"Dwarf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... turn for a moment to two other types of chestnut. First the chinquapin, a small dwarf chestnut which grows in the southern Atlantic states but reaches as far north as New Jersey and perhaps farther for all I know. The chinquapin in the past has been regarded as a rather resistant species and my own observations seem to bear out this supposition. I have seen very few chinquapins ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... anyone, making a display of dirt or stains on his clothes, or a torn shoe, prides himself to outsiders on his freedom from arrogance, and, by Zeus, thinks himself doing something very smart if he jeers at himself as a dwarf or hunchback, but wraps up and conceals as if they were ulcers the inner vileness of his soul and the deformities of his life, as his envy, his malignity, his littleness, his love of pleasure, and will not let anyone touch or look at them from fear ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... drenching days last week, he slopped down town with his cubs, and visited a poor little beggarly shed where were a dwarf, a fat woman, and a giant of honest eight feet, on exhibition behind tawdry show-canvases, but with nobody to exhibit to. The giant had a broom, and was cleaning up and fixing around, diligently. Joe conceived the idea ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... now in the kitchen-garden is water: during hot weather completely saturate the ground with it. July is not a very brisk month in the Children's Kitchen-garden; however, seeds of such useful salads as lettuce and radish may still be sown; and a few dwarf French beans can be put in if there is sufficient room. By sowing a small quantity of the early sorts of peas, it is just possible to obtain a fair crop, and particularly so if ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... sent as soon as my tender age would permit; for I was indeed but young when I went, and yet seemed younger than I was, by reason of my low and little stature. For it was held for some years a doubtful point whether I should not have proved a dwarf. But after I was arrived at the fifteenth year of my age, or thereabouts, I began to shoot up, and gave not up growing till I had attained the middle size ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... rest the Brigade moved on at dawn, the Battalion supplying the advance guard, and reaching its bivouac area at 1.15. The scenery as we advanced began to show a most welcome change. In the hollows by the side of the track little patches of dwarf barley appeared and a thin crop of green stuff began to transform the familiar sand. Our bivouac area was a valley which from a little distance looked almost like a meadow at home. On a nearer approach the vegetation ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... cases must have crawled, before dying, beneath and among the bushes." A strange instinct in a creature so preeminently social in its habits; a dweller all its life long on the open, barren plateaus and mountain sides! What a subject for a painter! The grey wilderness of dwarf thorn trees, aged and grotesque and scanty-leaved, nourished for a thousand years on the bones that whiten the stony ground at their roots; the interior lit faintly with the rays of the departing sun, chill and grey, and silent and motionless—the huanacos' Golgotha. In the long ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... The dwarf-palmetto on his knees adores This Princess of the air; The lone pine-barren broods afar and sighs, "Ah! come, lest I despair;" The myrtle-thickets and ill-tempered thorns Quiver and thrill within, As through their leaves they feel the dainty ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Many as I want to make up. I'm playing a story now while I wash dishes—this is my dining-room week. I pretend that a funny little dwarf climbed the beanstalk with Jack—and when the giant tumbled down he stayed up there in the giant's castle. Do you want to ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... proportions, say a Brobdingnagian and a Lilliputian, and let both show their powers in the arena. Suppose the first to weigh a million times more than the second. If the giant could raise to his shoulder, some thirty-five feet from the ground, a weight twenty thousand pounds, the dwarf can raise to his shoulder, not, as might be thought, a fiftieth of a pound, but two full pounds. The distance raised would be a hundred times less. In a race the Lilliputian, with a hundred skips a second, will travel an equal distance with the giant, who would take but a skip in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... fire-wood. There they found a big tree which lay felled on the ground, and close by the trunk something was jumping backwards and forwards in the grass, but they could not make out what it was. When they came nearer they saw a dwarf with an old withered face and a snow-white beard a yard long. The end of the beard was caught in a crevice of the tree, and the little fellow was jumping backwards and forwards like a dog tied to a rope, and did not ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... and climbed again, reaching at last a sun-and-wind-burnt common which forms the top of one of the highest mountains in the region. The forest was left below us and only a belt of dwarf firs ran along the edge of the great grassy shoulder. We dismounted, the mules were tethered among the trees, and our guide led us to an insignificant looking stone in the grass. On one face of the stone was cut the letter F., on the other was a D.; ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... him Popish because his name is Pope," says the lady. "'Tis only my joking way. And this little dwarf of a fellow has wrote a pastoral poem—all about shepherds and ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... strange mixture of the ludicrous and the terrible. This, with his insignificant size, and a bodily strength that was a miracle of surprise, won the admiration of an English gentleman; and when the tourist started back for Albion, the lusty dwarf rode on the box, duly articled, without consent of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... fly-trap. Every reader of natural history is familiar with its economy; but one does not often get a sight of it. By the side of it are many other curious plants, covered with equal care. Anoectochillis argenteus, a little dwarf plant, with leaves which, both in their beautiful lustre and peculiar markings, resemble a green lizard, must serve for an example. Among other curiosities, is a small plant of one of the species of rhododendrons, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... expected, have taken a very wide range in their inquiries as to what kind of plant the Dudaïm really was, some regarding it as lilies, roses, violets, snowdrops, and jasmine; others, as melons, plantain fruits, whirtleberries, dwarf brambles, the berries of the physalis or winter cherry, grapes of some peculiar kinds, or even underground fungi, as truffles, &c. Many have supposed the word to mean the ingredients, whatever they might have been, of a charm or love potion, and hence have recurred to the mandrake, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... the other day, meaning starlike; some people call these flowers Michaelmas daisies. These lovely lilac asters grow in light dry ground; they are among the prettiest of our fall flowers. These with the small white starry flowers crowded upon the stalks, with the crimson and gold in the middle, are dwarf asters." ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... honor to be one of Goude's pupils, but it had its drawbacks. His criticisms were severe and bitter; and he fell into violent passions when, as Leroux once observed, he looked like the yellow dwarf in a rage. Cuthbert had heard of him from Terrier, who said that Goude had the reputation of being by far the best master in Paris. He had presented himself to him as soon as he arrived there; his reception had not ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... vegetables Dwarf French Beans are deservedly in high favour, and are everywhere sown at the earliest moment consistent with reasonable expectations of their safety. This early sowing is altogether laudable, for although it occasionally entails the loss of a plantation, the aggregate ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... and I was carried ashore pick-a-back, and plucked the first flower I saw for Annie. It was a strange scene, far more novel than I had imagined: the high, steep banks covered with rich, spicy vegetation of which I hardly knew one plant. The dwarf palm with fan-like leaves, growing about two feet high, formed the staple of the verdure. As we brushed through them, the gummy leaves of a cistus stuck to the clothes; and with its small white flower and yellow heart, stood for our English dog-rose. In place of heather, we had myrtle ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exquisite silver and gold work upon them, and vessels of solid silver, some of them weighing six hundred pounds, were placed at the foot of the columns. We were shown two goblets, each prized at six thousand thalers, made of gold and precious stones; also the great pearl called the "Spanish Dwarf," nearly as large as a pullet's egg, globes and vases cut entirely out of the mountain-crystal, magnificent Nuremberg watches and clocks, and a great number of figures made ingeniously of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... quoted in Johnson's Dictionary (in the later editions only), under cross-bow. It is as follows:—'Testimony is like the shot of a long-bow, which owes its efficacy to the force of the shooter; argument is like the shot of the cross-bow, equally forcible whether discharged by a giant or a dwarf.' See Smollett's Works, ed. 1797, i. cliv, for a somewhat fuller account by Dr. Moore of what was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stunt or paralyze ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... twenty-third birthday. Transformation, like Frankenstein, dwells on the pathos of ugliness and deformity, but the subject is treated rather in the spirit of an eastern fairy tale than in that of a novel of terror. The dwarf, in return for a chest of treasure, borrows a beautiful body, and, thus disguised, wins the love of Juliet, and all ends happily. Mrs. Shelley's short stories[124] reveal a stronger sense of proportion than her novels, and are written in a more graceful, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... island on the right is a less settled country than the island of the temple. Camels, you note, run wild there; there is a sort of dwarf elephant, similar to the now extinct kind of which one finds skeletons in Malta, pigs, a red parrot, and other such creatures, of lead and wood. The pear-trees are fine. It is those which have attracted white settlers (I suppose they are), whose thatched huts are to be seen both upon the beach ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... me buried here. Up there to the north, three hundred yards from here on the right, is a dwarf cedar standing alone. Straight over the ridge from that and half-way down the other side is another cedar growing at the foot of a ledge. Below that ledge is a grave. There are stones piled flat, and a cross cut in the one toward ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... to pieces, and to split; Her necklace and her clothes were gone, And she had next to nothing on. Her hair was short, and was—alack! No longer fair, but bluish black! And she herself was—only think! Spotted all over brown and pink! Too scared to cry, she rose and saw A giant, dwarf, and several more. In fact, it soon was pretty plain These wicked men had stolen Jane, And meant to use her as a show, Dressed as a "spotted child," you know. She struggled hard to be polite; "Pray, sirs," she asked, "can this be right?" "You 'old your bloomin' row!" they said, And ...
— Plain Jane • G. M. George
... in those early times the work of the smith was looked upon as the most worthy of all trades,—a trade which the gods themselves were not ashamed to follow. And this smith Mimer was a wonderful master,—the wisest and most cunning that the world had ever seen. Men said that he was akin to the dwarf-folk who had ruled the earth in the early days, and who were learned in every lore, and skilled in every craft; and they said that he was so exceeding old that no one could remember the day when he came to dwell in the land of Siegmund's ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... Giant appeared to be entirely of this opinion, for during the foregoing rhapsody of his fellow-sentinel he had been scratching his head with an air of comical uneasiness, or rather with an air that would have been very comical if he had been a dwarf or an ordinary-sized man. He winked too, and though it could not be doubted for a moment that he winked to himself, still he certainly cocked his enormous eye towards the gallery where the listener was concealed. Nor was this all, for he gaped; and when he gaped, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... country from there to the roots of the mountains; great pines stood wide apart, with here and there a dwarf cedar steeping in the strong sun. We hunted all the morning and lay up under a dark oak watching the young winds stalk one another among the lupins. Lifting myself to catch the upper scent, I winded a man that was not of Ty-uonyi. A moment later we saw him ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... had passed, and the two survivors of this awful journey sat watching each other. The gaunt giant, his eyes gleaming with hate and hunger, sat sentinel over the dwarf. The dwarf, chuckling at his superior sagacity, clutched the fatal axe. For two days they had not spoken to each other. For two days each had promised himself that on the next his companion must sleep—and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... same degree as Michael Angelo, using what the Greeks and Duerer would doubtless have considered a dangerous liberty, however much they might have felt bound to admire the results obtained; not only does he do this when, for instance, he represents Jesus now as a giant, now as almost a dwarf, according to the imaginative impression which he chooses to create; but he follows a similar process in his black and white pattern. For among his works there are etchings, which, though often supposed to have been left unfinished, are discerned by those with a sense for ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... sleeping late in the morning when one sleeps in the open, under the stars. After breakfast, the artist received another lesson in packing, and they moved on toward the world that already seemed to dwarf that other world which they had left, by one day's walking, so far below. A heavy fog, rolling in from the ocean in the night, submerged the valley in its dull, gray depths—leaving to the eye no view but the view of the mountains before ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... the 14th, and about an hour before these troops (dragoons for the most part) began to descend the pass, I had posted myself with Jose on one of the lower ridges and (as I imagined) well under cover of the dwarf oaks which grew thickly there. They did indeed screen us admirably from the squadrons I was watching, and they passed unsuspecting within fifty yards of us. Believing them to be but an advance guard, and that we should soon hear the tramp ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the steamer which will take me to Shetland and Aberdeen, from which last place I go by train to Inverness, where my things are, and thence home. I had a stormy passage to Stromness, from whence I took a boat to the Isle of Hoy, where I saw the wonderful Dwarf's House hollowed out of the stone. From Stromness I walked here. I have seen the old Norwegian Cathedral; it is of red sandstone, and looks as if cut out of rock. It is different from almost everything of the kind I ever saw. It ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... without it must be a sort of shift for the mastery. He, therefore, not only cast his eye on one of the most high-spirited women that he knew in his own society, but actually one on the largest scale of physical dimensions. If he had one hero of his admiration more than another, it was a little dwarf at Mansfield, who used to wear a soldier's jacket, and who had taken it into his head to marry a very tall woman, whom he had reduced to such perfect subjection, that he used from time to time to evince his mastery by mounting ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... vivid-faced youth of eighteen, smiled at me from a pair of remarkable Italian eyes. But he was a dwarf. So short was he that he was all sea-boots and sou'wester. And yet he was not entirely Italian. So certain was I that I asked the mate, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... mean to accept the proposal, or not," she consequently said, "you can anyhow speak nicely. It isn't worth the while dragging this one in and involving that one! The proverb adequately says: 'In the presence of a dwarf one mustn't speak of dwarfish things!' Here you've been heaping insult upon me, but I didn't presume to retaliate. These two young ladies have however given you no provocation whatever; and yet by referring, as you've done, in this way and that way to secondary wives how ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... just before the mob spilled out into the square. The fleeing dwarf stared about wildly for an instant, his head jerking from side to side so rapidly that it was impossible to get even a fleeting impression of his face—human or nonhuman, familiar or bizarre. Then, like a pellet loosed from its sling, he made straight ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... regard for direction. I was becoming numb, but in half an hour I safely reached the dwarf trees at timberline and plunged through them to a dense grove of spruce. Occasionally there was a dead tree, and nearly all trees had dead limbs low down. With such limbs or small trunks as I could find I constructed ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... as the statement is, it is a better theology than many another of much larger dimensions. Many people do not understand this alliance in which we are led into union with God, through the Holy Spirit. They think it is more like the old story of the dwarf and the giant, who went a warfare together, in which expedition the dwarf lost his arms and legs, and was only saved from imminent death in each conflict by the happy arrival of the giant. One can scarcely blame the dwarf ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... perch. Grass is apparently the most convenient material for the purposes of the Weaver-bird when constructing its nest, but other substances are often substituted, and some nests which I brought from Ceylon proved to be formed with delicate strips from the fronds of the dwarf date-palm, Phoenix paludosa, which happened to grow near the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... half rose, and seeing the dwarf so near, and on the other side of her a repulsive looking woman staring at her, sprung to her feet and fled. The same instant the mad laird, catching sight of Mrs Catanach, gave a cry of misery, thrust his fingers in his ears, darted down the other side of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... related; in one of these cases there were 5 idiotic children; in 5 families there were 4 idiots each; in 3 families 3 each; in 2 families 2 each; and in 6 families i each. In all 17 families there were 95 children of whom 44 were idiots, 12 were scrofulous and puny, 1 was deaf, 1 dwarf—58 in low health or defective, and only 37 fairly healthy. These of course are selected cases and do not indicate at all, as Dr. Howe supposed, that consanguinity was the cause of the disasters. He adds that in each case one or both of the parents were either intemperate or scrofulous, ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... fell in with a very little man—so little, indeed, that most people would have called him a dwarf. He was walking in the same direction as Edward, and overtaking him, and Edward waved his hand and smiled and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... Rupert, who was concealed from her by some trees, a little in advance of her. She hastened forwards, and found him and all the others just emerged from the wood, and standing on an open bare common where neither castle nor cottage was to be seen, nothing but a carpet of purple heath, dwarf furze, and short soft grass upon which a few cows, a colt, and a donkey, were browsing. The party were standing together, laughing, some moderately, ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gave birth to William Parsons, [query Walter,] the gigantic porter of King {136} James I., whose picture was at Whitehall; and a bas-relief of him, with Jeffry Hudson the dwarf, was fixed in the front of a house near the end of a bagnio court, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... from a tiny point on the stage until it became a living pillar of luminosity that seemed to dwarf the night. ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... two dynasties had sprung from the island of Elephantine, opposite Assuan; it was, therefore, perhaps natural that they should take an interest in the country to the south. One expedition made its way into the land of Punt, to the north of Abyssinia, and brought back a Danga dwarf, whose tribal name still survives under the form of Dongo. Later expeditions explored the banks of the Nile as far south as the country of the Dwarfs, as well as the oases ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... Bethany to Jericho was sometime a little city, but it is now all destroyed, and now is there but a little village. That city took Joshua by miracle of God and commandment of the angel, and destroyed it, and cursed it and all them that bigged it again. Of that city was Zaccheus the dwarf that clomb up into the sycamore tree for to see our Lord, because he was so little he might not see him for the people. And of that city was Rahab the common woman that escaped alone with them of her lineage: and ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... riddle-me-ree, And tell me what my name may be. I am nearly one hundred and thirty years old, And therefore no chicken, as you may suppose;— Tho' a dwarf in my youth (as my nurses have told), I have, every year since, been out-growing my clothes: Till at last such a corpulent giant I stand, That if folks were to furnish me now with a suit, It would take every morsel of scrip in the land But to measure ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Gnome with beard so gray Who digged for gems all night and day To please the Dwarf with anxious looks Who guarded the castle and kept the books ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... abstracted, self-forgetful, trying to find out with an ever increased self-detachment, with an ever deepening regal solicitude, why there are massacres, wars, tyrannies and persecutions, why we let famine, disease and beasts assail us, and want dwarf and cripple vast multitudes in the midst of possible plenty. And when he found out and as far as he found out, he meant quite simply and earnestly to apply ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... amusements, the lack of contrast, these are a few of the causes that contribute towards the self-centred existence led by most inhabitants of rural communities. To prove this, one has but to think of a cripple, or a dwarf, or a drunken man, or a maniac; also, to revert to pleasanter images, of an unusual flower or animal, or of convincing and conspicuous personal beauty. What is a cripple in the city? He is passed by without a glance, for there ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... different from the rest, and signifies nothing more than the exaggerated outlines of a figure, all the parts of which may be, in other respects, a perfect and true picture of nature. A giant or a dwarf may be called a common man, outre. So any part, as a nose, or a leg, made bigger, or less than it ought to be, is that part outre, which is all that is to be understood by this word, injudiciously used to the prejudice of ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the Ouysse, I came to a spot where the valley ended in an amphitheatre formed by steep hills more than 600 feet high, and covered for the most part with dwarf oak. In the hollow under the dark cliffs was a little lake or pool forty or fifty yards from shore to shore. The water showed no sign of trouble save where it overflowed its basin on the western side, and formed the river that I had been keeping in sight for hours. The pool filled the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... is of beauty in Accra is oriental in type. Seen from the sea, Fort St. James on the left and Christiansborg Castle on the right, both almost on shore level, give, with an outcrop of sandy dwarf cliffs, a certain air of balance and strength to the town, though but for these and the two old castles, Accra would be but a poor place and a flimsy, for the rest of it is a mass of rubbishy mud and palm-leaf huts, and corrugated iron dwellings ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Dwarf-elves, of Scandinavia are famous for the dexterity with which they fabricate ornaments of every kind, from the gold which they dig out of the depths of ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... "Impudent little dwarf!" said my mother, recovering her breath after ever so long. "Oh, John, how thankful you ought to be! What a life she ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... grasping real iron pincers, and the other a huge hammer; and it had a helmet on its head, without any eyelet holes, that I could see. And its two hind claws became strong crooked legs, with feet bent inwards. And so there stood by me a dwarf, in glossy black armour, ribbed and embossed like a beetle's back, leaning on his hammer. And I could not speak for wonder; but he spoke with a murmur like the dying away of a beat upon a bell. He said, 'I will ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... small padded compartment like that of the pneumatic tube cars. At one end there was an amazing array of machinery with glittering levers and handwheels—a control board on which numberless tiny lights blinked and flickered in rapid succession. At these controls squatted the twisted figure of a dwarf. A second of the creatures sat at his side and stared with those ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... there lived three poor little dwarfs in a tumble-down house by a roadside, and each dwarf owned ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... the Cambrian Rocks are very rich in the remains of Trilobites. In the lowest beds of the series (Longmynd Rocks), representatives of some half-dozen genera have now been detected, including the dwarf Agnostus and the giant Paradoxides. In the higher beds, the number both of genera and species is largely increased; and from the great comparative abundance of individuals, the Trilobites have every right to be considered as the most characteristic fossils ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... between St. George's Sound and the Gulf coast we traversed a vast swamp, where the ground was carpeted with the dwarf saw palmettos. A fire had killed all the large trees, and their blasted, leafless forms were covered with the flaunting tresses of Spanish moss. The tops of many of these trees were crowned by the Osprey's nest, and the birds ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... evening camps to increase the merriment of his jolly companions. In those days we got no rain, see no living animals of any kind except those of our train, see not a bird nor insect, see nothing green except a very stunted sage, and some dwarf bushes. We now know that the winter of 1849-50 was one of the wettest ever seen in California, but for some reason or other none of the wet clouds ever came to this portion of the State to deposit the most scattering ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... ripple upon the water, not a breath stirring the rushes on the banks. Between the balcony and the river there was a broad battlemented walk, and in the embrasures where cannon had once been there were great stone vases of geraniums and dwarf roses, which seemed only masses of dark foliage ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... physical laws do not assimilate with those of other continents, lies the great charm of Australian exploration. It is the spectacle of one man pitted against the whole force of nature—not the equal struggle of two human antagonists, but the old fable of the subtle dwarf ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... saw as she left Monte Carlo was that of the hunchbacked dwarf at St. Roman. He was hobbling away from his pitch to go home, and from the window of the closed landau Mary waved a hand to him ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all wretched and useless. They can be described only by negative characters; without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support merely a few dwarf plants. Why, then, and the case is not peculiar to myself, have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold on my memory? Why have not the still more level, the greener and more fertile Pampas, which are serviceable ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... very wild localities, may lie close by a carcass, or in the middle of a berry ground. The deer-killing bear above mentioned had evidently dragged two or three of his victims to his den, which was under an impenetrable mat of bull-berries and dwarf box-alders, hemmed by a cut bank on one side and a wall of gnarled cottonwoods on the other. Round this den, and rendering it noisome, were scattered the bones of several deer and a young steer or heifer. When we found it we thought we could ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... pleasant odour of Russia leather and camphor-wood came from the dwarf bookcases that dadoed the walls. The room was quite dark; the two high windows, screened by clear muslin blinds running on gilded rods, showed pale parallelograms of cold twilight. The coachhouse and stable building at the end of the paved yard showed as a cube of blackness. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... were t' witch dwarf, if I had t' money, wud hur thank me? Wud hur take me out o' this place wid hur and Janey? I wud not come into the gran' house hur wud build, to vex hur wid t' hunch,—only at night, when t' shadows were dark, stand ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... investigations when he had passed into another. This peculiarity of his mind makes the idea of a "Johnson party" so difficult of realization; for a party cannot be founded on a man, unless that man's intellect and integrity are so manifestly pre-eminent as to dwarf all comparison with others, or unless his conduct obeys laws, and can therefore be calculated. Thus the gentlemen who spoke for him in New York, on the 22d of February, at the time he was speaking for himself in Washington, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... me to mention any point on which I want information. If you are so inclined, I am curious to know from systematic experiments whether Mr. D. Beaton's statement that the pollen of two shortest anthers of scarlet Pelargonium produce dwarf plants (625/1. See "Animals and Plants," Edition II., Volume II., page 150, for a brief account of Darwin's experiments on this genus. Also loc. cit., page 338 (note), for a suggested experiment.), in ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... a long hour, Helen's roving eyes were everywhere, taking note of the things from near to far—the scant sage that soon gave place to as scanty a grass, and the dark blots that proved to be dwarf cedars, and the ravines opening out as if by magic from what had appeared level ground, to wind away widening between gray stone walls, and farther on, patches of lonely pine-trees, two and three together, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... districts three feet deep) intermixed with the roots of the wishakapakka herb (Ledum palustre, from which Labrador tea is made), of cranberries, gooseberries, heather (with white bell flowers), and a dwarf birch. This last, in sheltered places where a little vegetable soil has been formed, grows into a low scrubby bush. As to the gooseberries—here and farther south—Hearne describes them as "thriving best on the stony or rocky ground, open and much exposed to ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... shade. For we had quite left the patches of forest behind at this point, and were tramping slowly over a bare sterile region of the most forbidding character, low down by the river. Higher up where we could not climb the tall trees again appeared, and every ledge and slope was crowned with dwarf pine, ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... numbers which dwarf the grand armies of Napoleon and Xerxes. But they are numbers not of conquest and maintenance of the established order, but of conquest and revolution. They compose, when the roll is called, an army ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... Everything was to his satisfaction. So his tall, fur-clad figure passed in amongst the dwarf trees. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... moonlit garden, and in it a vast tree with twisted roots that seemed familiar to her. Something moving among the branches of this tree attracted her attention, but for a long while she watched it without being able to discover what it was. Now she saw. The moving thing was a hideous black dwarf with beady eyes, who held in his hand a little ivory tipped bow, on the string of which was set an arrow. Her consciousness concentrated itself upon this arrow, and though she knew not how, she became aware that it was poisoned. ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... whose twigs, crossing and intertwining with each other, added to the roughness below, made the passage infinitely toilsome. Scattered over this space were single cedars with their ragged spines and wreaths of moss, and copses of dwarf oaks, which were only new ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... how they stand between us and our own contempt, believing in our best; how, linking us with others, and still spreading wide the influential circle, they weave us in and in with the fabric of contemporary life; and to what petty size they dwarf the virtues and the vices that appeared gigantic in our youth. So that at the last, when such a pin falls out—when there vanishes in the least breath of time one of those rich magazines of life on which we drew for our supply—when he who had first dawned upon us as a face ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a cry of alarm, and pointed towards the opposite wall. Sibyll, startled from her revery, looked up, and saw something dusk and dwarf-like perched upon the crumbling eminence. Presently this apparition leaped lightly into the garden, and the alarm of the women was lessened on seeing a young boy creep stealthily over the grass and approach the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... about their acquaintances; precisely like a duke or a delicatessen-keeper. They played out their game. But it was so tiny a game, so played to the exclusion of all other games, that it tended to dwarf its victims—and the restless children, such as Carl, instinctively resent this dwarfing. They seek to associate themselves with other rebels. Carl's unconscious rebel band was the group of rowdyish freshmen who called themselves "the Gang," and loafed about the room of their unofficial captain, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... so like a gray-whiskered dwarf or gnome that Sara was rather fascinated. He looked at her with his bright eyes, as if he were asking a question. He was evidently so doubtful that one of the child's queer thoughts came into ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was the Royal Circus, all the horses standing in a line, with men and women standing on their backs, waving flags, while the trumpeters blew their trumpets. And the largest giant in the world, and Mr Paap, the smallest dwarf in the world, and a female dwarf, who was smaller still, and Miss Biffin, who did everything without legs or arms. There was also the learned pig, and the Herefordshire ox, and a hundred other sights which I ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... to the American public. His "A Daughter of Mystery" was one of the most realistic stories of modern London life that has recently appeared. "The Golden Dwarf" is such another story, intense and almost sensational. Mr. Silver reveals the mysterious and gruesome beneath the commonplace in an absorbing manner. The "Golden Dwarf" himself, his strange German physician, and the secret of the Wyresdale ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... not at the name, for it was familiar to him, but at the mere mention of the person who bore it and who was the King's dwarf jester, Miguel de Antona, commonly known by his classic nickname. "Bring Adonis here—he ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box, eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... be found identical with that which obtained among the ancient Jews. In this respect the Levitical law was the same as the masonic, which would not allow any 'to go in unto the vail' who had a blemish—a blind man, or a lame, or a man that was broken-footed, or broken-handed, or a dwarf, &c.... ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... horrible cavern with a floor of ice in many places, and with a temperature below freezing even in summer? Fuel they could not procure, as there are but black sandy moors around that grow nothing but dwarf willow, and that is so scarce as to be inefficient for their purpose. They must have supplied themselves with light and heat by the tallow of the sheep they killed, run into a lamp. This is the only heating fuel used at present by the Icelanders, apart ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... have fancied between the superiority of the moderns to the ancients, and the elevation of a dwarf on the back of a giant, is {126} altogether false and puerile. Neither were they giants, nor are we dwarfs, but all of us men of the same standard; and we, the taller of the two, by adding their height to our own. Provided always that we do not yield to them in study, attention, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... to myself as some hero, waging far, lonely fights, against foes on the edge of the skies; and I dreamed of how Vega stood waiting, until Stroom married Graith, and of how at the height of his majesty she inflicted her doom—a succession of abhorrent rebirths as a grotesque little dwarf. ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... King Golo. But she—so strange is the perversity of women—beholding this man of a pearly tint, as fair as the moon, and as soft as a river—for he took many months to get properly tanned—with one long gaze of amazement yielded to him what he sought for another. A dwarf and a whipster he might be among the great darkies around her—for he had only six feet and one inch of stature, and forty-two inches round the chest—but, to her fine taste, tone and quality more than covered defect of quantity. The sight of male members of her race ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... three loafers came slouching down the street, eager for mischief or beastliness of some sort. They chose a house that seemed rather smarter than the rest, and, irritated by the neat curtains, the little grass plot with its dwarf shrub, one of the ruffians drew out a piece of chalk and wrote some words on the front door. His friends kept watch for him, and the adventure achieved, all three bolted, bellowing yahoo laughter. Then a bell began, tang, tang, tang, and here and there children appeared on their way to Sunday-school, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... its being directly opposite to the western[509] coast of Sky, where the watery clouds are broken by high mountains. The hills here, and indeed all the heathy grounds in general, abound with the sweet-smelling plant which the Highlanders call gaul, and (I think) with dwarf juniper in many places. There is enough of turf, which is their fuel, and it is thought there is a mine of coal.—Such are the observations which I made upon the island of Rasay, upon comparing it with the description given by Martin, whose book ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... shadow. An Irish Glen surrounded by bare mountains covered with dwarf oaks, overhanging a big bog. The Moon is shining dimly. CASPAR discovered with a pouch and hanger, busily engaged in making a Circle of fairy lanterns, in the middle of which is placed a turnip-skull, a shillelagh, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... and rich Candian wines, Yet drinks the lees of Lombard's vinegar: You will not lie in straw, whilst moths and worms Feed on your sumptuous hangings and soft beds; You know the use of riches, and dare give now From that bright heap, to me, your poor observer, Or to your dwarf, or your hermaphrodite, Your eunuch, or what other household-trifle ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... colonnade which in spite of faults possesses unequalled majesty, a vast piazza, enclosing many acres, in whose immense area puny man dwindles to a dwarf, and in the distance the unapproachable glories of the greatest of earthly temples—such is the ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... with its decaying stumps, its rounded hillocks, its patches of withering fern and harsh dwarf juniper, was bathed in all the colours of the autumn sunset, while the farmyard down in the valley was already in the first purple of the twilight. The centre of the pasture was the hilltop, roughly rounded, and naked save for one maple-tree, now ablaze with scarlet and amber. Along ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... tail of an army. Indians tottered and staggered under green-curtained doolies; Kaffir boys guided spans of four and five and six mules drawing ambulances, like bakers' vans; others walked beside waggons curling whips that would dwarf the biggest salmon-rod round the flanks of small-bodied, huge-horned oxen. This tail of the army alone covered three miles of road. At length emerging in front of them you found two clanking field-batteries, and sections of mountain guns jingling on mules. Ahead of these again long ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... But exile, you will say, is a matter of reproach. It may be among fools, who also jeer at the beggar, the bald man, the dwarf, aye, and even the stranger and resident alien. But those who are not carried away in that manner admire good men, whether they are poor, or strangers or exiles. Do we not see that all men adore the temple of Theseus as well as the Parthenon ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... surprising knowledge of what the receipts will be always, and wins half-crowns every night. Chang is living in this house. John (not knowing it) was rendered perfectly drivelling last night, by meeting him on the stairs. The Tartar Dwarf is always twining himself upstairs sideways, and drinks a bottle of whisky per day, and is reported to be a surprising ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... now what relieved in part this over-tension of soul was the lad's pleasure in the country and the open air; above all, the ramble to the coast, over the marsh with its dwarf roses and wild lavender, and delightful signs, one after another—the abandoned boat, the ruined flood-gates, the flock of wild birds—that one was approaching the sea; the long summer-day of idleness among its vague scents and sounds. And it was characteristic ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... low blueberry. It is very much like the dwarf blueberry, but the bush grows sometimes as high as four feet. It is stiff and upstanding and prefers the edge of the woods and sheltered roadsides to the dry open fields. The berries are blue with a grape-like bloom and, like the first ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... he would eat no food on the day of Pentecost, which we call Whit Sunday, until he had heard or seen some great marvel. So on that morning Sir Gawaine was looking from the window a little before noon when he espied three men on horseback, and with them a dwarf on foot, who held their horses when they alighted. Then Sir Gawaine went to the King and said, 'Sir, go to your food, for strange adventures are at hand.' And Arthur called the other Kings that were in the castle, and all the Knights ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... he replied. "In the first place there is always much to be said on both sides of any question, and a clever speaker can make his side dwarf the other. And of course no party could exist five minutes unless it had some good in it. There are several admirable principles in the Populist creed; there are enough windy theories to upset the Constitution of which they ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... side of the ornithon proper which contains the cages, to the upper end of the interior quadrangle [adjoining the capital]. This portico is constructed of a series of stone columns between which and the main outside walls are planted dwarf shrubs, a net of hemp being stretched from the top of the walls to the architrave of the portico, and thence down to the stylobate or floor. The exterior spaces thus enclosed are filled with all kinds of birds which are fed through the net, water being provided by a small running stream. ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... in a tone of compassion; for he was a giant in strength and stature, and Nicholas, very likely, in his eyes, seemed a mere dwarf; 'dean't say thot.' ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... same time destroys the gums. The more wealthy people have suburban villas, the gardens of which are surrounded by a wall, and laid out in the Chinese style, with fish-ponds, containing gold and silver fish, bridges, pagoda-shaped summer-houses and chapels, beds of gay-coloured flowers, and dwarf fruit-trees. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... conductors whenever they entered and asked when the train was due in New York (a tremulous, vibratory old lady in antiquated frills and an agitatedly sidewise bonnet, and loose black silk gloves), and across the aisle a tiny, deformed woman, a dwarf, in fact, with her maid. This little woman was richly dressed, and she had a fine face. She was old enough to be Maria's mother. Her eyes were dark and keen, her forehead domelike, and her square, resigned chin was sunken in the laces at her throat. Her maid was ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... many faces intent on what I had to say, and among them was a little dwarf belonging to the house, as an errand-boy. He covered up his face with his hands, sitting upon a low stool, and perhaps his mind wandered back to the humble cottage where he was born, and a mother's smile was his best beacon of goodness: he had not forgotten! For when I came back ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... leisurely up the avenue towards the Casa Barenna when the branches of a dwarf ilex were pushed aside, and there came to him from their leafy concealment, not indeed a wood- nymph, but Senora Barenna, with ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... not to appeal against me to the law, which cannot yet determine whether I am a reality or a fiction? Or have I proved my arm a little too substantial? Must the giant promise not to exercise the masculine prerogative of physical force safely conceded to the dwarf? Fie, Eveena! I am almost afraid to touch you, lest I should hurt you unawares; lest tenderness itself should transgress the limit of legal cruelty, and do grave bodily harm to a creature so much more like a fairy than ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... pink tarlatan to her first ball, or whether on the day of her elopement the indignant papa succeeded in preventing the consummation of her felicity with Mr. Belshazzar Algernon Nebuchadnezzar Smith. I neither magnify nor dwarf, I merely state a ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... footsteps on the boggy patches, with scratches on the rock where he had leapt from point to point, or planted his stick to steady himself. I tried to help Elsie along among the littered boulders and the dwarf growth of wind-swept daphne: but, poor child, it was too much for her: she sat down after a few minutes upon the flat juniper scrub and began to cry. What was I to do? My anxiety was breathless. I couldn't leave her there alone, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... conscious of his great powers in this art, he would never publish any specimen of his writing. 'My stature,' he would say, 'is reflected in my verses; if the public were to read them it would not be because I am a poet, but because I am a dwarf.' Several MS. books of Sir Hercules's poems survive. A single specimen will suffice to illustrate his ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... answer; you are embarrassed. She has then taken your fancy; or you fear to offend our friend Monsieur de Thou in comparing her with the beautiful Guemenee. Well, let's talk of the customs; the King has a charming dwarf I'm told, and they put him in a pie. He is a fortunate man, that King of Spain! I don't know another equally so. And the Queen, she is still served on bended knee, is she not? Ah! that is a good custom; we have lost it. It is very unfortunate—more ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... large heap is built in alternate layers,' I read with passionate interest, 'of these materials; it is left for several days, and then turned over. The site of the hot-bed should be sheltered from cold winds, but open to the sunshine. Early and dwarf varieties of potatoes should be chosen; asparagus plants may be dug up from the ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... the scene before and below with the eye of a painter. Insensibly, while listening to the bandit, he had wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon a broad ledge of rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this eminence and another of equal height, upon which the castle was built, there was a deep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, so that the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged surface of the abyss; but the profoundness ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... I had tied the calf to a low tree, which I discovered was the thorny dwarf palm, which grows quickly, and is extremely useful for fences. It bears an oblong fruit, about the size of a pigeon's egg, from which is extracted an oil which is an excellent substitute for butter. I determined to return for some young plants of this palm to plant ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... results are perfectly remarkable. I have only done it for a year, but you will see 100% of catches on almost everything, hickories, walnuts, hazels. I must tell you of one very remarkable incident. Mrs. Morris had some dwarf trees set out on the slope of the lawn, dwarf pear trees. One of my men cut one of them off with a lawn mower the latter part of August. The top kicked around under foot for three or four days, wilted in the sun. We were ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... they came upon three caves, hollowed from the rocks, and in front of each cave squatted a queer little dwarf. Ozma and the Wizard paused to examine them and found them well-shaped, strong and lively. They had big round ears, flat noses and wide grinning mouths, and their jet-black hair came to points on top of their heads, much ...
— Little Wizard Stories of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... on extraordinary occasions. Any levity manifested either by the teacher or the pupils will be fatal to the effect. But to illustrate it, I will state a fact. In the play-ground of an Infant School there was an early dwarf cherry-tree, which, from its situation, had fruit, while other trees had only flowers. It became, therefore, an object of general attention, and ordinarily called forth a variety of important observations. Now it happened that two children, one five years of age, and the other not quite three, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... flame-colored azalea and the North American papaw—a relative of the tropical custard-apple—and the pink blossoms of the Judas-tree, and several varieties of larkspur, and in low thickets are found the white adder's-tongue and the dwarf white trillium. At the West, the interesting anemone called Easter or Pasque flower, from its blossoming near Easter; and another beautiful Western flower is the American cowslip, called also the shooting-star, which is found in Pennsylvania as well ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the flavor of Red Russian to the ubiquitous green Siberian, but Red Russian is very slightly less cold hardy. Westland Winter (TSC) and Konserva (JSS) are tall European oleracea varieties. Winterbor F1 (JSS, TSC) is also excellent. The dwarf "Scotch" kales, blue or green, sold by many American seed companies are less vigorous types that don't produce nearly as many gourmet little leaves. Dwarfs in any species tend ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... ring as it flashed before him, and his face changed. No such jewel had he in all his treasures, for it was of dwarf work in gold, set with a deep crimson stone that was like the setting sun for brightness. I do not know whence these stones came, unless it were from the East. Eleyn the queen, his mother, was thence, and I know now that the ring was hers. But I think that when ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... them in the name of law and order. With these pauper princes his children intermarried, and he fed them with his crumbs and clothed them with scraps of his purple. The visitor can see today, in every one of their dwarf palaces, some of his malachite vases or porcelain bowls ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... being white-washed. The little retreat is most delightful, and I am sure you and Lady Beaumont would be highly pleased with it. Coleridge has never seen it. What a happiness would it be to us to see him there, and entertain you all next Summer in our homely way under its shady thatch. I will copy a dwarf inscription which I wrote for it the other day, before the building was entirely finished, which indeed it ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to be our ornamental water, choose an open seaboard with a heavy beat of surf; one much broken in outline, with small havens and dwarf headlands; if possible a few islets; and as a first necessity, rocks reaching out into deep water. Such a rock on a calm day is a better station than the top of Teneriffe or Chimborazo. In short, both ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cement, making spreading rails and loose ballast impossible. A large increase in capital was necessary for these improvements, the elimination of curves being the most laborious part, requiring bridges, cuttings, and embankments that dwarf the Pyramids and would have made the ancient Pharaohs open their eyes; but with the low rate of interest on bonds, the slight cost of power, and great increase in business, the venture was a success, and we are now in sight of further advances that will enable a traveller in ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... administrative tenure of India so much of the bold generalship of raw recruits, the statesmanship of common clerks, and the heroic devotion of mere adventurers, that even the largest canvas of the historian must dwarf the stature of heroes; and characters which, in the history of Greece or England, would stand out in bold relief, must vanish unnoticed in the crowd. The substance of the present memoir appeared in the "Journal" of ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... had such an absorbing interest, that they have tended to overshadow the half century of distinction and achievement which preceded them. Failure and disappointment on the part of such a man as Webster seem so great, that they too easily dwarf everything else, and hide from us a just and well proportioned view of the whole career. Mr. Webster's success had, in truth, been brilliant, hardly equalled in measure or duration by that of any other eminent ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... he spied his father come riding from one direction, and Curate Haddo walking from another; and Montroymont leaning down from the saddle, and Haddo getting on his toes (for he was a little, ruddy, bald-pated man, more like a dwarf), they greeted kindly, and came to a halt within two fathoms of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nothing. The great artist steps upon that scene, and how she fills it in a moment! Mind and majesty wait upon her in the air; her person is lost in the greatness of her personal presence; she dilates with thought, and a stupid giantess looks a dwarf ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... plantation, the aggregate result is advantageous, and a very little protection suffices to carry the early plant through the late spring frosts. But those who supply our tables with green delicacies do not all recognise the importance of late sowings of Dwarf Beans. Here, again, a risk must be incurred, but the cost is trifling, and when the summer is prolonged to October the late-sown Beans are highly prized. Even if they produce plentifully through September there is a ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... ascended, the trees decreased in size. We had long ago left the deciduous foliage behind us; but the pines themselves were smaller, interspersed with what is called "crooked timber," which grows in grotesque dwarf-like forms. The forest at last diminished into mere sparse shrubs, and finally we reached the treeless region, called in German the Alpen, where there is rich pasturage for cattle and sheep during the summer. We were now on tolerably level ground, and I thought ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... confess that Fanny Brandeis begins to lose interest for me. Big Business seems to dwarf the finer things in her. That red-cheeked, shabby little schoolgirl, absorbed in Zola and peanut brittle in the Winnebago library, was infinitely more appealing than this glib and capable young woman. ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Lord Grenville, or even the Duke of Portland? But the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Talleyrand, 'is' acknowledged, which, in our opinion, could not have happened had he written only that insignificant prose letter, which seems to precede Bonaparte's, as in old romances a dwarf always ran before to proclaim the advent or arrival of knight or giant. That Talleyrand's character and practices more resemble those of some 'regular' Governments than Bonaparte's I admit; but this of itself does not appear a satisfactory ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... so strikingly displayed. Japan made use of the lessons which it had well learned in its forty years of intercourse with Europe. China fought in the obsolete fashion of a past age. As a result, the cumbersome mediaeval giant went down before the alert modern dwarf, and the people of Eastern Asia were taught a new and astounding lesson in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... seems to have entirely forgotten that he owed his throne to that act of the English Parliament which accepted him as Elizabeth's successor (S415). In his exalted position as head of the nation, he boasted of his power much like the dwarf in the story, who, perched on the giant's shoulders, cries out, "See ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... poorest of the sons of earth, For once, I e'en to thee feel gratitude. Despair the power of sense did well-nigh blast, And thou didst save me ere I sank dismay'd, So giant-like the vision seem'd, so vast, I felt myself shrink dwarf'd as I survey'd! ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... infinite joy. The precipice was his domain, his property, and his eyes took possession of it. He could not cease gazing at the steep, wall-like rocks, the sides of which were cut by transverse belts of brush-wood and dwarf trees. It was long since he had experienced such a lively sensation, and he felt that if his heart was old, his senses were entirely new. The fact is that at this moment, Gilbert, the grave philosopher, was as happy as a child, and in listening ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... bank is wild; the field touches the steep gravel hills, where a few scattered hawthorn bushes and dwarf birches grow. Patches of earth show here and there, as though the turf had been peeled. Even the hardiest plants eschew these patches, where instead of vegetation the surface presents clay and strata of sand, or else rock showing its teeth to ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... the tomahawk. He saw the clustering green shoots—numerous, in the sign of plenty—all crowding together and clamoring for light, and life, and air, and room. He saw the prevailing of the tall and strong upthrusting stalks, after the way of life; saw the others dwarf and whiten, and yet cling on at the base of the bolder stem, parasites, worthless, yet existing, after the ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... to throw, not merely his mortal life, but his immortality even, into the forlorn hope, to bridge, with a never-dying soul, the chasm over which white-robed victors should pass to a commonwealth of glory and splendour, whose vastness should dwarf the misery of all the lost to an infinitesimal.' And while by many the idea of suffering everlasting pains for the glory of God, and the good of being in general, was thus contemplated with equanimity, there were some few for whom the idea of so suffering for the good of others ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... the different parties took up their positions to await the result of the beating of a strip of dwarf forest, several miles in extent, which clothed part of the mountain slopes below ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... what lay behind the veil, they knew if it were lifted what it was that they would see—the land of gold was the land of love, where men and women wandered hand in hand, where sorrow was a dwarf and grief a cripple, since love—the Almighty King of the unknown land—had wounded them ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... by the force of a solemn conviction, and to be retained and cherished ever after on the strength of this association. This may have tended to give an obliquity to the disciple's understanding, or to arrest and dwarf its growth; to fix it in prejudices instead of training it to judgments; or to dispense with its exercise by merging it in a kind of quietism; so that the proper tendency of religion to excite intellectual activity was partly overruled and frustrated. It is most unfortunate that ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... of background, mostly grotesque or hideous, for the figure of Little Nell, were characters of to-day, or at least of the day when the book was written; for I must not forget that that day ran into the past some six and forty years ago. Quilp, the dwarf,—and a far finer specimen of a scoundrel by the by, in every respect, than that poor stage villain Monks; Sampson Brass and his legal sister Sally, a goodly pair; Kit, golden-hearted and plain of body, who so barely ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... remembered that he had had a chance of seeing those little rooms that held Mary and had relinquished it on that bygone Good Friday. He looked enviously beyond Mary herself to the glimpse of lamplit room. He could see a white wall with pictures on its panels, a bit of a dwarf bookcase, a chair drawn to a table heaped with books, a green-shaded reading-lamp. Against the lighted background Mary's ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... is for coat card, a name given to these cards from the dresses depicted on them. Florio has carta di figura, "a cote carde." The card game called Pope Joan would appear to be in some way corrupted from nain jaune, lit. "yellow dwarf," ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... a hard climb. Fallen timber at the mountain's foot covered with thick brush swallowed us up and plucked us back. Beyond, on the steeper slopes, grew dwarf evergreens, five or six feet high—the same fir that towers a hundred feet with a diameter of three or four on the river banks, but here stunted by icy mountain winds. The curious blasting of the branches ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young |
