"Acorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a huge oak-tree, There was of swine a huge company; That grunted as they crunch'd the mast, For that was ripe and fell full fast. Then they trotted away for the wind grew high, One acorn they left and no more might ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... congratulations come in. All at home send you their best greetings, kisses, and embraces. The old gentleman is as sound as an acorn, or as a ripe apple freshly plucked from the tree. Don't be in the least concerned on his account; your uncle feels remarkably well. But your aunt is sick, very sick, and to all appearance ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... "Nothin' but a acorn drappin'. You fellers is afeerd o' yore shadders; what does the gang mean by sendin' out sech white-livered chaps?" The only sound for a moment was the gurgling of the whiskey as it ran into the jug. "How's Toot like his isolation?" concluded Dill, grunting ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... duly reported and printed, removed the last let to aristocratic favor; fast young bloods of the highest nobility did not acorn to shake off their perfumes and air their profane vocabulary in the green-room, offering snuff and the incense of flattery together to the Tamerlane, the Romeo, or the Lord Hamlet of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... of plants; or like fundamental types in the animal kingdom, securing the same homologous structures in all classes and orders; so these fundamental ideas in human nature constitute its sameness and unity, under all the varying conditions of life and society. The acorn must produce an oak, and nothing else. The grain of wheat must always produce its kind. The offspring of man must always bear his image, and always exhibit the same fundamental characteristics, not only in his corporeal nature, but ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... rainfall check it. In this region of its distribution Greek and Roman legends betray the belief that grain-cultivation came late, and superseded a staple diet of tree produce, chestnut, walnut, filbert, and acorn.[9] And when the 'nobler grasses' came, it was barley and red wheat that predominated, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... be all your plots for bravery? You always meant to seek your fortune—not bide here like an acorn for ever." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... playing and gathered nearer. The spell was broken. That strange and mysterious look vanished from Lady Sue's face; she turned away from the speakers and idly plucked a few bunches of acorn ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... this a cup," declares Mr. Grebby, grinning broadly as Eleanor hands him his tea. "It's more like an acorn!" He takes half a dozen slices of bread and butter ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... a resistless impulse, even in the case of those of its impulses which apparently are the most unreasoned. It seems at times as if nations were submitted to secret forces analogous to those which compel the acorn to transform itself into an oak or a comet to follow ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... Robin, who sang so hard in his efforts to make up for the rest that he was as hoarse as a crow the next morning. The blackleg fairies had a hard time too. They hadn't a minute to gossip with the flowers, as they usually did when they flew round with their acorn-cups of dew and thistledown sponges and washed their faces and folded up their petals ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... bow was a pliant whalebone, And his arrow a white-pine stick; Such a life as his archery practice Led the cats and each wretched chick! Our tea-sets were bits of dishes That mother had thrown away, With chincapin saucers and acorn-cups; And our dolls slept on moss and hay. With a May-apple leaf for a parasol We played 'Lady-come-to-see,' Polly's house was the kitchen door-step, And mine was ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... head, Our table cloth we spread; A grain of rye or wheat Is manchet, which we eat; Pearly drops of dew we drink, In acorn cups, filled ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... only between two words; as suppose Divinity and Philosophy, or Revelation and Reason. Setting forth with Revelation first. "Revelation is a Lady; Reason, an Handmaid! Revelation is the Esquire; Reason, the Page! Revelation is the Sun; Reason, but the Moon! Revelation is Manna; Reason is but an acorn! Revelation, a wedge of gold; Reason, a small piece ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... towards the east. In the scrub; Fusanus was observed in fruit, and the Stenochilus and the white Vitex in blossom; from the latter the native bee extracts a most delicious honey. A small tree, with stiff alternate leaves scarcely an inch long, was covered with red fruit of the form of an acorn, and about half an inch long, having a sweet pericarp with two compressed grain-like seeds, which had the horny albumen of the coffee, and were exceedingly bitter. The pigeons, crows, and cockatoos, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... I can see it from the window, and not forget to water and take care of it," added Jack, still turning the pretty brown acorn to and fro as if ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... you were an acorn on the tree top, Then was I an eagle cock; Now that you are a withered old block, Still am I an ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... stealing—no indeed! Striped Chipmunk would have gone his way and thought no more about it, had it not happened that there was a hole in the bag and from it something dropped at his feet. Striped Chipmunk picked it up and it wasn't a potato. It was a fat acorn. Striped Chipmunk said nothing but slipped ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... represented as "snoring outrageously,"—and after each blow of the Thunder god's hammer, Skrymer merely wakes up—strokes his beard—and complains of feeling some trifling inconvenience, such as a dropped acorn on his head, a fallen leaf, or a little moss shaken from the boughs. Finally, he takes leave of them,—points out the way to Utgard Loke's palace, advises them not to give themselves airs at his court,—as unbecoming "such little fellows" as they were, and disappears in the wood; ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... and me's the first person singular, nominative case, agreeing with the verb "it's", and governed by Squeers understood, as a acorn, a hour; but when the h is sounded, the a only is to be used, as a and, a art, a ighway,' replied Mr Squeers, quoting at random from the grammar. 'At least, if it isn't, you don't know any better, and if it is, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Hail to the acorn, when first they stood. On Bunker's height, And, fearless stemmed the invading flood, And wrote our dearest rights in blood, And mowed in ranks the hireling brood, In desperate fight! O! 't was a proud, exulting day, For even our ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... The one was, why woodpeckers should spend their time in pecking the trees so incessantly; the other was, how it happened that several trees I have cut down could have had so many little holes bored in their trunks, and an acorn neatly inserted into each. Now that little bird has settled the question for me. I caught him in the act not ten minutes ago. He flew to that tree with an acorn in his beak, tried to insert it into a hole, which didn't fit, being too small; so he tried another, which did ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... centuries before it was carried to Europe—to England, Germany, France, Spain and Italy—different varieties adapting themselves to each country. The name "walnut" is of German origin, meaning "foreign nut." The Greeks called it "the Royal nut," and the Romans, "Jupiter's Acorn," and "Jove's Nut," the gods having been ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... place, we would remark, that the spelling of "burr-oak," as given in this book, is less our own than an office spelling. We think it should be "bur-oak," and this for the simple reason, that the name is derived from the fact that the acorn borne by this tree is partially covered with a bur. Old Sam Johnson, however, says that "burr" means the lobe, or lap of the ear; and those who can fancy such a resemblance between this and the covering of our acorn, are at ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... thousand artists may carve a thousand acorns, so cunningly coloured, and so admirably contrived as to be practically indistinguishable from the genuine fruit of the oak. Each of these thousand artists may present me with his manufactured acorn, and may assure me of its genuineness. And, alas! I may be quite deceived and taken in; yes, but only for a time. When I plant them in the soil, together with the genuine acorn, and give them time ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... small flag. There were four rooms in the house, all of them on the ground floor. The parlor was elegantly furnished with a braided carpet, of striped grass, a piano, whose black and white keys were put on with coal and chalk, not to mention other articles of luxury. The table was spread with acorn-cups and poppy teapots, the little housekeepers being advised not to make use of their ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... tell when you do an act Just what the result will be; But with every deed you are sowing a seed, Though the harvest you may not see. Each kindly act is an acorn dropped In God's productive soil You may not know, but the tree shall grow, With shelter for ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate, but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in.—Thackeray, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... delightful than those of Samarcand bubbles in its crystal bosom I Farewell to the red cap and slippers, to the big turban, the flowing trousers, and the gaudy shawl—to squatting on broad divans, to sipping black coffee in acorn cups, to grave faces and salaam aleikooms, and to aching of the lips and forehead! Farewell to the evening meal in the tent door, to the couch on the friendly earth, to the yells of the muleteers, to the deliberate marches of the plodding ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... acorns were planted in "Acorn Patch Enclosure" in the Forest; and in 1800 trees marked A and B were taken from this place and planted opposite the "Speech House." Two, marked D and F, were drawn out of Acorn Patch in 1807 and planted near the Speech House fence. Another, marked N, was planted ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... on each SEED within its slender rind Life's golden threads in endless circles wind; Maze within maze the lucid webs are roll'd, And, as they burst, the living flame unfold. 385 The pulpy acorn, ere it swells, contains The Oak's vast branches in its milky veins; Each ravel'd bud, fine film, and fibre-line Traced with nice pencil on the small design. The young Narcissus, in it's bulb compress'd, 390 Cradles a second nestling on its breast; In whose fine arms a younger embryon lies, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... would come; and so successively one after another, for great part of the Morning. It is observable, that whereever these Fowl come in such Numbers, as I saw them then, they clear all before them, scarce leaving one Acorn upon the Ground, which would, doubtless, be a great Prejudice to the Planters that should seat there, because their Swine would be thereby depriv'd of their Mast. When I saw such Flocks of the Pigeons I now speak of, none of our Company had any ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... this Mexican, would make him quit out like a jack rabbit. "As I observes prior, courage is frequent the froots of what a gent don't know. Take grizzly b'ars. Back fifty years, when them squirrel rifles is preevalent; when a acorn shell holds a charge of powder, an' bullets runs as light an' little as sixty-four to the pound, why son! you-all could shoot up a grizzly till sundown an' hardly gain his disdain. It's a fluke ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... truth: that wrong and injustice once done cannot be undone; but are eternal in their consequences; once committed, are numbered with the irrevocable Past; that the wrong that is done contains its own retributive penalty as surely and as naturally as the acorn contains the oak. Its consequences are its punishment; it needs no other, and can have no heavier; they are involved in its commission, and cannot be separated from it. A wrong done to another is an injury done to our own Nature, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... plane, we have analogies illustrating this fact. It is said that in every acorn rests and exists, in miniature, the form of the future oak. And, some go so far as to say that the oak is the "ultimate cause" of the acorn—that the idea of the oak caused the acorn to be at all. In the same way, the "idea" of the man must be in the infant boy, from the moment of birth, ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... a nut or a fir-cone. Why, it's just the same noise as you hear in the country at home when they drop an acorn." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... guards is all for the folk that ask it in God's name, not for one's kindred, or for another more vile. The flesh of mortals is so soft that a good beginning suffices not below from the springing of the oak to the forming of the acorn. Peter began without gold and without silver, and I with prayers and with fasting, and Francis in humility his convent; and if thou lookest at the source of each, and then lookest again whither it has run, thou wilt see dark made of the white. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... but they are getting very scarce, for most of them appear to have found their way into the scrap heap of the old-metal dealer. Some of the racks intended for the storage of pipes and not for baking them were exceedingly decorative, the ornamental sides terminating with acorn ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... of earth and ayre are thine intire, That with thy feet and wings dost hop and flye; And when thy poppy workes, thou dost retire To thy carv'd acorn-bed to lye. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... pepperidge tall, Where the birds and the squirrels tirelessly call, Where in autumn the flowers of the gentian blue Look up with their eyes so dark and true, Up into the hazy sky, Dreaming away as the red leaves drop, And the acorn falls from its deep brown cup, And the yellow leaves ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... upside down. At seven o'clock in the morning I drink tea in bed—for some reason it must be in bed; at half-past seven a German by way of a masseur comes and rubs me all over with water, and this seems not at all bad. Then I have to lie still a little, get up at eight o'clock, drink acorn cocoa and eat an immense quantity of butter. At ten o'clock, oatmeal porridge, extremely nice to taste and to smell, not like our Russian. Fresh air and sunshine. Reading the newspaper. At one o'clock, dinner, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... how much value was formerly attached to the right of turning out swine in wooded wastes, during the acorn season, it seems probable that Sir R. Harley might be the king's "Porcarius," or receiver of the money paid for an annual license to depasture hogs in the royal forests; and, after all, Porkership is as like to Pokership as Parkership, ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... there the wooden-chuck doth tread, And from the oak-tree's top The red, red squirrels on thy head The frequent acorn drop. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... upward among the trees oftener. He saw more birds, he learned their actions better and so knew better how to have roast bird for supper. So perhaps they were right about the good luck. Besides, both of them were growing up. Sptz had learned to make acorn bread and found a hollow on the top of the Iron Star which was just the thing to grind up nuts in. Umpl was two feet taller than when the star fell, and could draw a bow and send an arrow right through a stag. And one great day ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... then to work the fields with iron, Or plant young shoots in holes of delved loam, Or lop with hooked knives from off high trees The boughs of yester-year. What sun and rains To them had given, what earth of own accord Created then, was boon enough to glad Their simple hearts. Mid acorn-laden oaks Would they refresh their bodies for the nonce; And the wild berries of the arbute-tree, Which now thou seest to ripen purple-red In winter time, the old telluric soil Would bear then more abundant and more big. And many coarse foods, too, in ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... small, like a bud. The bud spreads into a little branchlet and bears the flowers at the tip. The calyx is not seen at first; it is a mere membrane covering the ovary. By degrees the ovary swells into the acorn and the membrane ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... took a walk to one of the numerous cinnamon plantations round Colombo. The cinnamon tree or bush is planted in rows; it attains at most a height of nine feet, and bears a white, scentless blossom. From the fruit, which is smaller than an acorn, oil is obtained by crushing and boiling it; the oil then disengages itself and floats on the top of the water. It is mixed with cocoa- oil ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... much to be desired. The man of whom I am telling you had grown so much used to using it in this way, that whenever he saw anything coming in the shape of a carte he thrust it forward as naturally as a pig does when he sees an acorn. After a couple of semesters the cartes sat on his nose from bridge to tip, one after the other, like the days of the week in a calendar. But when the third semester began, and the cartes began to fall ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... is often the direct cause of irritability, nervousness, crying, and too frequent urination. It should be closely examined by both physician and nurse and when the foreskin does not readily slip back over the acorn-like head of the organ, circumcision is advised early in the second week. This simple operation will start the child out on his career with at least one moral handicap removed and one desirable possibility established—that of being able to ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... the forests wild: But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy: Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: And now they never meet in grove, or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But they do square; that all their elves, for fear, Creep into acorn cups, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... was far away from it; but the nights were all his, and at the end of the sixth night the thing arose, perfect as far as his hand could perfect it; begotten by a chance and ignorant word as have been many of the greatest works the world has seen;—oaks sprung from the acorn that a careless child has ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... its native mead, The golden acorn lay; And watch with care the bursting seed, And guard the tender spray; England will bless us for the deed, In ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... flow from seemingly insignificant causes!" said Sir Christopher. "A spark shall light a conflagration of a mighty city; an acorn shall bear an oak to waft armies over oceans to conquest; and the conversion of a child to the true faith may change the destinies of nations. It may be thy blessed lot, Celestina, to plant a seed which shall grow ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... transverse lane into the small town or village of Evershead, being now about halfway over the distance. She made a halt here, and breakfasted a second time, heartily enough—not at the Sow-and-Acorn, for she avoided inns, but at ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... perceives effects, and he perceives the means by which they are produced. He has learned what to do; and, in part, he has learned how to do it. His after-progress will depend on the amount of force which his nature possesses; but all this is as natural as the growth of an acorn. You do not preach to the acorn that it is its duty to become a large tree; you do not preach to the art-pupil that it is his duty to become a Holbein. You plant your acorn in favourable soil, where it can have light and air, and be sheltered from the wind; you remove ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... creatures we have about us! Tinman practicing in his Court suit before the chiwal-glass! And that good fellow, the carpenter, Crickledon, who has lived with the sea fronting him all his life, and has never been in a boat, and he confesses he has only once gone inland, and has never seen an acorn!