"Tuft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and steam vessels overhangs the busy town and port of Drogheda. On the Meath side of the Boyne, the ground, still all corn, grass, flowers, and foliage, rises with a gentle swell to an eminence surmounted by a conspicuous tuft of ash trees which overshades the ruined church and desolate graveyard ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Kennedy as Senora Mendez took one of the little buttons out of the silver tray. Carefully paring the fuzzy tuft of hairs off the top of it—it looked to me very much like the tip of a cactus plant, which, indeed, it was—she rolled it into a little pellet and placed it in her mouth, chewing it slowly like a piece ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... painful, the nail should always be kept scraped very thin, and as near the flesh as possible. As soon as the corner of the nail can be raised up out of the flesh, it should be kept from again entering, by putting a tuft ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... meadow-lark is about the size of a quail. He stands erect when he sings, and he has a rather long beak. The nest can be found, if you look for it, but is generally out of sight under a loosened clod of earth or tuft of grass. ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... the end a tuft of thick hair which serves the purpose of keeping off the flies and stinging insects, so plentiful in the ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... that of the spearmen behind them. These former bore no shields, no swords or bombs, but wore that same kind of leather body-armor which graced the powerful limbs of Hero Giles. Their helmets, too, were different: only the dolphin crest with a tuft of red feathers spouting from it bore any resemblance to those of the infantry, and, moreover, the artillerymen's eyes were shielded by ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... sending a dozen unexpected things darting to cover, raising a myriad of indignant dung-flies, smashing little blossoms, flowering complacently, back into their parental turf. Trees again, and then splash, splash across a torrent; then a hare shot out of a tuft of grass under the very hoofs of the Master Horse, and the jackals left them incontinently. So presently they broke into the open again, a wide expanse of turfy hillside—the very grassy downs that fall northward nowadays from ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... indeed, ma belle," said Louis, stooping as he spoke to gather up, not the fruit, but a dozen fresh partridge's eggs from the inner shade of a thick tuft of grass and herbs that grew beside a fallen tree. Catharine's voice and sudden movements had startled the ruffed grouse [Footnote: The Canadian partridge is a species of grouse, larger than the ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... a surly looking man beyond middle age with large eyes that showed signs of dissipation. He had a small dark tuft beneath his lower lip ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... was going, traveling through wood and waste until the coming on of night. The little fluttering birds were going from the bush tops, from tuft to tuft, and to the briar-roots, going to rest; but if they were, he was not, till the night came on, blind and dark. Then the King's Son ate his bread and meat, put his satchel under his head and lay down to take his rest on the edge of a ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... Anthony was one of the oldest of the clerks, and just the subject for a painter. He was as thin as a lath, wrinkled round the mouth and eyes, had long, bony fingers, bushy, gray eyebrows, and over his left eye hung a thick tuft of hair, which did not look handsome, but made his appearance very remarkable. People knew that he came from Bremen; it was not exactly his home, although his master resided there. His ancestors were from ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... lots of the same seeds were sown in the midst of a bed of candy-tuft (Iberis) growing vigorously. The seedlings came up, but all the self-fertilised ones soon died excepting one, which never twined and grew to a height of only 4 inches. Many of the crossed seedlings, on the other hand, survived; and some twined up the ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... the air was impregnated with a delightful odour. In the centre of this bed of sweets rose the humble mound that protected the bones of the red man from the ravenous jaws of the wolf and the wild cat. It was completely covered with stones, and from among the crevices had sprung a tuft of blue harebells, waving as wild and free as if they grew among the bonny red heather on the glorious hills of the North, or shook their tiny bells to the breeze on ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... friend of poets, if thy glass Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass, Let this slight token of the debt I owe Outlive for thee December's frozen day, And, like the arbutus budding under snow, Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May When he who gives it shall have gone the way Where faith shall see and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... depth of the back-ground. The larches and cedars diminished gradually in size and numbers, until the straggling and stinted tree became a bush, and the latter finally disappeared in the shape of a tuft of pale green, that adhered to some crevice in the rocks like so much moss. Even the mountain grasses, for which Switzerland is so justly celebrated, grew thin and wiry; and by the time the travellers reached the circular basin at the foot of the peak of Velan, which is called ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... rust-preventing film over the interior surface. She burnished the silver and brass ornaments, and rubbed the polished stock until it shone. When not a suspicion of soil or dirt remained any where, the delicate double triggers were examined and set so that they would yield at the stroke of a hair, a tuft of lightly-oiled tow was placed over the nipple and another ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... skirmishing up near to the castle, and taking advantage of every inequality in the ground, of every bush and tuft of high grass, worked up close to the moat, and then opened a heavy fire with their bows against the men-at-arms on the battlements, and prevented their using the machines against the main force now advancing to the ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... man drew nearer, and I began to perceive my error. Gamekeepers do not usually paint their faces red and green, neither do they wear scalp-locks, a tuft of eagle's feathers, moccasins, and buffalo- hide cloaks, embroidered with representations of war and the chase. This was the accoutrement of the stranger who now approached me, and whose copper-coloured complexion indicated that he was a member of the Red Indian, or, as the late Mr. Morgan ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... of ptarmigan. The men in the Totem Dances also wear handlets which are carved and painted to represent the particular totem they seek to honor. These too are fantastically decorated with feathers, usually of the loon. The central feather is stripped, and crowned with a tuft of white down. Both men and women wear armlets and fillets of skin or feathers according to the animal character they represent. When in the full swing of the dance with fur and feathers streaming they present a pleasing spectacle, a picture full of the same wild grace and ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... country goatee is frequently used for a tuft of beard on the point of the chin—what is sometimes called "an imperial," apparently because the late Emperor Napoleon III wore his beard so. His Majesty the Goat is graciously pleased to wear his ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... were sitting in the warm dusk by the edge of a little dip of heather sheltered by a tuft of broom, when suddenly they heard the purring sound of the night-jar, and immediately after the bird itself lurched past them, and as it disappeared into the darkness they caught several times the characteristic ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mayor cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... makes his appearance with a large wooden bowl, a piece of soap, and a bunch of palm-fibres. He squats down beside the bowl, and speedily creates a mass of snowy lather, which grows up to a pyramid and topples over the edge. Seizing us by the crown-tuft of hair upon our shaven head, he plants the foamy bunch of fibres full in our face. The world vanishes; sight, hearing, smell, taste (unless we open our mouth), and breathing, are cut off; we have become nebulous. Although our eyes are shut, we seem to see a blank whiteness; ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... should be tenderly hidden by those who are near. The bees kept very beesy all about us. To see one huge fellow, as big as three ordinary ones with pieces of red and yellow about him, as if he were the beadle of all bee-dom, and overgrown in consequence—to see him, I say, down in a little tuft of white clover, rolling about in it, hardly able to move for fatness, yet bumming away as if his business was to express the delight of the whole creation—was a sight! Then there were the butterflies, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... matter of fact—as if there were nothing in suffering and slavery, grim enough to cast a solemn air on any human animal; though it were as ridiculous, physically, as the most grotesque of apes, or morally, as the mildest Nimrod among tuft-hunting republicans! ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... were cast in the pure, Eastern mould of his race. His complexion was of a dead yellow, his nose aquiline, his chin shaded by a little tuft of white beard, while projecting cheek-bones threw a harsh shadow upon the hollow and wrinkled cheeks. His countenance was full of intelligence, fine sharpness, and sagacity. On his broad, high forehead one might read frankness, honesty, and firmness; his eyes, black and brilliant as an ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... are pits all along the Bottom. There are several Levels in the Bottom from Beechenhurst Hill along the Delves quite up to Nail Bridge. Another large field of coal from Whitecroft Bridge, at the back of White Mead Park along the Delves to Great Moseley Green, and from thence through Old Vallet Tuft and Aures Glow, almost up to Little Stapleage. These are the works which do the greatest mischief to the Forest. There are some others on the Coleford side, from which a great deal of coal is raised. Very little timber is growing in any of these Delves; and enclosures ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... "the crowd returned, more excited and noisy than ever. Barricades were erected with wonderful rapidity; two of those were on the boulevard close to the place where I was. I saw a horseman suddenly bound over the first; he wore a tuft of red-and-white feathers in his hat. I saw that it was a staff officer, doubtless carrying some despatch to headquarters. He continued his way, sabre in its sheath, head erect, proud and calm in the midst of insulting shouts from the crowd; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... samphire, which bears a white flower. Farther in the mould is reddish, a sort of sand, producing some grass, plants, and shrubs. The grass grows in great tufts as big as a bushel, here and there a tuft, being intermixed with much heath, much of the kind we have growing on our commons in England. Of trees or shrubs here are divers sorts, but none above ten feet high, their bodies about three feet about, and five or six feet high before you come to the branches, which are bushy, and composed of ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... man, let his profession be what it may, who can receive overtures of friendship from dukes without some elation. Mark, too, had risen in the world, as far as he had yet risen, by knowing great people; and he certainly had an ambition to rise higher. I will not degrade him by calling him a tuft-hunter; but he undoubtedly had a feeling that the paths most pleasant for a clergyman's feet were those which were trodden by the great ones of the earth. Nevertheless, at the moment he declined the duke's invitation. He was very much flattered, he said, but the duties of his parish ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... it that I am to eat my meal standing, the same as a crane in a shallow, or moving from tuft to thistle like you'd see a jennet on ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the artist, was to visit the family the following Sunday. When there appeared a smallish, Yankee looking individual, wrinkled face, a tuft of beard on his chin, similar to that bestowed upon the comic cartoons of the face of Uncle Sam, a beaked nose, very dirty hands and iron grey hair, sparsely sprinkled over his acorn-shaped head, ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... all sorts, but never to shoes. This hint of the conventional only serves to accent the little self-satisfied excursions he makes into barbarism. The shirt is always worn outside, the ear ornaments are as varied as ever, the head is shaved in strange patterns, a tiny tight tuft on the crown is useful as fastening for feathers or little streamers or anything else that will wave or glitter. One of these individuals wore a red label he had, with patience and difficulty, removed from one of our trunks. He had pasted it on his forehead; and it read "Baggage Room. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... of pale silk, which floated after her along the dirty pavement, much, I remember, to my admiration. Above this was some tight-fitting thing with a good deal of lace about it, which was crowned by a fragile and flowery bonnet, and such a tuft of white lace at the end of a white stick as just sheltered her nose, which was aquiline, from the sunshine. She was prettily dressed for an open carriage, a flower-show, or a wedding breakfast; for walking through the streets of a small, dirty ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... hints foresay the berry, On spray of haw and tuft of brier, Then, wandering incendiary, You set the maple ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... The white-scrubbed hall detained him several minutes before he returned with a large man who smoked a crooked-stemmed pipe during the conference. The man held the bowl of the pipe in his hand which was fat and red. So was his face. He had a mighty tuft of hair on his upper lip. His shirt sleeves shone like new snow through ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... TUFT HUNTER. A it anniversary parasite, one who courts the acquaintance of nobility, whose caps are adorned ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Pastor Tuft was walking up and down his study, composing his Sunday sermon. He was a handsome man, with a long, fair face, and dreamy eyes; his wife, Josephine, in the days when she thought she was in love with him, used to call him Melanchthon—that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... surrounding the face, are both, in perhaps equal degrees, worthy of the attention of the tasteful. The shaggy beard and mustachios, especially, if aided by the effect of a ferocious scowl, will admirably suit those who would wish to have an imposing appearance; the chin, with its pointed tuft a la capricorne, will, at all events, ensure distinction from the human herd; and the decorated upper lip, with its downy growth dyed black, and gummed (the cheek at the same time having been faintly tinged with rouge, the locks parted, perfumed, and curled, the waist duly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... caps over one ear, rode about on the little cheap horses of the country, which seem indefatigable, go twenty leagues at a stretch, and, never combed, never covered, give themselves a shake at the end of their journey, and go to graze on the first tuft of heath, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... after the war-dance that has been described. The season was advanced and nesting time already begun. In fact, it was ended in several families; mocking-birds were about ready to fly, young chipping sparrows peeped from every tuft of grass, baby bluebirds were trying their wings at their doors, the yellow-throated warbler was stuffing her youngsters on the next tree, and the late kingbirds had nearly finished their nests. Whether a pitched battle at last settled the dispute, whether the modest little dame united ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... time we had pretty well killed our horses, and we were compelled to stop among a tribe of Gorraguas, a very mild, inoffensive people, who supplied us with milk, and treated us very kindly. We had some adventures, nevertheless. One day as we were passing by a tuft of small trees, a rhinoceros charged upon my horse, which very narrowly escaped by wheeling short round and getting behind him; the beast then made off without meddling with us any more. Every day we used to shoot some animal or other, for provision: ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... chronicles, which opened into the inner towers of the ancient castle of the Herons. He found himself among rugged, heathy ground, the hollow palm of the island, now suffused with milky opalescence, for the sun was setting. Hardly could Stair see from one tuft to another, but out of the tinted mist swooped first two and then three birds like angels appearing out of a white heaven. Magnified by the mist Stair hardly recognized the green and black summer uniform of the golden plover, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Ceylon Miscellany, July, 1843, recorded the results of some experiments, made near Colombo, as to the daily variation of temperature and Its effects on cultivation, from which it appeared that a register thermometer, exposed on a tuft of grass in the cinnamon garden in a clear night and under the open sky, on the 2nd of January, 1841, showed in the morning that it had been so low as 52 deg., and when laid on the ground in the place in the sunshine on the following day, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... been deemed impossible; pine seeds planted in the lax hold of these sands had hitherto been unable even to take root, against the unbroken sweep of the winds. M. Bremontier, after many experiments, conceived the idea of planting with the pine seeds the seeds of the common broom, whose hardy tuft should protect the tiny sapling until it could stand by itself. The result surpassed hope; pine forests, protecting in their turn, have sprung up and endured throughout the Landes; they have broken forever the power of the wind-storms; and their ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... newspaper reporters, stepping on the balls of his feet as lightly as a puss-cat, emerged Major Putnam Stone. His sleeves were turned back off his wrists and his vest flared open. His head was thrust forward so that the tuft of goatee on his chin stuck straight out ahead of him like a little burgee in a fair breeze. His face was all a clear, bright, glowing pink; and in his right hand he held one of the longest cavalry revolvers that ever was made, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... unprofitable atoms of life Lady Maude Blythe had been one of the vainest and most unprofitable,—though of such "social" importance as to be held in respectful awe by tuft- hunters and parasites, who feed on the rich as the green-fly feeds on the rose. The news of her sudden death briefly chronicled by the fashionable intelligence columns of the press with the usual— ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... field. The infantry consisted of a limited number of archers or slingers. They had usually neither shield nor cuirass, but merely, in the way of protective armour, a padded head-dress, ornamented with a tuft. The bulk of the army carried short lances and broad-bladed choppers, or more generally, short thin-handled swords with flat two-edged blades, very broad at the base and terminating in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... gentlemanlike, all the summer they come abroad to their country-houses, to recreate themselves. Our gentry in England live most part in the country (except it be some few castles) building still in bottoms (saith [3154]Jovius) or near woods, corona arborum virentium; you shall know a village by a tuft of trees at or about it, to avoid those strong winds wherewith the island is infested, and cold winter blasts. Some discommend moated houses, as unwholesome; so Camden saith of [3155]Ew-elme, that it was therefore unfrequented, ob stagni ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... slowly, first pillowing the mangled head on a soft tuft of moss, tenderly as if it were conscious still. His nature was such that no shock, or pain, or sorrow to which humanity is liable, could bend or quell it, so as to deprive him, beyond a brief instant, of self-possession and calmness. It was not insensibility ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... was a great day for me, but I don't remember that the oxen cared much about it. They sagged along in their great clumsy way, switching their tails in my face occasionally, and now and then giving a lurch to this or that side of the road, attracted by a choice tuft of grass. And then I "came the Julius Caesar" over them, if you will allow me to use such a slang expression, a liberty I never should permit you. I don't know that Julius Caesar ever drove cattle, though he must often have seen the peasants from the Campagna ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... I were sitting at the open bow-window of my study, watching the tuft of bright-red leaves on our favorite maple, which warned us that summer was over. I was solacing myself, like all the world in our days, with reading the "Schoenberg Cotta Family," when my wife made her voice heard through the enchanted distance, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... independent thought or action, is content to attach himself to the skirts and coat-tails of the great, and to exist for a long time as a mere appendage in mansions selected by the unerring instinct of a professional tuft-hunter. It is as common a mistake to suppose that all tuft-hunters are necessarily of lowly birth and of inferior social position, as it is to believe them all to be offensive in manner and shallow in artifice. The coarse but honest Snob still perhaps exists, and here and there he thrusts ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... plain nest in the open field, without so much as a bush or thistle or tuft of grass to protect it or mark its site; you may step upon it, or the cattle may tread it into the ground. But the danger from this source, I presume, the bird considers less than that from another. Skunks and foxes have a very impertinent ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... we see A piece of work I apprehend, May lead to trouble in the end, For while they only wanted five, Yet six they got, as I'm alive, First they installed Peter Jaquett, Then John Creswell, two men well met, James Law, but they were not enough, And so they added William Tuft. One more was wanted that was plain, That one was found in John McKane, But when the five were call'd to meet There were but four came to the seat; There are but four, said one so racy, So they elected William Gracy. Now you perceive this grave ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... be found missing in one or more places on a finished animal and in such case "Old Dr. Le Page's Liquid Hair Restorer" is the only remedy. The place to be covered is coated with glue and a small tuft of hair from the same or another skin grasped with a forceps, the base touched with glue and carefully placed. The hair is arranged with a setting needle before the glue hardens, and though a tedious operation it may be performed so well ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... place Of pillowing. And Paris kissed her breast And slept; but her heart's riot gave no rest As quaking there she lay, awaiting doom. Then afar off rose clamour, and the room Was fanned with sudden light and sudden dark, As on a summer night in a great park Blazed forth you see each tuft of grass or mound, Anon the drowning blackness, while the sound Of Zeus's thunder hardens every close: So here the chamber glared, then dipt, and rose That far confused tumult, and now and then The scurrying ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... Bouvard, "but you have a better tuft of hair!" And, without solving the difficulty, they arranged their ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... without being discovered, was the difficulty. Following Dango's example, who crept on through the high grass on hands and knees, now finding some bushes behind which we could run on at a more rapid pace, now once more crawling on as before, keeping our bodies concealed merely by a high tuft of grass, we at length got within a distance at which Nowell thought that we might hope to bring ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... tuft of hair worn on a man's forehead, or a projecting conspicuous part of the women's caps worn by the fashionables of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Amid yon tuft of hazel trees, That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perch'd in ecstasies, Yet seeming still to hover; There, where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows and sunny glimmerings, That cover ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... in the bog, among red fly-catchers, and pink bottle-heath, and sweet white orchis; nor such a one as you may see, too, here, which bubbles up under the warm sandbank in the hollow lane, by the great tuft of lady ferns, and makes the sand dance reels at the bottom, day and night, all the year round; not such a spring as either of those; but a real North country limestone fountain, like one of those in Sicily or Greece, where the old heathen fancied ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... as poppy and candy-tuft, are early blooming, while others, such as aster and cosmos, bloom in late summer, hence a selection should be made that will yield a succession ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... coloured silk, so as to resemble the ordinary idea of an Indian prince. He wore sandals, fastened on with ribands of scarlet silk, and held in his hand a sort of fan, such as ladies then used, composed of the same feathers, assembled into a plume or tuft. ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... get some water, so he took his bucket and went to Brother Goat's well. On the way he was very much afraid that something would catch him. He trembled when the wind shook the leaves of the trees. He would go a little distance and then stop and listen; he hid here behind a stone, and there behind a tuft of grass. ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... other side of the river two bright eyes, like those of a cat, beneath a tuft of alders; then he saw the tanned forehead and tangled hair of a boy about ten years of age, who was lying on his stomach and making signs towards the otter to let his master know he kept it well in sight. ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... expressive mouth, slight of build, but muscular and supple. His dress was rustic, but simple almost to affectation; you would not have found a seal on his white bulging shirt, search as you might, and he wore his cap, with a tuft of meadow-sweet in it, as gallantly ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... must necessarily entertain the greatest contempt for such an under-bred person as Leigh Hunt. But Lord Byron! How must the haughty spirit of Lara and Harold contemn the subaltern sneaking of our modern tuft-hunter. The insult which he offered to Lord Byron in the dedication of Rimini,—in which he, a paltry cockney newspaper scribbler, had the assurance to address one of the most nobly-born of English Patricians, and one of the first geniuses whom ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... though common in the interior, are here rare; an imitation is produced by tressing the hair longitudinally from occiput to sinciput, making the head a system of ridges, divided by scalp-lines, and a fan-shaped tuft of scarlet-stained palm frond surmounts the poll. I noticed a fashion of crinal decoration ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... adoption was pretty severe and painful. All the hair of the head was plucked out by a tedious operation, leaving simply a tuft three or four inches in diameter on the crown. This was called the scalp-lock. The hair was here allowed to grow long, and was dressed with ribbons and feathers. It was to an individual warrior what the banner is to an army. The victor tore it from the skull ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... moving.] And so ugly as he is! [Plucks up a tuft of heather and throws it away.] So ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... chin and jaws, full and heavy, giving an appearance of great roundness to the countenance. His features were regular, the mouth small and compressed, and on the upper lip he wore a moustache, parted in the centre, and brushed out horizontally, balanced by a tuft on the chin, four or five inches long. An adventurous spirit gazed out of his clear steady eyes, and altogether he looked like a man of determined temper, and one who, having once formed a resolution, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... a native of Gibraltar, bear some resemblance to those of the Common Candy-Tuft, but when they blow in perfection, they are usually twice as large; hence they are highly ornamental in the green-house, which early in the Spring, the time of their coming forth, stands in need ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 4 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smile went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone, Had walked ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning
... on the closed door with the butt of his pistol. In a moment, it slid open, and a young Assassin with a narrow mustache and a tuft of ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... Boisselle was a wonderful sight. One morning I was wandering about the old battlefield, and I came across a great wilderness of white chalk—not a tuft of grass, not a flower, nothing but blazing chalk; apparently a hill of chalk dotted thickly all over with bits of shrapnel. I walked up it, and suddenly found myself on the lip of the crater. I felt myself in another world. This enormous hole, 320 yards round at the top, with ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... sky. There was a white dusty road or rather a track between two rough fences, with a wide space of green grass on each side, and here and there could be seen the cattle wandering idly homeward, lingering every now and then to pull at a particularly tempting tuft of bush grass growing in the moist ditches which ran along each side of the highway. Scattered over this pastoral-looking country were huge mounds of white earth, looking like heaps of carded wool, and at the end of each of these invariably stood a tall, ugly ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... day, when she was walking through a great, great wood, she felt tired, and sat down on a mossy tuft and fell asleep. Then she dreamt that she went deeper and deeper into the wood, till she came to a little wooden hut, and there she found her brothers. Just then she awoke, and straight before her she saw a worn path in the green moss. This path went deeper into ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... o'ergrown with moss Has many a tuft of thatch projected, A spider-web is built across The window-jamb, else unprotected; The wing of a gleaming dragon-fly Hangs in it like some petal tender, The body armed in golden splendor Lies headless ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... "Thar's a tuft of black fur in the teeth of the trap," he pointed out. "An' look at them claw marks! Guess that critter's some bigger'n a lynx. May's well stay another night in this camp an' try ter ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... I saw him last on the road across the river—it leads to Sasellano, I believe." Dieppe kept his eye on his vanquished opponent, but Guillaume threatened no movement. The Captain dropped the revolver into his pocket, stooped to pull up a tuft of grass with moist earth adhering to it, and, with the help of his handkerchief, made a primitive plaster to stanch the bleeding of his ear. As he was so engaged, the sound of wheels slowly climbing the hill became audible from the direction ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... derived from her imagination, aided by a school geography, the ground was fairly honeycombed with entrances to the abodes of these reptiles, and I fully expected to find them festooning trees, bushes, and fences, lying in wait within every tuft of grass, and in fact making my life one hideous, ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... common red deer of the Eastern States, two other varieties are found in the Rocky Mountains, viz., the "black-tailed deer," which takes its name from the fact of its having a small tuft of black hair upon the end of its tail, and the long-tailed species. The former of these is considerably larger than the eastern deer, and is much darker, being of a very deep-yellowish iron-gray, with a yellowish ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... age. The boys were unable to say, though they decided that he was quite young. He was considerably shorter in stature than the Indians they had seen, and Tad wondered if he were not an Eskimo. The guide's head was shaven except for a tuft of black coarse hair on the top, standing straight up, while a yellow bar of paint had been drawn perpendicularly on each cheek. He wore a shirt that had once been white, a pair of trousers, one leg of which extended some six inches below the knee, the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... for Thasus. In later times, when multitudes of people came from great distances to put questions to the oracle, a spacious temple of marble was erected over the spot. But in the days of Cadmus, as I have told you, there was only this rustic bower, with its abundance of green foliage, and a tuft of shrubbery, that ran wild over the mysterious hole ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... last (fifth) edition of "Natural Selection," 1869, p. 102, admits that all sexual differences are not to be attributed to the agency of sexual selection, mentioning the wattle of carrier pigeons, tuft of turkey-cock, &c. These characters, however, seem less inexplicable by sexual selection than those given in ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... two wrestlers, one was a veritable giant, swarthy of skin, hairy-chested. His great hands were extended to grasp or to parry—his head lowered with a ferocious scowl—and across his forehead swayed a tuft of black, shaggy hair. He might have stood for one of those northern barbarians whom the Romans loved to pit against their native champions in the arena. He was the greater because of the opponent he faced, and it was upon this opponent that the ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... and balanced his ponderous form against the table, holding a law-book in his hand. The tuft of whiskers on his chin seemed to quiver into an accompaniment to his words. He began reading in a deep voice: "Gentlemen of the jury, to enlighten you as to the nature of this case, I shall read to you under Subdivision V, Section ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... bare spot! but dead, dead as any peeled and fallen!' said Alvan, fingering a tuft of the sooty snake-lichen. 'This is a tree for a melancholy poet—eh, Clotilde?—for him to come on it by moonlight, after a scene with his mistress, or tales of her! By the way and by the way, my fair darling, let me never think of your wearing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on a tuft of grass, eating something that looked very nice; but, all of a sudden, she dropped her bowl, and ran away, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... anybody else doing it. Naturally I was considerably pleased with myself, and having again loaded up, I went on to look for the black-maned beauty who had killed Kaptein. Slowly, and with the greatest care, I proceeded up the kloof, searching every bush and tuft of grass as I went. It was wonderfully exciting work, for I never was sure from one moment to another but that he would be on me. I took comfort, however, from the reflection that a lion rarely attacks a man,—rarely, I say; ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... and a little tuft of white hair floated slowly to the judge's feet in the moonlight. The judge did not swerve; he still stood erect and motionless, like a statue, with his pistol-arm hanging straight down at his side. He was reserving ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... increased a hundred per cent! [Poking a tuft of grass with his foot] Have you watered the grass? [Furiously] You have no business doing that during ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand
... the larger vegetation often found on such as were most decayed produced a picturesque effect. Here, for example, is a bear five or six feet long, reposing on top of his lichen-clad pillar, with paws comfortably folded, a tuft of grass growing in each ear and rubus bushes along his back. And yonder is an old chief poised on a taller pillar, apparently gazing out over the landscape in contemplative mood, a tuft of bushes leaning back with a jaunty air from the top of his weatherbeaten ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... dome of the cathedral in the distance, in shadow-bulk in the cold-aired night of stars. Little trams were running brilliant over the flat new bridge on the right. And from a garden just below rose a tuft of palm-trees. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... on the back seat the White Linen Nurse could have sworn that she heard a sharply ejaculated, maliciously joyful "Ha!" piped out. But when both she and the Senior Surgeon turned sharply round to make sure, the Little Crippled Girl, in apparently complete absorption, sat amiably extracting tuft after tuft of fur from the thumb of one big sable glove, to the rumbling, sing-song monotone of "He loves me—Loves ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... surely, the Hemlock spruce of America; which, while growing by itself in open ground, is the most wilful and fantastic, as well as the most graceful, of all the firs; imitating the shape, not of its kindred, but of an enormous tuft of fern. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... water trickles down the cliff and fills a little cistern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it fresh and pure. This recess shall be my dining-hall. And what the feast? A few biscuits, made savory by soaking them in seawater, a tuft of samphire gathered from the beach, and an apple for the dessert. By this time, the little rill has filled its reservoir again; and, as I quaff it, I thank God morn heartily than for a civic banquet, that he ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the grey tuft on his chin and looking keenly at me a moment over his glasses,—"Those flowers," he said hesitatingly, "you might move those flowers from the room, perhaps. Their perfume is a trifle strong ... It might be better." Again he looked sharply at me. ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... estimate was too low. In some colonies the Loyalists were clearly in the majority. In all they were a menacing element, made up of the conservative, the prosperous, the well-educated, with a mixture, of course, of mere placemen and tuft-hunters. They composed weighty pamphlets, eloquent sermons, and sparkling satire in praise of the old order of things. When their cause was lost forever, they wrote gossipy letters from their exile in London or pathetic verses ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... He plucked a tuft of moss and tossed it from him, as if therewith dismissing the subject. And Priscilla felt a little hurt, though not for worlds would she have suffered him to ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... they usually dispersed in the woods to hunt, or look for small parties of whites; always, however, leaving some of their number to hover round the fort and watch any thing that took place. Masters in the art of hiding, and able to conceal themselves behind a bush, a stone, or a tuft of weeds, they skulked round the gate before dawn, to shoot the white sentinels; or they ambushed the springs, and killed those who came for water; they slaughtered all of the cattle that had not been driven in, and any one venturing ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... erred. They gave superciliously, handing down their alms from a top lofty altitude of Tory superiority, and the Radicals down below sniffed or growled even while they grudgingly took these gifts—that was all nonsense. These aristocratic or tuft-hunting philanthropists were the veriest duffers. They laid out millions of pounds in the vain attempt to secure what might easily be had for mere thousands, if they went sensibly to work. Their vast benefactions ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... which twelve project in an elegant curve, and are used by it for making prey of small fish." The very ancient error was to mistake the foot of the shell-fish for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for a tuft of feathers. As to the body, non est inventus. The Barnacle Goose is a well-known bird: and these shell-fish, bearing, as seen out of the water, resemblance to the goose's neck, were ignorantly, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... like a kitten about to make a pounce upon a cork, or some other plaything; then they would make a sudden rush, stand on their hind legs for an instant, touching me hurriedly with their paws, and scamper home to their mother, or behind some rock or tuft of grass, from which they would presently emerge to creep towards me once more; and so the whole play ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... accompanied by a charming young "Countess," and the honors showered upon them and the adulation paid by society tuft-hunters was something they ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... peasants could read that we were surprised. We stopped and looked at her—I see her now, as though it were yesterday, though it is nearly twenty years ago. She wore the dark costume of our Breton women, with the usual white head-dress, and she was seated on a large tuft of broom in blossom, which she had ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... have grown outward for centuries at right angles to the trunk begin to turn upward to assist in making a new crown, each speedily assuming the special form of true summits. Even in the case of mere stumps, burned half through, some mere ornamental tuft will try to go aloft and do its best as a leader in forming a new head. Groups of two or three are often found standing close together, the seeds from which they sprang having probably grown on ground cleared for their reception by the fall of a large tree of a former generation. They ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... low that the birds and mice do not see him till he is fairly upon them. The hen-hawk swoops down upon the meadow-mouse from his position high in air, or from the top of a dead tree; but the marsh hawk stalks him and comes suddenly upon him from over the fence, or from behind a low bush or tuft of grass. He is nearly as large as the hen-hawk, but has a much longer tail. When I was a boy I used to call him the long-tailed hawk. The male is of a bluish slate-color; the female reddish-brown, like the hen-hawk, ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... feverish shoulders, and dragged himself painfully to a little square near by, taking care that no policeman should see him. He knelt down, and dug in the earth with his finger nails, and devoutly buried his old pipe underneath a tuft of flowers. Then he returned to his dwelling-place ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... the last is deep black, with a transverse yellowish spot just before the middle, the remainder of the edge slightly spotted with black, upper side covered with short blackish hairs; lower wings deep black; abdomen of a bright red, with a round white tuft on the upper side near the end; first two pairs of legs of a deep brown, with some reddish lines; hind legs ferruginous ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... air. There was not a bit of her body that was not in motion, from the tuft of hair a-top of her head to the soles of her twinkling boots. Now here, now there, head ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... their earliest condition are symmetrical, and, if arrested at this stage of growth, they would not become irregular. If, moreover, the arrest were to take place at a still earlier period of development, the result would be a simple tuft of green leaves; and no one probably would call this a case of reversion. Dr. Masters designates the cases first alluded to as regular peloria; and others, in which all the corresponding parts assume a similar form of irregularity, as when ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... ordained that the maid-servants who came to find situations should bring their badge of office with them to the fair. They came with their brooms and mops, just as a carter would tie a piece of whipcord to his coat, and a shepherd's hat would be decorated with a tuft of wool. Time was when the labouring man was never happy unless he changed his abode from year to year. He would get tired of one master and one village, and be off to Cirencester mop, where he was pretty sure to get a fresh job. But ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... Lilies-of-the-valley for you, pink tulips for you, Mrs. Evan,—they will soon close, and look like pointed rosebuds,—yellow daffies to match my gown, and you must choose for the two men I do not know. I'll take a tuft of these primroses for Mr. Bradford, and play they grew wild. We always joked him about these flowers at college until 'The Primrose' came to be his ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... stepping daintily, the "bell," or tuft of coarse hair beneath his chin, swinging to his pace. Occasionally a cottontail leaped from his path and paused to stare, big ears alert and nose twitching sensitively; or a red squirrel, that saucy ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... below me. I perceived in the depth, on top of a long stone support that extended down the wall directly beneath me to the escarpment, so that its form was lost, a sort of round basin. Rain-water had collected there and formed a narrow mirror at the bottom; there were also a tuft of grass with flowers in it, and a swallow's nest. Thus in a space only two feet in diameter were a lake, a garden and a habitation—a birds' paradise. As I gazed the swallow was giving water to her brood. ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... words of true poems, The words of true poems do not merely please, The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters of beauty; The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers, The words of true poems are the tuft and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... grasses, old mulliens, and stunted, scattered brush barely six inches high. There seemed hardly cover enough to hide a man, and yet the dozen were as completely swallowed up as though they had plunged beneath the waters of the sea. Only occasionally the top of a grass tuft or a greasewood shivered. It became the duty of Alfred and his companion to shoot suddenly and accurately at these motions. This was necessary in order to discourage the steady concealed advance of the dozen, who, when they had approached to within as few yards as their god of war would permit, ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... and went out, leaving Colonel Dodd staring after him with his square face twisted into an expression of utter astonishment, his little eyes goggling, his tuft of whisker sticking up like ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... old Rome. Nature has been shut out for numberless centuries from those stony-hearted streets, to which he had latterly grown accustomed; there is no trace of her, except for what blades of grass spring out of the pavements of the less trodden piazzas, or what weeds cluster and tuft themselves on the cornices of ruins. Therefore his joy was like that of a child that had gone astray from home, and finds him suddenly in his ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this conversation with himself, Sir Piercie Shafton was hastening to the little tuft of birch-trees which had been assigned as the place of meeting. He greeted his antagonist with a courtly salutation, followed by this commentary: "I pray you to observe, that I doff my hat to you, though so much my inferior in rank, without derogation ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... enough to convert into silver all the trees, bushes, leaves and twigs in the vicinity of the young ladies with the Thor-and-Odin names; whilst to complete this German vision, a white bird with a yellow tuft upon its head stands sentry upon a branch beside them, the said bird being, we presume, a filthy squealing cockatoo, although Mr Boas, gay deceiver that he is, evidently wishes us to infer that it was an indigenous volatile of the phoenix tribe. Sentinel Cockatoo, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... leashed. Rolf was allowed to get well ahead, and crawling cautiously, a step at a time, he went, setting down his moccasined foot only after he had tried and selected a place. Once or twice he threw into the air a tuft of dry grass to make sure that the wind was right, and by slow degrees he reached the edge ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton |
