africans of whom Hun ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of the spring is not so fair Or bright as one the ripe midsummer brings. The first faint note the forest warbler sings Is not as rich with feeling, or so rare As when, full master of his art, the air Drowns in the liquid sea of song he flings Like silver spray from beak, and breast, and wings. The artist's earliest effort, wrought with care, The bard's ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... realise it. But the children did not gasp. They had always known that nothing ever really came to an end. "The weather's still here," he heard Judy calling across the lawn to Tim—as though she had just been looking among December snowdrifts and had popped back again into the fragrance of midsummer hayfields. "The Equator's made of golden butterflies, all shining," the boy called back, having evidently just been round the world and seen ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... seemed unwarrantably moist; and all about me on the ground little pools remained from the last rainfall. But here there was no soil, not so much even as a grain of sand seemed to exist. The air was warm, as warm as a midsummer's day in my own land, ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... less agreeable than in winter, and, as a rule, I find it harder to feed and to fatten persons at rest during our summer heats. That this rule is not without exception has been shown by Drs. Goodell and Sinkler, both of whom have attained some remarkable successes in midsummer. ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... and attention to details; also a careful supervision. The spring increased, burst into leaf and bloom, and settled into summer. Orde was constantly on the move. As soon as low water came with midsummer, however, he arranged matters to run themselves as far as possible, left with Newmark minute instructions as to personal supervision, and himself departed to Redding. Here he joined a crew which Tom North had already collected, and betook himself to the head ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... chosen to play the part of Hermia in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Her family shared her pleasure—they felt that a great distinction had come to them. Gyp and Jerry, particularly, were immensely excited. Jerry, who had only been to the theatre twice in her life, ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... midsummer's morning, as going to the fair, I met with young Jamie, wh'as taking the air; He ask'd me to stay with him, and indeed he did prevail, Beneath the pretty hawthorn that blooms in the vale— That blooms in the valley, that blooms in the vale, Beneath the pretty hawthorn that blooms ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the records of unsatisfactory commercial transactions, before Ralph Newton again entered the shop. He shook hands with Mr. Neefit,—as was the practice with many favourite customers,—and immediately went to work in regard to his new order, as though every Christmas and every Midsummer saw an account closed on his behalf in Mr. Neefit's books. "I did say just now, when I found you were out, that last year's lines would do; but it may be, you know, that I'm ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... lonely winters, when every villa or chateau of every friend of his for miles around is closed, and my vagabond village of Pont du Sable rarely sees a Parisian, the cure longs for midsummer. It is his gayest season, since hardly a day passes but some friend kidnaps him from his presbytery that lies snug and silent back of the crumbling wall which hides both his house and his wild garden from the gaze ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... house, the three women fell to work with commendable energy on their self-imposed tasks. It was a glorious midsummer morning and the picturesque pagoda at the foot of the garden proved an ideal retreat. Despite her sturdy declaration that she could not afford to be idle, more than once Grace's embroidery dropped from her hands as ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... midsummer is commonly referred to as "good mosquito weather." The accepted idea is that mosquitoes are much more abundant at such times. This is true, and the explanation is simple. Mosquito larvae, or wrigglers, as they are termed, require water for their development. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare says there was a law in Athens, that if a daughter refused to marry the husband selected for her by her father, she might be put to death. Eg[e]us (3 syl.), an Athenian, promised to give his daughter, Hermia, in marriage to Dem[e]trius; but, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... driven from the devastated scenes of his unholy conquest. The tide of conflict which during the dark days of midsummer threatened to overwhelm the allied forces has been turned into glorious victory. As the sounds of battle die away and the beaten foe hurries from the field it is fitting that the conquering armies should pause ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... wherefore wilt thou go? Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, Sweet William with his homely cottage smell, And stocks in fragrant blow: Roses that down the alleys shine afar, And ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... what seems an outbreak of violent and uncontrollable force to the purposes of beautiful and delicate life. Calms like sleep come upon landscapes, just as they do on people and trees, and storms awaken them in the same way. In the dry midsummer of the lower portion of the range the withered hills and valleys seem to lie as empty and expressionless as dead shells on a shore. Even the highest mountains may be found occasionally dull and uncommunicative as if in some way they had lost countenance and ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... the end of August. Roberto had no great liking for his gloomy palace in Milan, and it had been his habit to spend nine months of the year at Siviano; but he was now too much engrossed in his work to remain away from Milan, and his wife and sister had joined him there as soon as the midsummer heat was over. During the autumn he had called me once or twice to the city to consult me on business connected with his fruit-farms; and in the course of our talks he had sometimes let fall a hint of graver matters. It was in July of that ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... his veins. Ay, thus it is, the old man will not forget that he has once been young, nor the young that he must some day be old; and so the one changes his manners into the lingering formality of advanced age, and the other remains like a midsummer torrent swoln with rain, every drop of water in it noise, froth, and overflow. There is a maxim for thee, Gilbert!—Heardest thou ever better? hang it up amidst thy axioms of wisdom, and see if it will not pass among them like fifteen ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... their first mysterious tinge of pale yellowish green, and Hansie, watching them, wondered what developments would have taken place before those overhanging branches would be crowned with the full beauty of midsummer. September 1901 was a month of proclamations and peace negotiations, all of which "ended ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... from twenty-eight to twenty-nine days, no Mussulman dares eat, drink, or smoke, from an hour before sunrise till half an hour after sunset. The Mohammedan months are lunar, and each month makes the whole round of the seasons, once in thirty-three years. When, therefore, the Ramazan comes in midsummer, as at present, the fulfilment of this fast is a great trial, even to the strongest and most devout. Eighteen hours without meat or drink, and what is still worse to a genuine Turk, without a pipe, is a rigid test of faith. The rich do ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... all the better for the severest kind of a bit. So Miss Bell wrote about colonial exhibitions and popular spectacles, and country outings for babies of the slums, and longed for a fairer field. As midsummer came on there arrived a dearth in these objects of orthodox interest, and Rattray told her she might submit "anything on the nail" that occurred to her, in addition to such work as the office could give her to do. Then, in spite of the vigilance of the editor-in-chief, ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... Kelvin side, or visit the Botanic Gardens. Inland scenery, trees, and, above all things, flowers, greatly delighted her. It gave her a thrill of exquisite pleasure to tread among long, green grass, and feel the wavering sunshine and shadows of the woods about her; and in the midsummer month, when she was to have a short holiday, she promised herself many days of such pure and ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... stores of honey gathered before midsummer you may chance upon a card, or mayhap only a square inch or two of comb, in which the liquid is as transparent as water, of a delicious quality, with a slight flavor of mint. This is the product of ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... This is some four miles westward of Glen Alpine Springs, and is reached by way of easy mountain trails under sweet-scented pines and gnarled old junipers; besides singing streams; across crystal lakes, through a cliff-guarded glade where snowbanks linger until midsummer, ever renewing the carpet of green, decking it with heather and myriad exquisite mountain blossoms. On, over a granite embankment, and lo! your feet are stayed and your heart is stilled as your eyes behold marvelous Desolation Valley. Greeting ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... of attraction, infatuation, and appropriation should not be displayed too prominently before the world, nor treated as events of overwhelming importance and enduring moment. I would not counsel Tom and Ellinor, in the midsummer of their engagement, to have their photographs ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... the Campagna on those mild days of winter when the mere quality and temper of the sunshine suffice to move the landscape to joy, and you pause on the brown grass in the sunny stillness and, by listening long enough, almost fancy you hear the shrill of the midsummer cricket. It is detail and ornament that vary from month to month, from week to week even, and make your returns to the same places a constant feast of unexpectedness; but the great essential features of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of exceeding, so poorly mimics the reality, that it can never realize the effect which the poet designs, and with which the reader is impressed. So is it with supernatural and fanciful creations, especially of the more delicate and subtle kind. The Ariel of the "Tempest," the fairies of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and the Oceanides of the "Prometheus," are not to be represented by human shapes. We cannot say that they are not dramatic, but they are not theatrical. We can sympathize with the poet, but not with the actor. For the same reason, in a lesser degree, all ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... something unexpected should turn up in his favor. In this case, the Count de Moutier has the promise of succeeding to him, and if I do not mistake his character, he would give great satisfaction. So that I think you may calculate on seeing one or the other, by midsummer. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... people to rise early on Midsummer morning, to see the dew on the grassy edge of the dusty pathway, to notice the fresh shoots among the darker green of the oak and fir in the coppice, and to look over the gate at the shorn meadow, without recollecting that it is the Nativity ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... of rich, deep midsummer in the North Woods which had brought them back to the Settlement on their way to Lebarge. It was the season of joy come again, the warm, tender joy ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... butler, from a discreet distance, watched her as though he were looking at a strange thing. Round the corner of the villa remote from the winter-garden, was a long stone terrace upon which many windows opened. Screened from the wind, the sun here was of almost midsummer strength. There was no sound. The great house seemed asleep. There was nothing but the droning of a few insects. Even the birds were songless. The walls were covered with drooping clematis and roses, roses that twined over the balustrades. Below them was ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... save the buzzing of the flies about the casks on that hot midsummer's day, and without the trace of a limp, the man stepped rapidly into the office, but only to dart back again in alarm, for, all at once, there was a loud rattling noise of straps, ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... was one June when we gathered eglantine together, and the richest and deepest of all reds in roses. In the midsummer afternoons we plucked our garlands and brought them home at sunset time. Such afternoons they were, tempting all living things into the symphony of glory, such afternoons of splendour that now, looking back, it seems to be the very acme ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... of style is not wider than the gulf which gapes between the first style of Shakespeare and the last. But men of Shakespeare's stamp, I venture to think, do not thus repeat themselves. The echo of the passage in A Midsummer Night's Dream, describing the girlish friendship of Hermia and Helena, which we find in the first act of The Two Noble Kinsmen, describing the like girlish friendship of Emilia and Flavina, is an echo of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Wagstaff added two more ponies to his pack train. These he loaded down with food, staples only, flour, sugar, beans, salt, tea and coffee, and a sack of dried fruit. Also he bestowed upon Nigger a further burden of six dozen steel traps. And in the cool of a midsummer morning, before Hazleton had rubbed the sleep out of its collective eyes and taken up the day's work of discussing its future greatness, Roaring Bill and his wife draped the mosquito nets over their heads ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... people generally; and as white labor becomes abundant—and before the war it was becoming abundant—men recognize the fact that the white man's labor is the more profitable. The heat in this State, in midsummer, is very great, especially in the valleys of the rivers. At St. Louis, on the Mississippi, it reaches commonly to ninety degrees, and very frequently goes above that. The nights, moreover, are nearly as hot as the days; but this great heat ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... like a tightly fitting wig. It is a cold, dreary, disheartening neighborhood, that of Abbotsford; at least, it has appeared so to me at both of my visits,—one of which was on a bleak and windy May morning, and this one on a chill, showery morning of midsummer. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
