"Fir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boulders were piled, moss-grown, lividly decked with orange fungi, and surrounded by a thick undergrowth of holly and elder bushes. This place had no name beyond "the wood"—enough distinction in that county where a copse of ash or fir was all that scarred moor and pasture with shadow. It was just within Ishmael's property, marking his most inland boundary, and he cherished it as something dearer than all his money-yielding acres. It had been his ambition ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... of Bees in a dry and warme Bee-house, comely made of Fir-boords, to sing, and sit, and feede vpon your flowers and sprouts, make a pleasant noyse and sight. For cleanely and innocent Bees, of all other things, loue and become, and thriue in an Orchard. If they thriue (as they must needes, if your Gardiner bee skilfull, and loue them: for they loue ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... in the midst of a clump of firs just south and a little below the house; the mansion and the grounds are nearly as they were left by Washington, and the whole looks down upon the river, calling upon the passer-by for a thought upon the great man whose dust lies beneath the fir trees. After passing Mount Vernon, nothing of special interest was seen except the broad expanse of waters of this magnificent stream. A few large mansions, a few inferior houses, and now and then a little hamlet, appeared on the banks; ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... like the fir and the pine, flourish most in the mountains on account of the eager air, while in this region where it is more temperate the poplars and the willows thrive best. Again the arbute and the oak prefer the more fertile lands, while the almond and the fig trees love the lowlands.[61] ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... soldiers that fought here of yore? The sod is upon them, they'll struggle no more, The hatchet is fallen, the red man is low; And near him reposes the arm of his foe. . . . . . . . . Sleep, soldiers of merit; sleep, gallants of yore. The hatchet is fallen, the struggle is o'er. While the fir tree is green and the wind rolls a wave, The tear drop shall brighten the turf of the ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... the same class of instruments as the guitar, differing from that, however, in important details of construction. It has a pear-shaped body, composed of narrow pieces of bent wood glued together; the sounding board is flat, and of fir. The neck is longer or shorter, according to the variety of lute. It was strung with from eight to eleven strings, which in the east were of silk, but in Europe were catgut down to the end of the seventeenth century, when spun strings were substituted ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... upon the livid expanse of snows till, out of the waste of a white earth joining a bestarred sky, surged up black shapes, the clumps of trees about a village of the Ukrainian plain. A cottage or two glided by, a low interminable wall, and then, glimmering and winking through a screen of fir-trees, the ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... corner of the house; one of its windows looking to the south front of the college and the chapel with its slender spire; the other window looking over the garden and a waste of heather beyond, to the fir-crowned hill of Ambarrow. My father had been Headmaster for twelve years and was nearing the end of his time there; and I was myself nine years old, and shortly to go to a private school, where my elder brother Martin already was. My two sisters, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was very festive. Lights shone out from every window, wreaths of fir twigs hung from the ledges. Branches decorated the front doors, which swung open, and in the hall the landlord voiced his superiority by bullying the waitresses, who ran about continually with glasses of beer, trays of cups and saucers, ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... Distaff. Nay, the Hesperian Tree was this, As shew the Poma Veneris; These Apples doubtless were the Fruit That 'twixt the Queens rais'd such Dispute, To make 'em all stark-naked stand, While Paris held it in his Hand, And chuck'd it into Venus' Mouth, 'Cause she with Beauty fir'd the Youth. ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... under the very tree where Frederick and Catherine were. Frederick slipped down on the other side, and picked up some stones. Then he climbed up again, and tried to hit the thieves on the head with them: but they only said, 'It must be near morning, for the wind shakes the fir-apples down.' ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... up to her eyes, through a complexion well en-browned by sun and wind, Evan intimated his commands that the fish should be prepared for breakfast. A spark from the lock of his pistol produced a light, and a few withered fir branches were quickly in flame, and as speedily reduced to hot embers, on which the trout was broiled in large slices. To crown the repast, Evan produced from the pocket of his short jerkin a large scallop shell, and from under the folds of his plaid a ram's ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... long. One end of each was lined out into planks, three or four inches thick, and then split with wedges. They then fixed the plank into notches with wedges between two logs, and smoothed them with the axe and plane. Thinner planks were made out of the white cedar, which splits very freely. The fir planks served for the flooring of their bed-rooms, and for ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... I mean by a fine country; never can a flat one, though ever so beautiful, appear such in my eyes: I must have torrents, fir trees, black woods, mountains to climb or descend, and rugged roads with precipices on either side to alarm me. I experienced this pleasure in its utmost extent as I approached Chambery, not far from a mountain which is called ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... bringeth forth, where the child lispeth the name of mother, where the mother beareth a son, where men kindle fire, where the ship saileth, where shields blink, sun shineth, snow lieth, Finn glideth, fir-tree groweth, falcon flieth the live-long day and the fair wind bloweth straight under both her wings, where Heaven rolleth and earth is tilled, where the breezes waft mists to the sea, where corn is sown. Far shall he dwell from church and Christian ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... was the pile, a Parthian bow, With vigour drawn, must send the shaft below. The bottom was full twenty fathom broad, With crackling straw, beneath in due proportion strowed. The fabric seemed a wood of rising green, With sulphur and bitumen cast between To feed the flames: the trees were unctuous fir, And mountain-ash, the mother of the spear; The mourner-yew and builder-oak were there, The beech, the swimming alder, and the plane, Hard box, and linden of a softer grain, And laurels, which the gods for conquering chiefs ordain. How they were ranked shall ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... that the Amonians settled in Liguria: and, in consequence of it, the Heliadae are represented as weeping, not only amber, but gold. Philostratus, speaking of a particular species of fir-trees in Boetica, says, that they dropped blood, just as the Heliadae ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... from the stormy Lake, Pure from the springs that break In Valdai vales the forest's mossy floor, Greener than beryl-stone From fir woods vast and lone, In one full stream the braided ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... assortment of burglar's tools. The roof was supported by posts and transverse beams, and from them hung legs of pork, bacon, and sausages. There was also a cellar well stocked with wine and brandy, and even champagne. A bed was fashioned of birch boughs and fir branches and hay. The boughs protected from the damp of the soil. Great quantities of bones of pigs, sheep, geese, and other poultry were found buried in the sides of the passage and ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... little companies of two's and three's out into the caller air before their final parting. Their gait was solemn—if a trifle uncertain—as they slowly daundered up the road between the trees. It was a still Sabbath evening, when one can hear the very whispers of the fir branches, the murmur of a burn far away—when suddenly the stillness was broken by the thud of a horse's hoofs. Beat—beat—beat—on the turf by the side of the road they came, and each man of the party cocked his ears and strained his eyes into the darkness to see who might be the horseman ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... ancient woodstack on the path hid deep in undergrowth of laurels and spruce fir, and not seldom in summer I'd smoke a pipe with my back against it; but oftener I'd tramp up and down past it, where it heaved up beside the narrow way. They was always going to pull it down, but there never rose no call for wood and ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... come across any of these books I am filled with a curious melancholy. