"Birch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hour's rapid walking brought him to the river. Here he plunged into a thicket of willows, and emerged on a sandy strip of shore. He carefully surveyed the river bank, and then pulled a small birch-bark canoe from among the foliage. He launched the frail craft, paddled across the river and beached it under a ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... when the signs of summer thicken, And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken, Yearly you turn from our side, ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... the point of this noisy embarkation was another, though much less ostentatious scene of departure and leave-taking. In the stern of a birch canoe, paddle in hand and evidently impatient to be off, sat one of Rogers' buckskin-clad rangers, who was about to revisit his distant New Hampshire home, for the first time in three years. Near by, on the strand, stood ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... fit,—fit that such a creature of the trees should not go to the ground for its nest-material, and should choose something soft and pliable. Among the birches, it probably gathers the fine curling shreds of the birch bark. ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... Border. The ferule was a name given both to the bamboo and to the yellow cane, which grew plentifully both in the islands of the Greek Archipelago and in Southern Italy, as notably at Cannae in Apulia, where it gave a name to the scene of the great battle. The virga was also used, a rod commonly of birch, a tree the educational use of which had been already discovered. The walls of Pompeii indeed show that the practice of Eton is truly ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... kinds from many climes, until he has an arboretum hardly equaled anywhere. There are pines in endless variety—from the Sierra and from the seashore, from New England, France, Norway, and Japan. There flourish the cedar, spruce, hemlock, oak, beech, birch, and maple. There in peace and plenty are the sequoia, the bamboo, and the deodar. Eucalypts pierce the sky and Japanese dwarfs ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... cried the mother in a low, firm voice, and the little bits of things, scarcely bigger than acorns and but a day old, scattered far (a few inches) apart to hide. One dived under a leaf, another between two roots, a third crawled into a curl of birch-bark, a fourth into a hole, and so on, till all were hidden but one who could find no cover, so squatted on a broad yellow chip and lay very flat, and closed his eyes very tight, sure that now he was safe ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... come, loyal little folk preparing the way for them, as the trolls of ancient tales worked for those they loved. Into the brown furrows troop the goldenrod and asters, the wild grasses and brambles making a first shelter for the seeds of gray birch and wild cherry that magically come and plant themselves. A thousand other forms of life, beast and bird and insect, make the place their home; all preparing it for the nursing of the young pines to came. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... number of the hymns and prayers were recited by the people of Egypt on behalf of their deceased friends before the first dynasty had begun to reign. Birch says before 3000 B.C. The hymns and prayers were first of all preserved in the memory only, and their number was at an early time but small. They were written down when the priests had doubts with regard to the meaning of certain terms, and wished to hand them on unimpaired to posterity, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... of passage have gone; a happy journey and welcome back again! Titmouse and blackcap and a hedge-sparrow or so live now alone in the bush and undergrowth: tuitui! All is so curiously changed—the dwarf birch bleeds redly against the grey stones, a harebell here and there shows among the heather, swaying and whispering a little song: sh! But high above all hovers an eagle with outstretched neck, on his way ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... came home with her and her friend and made them urinate into his mouth. She also had stories of flagellation, generally of men who whipped the girls, more rarely of men who liked to be whipped by them. One man, who brought a new birch every time, liked to whip her friend until he drew blood. She knew another man who would do nothing but smack her nates violently. Now all these things, which come into the ordinary day's work of the prostitute, are rooted in deep and almost irresistible ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... grown in the valley of the Sioule; walnuts, chestnuts, plums, apples and pears are principal fruits. Goats, from the milk of which choice cheese is made, and pigs are plentiful. A large area is under forests, the oak, beech, fir, birch and hornbeam being the principal trees. The mineral waters at Vichy (q.v.), Neris, Theneuille, Cusset and Bourbon l'Archambault are in much repute. The mineral wealth of the department is considerable, including coal ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... passed before his eyes.—"My vig, why it's water!" exclaimed he—"water, I do declare, with worms[21] in it—I can't eat such stuff as that—it's not man's meat—oh dear, oh dear, I fear I've made a terrible mistake in coming to France! Never saw such stuff as this at Bleaden's or Birch's, or anywhere in the city." "I've travelled three hundred thousand miles," said the fat man, sending his plate from him in disgust, "and never tasted such a mess as this before." "I'll show them up in The Times," cried Mr. ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... Thomas Birch, in a letter dated June 15, 1764, says that this letter was by Mr. Philip Yorke, afterwards Earl of Hardwicke, who was author also of another piece in the Spectator, but his son could ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... was no such book as this Justinian of the play-ground, if we except a thin volume of games published by Tabart. Boys then quarrelled upon nice points of play, parties ran high, and civil war, birch, and the 119th psalm were the consequences. A disputed marble, or a questioned run at cricket, has thus broken up the harmony of many a holiday; but we hope that such feuds will now cease; for the "Boy's Own Book," will settle all differences as effectually as a police magistrate, a grand jury, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... thought I, why should not others be amused also? In a few days Dr. Birch's young friends will be expected to reassemble at Rodwell Regis, where they will learn everything that is useful, and under the eyes of careful ushers continue the business of ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild woods, thickening green; The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar Twined amorous round the raptured scene: The flowers sprang wanton to be pressed, The birds sang love on every spray, Till too, too soon the glowing west Proclaimed the speed ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the gentleman-class: the ideas of the personal relation to one's self, one's fellow men and one's Maker are those natural to a person of that station. The charming poem which the author set as Finis to "Dr. Birch and His Young Friends," with its concluding lines, is an unconscious expression of the form in which he conceived human duty. The "And so, please God, a gentleman," was the cardinal clause in his creed and all his work proves it. It is wiser to be thankful that a man of genius was ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Molly fitted in with the conception of an "impossible" as little as with the actual visible facts of his ragged shirt-sleeves and faded, earth-stained overalls. They toiled upwards in silence for some moments, the man still chewing on his birch-twig. He noticed her sidelong half-satirical glance at it. "Don't you want one?" he asked, and gravely cut a long, slim rod from one of the saplings in the green wall shutting them into the road. As ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... and after women wailed their warriors slain, List the Saxon's silvery laughter, and his humming hives of gain. Swiftly sped the tawny runner o'er the pathless prairies then, Now the iron-reindeer sooner carries weal or woe to men. On thy bosom, Royal River, silent sped the birch canoe Bearing brave with bow and quiver on his way to war or woo; Now with flaunting flags and streamers—mighty monsters of the deep— Lo the puffing, panting steamers through thy foaming waters sweep; And behold the grain-fields golden, where the bison grazed of eld; See the fanes of forests ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... into a little ridge, with great, gray rocks here and there, spots of cool, restful color amid the lavish green and gold and purple of nature's carpeting. To the north swept hills clothed with the deep, rich green of hemlock, the faint green flutter of birch, the dense foliage of sugar maples. To the east, in the valley, a singing silver brook flashed in and out among somber boulders, the land ascending to sunny hilltop pastures beyond. But toward the south from the homestead lay the gem of the scenery; one of the most beautiful ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... examine whether any of the Sioux had recently visited that quarter. In one of these excursions, there was found, suspended to a tree, in an exposed situation, a piece of birch-bark, made flat, by being fastened between two sticks, about eighteen inches long by fifteen broad. This bark contained the answer of the Sioux nation, to overtures which the Chippeways had made, on Governor Cass' offer of mediation:—which overtures had been found and taken ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... boys, four in all, fairly carved a farm out of the big forest that covered the cold rocky hills. Giant work it was for them in such heavy timber—pine, hemlock, maple, beech and birch—the clearing of a single acre being a man's work for a year. The place where the maples were thickest was reserved for a sugar grove, and from it was made all of the sweet material they needed, and some besides. Economy ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... his weakness, and resolutely refrained from giving any evidence of his suffering, but when he detected the pale green foliage of the fragrant birch, he ventured to step out of the trail, break off a branch and chew the bark, thus securing temporary relief from the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... went up the ridge, regarded in the neighbourhood as the chief's pleasure-ground where nobody went except to call upon the chief, they must, having mounted it lower down than where they descended, pass the cottage. The grove of birch, mountain-ash, and fir which surrounded it, was planted quite irregularly, and a narrow foot-path went winding through it to the door. Against one of the firs was a rough bench turned to the west, and seated upon it ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... of independent criticism. The child problem is merely one phase of the universal problem that confronts society. It seems likely that the rod of reason will have to replace the rod of birch. Parental authority never used to be called into question; neither was the catechism, nor the Bible, nor the minister. How should parents hope to escape the universal interrogation point leveled at everything else? In these days of free speech it is hopeless to suppose ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... young people become half wild with joy and expectation. To some of them it is a sorry time; for the saint is very candid, and, if any of them have been bad during the past year, he is quite sure to tell them so. Sometimes he carries a birch-rod under his arm, and advises the parents to give them scoldings in place of confections, and floggings instead ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... last sat down under a tree to rest, for it was very hot in the sun, and I had walked farther than I knew. I heard voices a little way off, and thought they came from our party; but all at once some one walked round the very tree I was leaning against, and, handing me the prettiest little birch-bark canoe, about six inches long, filled with blackberries, said, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... has the autograph of Richard Claridge, the quaker) has written on the title in an old hand "By H. Hallywell." In the Biographia Britannica vol. iv., p. 546., 2d edit., it is said to be by Ralph Cudworth. If so, it has escaped Birch and the other ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... though more tempered in tone, reveal quiet content with the simple life and a thorough enjoyment of nature in its original wildness. In the summer they followed the tracks of the moose and deer through the primitive forests, and explored the streams and lakes in the light birch canoe, with a woodsman or savage for their guide. In the winter they made long journeys over land and water on snowshoes or on skates, occasionally visiting the villages of the Indians, with whom the Lesderniers were on the ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... mechanical contrivance, capable of great speed; it is the only vehicle in which one could approach that distant smudge on the landscape with any sense of the eternal fitness of things. A coach and four would be as far behind the times on this highway as a birch-bark canoe on yonder lake. In America an automobile is beautiful because it is in perfect harmony with the spirit of the age and country; it is twin brother to the trolley; train, trolley, and automobile may ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... spruce and Cembran pine. Below this altitude the woods are composed of deciduous and evergreen broad-leafed trees and shrubs, mingled together in a profusion of species. Pure broad-leafed forests of one or two species are rare, though small woods of oak, of alder and of birch are occasionally seen. There is nothing comparable to the extensive beech forests of Europe, the two species of Chinese beech being sporadic and rare trees. The heaths, Calluna and Erica, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Thursday before Whitsunday the Russian villagers "go out into the woods, sing songs, weave garlands, and cut down a young birch-tree, which they dress up in woman's clothes, or adorn with many-coloured shreds and ribbons. After that comes a feast, at the end of which they take the dressed-up birch-tree, carry it home to their village with joyful dance and song, and set it ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... time with success. For after a little they came into the shadow of the island, the keel grunted upon sand, and they got out. There was a little crescent of white beach, with an occasional exclamatory green reed sticking from it, and above was a fine arch of birch and pine. They hauled up the boat as far as they could, and sat down to wait for the tide to turn. Firm earth, in spite of her awful spiritual forebodings, put Margaret in a more cheerful mood. Furthermore, the woods and the ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, compiled chiefly from his Original Papers and Letters. By THOMAS BIRCH, D.D. The second Edition, enlarged. Price ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... at the long ridges planted with mugwort, wormwood, and mountain ash. He gazed—and that vast level solitude, so fresh and so fertile, that expanse of verdure, and those sweeping slopes, the ravines studded with clumps of dwarfed oaks, the grey hamlets, the thinly-clad birch trees—all this Russian landscape, so-long by him unseen, filled his mind with feelings which were sweet, but at the same time almost sad, and gave rise to a certain heaviness of heart, but one which was more akin to a pleasure than to a pain. His thoughts wandered slowly past, ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... important of these characteristics of race or species are those which are concerned with the relation of each to light, heat, and moisture. Thus, a river birch will die if it has only as much water as will suffice to keep a post oak in the best condition, and the warm climate in which the balsam fir would perish is just suited to the requirements of a long leaf ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot
... otter, a marked event in their uneventful days; the farm with its red gables and its crowd of gobbling turkeys; the sweet-smelling fir groves with their sandy paths; and their own particular wood where beeches, oaks, and silvery birch trees were intermingled, with here and there a tall pine sometimes stately and erect, sometimes blown ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... pink-and-white laurel and the wild honeysuckle; he dug the roots of the fragrant sassafras and of the sweet-flag; he ate the tender leaves of the wintergreen and its red berries; he gathered the peppermint and the spearmint; he gnawed the twigs of the black birch; there was a stout fern which he called "brake," which he pulled up, and found that the soft end "tasted good;" he dug the amber gum from the spruce-tree, and liked to smell, though he could not chew, the gum of the wild cherry; it was his melancholy duty to bring ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... apparently capable of holding extended conversations in an unknown dialect with birds and red squirrels. Once I fell asleep in my cradle, suspended five or six feet from the ground, while Uncheedah was some distance away, gathering birch bark for a canoe. A squirrel had found it convenient to come upon the bow of my cradle and nibble his hickory nut, until he awoke me by dropping the crumbs of his meal. It was a common thing for birds to alight on my cradle in ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... there was another king coming—that was his hunch—and he got it. And I tell you-all I got a hunch. There's a big strike coming on the Yukon, and it's just about due. I don't mean no ornery Moosehide, Birch-Creek kind of a strike. I mean a real rip-snorter hair-raiser. I tell you-all she's in the air and hell-bent for election. Nothing can stop her, and she'll come up river. There's where you-all track my moccasins in ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the Empire caused its vegetable productions to include almost all the forms known to the ancient world. On the one hand, the more northern and more elevated regions bore pines, firs, larches, oaks, birch, beech, ash, ilex, and junipers, together with the shrubs and flowers of the cooler temperate regions; on the other hand, the southern tracts grew palms of various kinds, mangoes, tamarind-trees, lemons, oranges, jujubes, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... variety of the common oak, of which many prostrate trunks occur in the peat at higher levels than the pines; and still higher the pedunculated variety of the same oak (Quercus robur, L.) occurs with the alder, birch (Betula verrucosa, Ehrh.), and hazel. The oak has now in its turn been almost superseded in Denmark by the common beech. Other trees, such as the white birch (Betula alba), characterise the lower part of the bogs, and disappear ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... a gray, old man lived on the top of a mountain, where he could see glimpses of the sea. He had a lodge made of birch bark that shone like ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... November the army had a disagreeable march from Orcha to Borizoff, on a wide road skirted by a double row of large birch-trees, the snow having melted, and the mud being very deep. The weakest here found their graves; and those of our wounded who, in expectation of a continuance of the frost, had exchanged their wagons for sleighs, were left behind, and fell into the hands ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... and asked if there were any Englishmen concealed in it. He replied that he did not know, they might search for themselves. At length they opened the garret door and ascended the stairs, but Henry had concealed himself among a heap of birch-bark vessels, which had been used in making maple sugar, and thus escaped. Fatigued and exhausted, he lay down on a mat and went to sleep, and while in this condition he was surprised by the wife of Langlade, who remarked that ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... the master-piece of an education, was not fortunate in his teachers. Saint- Laurent, to whom he was first confided, was, it is true, the man in all Europe best fitted to act as the instructor of kings, but he died before his pupil was beyond the birch, and the young Prince, as I have related, fell entirely into the hands of the Abbe Dubois. This person has played such an important part in the state since the death of the King, that it is fit that he should be made known. The Abbe Dubois was a little, pitiful, wizened, herring-gutted man, in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... through a pleasant fringe of beech and birch and maple trees to a beautiful brook, which was easily crossed on stones, then up the bank on the other side into an open pasture with scattering spruce and other trees. Now I began to look for my bluejays. I disturbed the peace of a robin, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... The birch, most shy and lady-like of trees, Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, As one ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... is not the sunset nor the pale green sky shimmering through the curtain of the silver birch, nor the quietness; it is not the hopping of birds upon the lawn, nor the darkness stealing over all things that ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... often rest on the end of his long nose, and the word "rum" be passed tittering along the benches. For some men are born to the mill, and others to the mitre, and still others to the sceptre; but Mr. Daaken was born to the birch. His long, lanky legs were made for striding after culprits, and his arms for caning them. He taught, among other things, the classics, of course, the English language grammatically, arithmetic in all ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... horse whinnying for his corn; And sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows, 15 The cattle shake their walnut bows; While peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent And down his querulous challenge ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... real darkness down there in that narrow valley, but there was dusk of a kind that made everything grey and uncertain. It was a vague, nebulous atmosphere in which objects merged into each other confusedly. Bushes came down to within a few feet of where we were working, dense-growing alder and birch that would have concealed a whole ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Heath. A brown brick wall with buttresses, strong like fortifications on a breastwork, enclosed it on three sides. From the flagged terrace at the bottom of the garden you looked down, through the tops of the birch-trees that rose against the rampart, over the wild places of the Heath. There was another flagged terrace at the other end of the garden. The house rose sheer from its pavement, brown brick like the wall, and flat-fronted, with the white wings of its storm shutters spread open, row on row. It barred ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... and lungs made alike; and the so-called moral qualities are the same in all; the slight variations are of no importance. A single human specimen is sufficient to judge of all by. People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch-tree.' ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... want a pedant made, Blackmore at first set up the whipping trade: Next quack commenc'd; then fierce with pride he swore, That tooth-ach, gout, and corns should be no more. In vain his drugs, as well as birch he tried; His boys grew blockheads, and his ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... himself and Rand took their own turns at the poles to relieve the aching and untried muscles of the younger Scouts. Soon after leaving the sandy banks and tundra of the lower stream, the creek began to wind its way through dense forests of spruce, poplar and oak with the ghostly bark of the birch lighting up the dim that marks the tangled wildwood of more southern climates, showing how little the sunlight of these northern climes penetrated ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... struck the sources of the White River, pleasant springs on a hillside, bubbling forth among the first trees we had seen since we left the Laramie. Then we descended into a fine shady valley: all our old friends were there in thickets—the box-elder, willow, birch and cottonwood, the alder, osier and wild cherry, currant, gooseberry, buffalo-berry and clematis. As we went on, brushing through the thick foliage, the hills on either side became higher, and grew into bastions, castles, donjon-keeps and fantastic clustered chimneys, like Scott's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... earnestly attended them at least twice a year—but they were sufficiently exotic to make him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met two days before, so they were ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... of the leaves on a branch of birch shows that something living is there, and presently the little head and neck of a whitethroat peers over them, and then under, looking above and beneath each leaf, and then with a noiseless motion passing on to the next. Another whitethroat follows immediately, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... fluttering down about them, clipped by the gigantic scythe that was mowing down the wood. Another man was struck dead beside them by a bullet in the forehead, and he retained his erect position, caught in some vines between two small birch trees. Twenty times, while they were prisoners in that thicket, did they feel death ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... branching from the silver Trent, The whispering birch by every zephyr bent, The woody island, and the naked mead, The lowly hut half hid in groves of reed, The rural wicket, and the rural stile, And frequent interspersed, the woodman's pile. Above, below, where'er I turn my eyes, Rocks, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... testimony in their favor, the girls proceeded to deposit the body in a shell, ingeniously, and not inelegantly, fabricated of the bark of the birch; after which they lowered it into its dark and final abode. The ceremony of covering the remains, and concealing the marks of the fresh earth, by leaves and other natural and customary objects, was conducted with the same simple and silent forms. But when the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... mockingly, insensately glad—lightsome, jubilant. The birds forsook their frost-bound nests, and sang cheerily in the clear morning air. One little linnet—so very little—perched on a delicate silver birch, and poured its full soul out ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... at the topmost source—fons et origo—of our chosen river. This single spring, crystal-clear and ice-cold, gushing out of the hillside in a forest of spruce and yellow birch and sugar maple, gave us the clue that we must follow for a ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... hundred and thirty paces west of the house in which I live stand two birch trees. One windy winter day I made some fresh tracks in the snow near my house, and within a few minutes the cavities looked as though some one had sprinkled wheat bran in them, on account of the many birch seeds ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... spare, and whatever fragments remained of the Central America. Had he not changed the course of his vessel by reason of the mysterious conduct of that man-of-war hawk, not a soul would probably have survived the night. It was stated by the rescued passengers, among whom was Billy Birch, that the Central America had sailed from Aspinwall with the passengers and freight which left San Francisco on the 1st of September, and encountered the gale in the Gulf Stream somewhere off Savannah, in which she sprung a leak, filled rapidly, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... almost a living, breathing reality for him there on the golden fore-deck of the scow. He turned his face toward the far shore, where the wilderness seemed to reach off into eternity. What a glory it was—the green seas of spruce and cedar and balsam, the ridges of poplar and birch rising like silvery spume above the darker billows, and afar off, mellowed in the sun-mists, the guardian crests of Trout Mountains sentineling the country beyond! Into that mystery-land on the farther side of the ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... next day, he took occasion to remark the delicate Precaution taken to render his sojourn pleasant as possible. The furniture of maple or birch was plain, but wonderfully neat; the bed linen was of snowy whiteness and purity; and perfumed by aromatic plants with which in the drawers it had been strewed. Here and there were a few choice engravings, and on the floor was a carpet woven by ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... seen. It was about eight feet long by six in width, and the ceiling was so low that, even kneeling, his head touched it. His match burned out, and he lighted another. This time he saw a candle stuck in a bit of split birch that projected from the wall. He crept to it and lighted it. For a moment he looked about him, and again he blessed Fingers. The little scow was prepared for a voyage. Two narrow bunks were built at the far end, one so close above the other that Kent grinned as he thought of squeezing ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... discharged from the service by Perron, who had probably very good reason to believe that they would not join in fighting against the army of their own sovereign. Carnegie, Stewart, Ferguson, Lucan, two Skinners, Scott, Birch, and Woodville, are the only names recorded, but there may have been others also who were dismissed from the army at Perron's disposal. The prospects of those who were absent on duty in the Deccan, and elsewhere, soon became far more serious. Though not at present dismissed, they were ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... observe a young man at a little distance, leaning back against an aged birch, on whose silvery bark the dark outlines of his figure were finely daguerreotyped. He was the beau ideal of an artist, with his long brown hair carelessly pushed back from his white temples, his portfolio in his left ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... thousand years ago. Yes, in these respects the same was to be seen there as is to be seen now. The rushes had the same height, the same sort of long leaves, and blue-brown, feather-like flowers that they bear now; the birch tree stood with its white bark, and delicate drooping leaves, as now; and, in regard to the living creatures, the flies had the same sort of crape clothing as they wear now; and the storks' bodies were white, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... her hat. She sat leaning against the crisp trunk of a silver birch. Her hands were in her lap. Her dress was crumpled up, displaying her crossed feet and the tantalizing line of her slim ankles. Against the copper green of the tree trunk the mass of her hair was pressed, gold upon the shadow of gold. Her moist lips were half open. Her eyes ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... shed tears unrebuked. She did not weep passionately, but the big salt drops welled slowly from her eyes and ran down her young cheeks, as drop after drop of shining sap flows down the trunk of a wounded birch-tree. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Manners and Customs, &c., 2nd Ser. pl. 31, fig. 2, vol. i. p. 312; vol. ii. p. 227. Mr. Birch of the British Museum informs me that throughout the ritual or hermetic books of the ancient Egyptians a mystical notion is attached to the goose as one of the creatures into which the dead had to undergo a transmigration. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... of Sweden by the fairy-story teller Hans Christian Andersen. Reader, will they strike you as pleasantly as they did me? I know not. Let us glance them over. They have at least the full flavor of the North, of the healthy land of frost and pines, of fragrant birch and of sweeter meadow-grass, and simpler, holier flowers than the rich South ever showed, even in her ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... few minutes the trembling urchin, glad of any message that might serve to divert the dreaded birch from himself, entered the, uproarious "Siminary," caught his forelock, bobbed down his head to the master, and pitched his "two sods" into a little'heap of turf which lay in the ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... Petropavlovsk. The scenery at the entrance more than equalled our highest anticipations. Green grassy valleys stretched away from openings in the rocky coast until they were lost in the distant mountains; the rounded bluffs were covered with clumps of yellow birch and thickets of dark-green chaparral; patches of flowers could be seen on the warm sheltered slopes of the hills; and as we passed close under the lighthouse bluff, Bush shouted joyously, "Hurrah, there's clover!" "Clover!" exclaimed the captain ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... and brutality manipulated the birch. Head was all; heart and hand nothing. This was schoolteaching. As a punishment for failure to memorize lessons, there were various plans to disgrace and discourage the luckless ones. Standing in the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... at Great Estates by a dozen footmen in satin knee breeches, file into the "dining camp" and take their places at a long pine table, painted turkey red, on ordinary wooden kitchen chairs, also red! The floral decoration is of laurel leaves in vases made of preserve jars covered with birch bark. Glass and china is of the cheapest. But there are a long centerpiece of hemstitched crash and crash doilies, and there are "real" napkins, and at each plate a birch bark napkin ring with a number on it. Mrs. Worldly looks at her napkin ring as though it were an insect. One or two of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... want of pity, to the time it was your rods and cloaks made a little tent for me where there'd be a birch tree making shelter and a dry stone; though from this day my own fingers will be making a tent for me, spreading out my hairs and they knotted with the rain. [Lavarcham and Old Woman come in stealthily on right. ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... me to think that the fault of the usual method of dealing with homosexuality in schools is that it regards all school homosexualists as being in one class together, and has only one way of dealing with them—the birch for a first offense, expulsion for a second. Now, I think we may distinguish ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... piece, already prepared and fitted, was lashed securely to it and it was planted on one of the little snow turrets of the summit—the sign of our redemption, high above North America. Only some peaks in the Andes and some peaks in the Himalayas rise above it in all the world. It was of light, dry birch and, though six feet in length, so slender that we think it may weather many a gale. And Walter thrust it into the snow so firmly at a blow that it could not be withdrawn again. Then we gathered about it and said the ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... fuel, for which it is much used, and chestnut, the same as in the Netherlands, growing in the woods without order. There are three varieties of beech—water beech, common Beech, and hedge beech—also axe-handle wood, two species of canoe wood, ash, birch, pine, fir, juniper or wild cedar, linden, alder, willow, thorn, elder, and many other kinds useful for many purposes, but unknown to us by name, and which we will be glad to submit to the ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... the lakes and rivers at this time was limited to three types of vessel, the "snow," a three-master with a try-sail abaft the mainmast, the schooner, the batteau and the birch canoe, and, in closely land-locked waters, the horse ferry. The Durham boat, a batteau on a larger scale with false keel, had yet to be introduced. The bark canoe, which for certain purposes has never been improved upon—not ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... best example for Assyria is furnished by the magnificent bronze gates of Balawat, now in The British Museum. See Birch and Pinches, The Bronze Ornaments of the Palace Gates ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... reports a grave shortage of birch, and a number of earnest ushers are asking, "What is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... the mention of white bait, his lips smack together with joy, and he lisps out instinctively Blackwall: talk of a rump steak and Dolly's, his eyes grow wild with delight; and just hint at the fine green fat of a fresh killed turtle dressed at Birch's, and his whole soul's in arms for a corporation dinner. Reader, I have been led into this strain of thinking by an excursion I am about to make with Alderman Marigold and family, 89to enjoy the pleasures of a Sunday ordinary in the suburbs of the metropolis; an old fashioned custom that is ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... along the edge of the forest, then along a broad forest clearing; they caught glimpses of old pines and a young birch copse, and tall, gnarled young oak trees standing singly in the clearings where the wood had lately been cut; but soon it was all merged in the clouds of snow. The coachman said he could see the forest; the examining magistrate could see nothing but the trace horse. ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... live coal, but all is burnt-out to a dead grammatical cinder? The Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax enough; and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be acted-on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch-rods. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... is seated with pews of curly birch, upholstered in old rose plush. The floor is in white Italian mosaic, with frieze of the old rose, and the wainscoting repeats the same tints. The base and cap are of pink Tennessee marble. On the walls are bracketed oxidized silver lamps of Roman design, ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... two the feather of the hat belonging to him against whom it was directed, and broke a small birch at the other end of the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Copy formerly belonging to Dr. Birch, and now in the library at the British Museum. ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler
... submergence in the water and in the unusually moist soil above it to betray without any serious question the nature of the materials used and the mode of their employment. One of the corner-posts was a black birch and the bark on it is in a good state of preservation at and below the surface ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... with all the bugs and specimens which he had collected. And, for those who feel an interest in Professor Shaw, it may be agreeable to know, that in his wanderings, having discovered in a green lane, on the margin of a duck-pond, a district school in want of a pedagogue, he forthwith assumed the birch, and may be now seen at almost any hour of the day, in the midst of his noisy populace, commanding silence, or dusting them on their least honorable parts. 'Tough, are you? I'll see if I can find a tender spot. Come, no bawling, or ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... Micah, for their closing repast, considering the circumstances, might have been pronounced as achieved in the highest style of art. Under a bright sky, shadowed by soft, quivering birch-trees, scattering broken lights all over their rustic table, never surely was a dinner ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... river, a place with celebrated gardens which would always come back to her memory as a riot of roses. The frocks of the people on the lawn looked as though they were made of the petals of flowers, and a mad little haunting waltz was being played by the band, and there under a great copper birch on the green velvet turf near her stood Jem, looking at her with dark, liquid, slanting eyes! They were only a few feet from each other,—and he looked, and she looked, and the haunting, mad little waltz played on, and it was as though they ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... perhaps a thousand of these trees near together constitute what is called a sugar-bush. Here, then, a rude hut, but withal picturesque in its appearance, is erected—it is formed of logs, and covered with broad sheets of birch bark. For the universal use of this bark I think the Indians must have given the example. Many beautiful articles are made by them of it, and to the back settlers it is invaluable. As an inside roofing, it effectually resists ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... important matter of education had been occupying the attention of the Queen and her husband. After careful inquiry during nearly a year the Rev. Henry Mildred Birch was selected and on April 10, 1844, the Prince Consort wrote, in a private and family letter, that "Bertie will be given over in a few weeks into the hands of a tutor whom we have found in Mr. Birch, a young, good-looking, amiable man who was a tutor at Eton and who not only ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... Harry; and away the whole party went, to be just in time to see the water taking its departure, and Dick's kennel wrecked, down by the gates where the yard was highest, for Old Sam, in spite of the pelting rain, was punching away at the sink-hole with the stump of an old birch broom, and the water was rushing down it like a little maelstrom; while the bits of straw and twigs that floated near, represented the unfortunate vessels that get caught ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... The fourth is Mr Birch, formerly tutor to the Prince of Wales, scarcely of sufficient calibre for the office, and not qualified by a ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... "but I learned to paddle a canoe pretty well. I'd rather have a good row-boat, though, than any birch I ever saw. If you run one of them on a sharp stone, it may be cut ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... tried to think of another way to accomplish his purpose. None presented itself; so with glowing words he appealed to their nobler selves, telling them all the great need of the travelers who were obliged to pass that way. First he appealed to a fine birch which bordered ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... was flooded in moonlight and the birch trees wavered their stark shadows across it like supplicating arms. Suddenly I heard the soft padded sound of snow falling upon snow, to slowly perceive a figure, the slender figure of a young child attempting to arouse itself ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... use. Since Naboth drew his fence about the field and restricted it to a few wild-eyed steers, halting between the hills and the shambles, many old habitues of the field have come back to their haunts. The willow and brown birch, long ago cut off by the Indians for wattles, have come back to the streamside, slender and virginal in their spring greenness, and leaving long stretches of the brown water open to the sky. In stony places where no grass grows, wild olives sprawl; close-twigged, blue-gray ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... orchis spikes springing from black-spotted leaves, and deep-grey crested dog- violets. On one side was a perfect grove of the broad-leaved, waxen- belled Solomon's seal, sloping down to moister ground where was a golden river of king-cups, and above was a long glade between young birch-trees, their trunks gleaming silvery white, the boughs over head breaking out into foliage that looked yellow rather than green against the blue sky, and the ground below one sheet of that unspeakably intense purple blue which ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a violent effort breaking away from my meditations, I hastened forward; one mile, two miles, three miles were speedily left behind; and now I came to a grove of birch and other trees, and opening a gate I passed up a kind of avenue, and soon arriving before a large brick house, of rather antique appearance, knocked ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... rain had fallen the day before, and now wherever the ground was not paved the grass shone green. The birch trees in the gardens looked as if they were strewn with green fluff, the wild cherry and the poplars unrolled their long, balmy buds, and in shops and dwelling-houses the double window-frames were being removed and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... wayside a little later, the Tramp carved upon the smooth bark of a birch-tree the words, "John ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... Grania, 'one on each side of the stream, and we will travel on foot.' So they went on till they reached Galway, and there Diarmid cut down a grove, and made a palisade with seven doors of wattles, and gathered together the tops of the birch trees and soft rushes ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... strongest boys in the school, who were devoted to me; their business was to join me in dragging the tyrant to a bench, over which he was to be laid, and his bare posteriors heartily flogged, with his own birch, which we proposed to wrest from him in his struggle; but if we should find him too many for us all three, we were to demand the assistance of our competitors, who should be ready to enforce us, or oppose anything that ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... said that half a bow-shot from the house on that side (i.e. due north thereof) was a little hazel-brake, and round about it the trees were smaller of kind than the oaks and chestnuts he had passed through before, being mostly of birch and quicken-beam and young ash, with small wood betwixt them; so now he passed through the thicket, and, coming to the edge thereof, beheld the Lady and the King's Son walking together hand in ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... hours more talk one after another got up and went out, making profuse salutations to me and to the others. My candles had been forgotten, and our seance was held by the fitful light of the big logs on the fire, aided by a succession of chips of birch bark, with which a woman replenished a cleft stick that was stuck into the fire-hole. I never saw such a strangely picturesque sight as that group of magnificent savages with the fitful firelight on their faces, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... than the other, for the same preference is unhesitatingly accorded to the same effect in nature herself. Whatever beauty there may result from effects of light on foreground objects, from the dew of the grass, the flash of the cascade, the glitter of the birch trunk, or the fair daylight hues of darker things, (and joyfulness there is in all of them), there is yet a light which the eye invariably seeks with a deeper feeling of the beautiful, the light of the declining or breaking day, and the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... are a hazy cloud of tender green, pink, yellow and pale purple. Nearer trees show in their opening leaves pale tints of the same gorgeous colors which we see in the fall. The maple keys and the edges of the tender leaves glow blood-red in the morning sun. The half-developed leaves of the birch and the poplar are a yellowish-green, not unlike the yellow which they show in autumn. The neatly plaited folds of the leaves of the oak display a greenish or cinerous purple, a soft and delicate presentment of the stronger colors which come in October, ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell |
