"Maidenhair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plash of water, dripping from a pile of rocks into the circular central pool, wherein fat gold-fish went idly to and fro, nuzzling floating specks upon the surface. Through the polished green of the surrounding palms and rubber-plants stared gardenias and camelias; below, between maidenhair and sword-ferns, winked the little waxen blossoms of fuchsias and begonias: at intervals poinsettia flared audaciously among its more quietly dressed neighbors; and, in the far corners the golden spheres were swelling to fairly ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... out into the podere, pausing a little while to look down into a well that stands on the verge of the lawn. Within the spacious circle of its stone curb was an abundant growth of maidenhair, forming a perfect wreath of thickly clustering leaves quite round, and trailing its tendrils downward to the water which gleamed beneath. It was a very pretty sight. Mr. Story bent over the well and uttered deep, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the heathen gods of old. Thus the anemone, poppy, and violet were dedicated to Venus; and to Diana "all flowers growing in untrodden dells and shady nooks, uncontaminated by the tread of man, more especially belonged." The narcissus and maidenhair were sacred to Proserpina, and the willow to Ceres. The pink is Jove's flower, and of the flowers assigned to Juno may be mentioned the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... marble basin, which was all covered with moss and shaggy with water-weeds. Over the gush of the small stream, with an urn in her arms, stood a marble nymph, whose nakedness the moss had kindly clothed as with a garment; and the long trails and tresses of the maidenhair had done what they could in the poor thing's behalf, by hanging themselves about her waist, In former days—it might be a remote antiquity—this lady of the fountain had first received the infant tide into her urn and poured it thence into the marble basin. But now the sculptured ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in from the woods and rocks without her trophies. Rare, lovely mosses and bits of most delicate ferns, maidenhair and lady-bracken, tiny trails of wintergreen and arbutus, filled a great shallow Indian china dish upon her bureau top, and grew, in their fairy fashion, in the clear, soft water she ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the new suit Maurice walked up and down the little room, round and round the table, where on a turkey-red cloth a hideous hammered brass bowl held some lovely maidenhair ferns. The vision of Eleanor abasing herself to Lily was unendurable. To drive it from his mind, he went to the window and stood looking out through the fragrant greenness of rose geraniums, into the squalid street where the offspring of the Funeral Pomps Director were fighting over the dead ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the witchery of the spell she cast over him. Not the drooping maidenhair ferns through which she trailed were more delicate or graceful than she. But some instinct in him played surface commonplaces against the insurgent ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... Department of Agriculture—was disclosed to view. Beautiful streams gushed from rounded holes, fifty yards above the river. The rock walls reminded one of an ivy-covered castle of old England, guarded by a moat uncrossed by any drawbridge. It was trellised with vines, maidenhair ferns, and water-moss making a vivid green background for the golden yellow and burnished copper leaves which still clung to some small cottonwood trees—the only trees we had seen ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... without attempting fully to answer it I will say that the likeness of the primitive mind of the race to that surviving in the highly evolved individual is only partial. Like tendencies exist but the influence of a great body of knowledge above inevitably alters the action of the latter. Maidenhair fern stood indubitably in several instances for the pubic hair, once surrounding a cluster of trailing arbutus when talcum powder of that fragrance had been used on the body. I dreamed of Linnaea borealis, the little twin-flower, in connection ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... of rural economy, it may not be improper to mention a pretty implement of housewifery that we have seen nowhere else; that is, little neat besoms which our foresters make from the stalks of the polytricum commune, or great golden maidenhair, which they call silk- wood, and find plenty in the bogs. When this moss is well combed and dressed, and divested of its outer skin, it becomes of a beautiful bright- chestnut colour; and, being soft and pliant, is ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... actually bridged over by masses of rock which have fallen from the cliffs above.[145] In the gully below fig-trees and planes, besides many shrubs, find a footing, and the moist walls of rock on either side are hung with ferns of various kinds, among which is conspicuous the delicate and graceful maidenhair. Further down the chasm deepens, first to 1,000 and then to 1,500 feet, "the torrent roars in the gorge, milk-white and swollen often with the melting snow, overhung with semi-tropical oleanders, fig-trees, and oriental planes, while the upper cliffs are clad with ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... a place below the spring where the maidenhair fern grew thick and spread out wide, perfect fronds on slender brown stems, shading fairy bowers; and where taller ferns grew high and leaned over like a delicate fairy forest; and where the wild ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... through an aperture in the roof of each. Near by was a broad creek to which the bank sloped gently from the clearing. The creek, some three feet deep, murmured over coloured stones and sprouting trees. The long fine strands of the ice grass trailed far over the water, motionless. Huge bunches of maidenhair, delicate as green lace, clung to the steep bluffs on the opposite side. Forests of ferns grew close to the water's edge. Down through a rift in the cliffs tumbled a mountain stream ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... one is accustomed to seeing preciously conserved in hot- houses. In fact, the ditch country of Maui is nothing more nor less than a huge conservatory. Every familiar variety of fern flourishes, and more varieties that are unfamiliar, from the tiniest maidenhair to the gross and voracious staghorn, the latter the terror of the woodsmen, interlacing with itself in tangled masses five or six feet ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... sisters working were, As they were closely set, Of soft and dainty maidenhair A curious armillet. I, smiling, asked them what they did, Fair Destinies all three, Who told me they had drawn a thread Of life, and 'twas for me. They show'd me then how fine 'twas spun, And I reply'd ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick |