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire means more to me than to some: I hear the whirr of the buzz-saw as I open it; even in its driest page I smell the resin of fir and spruce; Locke's Human Understanding recalls things no man can understand if he has not worked alongside Indians and next to Chinamen. As for Carlyle, I never hear him mentioned without seeing the mountains and glaciers of the Selkirks; in ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... of Dirce: Argos Amymone: Corinth laments Pirene. Nor yet safe Were rivers bounded by far distant shores, Tanais' midmost waves fume to the sky; And ancient Peneus smokes: Ismenos swift; Caicus, Teuthrantean; and the flood Of Phocis, Erymanthus: Xanthus too, Doom'd to be fir'd again: Lycormas brown; Maeander's sportive oft recircling waves; Mygdonian Melas; and the Spartan flood, Eurotas; with Euphrates burn: and burn, Orontes; and the rapid Thermodoon; Ganges; and Phasis; and the Ister swift. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then,—and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look at—or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells around me—or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... at the pond. Overhead the trees were whispering; behind him, in and out of their holes the rabbits whisked; far off he could hear the twitter of a swallow; the foxglove was dead, the bracken was turning brown, the cones from the fir trees were lying on the ground. As he watched, a strange thing happened. Slowly and slowly the pond lengthened out and out, stretching away and away until it became a river—a long river that went on and on, right down the woods, past the great black firs, past the little ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... the security still more complete by throwing a barricade across the stream, about a mile and a half below the city. Several boats full of stones were sunk. A row of stakes was driven into the bottom of the river. Large pieces of fir wood, strongly bound together, formed a boom which was more than a quarter of a mile in length, and which was firmly fastened to both shores, by cables a foot thick, [211] A huge stone, to which the cable on the left bank was attached, was removed many years ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... we found the tiger-skin tramped into the mire, but as soon as we struck the Islands I turned back, for I was in need of good oak browse, and I wished to find out what had become of Taku-Wakin. It was not until one evening when I had come well up into the hills for a taste of fir, that I saw him, black against the sun with the tribe behind him. The Five Chiefs walked each in front of his own village, except that Taku-Wakin's own walked after Opata, and there were two of the Turtle clan, each ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... west, is very extensive and picturesque. The hills and the plain are ornamented with the evergreen oak, sometimes in clumps or groves, at others standing solitary. On the summits, and in the gorges of the mountains, the cedar, pine, and fir display their tall symmetrical shapes; and the San Joaquin, at a distance of about ten miles, is belted by a dense forest of oak, sycamore, and smaller timber and shrubbery. The herds of cattle are scattered over the plain,—some of them grazing upon ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... from Teneriffe, and had a Pass from the Dutch Consul, but no Dutchmen on board: On Account of this Pass, the Governor of Curasoa sent out a Vessel to demand the Prize of Capt. Drummond, but he refus'd to restore her, fir'd at the Dutchman and beat him off. Before the Taking of this Snow, Capt Drummond had taken two Sloops, one was sent into Jamaica and condemn'd there, the other being a good Sailer, he has fitted out for a Tender, with ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... no more from you just at present. Your confession would be scarcely fir for the ears of these ladies. your testimony must be reserved for a future occasion," said the viscont. And then turning to Claudia with the coolest and most ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... dark fir-trees, with sharp needles, but shining green leaves, and great red flowers; and the mountains are not so high and dark, nor so near, but lie off in the distance, and are purple; and the sky and the lake are all golden and still and warm. There ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... direct road from Winchester to Salisbury, running through it, beside Ampfield Church and village. This is high ground, and Ampfield Wood extends along it to the borders of Hursley Park. It is chiefly of oak, fir, and beech, and on the southern side are the fine arcades of beechwood that Mr. Keble used to call Hursley Cathedral. From one point in the wood long sight can distinguish a sort of needle which is the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. The wood is very old, probably primeval, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... Rollanz the proud upon my way, I'll fall on him, or trust me not again, And Durendal I'll conquer with this blade, Franks shall be slain, and France a desert made." The dozen peers are, at this word, away, Five score thousand of Sarrazins they take; Who keenly press, and on to battle haste; In a fir-wood their ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... is illustrated in Plates 1 and 2, and consists predominantly of pinyon pine, Pinus edulis Engelm., and Utah juniper, Juniperus osteosperma (Torr.) Little. More sheltered areas along the North Rim and in most of the canyons support scattered small stands of Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii (Merb.) Franco. These are the "spruce trees" of Spruce Tree Canyon. An occasional ponderosa pine, Pinus ponderosa Laws., represents a vestige of more montane species of plants and animals in the Park. The dusky grouse, Dendragapus obscurus (Say), occurs ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... hardly out of his mouth before a succession of low, angry growls came to the ears of the boys, and the next moment they saw Oje springing into the lower branches of a great fir tree. ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... Haunerwiem on the other. Now stand still for a moment, I can show you the whole lie of the country from this point. Where we are standing belongs to your brother-in-law, his land reaches from my wheat-field up there to the right, as far as that small clump of fir-trees to the left. You see, Rexow is quite a small farm, there are only a few more acres belonging to it on the other side of the village. To the right up there is Warnitz; and in front of us, where the fallow ground begins, is Puempelhagen; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... was. The little Squirrels, who lived inside the tall fir-tree, kept rubbing each other's noses to keep themselves warm, and the Rabbits curled themselves up in their holes, and did not venture even to look out of doors. The only people who seemed to enjoy it were the great horned Owls. Their feathers were quite stiff with rime, but they did not ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... the catastrophe—and feeling the while a proud personal interest in it all. Ah, what good days those were, roaming about knee-deep in heather, catching the rare moths, chasing the squirrels that whisked up the fir stems and mocked us from their high perch, searching the hollow trees for woodpeckers' nests, eating the beech-nuts or pricking our fingers as we tried to open the husks of the Spanish chestnuts that grew by the lake! From among ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... carpeted the ground, made his way rapidly to the flat oblong slab beneath which his father lay. The marble was discoloured by long rains and stained with bruised periwinkle, and the shallow lettering was hidden under a fall of dried needles from a little stunted fir-tree; but, leaning over, he carefully swept the dust away and loosened the imprisoned name which seemed to hover like a spiritual presence ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... she could be so supplied with an article of such general consumption, and which they could not obtain but by the bateaux which went to Montreal. In the evening, when Malachi and John were, as usual, employed in cutting small trays out of the soft wood of the balsam-fir, and of which they had already prepared a large quantity, Mrs. Campbell asked Malachi how the sugar ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... Midianite Tayyib Ism. This is a section of the Jibl el-Samghi, the coast-range which extends as far north as the Wady Wati'r. The Dock-port, so useful when the terrible norther blows, has an admirable landmark, visible even from Sinfir Island, and conspicuous at the entrance of the Gulf. Where the sandy slopes of South-Eastern Sinai-land end, appears a large white blot, apparently supporting a block, built, like a bastion, upon a tall hill of porphyritic trap. We called this remnant of material harder than the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... mob-cap. The vane on the barn was delicately sifted over, and the top of every picket in the high front-yard fence had a fluffy peak. But it was chiefly in the woods that the rapture and flavor of the time ran riot in making beauty. There every fir branch swayed under a tuft of white, and the brown refuse of the ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... case. Particles of decayed bark, the borings of insects in dead wood, dust, and fragments of twigs, rush down in little streams and fill the eyes. The quantity of woody powder that adheres to a tree is surprising; every motion dislodges it from a thousand minute crevices. As for firs, in climbing a fir one cannot look up at all—dead sticks, needles, and dust pour down, and the branches are so thick together that the head has to be forced through them. The line fixed, the saw is applied, and by slow degrees the butt cut nearly through. Unless much overbalanced on one side by the limbs, an oak ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... conversation. She, indeed, seemed all made up of sunshine in the month of May, for there was nothing so dark and dismal that her pleasant mind could not cast a glow over it; and the wild man, like a fir tree in his native forest, soon began to brighten into a sort of sombre cheerfulness. At length she inquired whether his journey had any particular ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the ridge. At first they followed the course of the river, Helene leading the way. It was evident that she had grown up in the woods. How strong and supple she was, and how well she acquitted herself when she had to cross a brook, climb a wooded slope, force a way through a barrier of bristly young fir-trees which opposed her passage, or surmount a heap of clay at a quarry, of which there were a great many about there. Each difficulty was in turn overcome. The ascent from the river was the most direct and the pleasantest, ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... apoley which Didest inspire. the souls of burns and pop with sackred fir. Kast thy Mantil over me When i shal sing, the praiz Of A sweat flower who grows in spring Which has of late kome under the Fokis. of My eyes. It is called a krokis. Sweat lovly prety littil sweat Thing, you bloometh before The lairicks on High sing, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... too louely caus'd my wretched case. My face hath so entrap'd, so cast vs downe, That for his conquest Caesar may it thanke, Causing that Antony one army lost The other wholy did to Caesar yeld. For not induring (so his amorouse sprite Was with my beautie fir'de) my shamefull flight, Soone as he saw from ranke wherein he stoode In hottest fight, my Gallies making saile: Forgetfull of his charge (as if his soule Vnto his Ladies soule had bene enchain'd) He left his men, who so ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, Listened in every spray, While the whole camp, with "Nell," on English meadows Wandered and lost ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... you will hardly get far into them, except at the Christmas season for greenery. Gathering this by deputy is poor business. It is all very well, if you can do no better, to engage Mr. Brown to engage some one else to bring in the needed spruce, fir, and hemlock with which to obscure the fresco deformities of St. Boniface's; but it is far better to hunt for them yourself. There is something intensely delightful in the changes of the search; for it begins dull enough. You start in the drear December weather, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Kalinnikov's symphonic poem, "The Fir Tree and the Palm," given by the Philharmonic Society, ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... America. Next morning the illusion was completed. Here were men with mackinaws and green elk boots; here were cook-houses in which the only difference was that a soldier did the cooking instead of a Chinaman; and above all, here were fir and pines growing out of a golden soil, with a soft wind blowing overhead. And here, in an extraordinary way, the democracy of a lumber-camp had been reproduced: every one from the Colonel down was a worker; it was difficult, apart from their ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... as a slow-growing tree, but under certain circumstances a sapling will shoot up quickly to a wonderful height. When the woodmen cut down a fir plantation in the Chace there was a young oak among it that overtopped the firs, and yet its diameter was so small that it looked no larger than a pole; and the supporting boughs of the firs being now removed it could not uphold itself, but bent so much from the perpendicular as to appear ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... cliff, and we see the name of the place written up on a board, just like the name of a railway-station. This is Godoesund, a favourite holiday haunt of the Bergen people. It is not a town or even a village, but just a chalet-like hotel of two or three buildings, standing on the side of a fir-clad hill, in the midst of a fairyland of creeks and wooded islets—as pretty a spot as one could ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... aloud! The Merchant sees the gathering danger rise, And sends a thousand yearning sighs To his dear shelter'd home.— Its shades receive him;—but the tides Grow smooth;—the wild winds cease to roam; And see!—his new-trimm'd vessel gaily rides!— Fir'd with the hope of wealth, once more He quits, so hardly gain'd, the shore; Watches, with eager eye, th' unfurling sail, Nor casts one look behind to the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... from the fields to prove it. In all these narrow streets a great multitude of people were passing us; some were laden with vines, others with young forest trees, and still others with rude garlands of flowers. The peasant women's faces, as the bent figures staggered beneath a young fir-tree, were purple, but their smiles were as gay as the wild flowers with which the stones were thickly strewn. Their words ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... for one instant a threatening, impenetrable barrier, the next, opening to reveal glimpses of distant billowy ranges, their summits white with perpetual snow. The train had now reached a higher altitude, and breezes redolent of pine and fir fanned his throbbing brow, their fragrance thronging his mind with memories of other and far-distant scenes, until gradually the bold outlines of cliff and crag grew dim, and in their place appeared a cool, dark forest through which flecks of golden sunlight ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... bushy tails tossing in the warm wind! Under foot, ten thousand tall strange flowers and weeds and long spindled grasses grow, and reach up and up, as if to try to touch the sunlight above the tops of the oak and ash and pine and fir and cedar and maple and cherry and sycamore and spruce and tamarack, and all these that grow in common confusion here and shut out the sun from the earth as perfectly as if all things dwelt ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... largely engaged in the tremendous conflict with France, or rather in keeping Napoleon cribbed and cabined within his continental boundaries; and it is no wonder that British naval officers assumed to regard with contempt the fir-built frigates which bore the Stars and Stripes. The defeat and capture of the British frigate Guerriere, forty-nine guns, Captain Dacres, by the American frigate Constitution, fifty-five guns, Captain Isaac Hull, made British ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... in advance. The repeated flashes of lightning helped us to make out our position from time to time, and we trusted to the horses mainly to get us along in the safe middle course. At moments when the heavens were lit up, I could see the swaying branches of the fir-trees high above us battling with the wind, for we were still in the forest. The sound of many waters around on every side forcibly impressed us with the notion that we must be washed away—a result not by any means improbable, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... morning. The sky was cloudless. The air was charged with scent of spruce and balsam fir, wafted down by the breeze from the forest, lying in dark and solemn silence and spreading away from the near-by shore until it melted into the blue haze of rolling hills far to the northward. The huge black back of a grampus rose a hundred feet from the boat and with a noise like the loud exhaust ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... house had dozens of her efforts, large and small, hanging on the walls, and in the oddest frames. Some were of strips of thin board covered with little shells or dried moss, and others of rustic handiwork and mounted with fir cones. ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... glimpses of broad silver Whit, as she slides, with divided streams, through bright water-meadows, and stately groves of poplar, and abele, and pine; while, far aloft upon the left, the downs rise steep, crowned with black fir spinnies, and dotted ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... build a new house and farm buildings. Creative activity was his passion. He was never satisfied with what he had ready-made; he longed to make something new. He planted little trees, raised pines and fir-trees from seed, looked after them as though they were his children, and, like Colonel Vershinin in his "Three Sisters," dreamed as he looked at them of what they would be like in ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... went out, and, crossing a by no means well-kept field, entered the paddock, where the colts, Joe and Robin, had disported themselves before their sale. The paddock was skirted by a copse of small fir-trees, and Antonia sniffed the air as she walked towards it. Antonia was in a rusty black dress, with very little material in the skirt, and an extremely long train, which she never held up. She had just got to the edge of the copse of young trees, and was ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... scowling every day, and your eyes blaze out as if there were a thunder-storm about. What ails you, child? You are the handsomest girl in all the country round when you have a pleasant expression; and you are as tall and straight as a young fir-tree. Don't you know that?" ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... looks on to an old sun-dial, once a cross. The cross was found broken at its foot, probably by the country iconoclasts of the day. I have brought the interesting fragment again into light, and placed it conspicuously opposite to an old Scotch fir in the churchyard, which I think it not unlikely was planted by Townson on his restoration. The accumulation of the soil of centuries had covered an ascent of four steps at the bottom of this record of silent hours. These steps ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... fuel for their fire. Besides collecting some of the dead wood that was lying all about, they split up a number of resinous pine and fir trees with explosive bullets from their revolvers, so that soon they not only had a roaring fire, but filled the back part of the cave with logs to dry, in case they should camp there again at some later day. Neither Cortlandt nor Bearwarden felt much like sleeping, and so, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... here a meenit, Teen; the sun's fine an' warm,' said Liz, and plumped down among the bracken, while Teen stood still under the jagged branches of an old fir tree, and looked 'her fill,' as she expressed it, of the lovely world at her feet. It was still a spring world, clothed in a most delicate and exquisite garb of green, waiting only for the touch of later summer ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... rocks and fir-trees threw Their sunset-shadows o'er them, And Newbury's spire and weathercock Peered o'er ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in a convenient tree, with strict orders to cry 'nit' should anybody come in sight from the black clump of fir-trees surrounding the squatter's house. Then he led his party over the fence and along thick lines of currant bushes, creeping under their cover to where the beautiful white-heart cherries hung ripening in the sun. Dick was very busy ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... in the wood. We lighted a little fire of sticks and fir-cones, so as to be as gipsyish as we could, and we sat round the fire. We made a charming picture in our bright clothes, among what would have been our native surroundings if we had been real gipsies, and we knew ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... man crushed by his fellows. And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. And instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and man shall nowhere crush man on all the holy earth. Tomorrow's sun shall rise," said the stranger, "and it shall flood these dark kopjes with light, and the rocks ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... morning sun, and off toward Kettle Mountain; feeling very much like a truant schoolboy, John Westley had followed this path. A sense of adventure stimulated him, a pleasant little breeze whipping his face urged him on. He stopped at a cottage nestled in a grove of fir trees and persuaded the housewife there to wrap him a lunch to take with him up the trail. The good woman had packed many a lunch for her husband, who was a guide (and a close friend of the man who was cooling his heels at the hotel entrance), and she knew just what a person ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... the mountains they discerned a great variety of trees, among them the Palo Colorado or Lambertine fir, some of them a dozen feet in diameter, although they did not attain any remarkable height. These were not the colossal pines so famous the world over. There were quite a number of beech, sycamore, oak, spruce, and maple, and other ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... gaily decorated for the Prom, the walls hidden with greenery, the rafters twined with the college colors and almost lost behind hundreds of small Japanese lanterns. The fraternity booths were made of fir boughs, and the orchestra platform in the middle of the floor looked like ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... step by step with its happy inhabitants. The people were marked by a pastoral simplicity of manners, such as is still to be found in some of the remote and secluded hamlets of Ireland. The vale was green and shelving, having its cornfields, its pasturage, and its patches of fir, poplar, and mountain-ash intermingled, and creeping up on each side in wild but quiet beauty to the very mountain tops that enclosed it. At the head of the glen reposed a small clear sheet of water, as calm and unruffled as the village itself. By this sweet lake was fed the pure ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... forest stood a pretty little Fir Tree. It had a good place; it could have sunlight, air there was in plenty, and all around grew many larger comrades—pines as well as firs. But the little Fir Tree wished ardently to become greater. It did not care for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... indeed, but they are among the vague recollections that bewilder our memory; they are among the things which come up in the strange, confused remembrance of the dying man in the last days of life. There is an old fir-tree, a twisted, strange-looking fir-tree, which will be among my last recollections, I know, as it was among my first. It was always before my eyes when I was three, four, five years old: I see the pyramidal top, rising over a mass of shrubbery; ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the shout! All Saxony's astir; Groom, turn aside, swift must we ride Through the lone wood of fir.' ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the Bible, was once an abundant region, "flowing with milk and honey" in the language of Moses, with its grapes, its vast forests of cedar, fir, and oak, its treasures of wheat, olive-oil, and other rich agricultural products. Now all are gone. The entire country seen by the traveler in the Holy Land to-day is one of the most desolate regions on the globe, where the few inhabitants are ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... days were once holy to this heroic city, like the thundering heaven to the thundering earth; muffled-up forms, with little lights, stole through the dark streets; often there stood a long palace with colonnades in the light of the moon, often a solitary gray column, often a single high fir tree, or a statue behind cypresses. Once, when there was neither rain nor moonshine, the carriage went round the corner of a large house, on whose roof a tall, blooming virgin, with an uplooking child on her arm, herself ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... land. And he past swiftly along the Isthmus, for his heart burned to meet that cruel Sinis; and in a pine-wood at last he met him, where the Isthmus was narrowest and the road ran between high rocks. There he sat, upon a stone by the wayside, with a young fir tree for a club across his knees, and a cord laid ready by his side; and over his head, upon the fir tops, hung the bones ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... as I am. She, too, seems to prefer the spite of the elements to disturbing the tete-a-tete in the coach. Musgrave has made her as comfortable as he can, with her back against the poor little Scotch fir, and a plaid over both ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... both dide today. give them a big ded rat that old mis Dire give me. they toar it into bits and et it fir and all and when i come home from school they was both ded and all curled up. i asted old mis Dire how she cougt the rat and she sed she poizened it with rat poisen only she called it rat poizen. i told her it killed my horks and she sed she ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... by Dick led him back along the edge of the cliff by the route which they had traversed shortly before; and having reached the spot where Earle had taken his thrilling peep down into the abyss, the young man continued on, eventually entering a fir wood, through which he passed, bagging two brace of a species of pheasant as he went. Emerging from the wood, which was about a mile long, he found himself approaching a spot where the cliff seemed to dip somewhat, and halting ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... Zouche. A short distance further east is Storrington, which we have seen on our way to Worthing. Delightful walks may be taken across the park, which is freely open to the pedestrian. This stretch of sandy and picturesque wild land is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful domains in the south. Its fir-trees are characteristic of the sandstone formation which here succeeds the chalk. Visitors should make their way to the lake where the scene, with the Downs as a background, is one of extreme beauty. The Heronry here is famous; the birds were originally brought from Wales to Penshurst, from ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... things are forbidden to be sold to idolaters—fir-cones, and the best figs, with their clusters, and incense, and the white cock. R. Judah said, "it is allowable to sell a white cock among many others. But when a man has only one, he must cut its claw before he sell it, since the heathen do not offer ...
— Hebrew Literature
... wound in her side!) "Vay fink you 's worn out, 'weety, but we know you isn't, don' we, 'weety? An I'll tell you nite ittle tory to-night, tause you isn't seepy. Wunt there was a ittle day hen 'at tole a net an' laid fir-teen waw edds in it, an bime bye erleven or seventeen ittle chits f'ew out of 'em, an Mit Vildy 'dopted 'em all! In 't that a nite tory, you ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... supply-house catalog and from this order your special tools and sizes and colors of eyes needed), a jar of liquid cement, dry glue (for melting up for papier-mache), dry paper pulp, plaster of paris, Venetian turpentine, boiled linseed oil, boracic acid, some refined beeswax, a little balsam-fir, white varnish, turpentine, alcohol, benzine and a student's palette of tube oil colors (such as vermilion, rose madder, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow middle, zinc white, cobalt blue, French ultramarine ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... maze of words, his native skies He seem'd to quit, 'twas but again to rise; To mount, once more, to the bright source of day, And view the wonders of th' ethereal way. The love of fame his gen'rous bosom fir'd; Each science hail'd him, and each muse inspir'd. For him the sons of learning trimm'd the bays, And nations grew ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Savage, by royal grace, prolong'd his breath. Well might you think he spent his future years In pray'r, and fasting, and repentant tears. —But, O vain hope!—the truly Savage cries, "Priests, and their slavish doctrines, I despise. Shall I—— Who, by free-thinking to free action fir'd. In midnight brawls a deathless name acquir'd, Now stoop to learn of ecclesiastic men? No, arm'd with rhyme, at priests I'll take my aim. Though prudence bids me ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... passage, the people following. Outside the house, on the other side of the highway, a mass of dark heath-land rose sullenly upward to its not easily accessible interior, a ravined plateau, whereon jutted into the sky, at the distance of a couple of miles, the fir-woods of Mistover backed by the Yalbury coppices—a place of Dantesque gloom at this hour, which would have afforded secure hiding for a battery of artillery, much less ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... the "lookout" in the wind and sleet, Out in the woods of fir and spruce and pine, Down in the hot slopes of the dripping mine We dreamed of you and Oh, the dream was sweet! And now you bless the felon food we eat And make each iron cell a sacred shrine; For when your love thrills in the blood like ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... knew that their father's debts were many for flour and meat and clothing. Of fuel to feed the big stove they had always enough without cost, for their mother's father was alive, and sold wood and fir cones and coke, and never grudged them to his grandchildren, though he grumbled at Strehla's improvidence ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless. . . . Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown evejar. Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: So were it with me if forgetting could be will'd. Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, Tell it to forget the source that ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... was treating with Arnold and who now came to arrange terms with him, Major John Andre, Clinton's young adjutant general, a man of attractive personality. Under cover of night Arnold sent off a boat to bring Andre ashore to a remote thicket of fir trees, outside the American lines. There the final plans were made. The British fleet, carrying an army, was to sail up the river. A heavy chain had been placed across the river at West Point to bar the way of hostile ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... the rivers upon the snow, and made up into rafts. The Canadian crews erect masts and spread their sails, and by the aid of wind and current, and sometimes by rowing, they boldly guide these acres of fir down the rapids to Quebec, while they animate their labours with the melody of their popular songs. A part would intone ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... stared gravely down upon the tidy drive with its rhododendron shrubberies, the well-kept lawn with the triangular beds, and the belt of gloomy fir trees edging the high brick wall that ran along the public road. The windows were always draped and curtained, and opened one foot at the top with monotonous regularity. No one was ever seen leaning out of them, or even pushing back the curtains to widen their view. ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... things containing iron, may be thrown or may fall overboard during so long a passage, and thus find their way to land. But these are not mere conjectures and possibilities; for one of my people actually did see some wood in one of the houses at Wymoa, which he judged to be fir. It was worm-eaten, and the natives gave him to understand, that it had been driven ashore by the waves of the sea; and we had their own express testimony, that they had got the inconsiderable specimens of iron, found amongst them, from some place ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... would have tasked a landscape gardener to say where policy ended and unpolicied nature began. My lord had been led by the influence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a considerable design of planting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir, and the little feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop to the moors. A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds. Standing so high and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wine drunk at that fir table. The doctor was the medical attendant of Colonel Graeme, and this gave him means of working upon his conscience; and I know they have been at this work ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... and the sorrel mare jogged comfortably over the eight miles to Bright River. It was a pretty road, running along between snug farmsteads, with now and again a bit of balsamy fir wood to drive through or a hollow where wild plums hung out their filmy bloom. The air was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards and the meadows sloped away in the distance to horizon mists of pearl ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is on the Tree it looks whitish. They scrape it and pull it off and dry it in the Sun: they take it onely from off the smaller Trees, altho the Bark of the greater is as sweet to the smell and as strong to the tast. The [The Wood.] Wood has no smell, in colour white, and soft like Fir. Which for any use they cut down, favouring them no more than other wild Trees in the Wood. The [The Leaf.] Leaf much resembleth the Laurel both in colour and thickness; the difference is, whereas the Laurel hath but one strait ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... foolish delight. We sought them like scattered treasure, on the strange cheeks of the old willows, near the tendrils of the fall, on the birches that stand like candles in front of the violet thicket, and on the old fir which so often sheltered us with its dark wings. Many inscriptions have disappeared. Some are worn away because things do; some are covered by a host of other inscriptions or they are distorted and ugly. Nearly all have passed on as if they ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... and laden with the heavy cones, from which Ravenna draws considerable wealth. Scores of peasants are quartered on the outskirts of the forest, whose business it is to scale the pines and rob them of their fruit at certain seasons of the year. Afterwards they dry the fir-cones in the sun, until the nuts which they contain fall out. The empty husks are sold for firewood, and the kernels in their stony shells reserved for exportation. You may see the peasants, men, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... daughter of the Vikings. Though she was sixteen, her graceful body had retained most of the lines and slender curves of childhood; and she was long of limb and broad of shoulder. Her head was poised alertly above her strong young throat, and she was as straight as a fir-tree and as supple as a birch. A life out-of-doors had given to her skin a tone of warm brown, which, in a land that expected women to be lily-fair, was like a mask added to her disguise. The blackness of her hair was equally unconnected with Northern ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... space outside the main building, which lies to the right. A projecting corner of it is visible, with a door approached by a flight of low stone steps. The background consists of steep fir-clad slopes, quite close at hand. On the left are small scattered trees, forming the margin of a wood. The snowstorm has ceased; but the newly fallen snow lies deep around. The fir-branches droop under ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... from the white oak), the elm, ash, lime tree, &c. Generally speaking, however, this woodland does not extend back farther than a mile from the lakes. The white cedar, the hemlock, spruce, pine, and fir, are occasionally found; but the red cedar is scarce throughout this region, and none, perhaps, are to be seen but on islands of those lakes called by the Indians Red Cedar Lakes. The shrubbery consists principally of the wild rose, hawthorn, and wild ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic take their rise. With but three exceptions no part of this is less than 1,000 feet above the level of the sea. It is a perfect labyrinth of small lakes, cedar and alder swamps, and ridges covered with a thick but small growth of fir and spruce, or, more rarely, of birch. No portion of it appears to be ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... Why should they take my interest more than battleships and Cunarders? Yet I could potter about an ancient hooker or a tramp steamer all day, when I wouldn't cross a quay to a great battleship. I like the pungent smells of these old craft, just as I inhale the health and odour of fir woods. I love their men, those genuine mariners, the right diviners of sky, coast, and tides, who know exactly what their craft will do in any combination of circumstances as well as you know the pockets of your old coat; men who can handle a stiff ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... Judea, and undertook that if he would let the Tyrians have a harbour on the sea towards AEthiopia, he would assist him in the building of a palace, in which he was then engaged; and bind himself to supply him with materials of cedar and fir, and squared stones. Irenius assenting, made over to Joramus the city and harbour of Ilotha. There were a great many date trees there, but as their timber was not suitable for constructing vessels, Joramus despatched eight thousand camels to Ilotha, loaded with materials ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Burke rose with the dawn, and strode forth into the country through fragrant gardens and the pride of May, until want of breakfast drove him back unwillingly to the town, where amid lectures and books his heart incessantly turned to the river and the fir-woods of Ballitore. In the evening he again turned his back on the city, taking his way "where Liffey rolls her dead dogs to the sea," along to the wall on the shore, whence be delighted to see the sun sink into the waters, gilding ...
— Burke • John Morley
... snowstorm, and she was some distance from home. She strained her eyes westward and endeavoured to catch a glimpse of the lake towards which she was journeying, but she could see nothing save the drenched fields, and in the dim distance the dark line of fir woods. She turned her face homewards and began to walk with a quickened step. The cold air had made her hungry; she had only partaken of a lump of black bread and a glass of milk, and it was now late in the morning. She felt a soft cold touch on her cheek, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... walk, The withered tufts of asters nod; And trembles on its arid stalk The hoar plume of the golden-rod. And on a ground of sombre fir, And azure-studded juniper, The silver birch its buds of purple shows, And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose! Last Walk in Autumn. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... he felt the good firm ground under his feet and laid the still unconscious Molly on the grass behind a gray and barkless windfall that had once been a hundred-foot fir. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... was largely fir and pine, and the sunlight glanced down the straight trunks and patterned on the carpet beneath. Hollies gleamed green against the brown background, and in an open space of bare beech trees the littered ground was already pricked with the new green of the wild hyacinth. Now and again the ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... Bismarck's career. It was twilight at Varzin, and the Chancellor, as was his wont after dinner, was sitting by the stove in the large back drawing-room. After having sat silent for a while, gazing straight before him, and feeding the fire now and anon with fir-cones, he suddenly began to complain that his political activity had brought him but little satisfaction and few friends. Nobody loved him for what he had done. He had never made anybody happy thereby, he said, not himself, nor his family, nor any one else. Some ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... deodar, blue pine, fir, and oak in the Himalaya above the level of 5000 feet. The hill forests occupy the lower spurs, the Siwaliks in Hoshyarpur, etc., and the low dry hills of the north-west. A strong growth of chir pine (Pinus longifolia) is often found in the Himalaya between 3000 and 5000 ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... a little plantation of young fir-trees at one corner of the garden, intended to grow there for shelter from the north-west wind: the grass was so high amongst them, that the gardener had orders to go and carefully mow it down. He was engaged in the business when ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... twilight. Silence gathers itself together out of the dark, deepened, not broken, by the hushing of the wind among the beech-leaves, or the startled cluck of a blackbird, or a wood-pigeon's soft murmur, as it dreams in the silver fir. ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... stood for a minute beside the sleeping child, then bent and kissed Deb's brown neck. Moving to a window, she sat down before it, resting her arm upon the sill and her head upon her arm. Outside the window grew a giant fir tree, shading the room, and giving it at times an aspect too cold and northern. But Jacqueline loved the tree, and loved and fed the birds that in winter perched upon the dark boughs. Now, between the needles, the eastern sky looked blue and cold. Jacqueline, sitting idle, felt ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... we landed at the same village, and found it deserted as before. We left it and made for the highest peak on the island, accompanied by a few of the Coreans, who did not interfere with us till about halfway up, when on our entering a grove of fir trees, with the appearance of which we had been struck, one of the Coreans objected; we went on, however, and upon reaching the stump of an old tree the Corean fell on his knees, bowed his head to the ground, and ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... of land described as follows: Beginning at a large fir tree blazed on N. side being S.E. Cor. thence due N. 20 chains set post and made a mound thence due west 40 chains set post and made mound thence S. 20 chains set post being S.W. Cor. thence due E. 40 chains to point of beginning, in section ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... oaks, and chestnuts, and beeches, filling up the vacant space left by the granitic walls on either side: but in the higher regions of the mountainous district, in the more hidden recesses of the hills, they are all of the silver-fir species, and they attain a luxuriance of growth not to be imagined but by those who have studied this, the noblest of the whole tribe of pines. Here forests occur, leagues upon leagues in extent, filling up wide and winding valleys; running out upon the elevated plateaux ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... who is dead now, but he lived to be very old. For a very great many years he always took one walk, at a certain hour every Sunday morning, all the year through. It was a very ordinary country walk—through the little town, up by the side of a fir plantation, along hedge-rows and scattered houses, over a stile into a long ploughed field generally planted with turnips for cattle, then over another stile, through winding lanes that led to farm-houses and at last came ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... sense of surrounding objects, and found himself once more sitting at the foot of the monument in the garden of the academy, where he had contracted the bond with his friend. As formerly, the moon streamed through the dark branches of the fir-trees, and shed its pale cold light on the cold white marble of the monument. Then the floating form which had appeared in the room of the castle became clearer, more substantial, more earthly-looking; it issued from behind the tombstone, and stood ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... warmed in winter and summer, if necessary, by hot water, and capable of receiving the tallest tropical plants. Between the conservatories there are two beautiful mounds—one a labyrinth, and the other a collection of fir-trees. The labyrinth is one of the best and most beautiful I ever saw, far surpassing the celebrated one at Hampton court. The mound is of a conical shape, and is completely covered by winding and intricate paths. The whole is surmounted ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... on very old trees ash-white; not as flaky as the bark of the red spruce, the scales smaller and more closely appressed; young trees and small branches much smoother, pale reddish-brown or mottled brown and gray, resembling the fir balsam; branchlets glabrous; shoots from which the leaves have fallen marked by the scaly, persistent leaf-cushions; new shoots pale fawn-color at first, turning darker the second season; bark of the tree throughout decidedly lighter than that of ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... with wooden stakes. In the centre of the floor-space six little cut logs were fastened down in the form of a hexagon, and the earth scooped from within the hexagon was banked against the logs to form a permanent and limited fireplace. The surrounding floor space was covered with a layer of fir-brush, then a layer of rushes, and finally, where the beds were to be laid, a heavy mattress of balsam twigs laid, shingle-fashion, one upon another, with their stems down. Thus a springy, comfortable bed was formed, and the lodge perfumed with a delightful forest aroma. ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... the pathway by thy name, And love the fir-grove with a perfect love. Thither do I withdraw when cloudless suns Shine hot, or wind blows troublesome ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... delight. There were only two rooms, but it was quite fine with some of the Bellestre furnishings. At one end a big fireplace and a seat each side of it. Opposite, the sleeping chamber with one narrow bed and a high one, covered with Indian blankets. Beds and pillows of pine and fir needles were renewed often enough to keep ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... creatures. One can think how it must rejoice the heart of a partridge or a rabbit to come from the dry, whistling sweep of a deciduous forest under the home-like shadow of their branches. "As for the stork, the fir trees are her house," says the Hebrew poet; and our fir trees, this winter, give shelter to much small game. Often, on the light-fallen snow, I meet their little footprints. They have a naive, helpless, innocent appearance, these little tracks, that softens my heart like a child's ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... unknown realms, beyond the eastern boundary of Russia, where the gloomy waves of the Irtish, the Tobol, the Oural and the Volga flow through vast deserts, washing the base of fir-clad mountains, and murmuring through wildernesses, the native domain of wolves and bears, there were wandering innumerable tribes, fierce, cruel and barbarous, who held the frontiers of Russia in continual terror. They were called by the general name of Petchenegues. Igor was compelled ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... and the Sun-god surely has had a care of his own. Little didst thou need, in thy native land, the isle of the three capes, little didst thou need but sunlight on land and sea. Death can have shown thee naught dearer than the fragrant shadow of the pines, where the dry needles of the fir are strewn, or glades where feathered ferns make "a couch more soft than Sleep." The short grass of the cliffs, too, thou didst love, where thou wouldst lie, and watch, with the tunny watcher till the deep ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... and there was no prohibitory sign, I entered, and for easy miles walked on; under the springing arches of tall elms, flat roofs of beech, and level fans of fir and pine; through woodland, park and meadow, with glimpses of starred lily-ponds, blue lakelets, and bright brooks; seeing the dappled deer, the swans and pheasants—a glorious ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... is gray with unfallen sleet; the wind howls bitterly about the house; relentless in its desperate speed, it whirls by green crosses from the fir-boughs in the wood,—dry russet oak-leaves,—tiny cones from the larch, that were once rose-red with the blood of Spring, but now rattle on the leafless branches, black and bare as they. No leaf remains on any bough of the forest, no scarlet streamer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... you little monkey," said Kennedy, throwing a fir-cone at him. "You'll be qualified for the Alpine Club, Miss Home, before the ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... objects, laying the downiest of coverlids upon the dull old world until it was hardly recognizable. Every ledge, every branch and tiny twig held its feathery burden, or shook it softly upon the white mass covering the ground. Hardly a breath of air stirred, and the fir trees looked as though St. Nick had visited them in the night to dress a tree for every little toddler in ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Makes all things amorous. Thou only thus, Untamed wild creature, wilder than the rest, Deniest love the harbourage of thy breast. List to yon nightingale Singing within the vale 'I love, love, love.' With what renewed embracement vine clasps vine, Fir blends its boughs with fir, and pine with pine. Beneath the rugged bark May'st thou mute inward sighings mark, And wilt thou graceless be Less than a vine or tree— To keep thyself unloving, loverless? Bend, bend thy stubborn heart ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... Viola, had been spending the day with me, and it was a lovely spring evening, when we sat on the lawn, wondering whether I should ever care for anything so much as for those long shadows from the fir woods upon the sloping field, with the long grass rippling in the wind, and the border of primroses round the edge ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... presently, and passed near the northern cape of Flat-Rock Bay, a grand headland of red sandstone, a vast and dome-like pile, fleeced at the summit with green turf and shrubs of fir. The sun, at last, was really setting. There was the old magnificence of the king of day,—airy deeps of ineffable blue and pearl, stained with scarlets and crimsons, and striped with living gold. A blaze of white light, deepening into the richest orange, crowned the distant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... silence succeeded to the previous din of warfare. It was but preparatory to another more desperate attempt. From the mountain side I saw a fresh body of men advancing, who bore among them ladders roughly formed out of young fir-trees. It was evident that they intended to climb to the roof for the purpose of making an entrance through it, and dropping down upon the garrison. I foresaw that if they did so, the sacrifice of life must be very great, though they would ultimately ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... every other direction, far as the eye could see, leagues of feathery pale grass besprinkled with blue and yellow flowers went away in ribbed undulations, occasionally rolling up into a crest on which a company of fir trees hung like men on march. The sun was pale and smudged, the sky veiled: on its silken pallor floated, here and there, a blot of dark low cloud, and the clear distances ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... brutality to menace her with one of his pistols if she continued to fly. Yet she slacked not her pace for his threats, and he must either have executed them, or seen her escape to carry the tale to the Lodge, had she not unhappily stumbled over the projecting root of a fir-tree. But as he rushed upon his prey, rescue interposed in the person of Joceline Joliffe, with his quarterstaff on his shoulder. "How now? what means this?" he said, stepping between Phoebe and her pursuer. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... which make their nest in trees, are the red squirrel, often found in pine woods, as it is very fond of the cones of pine and fir trees; the gray squirrel, a magnificent fellow, with such a voracious appetite that it is said one squirrel alone will strip a whole nut tree; and the black squirrel, a handsome, glossy creature, which is so hated by its gray brothers that both are never ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... are divided into two classes, the harder woods, such as spruce, fir, etc., and the softer, such as poplar, cottonwood, etc. There are three ways of reducing or disintegrating wood fibres: first, by sulphurous acid or bi-sulphite of lime fumes, which gives the name "sulphite fibre"; second, by caustic ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... was repeated; descend into the Sweep!!!!! The other, which had fallen, I suppose, in the first crash, and which was the nearest to the pond, taking a more easterly direction, sunk among our screen of chestnuts and firs, knocking down one spruce-fir, beating off the head of another, and stripping the two corner chestnuts of several branches in its fall. This is not all. One large elm out of the two on the left-hand side as you enter what I call the elm walk, was likewise blown down; the ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... their greenness, even to those Cedars in Lebanon, in whose thick boughs The birds their nests build; though the stork doth choose The fir-trees for her house. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Park, New York, or the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. Here semi-arctic and semi-tropical plants and trees are found growing together, and all parts of the world seem to be liberally represented. The hardy Scotch fir and delicate palm crowd each other; the india-rubber-tree and the laurel are close friends; the California pine and the Florida orange thrive side by side; so with the silvery fern-tree of New Zealand, and the guava of Cuba. China, Japan, India, Africa, Egypt, and South America ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... had now taken leave of the last inhabitants. The remainder of our route was to be through a trackless wilderness. We now entered a doleful barren woods; the timber mostly pine and hemlock—some thick patches of spruce and fir, and some ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... have been exceedingly pleasant under ordinary conditions but it was impossible not to chafe at the delay occasioned by the caravan. Traveling southward for two days over bare brown mountain-sides, their monotony unrelieved except by groves of planted pine and fir trees, we descended abruptly into the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... compensated for the moderate dimensions of the building. It was such a sacred edifice as a traveller might have expected to find in El Dorado. The walls were of hewn stone, faced within with cedar which was richly carved with knosps and flowers; the ceiling was of fir-tree. But in every part gold was lavished with the utmost profusion; within and without, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, in short, the whole house is described as overlaid with gold. The finest and purest—that of Parvaim, by some supposed to be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... slowly from the great clouds stacked around a mountain-crest; and its light cast the regular shadows of the yews and fir-trees on the lawns. The weather was heavy with approaching storms. A warm breeze wafted the perfumes of ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... In all of these 'pineapple' is rendered as though it signified not the anana, but this cone of the pine; and not very long ago, the Journal des Debats made some uncomplimentary observations on the voracity of the English, who could wind up a Lord Mayor's banquet with fir-cones ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... was an American, bound to one of the islands, with shingle and fir planks; not only was her hold full, but the fir planks were piled up on each side of the deck, between the masts, to the height of five or six feet. The pirate had, apparently, been taking some of the planks on board for her ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... gulls soared gracefully overhead. Now and again a seal rose to gaze for an inquisitive moment at the passing boat, and once a flock of ducks settled upon the waters. The air was redolent with the pungent odour of spruce and balsam fir—the perfume of the forest—and Shad, lounging contentedly at the bow of the boat, drank in great wholesome lungfuls ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... with worthy, helpful, uplifting deeds. The good life not only has no debts—it has large assets, deep and lasting value; it enriches all life. It offers to the world not barren land claiming the virtue of freedom from the thorn and the brier, it crowns all with the abundance and glory of fir and myrtle. ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... loss of a character; to a married woman, of a family bereavement; and to a man, of an accession of fortune. To dream of a leafless tree, is a sign of great sorrow; and of a branchless trunk, a sign of despair and suicide. The elder-tree is more auspicious to the sleeper; while the fir-tree, better still, betokens all manner of comfort and prosperity. The lime-tree predicts a voyage across the ocean; while the yew and the alder are ominous of sickness to the young and of death to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the pine woods. After many weeks of slow journeying, the ladies with two of their servants reached Norway, and took up their abode in an old chateau, in the midst of a pine forest so-called, but a forest really composed of many varieties of fir and spruce, as well as pine. The combined aroma of these woods made the air fragrant for many acres around the chateau, and for a time, it appeared to have the most beneficial effect upon the invalid. But one quiet eve, when the summer days had waned, and the faded leaves of another ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... the roots had been torn. One moment they stood in shadow; the next, moved upward into a great splash of sunshine, thrown upon moss that still glistened with the dews of the night, and on splints of crag painted green and gold with lichen. Sun or shadow; the sweet fir-scents breathed upon their faces, mingled with many a waft of perfume from ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... with spits, or some such instruments: but the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so wed examined, that none has been found of late.** Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil-wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which the inhabitants called fir: but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them; and therefore rather suppose that they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic tree. (* See his Hist. of Staffordshire.) (** Old people have assured me, that on a winter's morning ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... day and day, and now it would be some steaming dainty cooked at her father's hearth by her own hands, again a branch of the fir-tree coated with ice and sparkling with a million gems, that she brought into the dull blankness of the room, and with her there always came a fresh sweet breath of the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... the village was a square laid out in winding paths, and surrounded by fir trees. In the middle of this square was a great stone basin, in which a spring perpetually bubbled up; the basin had a broad brim, on which the villagers sat when they came of an evening to fill jugs and bottles ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... By nightfall we should probably have chanced On much the same main points of interest— Both of us measured girth of mossy trunk, Stript ivy from its strangled prey, clapped hands At squirrel, sent a fir-cone after crow, And so forth,—never mind what time betwixt. So in our lives; allow I entered mine Another way than you: 't is possible I ended just by knocking head against That plaguy low-hung branch yourself ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... by a Lioness five whelps and an old Dog Lion. I was on my Favorite Horse Old Gotch. He feared Lions equally as great as I hated Squaws, They followed me for about three miles and when I reached an open space in the woods I halted near an old fir stub, I dismounted cautiously I could hear the old Dog growl and the whelps squeal like a flock of young pups. I found some dry leaves and struck a fire breaking off the limbs of the old stub for fuel, After an hour these ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... distance roars the fall; Through the fir trees howls the wind! 'Tis a sound implacable And ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine |