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... struck me as even more important than the chestnut, because of its much wider possibility in America, is the acorn. I have been through considerable areas in Portugal where they didn't care whether they had a cork tree or an oak. Land with such trees is worth from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars per acre. They assured me that the acorn oak forest was as valuable ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... misery to her, we learn very soon that this gesture might have been avoided, and that, in her place, we should have refrained. The friends of the man around whom all fell into ruins, and of the neighbour who ever was able to build up his life anew, will have observed before that the acorn sometimes will fall on to rock, and sometimes on fertile soil. And though poverty, sickness, and death still remain the three inequitable goddesses of human existence, they no longer awake in us ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his arm-chair. One's attitude towards Life's Little Difficulties should be that of the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn one day, and happened to doze. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak, sixty feet from the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... tolerable success, hitherto,—but only tolerable it must be confessed,—in developing them into men, there are those who would make girls grow into women by the same process. Because a gardener has nursed an acorn till it grew into an oak, they would have him cradle a grape in the same soil and way, and make it a vine. Identical education, or identical co-education, of the sexes defrauds one sex or the other, or perhaps both. It defies ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... keep them clean, Polly found a long-handled warming-pan; a set of fire-irons—the tongs, shovel, and andirons of the famous "acorn-top" design; and a funny old foot-warmer. A pair of ancient bellows was the last article found in the box, but the leather was so dry and old that pieces fell out when Polly tried ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... man is better born, and has better manners! Why, Lorna, how is it that you never speak about your charming uncle? Did you notice, Lizzie, how his silver hair was waving upon his velvet collar, and how white his hands were, and every nail like an acorn; only pink like shell-fish, or at least like shells? And the way he bowed, and dropped his eyes, from his pure respect for me! And then, that he would not even speak, on account of his emotion; but pressed my hand in silence! Oh, Lizzie, you have read me ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... on the wall she could but just see her chin in it. As she slowly tied her pink bonnet strings she grew happier. In truth, she would have been a maiden hard to console if the face that looked back at her from the quaint oak leaf and acorn wreath had not comforted her inmost soul, and made her again at peace with herself. And as the mother looked on she too was comforted; and in five minutes more, when Little Bel was ready to say good-by, they flung ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Shaman I am not. I know not the secret things. I say the things I know. When you plant kindness you harvest kindness. When you plant blood you harvest blood. He who plants one acorn makes way for life. He who slays one man slays the planter of a ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London
... from this bag he proceeded to take out things which would have given Shakespeare ideas for his witch scene in Macbeth. A little black ring, made of the legs of the black spider and bound together with black horse hair; a black thimble-like cup, not much longer than the cup of an acorn, made of the black switch of a mule containing the liver of a scorpion. The horny head and neck of the huge black beetle, commonly known to negroes as the black Betsy Bug; the rattle and button of a rattlesnake; the fang-tooth of a cotton-mouth moccasin, the left hind foot of a ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... discontent, as so many do in marriage, and you will be broken. But be faithful to it and to the high traditions which generations of suffering men and women have worked out for you, and you will be broken as the bud is broken into the blossom, as the acorn is broken into the oak—broken into a higher and stronger life. On the other hand rebel against it, attempt to drag it down or cast it from its place, and it will crush you, and grind some part of your higher nature to powder. How strangely and sadly is this shown in the case of one of our greatest ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... to do so. If a man will sow the wind, it may be good for him to reap the whirlwind, and so find out that sowing the wind will not prosper. The penitent thief did so. As the proverb is, he sowed the gallows-acorn, poor wretch, and he reaped the gallows-tree; but that gallows-tree taught him to confess God's justice, and his own sin, and so it ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... house, in the woods, and I went over there and laid down and watched it run by. I laid awful still, thinking I wisht I was away from that town. Purty soon a squirrel comes down and sets on a log and watches me. I throwed an acorn at him, and he scooted up a tree quicker'n scatt. And then I wisht I hadn't scared him away, fur it looked like he knowed I was in trouble. Purty soon I takes a swim, and comes out and lays there some more, spitting into the water and thinking what shall ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... down under a great oak tree that grew beside the way, and one gathered acorn cups, and another pulled burdock leaves and laid them for a cloth, and a third plucked the wild strawberries that shone like rubies ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... horse foaled by an acorn, i.e. the gallows, called also the Wooden and Three-legged Mare. You will be hanged.—See ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... draw-strings of gold and red braid, each ending in an ornamental oval acorn of silver thread and coloured silks, probably worked on canvas over a wooden core, ending in a tassel similar to ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... withholds the loved boy, Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But they do square; that all their elves for fear Creep into acorn cups, and hide ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to shut out, as he said, the advocates of annexation from every plea which could grace or dignify rebellion. He felt, indeed, an assured confidence that, by carrying out fearlessly the principle of self-government, he had 'cast an acorn into time,' which could not fail to bring forth the fruit of political contentment. But, in the meantime, for the immediate security of the connection between the colony and the mother-country he thought, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Where dropp'd the acorn that gave birth to thee? Can'st thou trace back thy line of ancestry? We're match'd, old friend, and let us not repine, Darkness o'erhangs thy origin and mine; Both may be truly honourable: yet, We'll date our ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... The next day the uproar on the hills was terrific. Frightened out of their wits, the bears forsook the acorn field and fled ingloriously to their secret haunts in the mountains ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... arroba, and a jar of honey one real. I saw a tree which had many honeycombs hanging on the branches. The mountains are fuller of wild boars than are the commons of Espana of swine and cattle in acorn time. One of those swine, if it is fat, is worth two reals, but only one if not fat; and a deer is worth the same sum. There are almost no fruits of Espana. There are melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, and radishes of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... fulfil it. When I was yet a little lad, and drove the swine out to feed on the hill yonder, when the acorns had fallen, afore Farmer Gyrton's father had gracious leave from the feoffees to put up the fence that doth now so sorely vex us, I found one day a great acorn, as big as a dow's egg, and of a rich and wondrous brown, and this acorn I bore home and planted in kind earth in the corner of my dad's garden, thinking that it would grow, and that one day I would hew its growth and use it for a staff. Now ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... second, the Rhamnus purshiana, gathered now for the market in the upper portions of the State, is found scattered through the timbered mountains of Southern California. It was used as a laxative, and on account of the constipating effect of an acorn diet, was doubtless in active demand. So highly was it esteemed by the followers of the Cross that it was christened Cascara Sagrada, or Sacred Bark. The third, Grindelia robusta, was used in the treatment of pulmonary troubles, and externally in poisoning from Rhus toxicodendron, or Poison ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... much more interesting to serve grass and acorn kernels from broken bits of china than it was to have a real tea-party in an orderly nursery with real cups and saucers, and the strange doll added to the zest of the play because she was an unknown. The children speculated upon who might be her possible owner, ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... with a garland of oaken branches; it being the Roman custom thus to adorn those who had saved the life of a citizen; whether that the law intended some special honor to the oak, in memory of the Arcadians, a people the oracle had made famous by the name of acorn-eaters; or whether the reason of it was because they might easily, and in all places where they fought, have plenty of oak for that purpose; or, finally, whether the oaken wreath, being sacred to Jupiter, the guardian of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... inflicted by these angered sprites. Then would he pause, and wash his story down With long-drawn draughts of amber ale; while all The rest came crowding under the wide oak tree, Piling the corn sheaves closer round the ring, Whispering and shaking, laughing too, with fear; And ever, if an acorn bobb'd from the boughs, Or grasshopper from out the stubble chirrupp'd, Blessing ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... path. It is not much to do,' it continued meekly, 'not great and glorious deeds at which the world stands amazed; but it was all I could do, and was the work He meant for me—we must not despise the day of small things. The acorn is very small, yet look at the oak. A gentle word, a bright smile, is not hard to bestow, but oh, the blessing they can be to hearts pining perhaps ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... thousand years pass by, since I was an acorn planted here. In a few moments I shall die and fall down. Cut my body into staves. Of these make a wooden petticoat, like a barrel, for your daughter. When her temper is bad, let her put it on and wear it until she promises ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... a knot of men about town, gentlemen highly "posted up" on dogs, and who could talk hoss and dog equal to a Lord Bentick, or Hiram Woodruff, or "Acorn," or Col. Bill Porter, of the "Spirit," were congregated in a famous resort, a place known as Hollahan's. A dog-fight that afternoon, under the "Linden trees," in front of the "State House," gave rise to ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... at the acorn on the lid of the coffee-urn, but said nothing. It cost his little heart a pang even to think of parting from his beloved father; but then wouldn't it be a glorious thing to hear him called General Clifford? And if he ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... creatures in the world are the rooks at the acorns. It is not only the eating of them, but the finding: the fluttering up there and hopping from branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end of the bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn drop tip-tap from bough to bough. Amid such plenty they cannot quarrel or fight, having no cause of battle, but they can boast of success, and do so to the loudest of their voices. He who has selected a choice one flies with ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... insolent reply, but a sudden sense of shame caused him to remain silent. Feeling irritated with his father, and grieved for Lialia, while despising himself, he went down the steps into the garden. A little frog, croaking beneath his feet, burst like an acorn. He slipped, and with a cry of disgust sprang aside. Mechanically he wiped his foot for a long while on the wet grass, feeling a ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... inlets of knowledge. The resurrection of a spiritual body from a natural body does not appear in itself a more wonderful instance of power than the germination of a blade of wheat from the grain, or of an oak from an acorn. Could we conceive an intelligent being, so placed as to be conversant only with inanimate or full grown objects, and never to have witnessed the process of vegetation and growth; and were another being to ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... violin before the musician touches them? The statue in the form of an idea or a conception exists in the mind of the sculptor, and he fashions the marble accordingly. Does the book exist in the pot of printer's ink? Living things exist in the germ, the oak in the acorn, the chick in the egg, but from the world of dead matter there is no resurrection or evolution. Life alone puts a particular stamp upon it. We may say that the snowflake exists in the cloud vapor because of the laws of crystallization, but the house does ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... grass was always under him, and the crackling of last autumn's leaves and last summer's twigs—minute dead of the infinite greatness—troubled him. Something portentous seemed connected with the patient noises about him. An acorn dropped, striking a thin fine powder out of a frail oak pod. He took it up, tossing it. He had never liked to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... shrills from stone to stone; And scattering o'er its darkened green, Bands of the fairies may be seen, Chattering like grasshoppers, their feet Dancing a thistledown dance round it: While the great gold of the mild moon Tinges their tiny acorn shoon. ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... The bark is supposed to contain more tannin than that of any other tree, and is valuable on that account. The acorns, or fruit, are good food for hogs, which are observed to grow very fat when turned into the forests at the season when they are ripe. The tree is raised from the acorn, ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... summit spread A wide extended plain, with herbage green: Shade to the place was wanting; hither came The heaven-born poet; seated him, and touch'd His sounding strings, and straight a shade approach'd. Nor wanted there Chaoenian trees; nor groves Of poplars; nor the acorn's spacious leaves: The linden soft, the beech, the virgin bay, The brittle hazle, and spear-forming ash; The knotless fir; ilex with fruit low-bow'd; The genial plane; the maple various stain'd; Stream-loving willow; and the watery lote; Box of perpetual green; slight ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... he perceived that Skrymir was again fast asleep, and again grasping his mallet, he dashed it with such violence that it forced its way into the giant's skull up to the handle. But Skrymir sat up, and stroking his cheek said, "An acorn fell on my head. What! Art thou awake, Thor? Methinks it is time for us to get up and dress ourselves; but you have not now a long way before you to the city called Utgard. I have heard you whispering to one another that I am ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... etc., etc., are among the sweetest and cleanest, most powerful and most varied in the world; that many of the birds of Australia have songs full of melody; that the so-called Australian cherry is no more a cherry than an acorn; that the Australian dog (though "the only true wild dog in the world") is deemed to be a comparatively recent introduction—a new chum of Asiatic origin who entered the glorious constellation of the State something before the era of exclusive ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... struggling piteous appeals for mercy; but Right strengthened the hands of Marcus, and he was gaining a complete triumph, and calculating where he should secure his two prisoners until either his father or Serge came back, the latter probably from his tramp through the forest to see after the young acorn-eating pigs. ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... 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 even in the hidden sprouts. Look at the acorn, for instance, as it breaks its shell, and see how the baby tree bears its birthmark: it is the blood-red in which the prism ray dawns out of the darkness, and the sunrise out of the night. The very stars, science now tells us, glow with this same colour as they are ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... could he see In the wood or in the mead, Or in any company Of the rustic mortal maids, Her with acorn-colored braids; Never came she to his need. Never more the lad was merry, Strayed apart, and learned to dream, Feeding on the tart wild berry; Murmuring words none understood,— Words with music of the wood, And with music ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... or green stools it must be stopped. Dr. Koplik, of New York, recommends stopping the feeding of breast and bottle-fed infants in severe diarrhea or cholera infantum and to use the following:—Albumin water, acorn cocoa, or beef juice expressed and diluted with barley water. The white of one egg is equal in nourishing value to three ounces of milk and is well borne by infants. The albumin water can be used alternately with the solution of acorn cocoa or beef juice or barley water. Liebig's soup mixture is ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... sharp bill, you see. So I can peck and peck at the tree until I have made a hole which will hold an acorn. Sometimes I fill my store house quite full in this way. You can see how they look in the picture. When I want to get at the meat in the acorn I drive the nut into a crack and split the shell. Then I have my breakfast ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... which Danton had placed at her back, and rested her cheek on her hand. They were under the drooping branches of an elm that stood holding to the edge of the bank. Well out over the water sat one of the squirrels, his tail sweeping above his head, nibbling an acorn, and looking with hasty little glances at the canoe. She watched him, and memories came into her eyes. There had been squirrels on her father's seignory who would take nuts from her hand, burying them slyly under the bushes, ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... built roads were made, marshes drained, and the whole country rose in civilisation, while for the learning of the nineteenth century to revile monastic lore is for the oak to revile the acorn from which it sprang. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... may be insects; but like the coral insect we build islands which become continents: like the bee we store sustenance for future communities. The individual perishes; but the race is immortal. The acorn of today is the oak of the next millennium. I throw my stone on the cairn and die; but later comers add another stone and yet another; and lo! ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Zumaco the trees are found which afford cinnamon. These trees are very large and have leaves resembling the laurel. Their fruit grows in clusters, consisting of a nut resembling the acorn of the cork tree, but larger, and containing a number of small seeds. The fruit, leaves, bark, and roots have all the taste and flavour of cinnamon; but the best consists of the shell or nut which contains the seeds. In the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... rather thick and woody, and remain on the tree either all winter or at least until nearly all other deciduous leaves have fallen. Flowers insignificant; the staminate ones in catkins; blooming in spring. Fruit an acorn, which in the White, Chestnut, and Live Oaks matures the same year the blossoms appear; while in the Red, Black, and Willow Oaks the acorns mature the second year. They remain on the tree until late in autumn. The Oaks, because of their large tap-roots, ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... though they wisely refuse to build in its branches; and I dislike it because its smell is offensive to me and its berries the least pleasant of all wild fruits to my taste. I can eat ivy-berries in March, and yew in its season, poison or not; and hips and haws and holly-berries and harsh acorn, and the rowan, which some think acrid; but the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... children is to watch the gradual growth of the acorn into the oak tree. They will suspend the acorn in a glass of water and watch the slow progress during long months. First one tiny white thread is put forth, then another, until at length the glass is almost filled with a tangle of white fibers, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... oaks, covered with the sweet, eatable acorn, we again met with the sow; our service to her in the evening did not seem to be forgotten, for she appeared tamer, and did not run from us. A little farther on, we saw some beautiful birds. Fritz shot some, among ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... squash, all the vining winter varieties in the C. maxima or C. pepo family seem acceptably adapted to dry gardening. These include Buttercup, Hubbard, Delicious, Sweet Meat, Delicata, Spaghetti, and Acorn. I wouldn't trust any of the newer compact bush winter varieties so popular on raised beds. Despite their reputation for drought tolerance C. mixta varieties (or cushaw squash) were believed to be strictly hot desert or humid-tropical varieties, ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... of the Amicable society are to walk, in a few days, from the townhall to the cathedral, in procession, to hear a sermon. They walk in linen gowns, and each has a stick, with an acorn; but for the acorn they could give no reason, till I told ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... like, has exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom of his stomach. "With which opinion," cries Teufelsdrockh, "I should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn might, by favorable or unfavorable influences of soil and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... which was not broken until the sun had risen high, and the birds were whistling gaily among the branches—some of them gazing at her in mute surprise, as if they had discovered some new species of gigantic acorn. ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... Now and then an acorn fell from among the serrated chestnut leaves, striking upon the fence with a sounding thwack, and rebounding in the weeds. Those chestnut-oaks always seem to unaccustomed eyes the creation of Nature in a fit of mental ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... growing love, a higher power Than Fancy gave assurance of some work Of glory there forthwith to be begun, Perhaps too there performed. Thus long I mused, 80 Nor e'er lost sight of what I mused upon, Save when, amid the stately groves of oaks, Now here, now there, an acorn, from its cup Dislodged, through sere leaves rustled, or at once To the bare earth dropped with a startling sound. 85 From that soft couch I rose not, till the sun Had almost touched the horizon; casting then A backward glance upon the curling cloud Of city smoke, by distance ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... insistent calls, or sang their tireless epithalamiums. Spiders hung in their gossamer lairs, only too tensely motionless not to seem dead; but if a gnat came—with what swift, accurate, and relentless vigour they sprang upon and garotted him. Sometimes a twig snapped, or a young acorn fell, or a caterpillar let himself down by a long silken thread. And the air under the oak was tonic ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... reasonably large. One of the two species abundant in Minnesota, Corylus cornuta or Beak hazel, has fine, needle-like hairs on its husk which are sure to stick into one's fingers disagreeably. When the husk is removed, Corylus cornuta resembles a small acorn. It does not produce in southern Minnesota and central Wisconsin as well as the common hazel, Corylus Americana, does, nor is its flavor as pleasing to most people. It is lighter in color than the common hazel and has a thinner shell. Of course, ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... to tear up an acorn-bearing oak from the earth; {and}, as he was grasping it in his embrace, and was shaking it on this side and that, and was moving about the loosened tree, the lance of Pirithoues hurled at the ribs of Petraeus, transfixed his struggling breast together with the tough oak. They said, {too}, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... clench the ground with their fibrous fingers as a purchase against the storm, and at last holds aloft its tons of matter against the constant tug and wrath of gravitation, and swings its Briarean arms in triumph, in defiance of the gale. Were it not for this energetic essence that crouches in the acorn and stretches its limbs every year, there would be no oak; the matter that clothes it would enjoy its stupid slumber; and when the forest monarch stands up in his sinewy, lordliest pride, let the pervading life-power, and its vassal forces that weigh nothing at all, be ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... for man's reason, conscience to account for his conscience, love to account for his love, spirit to explain his spirit. Nature as mother must become spirit to account for the soul of her son. The flower shows what was in the seed, the oak is the revelation of what was in the heart of the acorn; and man as the last and best outcome of nature is the authoritative expression of the power that is behind nature. Thus the mind that is the final product of nature discovers the mind that is the source of nature. Man seeking the origin of his being finds it on ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... we have gradually lost out of mind the true significance of the constitutional system. Those numberless intermediary institutions—which logically grew out of the Christian idea of mediation, as the oak naturally grows out of the acorn, and which wonderfully reconciled liberty with authority, freedom with order, the finite with the infinite—have become more and more obsolete, and less and less understood. They have crumbled away like the stately columns of a magnificent but neglected cathedral. They have become dead branches ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... divine; Head, face, and members, bristle into swine: Still cursed with sense, their minds remain alone, And their own voice affrights them when they groan. Meanwhile the goddess in disdain bestows The mast and acorn, brutal food! and strows The fruits and cornel, as their feast, around; Now prone and grovelling ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Whistling, singing through the forest, Whistling gayly to the squirrels, Who from hollow boughs above him Dropped their acorn-shells upon him, Singing gayly to the wood birds, Who from out the leafy darkness Answered ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... of natural history—namely that organic transformation is real and natural. We do not need to employ the methods of formal logic to know that in growing up a human infant undergoes the changes of childhood and adolescence, that kittens become cats, and that an oak tree is produced by an acorn, for we know these things directly by observing them. It is natural for development to take place under normal conditions, and if it does not, then something has interfered with nature. Inasmuch as "growing ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... till far away We come unto a hill-crest—lights and shades, Bright coloured landscapes far below us lay, Blue mists and fields of yellow corn and hay, In rows like soldiers, now the tired eyes see, And poplars guard the distant dim roadway, Whilst near the wind sighs thro' the acorn-tree, Till one feels hushed, serene, contented, ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... how cocoanuts and bananas grew in the jungle, and the little pig told about how he liked sour milk and things like that. And, after a while, they managed to find some berries for Mappo to eat, as he did not like the acorn nuts. ...
— Mappo, the Merry Monkey • Richard Barnum
... preferred it, myself," agreed Mrs. Denton. "I remember when I was a very little girl my mother longing for a tree upon the lawn underneath which she could sit. I found an acorn and planted it just in the right spot. I thought I would surprise her. I happened to be in the neighbourhood last summer, and I walked over. There was such a nice old lady sitting under it, knitting stockings. So you see ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... gets them mostly about acorn-time; they comes out of the plantations then. I keeps clear of the plantations, because, besides the men a-watching, they have got dogs chained up, and alarm-guns as goes off if you steps on the spring; and some have got a string stretched ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... Of patient trial serves for thrifty bees;- Such are my themes. O universal lights Most glorious! ye that lead the gliding year Along the sky, Liber and Ceres mild, If by your bounty holpen earth once changed Chaonian acorn for the plump wheat-ear, And mingled with the grape, your new-found gift, The draughts of Achelous; and ye Fauns To rustics ever kind, come foot it, Fauns And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing. And thou, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... has taken small, slender, and scarce visible things for principles of generation to the greatest. For it does not only from a grain of wheat produce an ear-bearing stalk, or a vine from the stone of a grape; but from a small berry or acorn which has escaped being eaten by the bird, kindling and setting generation on fire (as it were) from a little spark, it sends forth the stock of a bush, or the tall body of an oak, palm, or pine tree. Whence also they say that ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... great good-humour. His shirt was ragged and dirty, and had fallen completely away from one arm and shoulder, and the billowy muscles glistened in the sun. While Brother Brannum and Brother Roach were gazing at him with some degree of amazement, an acorn dropped upon the roof from one of the tall oaks. Startled by the sudden noise, the negro glanced hurriedly around, and dropped quickly ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... commonly given of Plato's Ideal theory may also be instructively used for showing the manner in which his facts are dealt with by the methods of modern science. Thus Plato would say that there is contained in every acorn the ideal type of an oak, in accordance with which as soon as suitable circumstances occur, the acorn will develop itself into an oak, and into no other tree. In the act of development of such a ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... show me the berry. It was like an acorn with the cup taken off in shape, and of a reddish-brown colour. These berries are harvested ordinarily at the beginning of the dry monsoon, i.e. in April or May. As the coolies are paid in proportion to the amount they gather, the whole crop is first of all measured. It is then put into a ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... and rarefaction, seeks a larger space, filling the hollow room of the heart; hence the dilating and opening of the heart, and because the heart is earthly the thrusting and moving ceasing, its parts are at rest, tending downwards. As a proof of this, take an acorn, which, if put into the fire, the heat doth dissolve its humidity, therefore occupies a greater space, so that the rind cannot contain it, but puffs up, and throws it into the fire. The like of the heart. Therefore the heart of a living creature is triangular, having its least ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous |
