"Fir tree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... struggled again. And gradually his surroundings fell into relationship with himself. He knew, and a great pang of fear went through his heart. Somebody was knocking. He could see the heavy, black rags of a fir tree overhead. Then everything went black. Yet he did not believe he had closed his eyes. He had not. Out of the blackness sight slowly emerged again. And someone was knocking. Quickly, he saw the blood-disgfigured face of his Captain, which he hated. And he held ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... still told in the villages of this deadly and enchanted mandragora; the lads sometimes go to the churchyards to search for it. Plantains and docks, wild spurge, hops climbing up a dead fir tree, a well-chosen pole for them—nothing is omitted. Even the silver weed, the dusty-looking foliage which is thrust aside as you walk on the footpath by the road, is here labelled with truth as ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Pliny relates some curious particulars of this ship: "A fir tree of prodigious size was used in the vessel which, by the command of Caligula, brought the obelisk from Egypt, which stands in the Vatican Circus, and four blocks of the same sort of stone to support it. Nothing certainly ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... there were those who said that they were of all colours named and nameless. They were soft and liquid splendours, unfathomable lakes of light above his full and ruddy cheeks, and beneath his curved and most tranquil brows. In form he was symmetrical, straight and pliant as a young fir tree when the sweet spring sap fills its veins. So he came to that assembly, in the glory of youth, beauty, strength, valour, and beautiful shame- fastness, yet proud in his humility and glittering like the morning star. Choice youths, his comrades, attended him. The kings ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... seen through the trees, now almost stripped of their summer foliage. On both sides of the scene are heavy forest trees, mostly pine and cedar. Across the stage there winds a narrow and very rough road. It is the scene of Winthrop's camp, six months before. On the left a large fir tree, with branches low to the ground; on the right, some scrub pine and oak. Some traces of the camp are still to be seen; some broken boxes; the charred remains of a fire at the right, near front. The sound of the wind in the pines at rise. Enter Corporal Evans and Hopkins (Right) by the road. ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... and lashed the horse with all his might. The road grew worse and worse every hour. Now he could not see the yoke at all. Now and then the sledge ran into a young fir tree, a dark object scratched the turner's hands and flashed before his eyes, and the field of vision ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... from the city on the afternoon boat. I had almost reached the brow of logs on the edge of the clearing when I stopped to get a drink from that little spring by the side of the road. I sat down for a minute or two under the shade of a small thick fir tree to fill my pipe, when happening to glance to my left I saw a man running up the road. I at once saw it was that artist fellow, and curious to know what he was running for I moved back a little behind the fir so's he couldn't see me. He stopped right by the logs ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... a deep purring sound, as though a great black panther lay concealed within its hood, and the doctor—the "psychic doctor," as he was sometimes called—stepped out through the gathering fog, and walked across the tiny garden that held a blackened fir tree and a stunted laurel shrubbery. The house was very small, and it was some time before any one answered the bell. Then, suddenly, a light appeared in the hall, and he saw a pretty little woman standing ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... to mention the placenta of the first child; three hundred and sixty ginseng roots, shaped like human beings and studded with leaves; four fat tortoises; full-grown polygonum multiflorum; the core of the Pachyma cocos, found on the roots of a fir tree of a thousand years old; and other such species of medicines. They're not, I admit, out-of-the-way things; but they are the most excellent among that whole crowd of medicines; and were I to begin to give you a list of them, why, they'd ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... remained, and it was a critical moment. I was numbed with the cold, it was almost dark, and I had to make a shot for a man's life, but I made it. It went far and true and struck in the branches of a fir tree over Power's head. He did not see it, but he heard it. Then began a search for a lost ball. It was pitch dark half an hour later when Powers shouted that he had found it, and soon after we yelled like madmen when a tiny yellow flame curled ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... a cup-shaped structure, composed exteriorly of twigs, grass, and moss, and lined with stalks of maiden-hair fern and fine roots. It is usually placed high up in a fir tree. Colonel Rattray believes that the birds bring up two broods in the year. They lay first in May, and, as soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, a second nest is made. Thus in July both young birds at large and ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... curious, peaceful stillness of heart that comes with an entire acceptance of fate, when she heard the sound of horses' hoofs in the hollow of the canyon. Her heart began to beat to suffocation. She ran to where, standing near a big fir tree, she could look straight down on the trail leading up to Prosper's cabin. Presently the horsemen came in sight—the one that rode first was tall and broad and fair, she could see under his hat-brim his straight ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... dancing between me and the sun like some grotesque dream fantasy. He was in full war bravery, his body painted red, barred with white stripes to imitate the lacing on our uniforms, and his hair feather-decked till he towered in height like a fir tree. I say that he was grotesque, but at the time I did not think of his appearance; I thought only that here was a man who was my mate in cunning, and who ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... stored with bowls of milk and cream, and with rows of cheeses standing on the ledges of rock. While the Greeks were regaling themselves, a noise was heard, and great flocks of sheep and goats came bleating in. Behind them came a giant, with a fir tree for a staff, and only one eye in the middle of his forehead. He was Polyphemus, one of the Cyclops, sons of Neptune, and workmen of Vulcan. He asked fiercely who the strangers were, and Ulysses ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... once, under the name of "The Passage of the Rubicon," but Pharaoh, badly disguised under the mantle of Caeser, was recognized and rejected with all the honors due him. Next year, Marcel threw a coat of white over the foreground, to imitate snow, planted a fir tree in one corner, and dressing an Egyptian like a grenadier of the Imperial Guard, christened his picture, "The ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... "'The fir tree on the mountain stands, The little cottage at its foot, And Mashenka is there. Her father comes to look for her, He wakens her and coaxes her: ''Eh, Mashenka, come home,'' he cries, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... instruments to the soft and sweet melody of Ole Bull's violin. Come with me to this rocky promontory; stand with me on this moss-covered boulder, which forms the point. On either hand is a little bay, the head of which is hidden around among the woods. See! over against us, on the limb of that dead fir tree, which leans out over the water, is a bald eagle, straightening with his hooked beak the feathers of his wings, and pausing now and then to look out over the water for some careless duck of which to make prey. See! he has leaped from his perch, has spread his broad ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... all covered with ivy, which hung loosely about, and bore bunches of brown berries. On the other side, it was higher than my head. We looked down on the Ambleside vale, that seemed to wind away from us, the village lying under the hill. The fir tree island was reflected beautifully.... About this bower there is mountain-ash, common ash, yew tree, ivy, holly, hawthorn, roses, flowers, and a carpet of moss. Above at the top of the rock there is another spot. It ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... they were armed, and came within two hundred yards. We then presented our guns, intimating that not more than one would be allowed to approach. They retired and fetched their arms, when one, the ill-fated husband of Mary March, our captive, advanced with a branch of fir tree (spruce) in his hand. When about ten yards off he stopped and made a long oration. He spoke at least ten minutes; towards the last his gesture became very animated, and his eye "shot fire." He concluded very mildly, and advancing, shook hands with many of the party—then ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad
... jay, to be succeeded by the soft cooing of the cushat doves; and every interval was filled up by the bursts of song from the small finches, thrushes, and other denizens of the wooded hill. In one fir tree there was a pair of tiny gold-crested wrens, beautiful little birds, which seemed to consider that their insignificance was quite enough to keep them from harm. So tame were they that they could have been struck down by a ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... shall surround thee, and he who would win thee must pass through the flame." He kissed her on the eyelids which began to droop as with sleep, and he laid her gently down upon a little mound beneath a fir tree. He closed her helmet and laid upon her her shining shield, which completely covered her body. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... was a solitary fir tree with a bushy top. The bird, whoever he was, had gone to sleep up there, close against the trunk, as birds do, for protection. During the night the soft snow gathered thicker and thicker upon the flexible branches. Their tips bent with the weight till they touched the trunk below, forming a green ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... sit doon 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 to give it a deeper hue. There were many touches of white and pink ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the happier kind of men did feel themselves covered by a roof as by the folded wings of some vast domestic fowl; and feel common doors like great mouths that opened to utter welcome. In the story of "The Fir Tree" he transplanted to England a living bush that can still blossom into candles. And in his tale of "The Tin Soldier" he uttered the true defence of romantic militarism against the prigs who would forbid it even as a toy for the nursery. He suggested, in the ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... 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
... of Susy Parlin on a New Year's day, only it is so hard to skip over Christmas. There is such a charm about Christmas! It makes you think at once of a fir tree shining with little candles and sparkling with toys, or of a droll Santa Claus with a pack full of presents, or of a waxen angel called ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... was to cost my dear friend his life, and both of us indescribable sufferings and hardships. And how true a prophecy it was! You who have smelled the camp fire smoke; who have drunk in the pure forest air, laden with the smell of the fir tree; who have dipped your paddle into untamed waters, or climbed mountains, with the knowledge that none but the red man has been there before you; or have, perchance, had to fight the wilds and nature for your very existence; you of the wilderness brotherhood can understand ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... its white cottages rising in soft undulations as far as the sight can reach. Over the extreme point of the southwestern cape hangs a fairy pavilion, like an eagle's eyrie amongst alpine crags, just a degree more secure than that pensile old fir tree which you notice at your feet stretching over the chasm; beneath you the majestic flood, Canada's pride, with a hundred merchantmen sleeping on its placid waters, and the orb of day dancing blithely over every ripple. Oh! for a few hours to roam with those we love under ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... dog has anything to do with it, Ned; it is a natural law. Now, if a fir tree is in a sheltered place, where the soil is deep and sandy, it grows to a tremendous size; but if the seed falls in a rocky place, where it has to get its roots down cracks to find food, and cling tightly against ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... a place of this kind that Mr Ralph Nickleby gazed, as he sat with his hands in his pockets looking out of the window. He had fixed his eyes upon a distorted fir tree, planted by some former tenant in a tub that had once been green, and left there, years before, to rot away piecemeal. There was nothing very inviting in the object, but Mr Nickleby was wrapt in a brown study, and sat contemplating it with far greater attention ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... poet to description yields Of waters gliding through the goodly fields; The Groves of Granta and her Gothic Halls, Oxford and Christchurch, London and St. Pauls, Or with a ruder flight he feebly aims To paint a rainbow or the River Thames. Perhaps you draw a fir tree or a beech, But then a landscape is beyond your reach; Or, if that allegory please you not, Take this—you'ld form a vase, but make ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... his nest Jamie found a young balsam fir tree, and with his sharp jack-knife cut from the bark several of the little sacs in which sap is secreted. He had often seen Thomas cut them and daub the contents upon cuts and bruises, and sometimes even have him and the other boys take the sap as medicine. Returning to the lean-to he pierced the ends ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. I must have been delirious—for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below. 'This fir tree,' I found myself at one time saying, 'will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears,'—and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a long and tiresome one. The hot sun seemed to strike the hillside with extra intensity, and there was not a breath of wind abroad. Once he sat down under the shade of an old fir tree and mopped his hot face with his handkerchief. Even from here the view of the river was magnificent, and what must it be ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... of pine twigs, lined with feathers, soft grass, and the needle-like leaves of the fir tree. Three or four eggs of a grayish or bluish white color, streaked with faint blood red, reddish brown, or bluish ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... out his eyes and turned him adrift, in spite of his prayers and tears; but, as the boat drifted, the lions swam after, and at last they laid hold of it and dragged it ashore on an island, and placed the lad under a fir tree. They caught game for him, and they plucked the birds and made him a bed of down; but he was forced to eat his meat raw and he was blind. At last, one day the biggest lion was chasing a hare which was blind, for it ran straight over ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... the results of a fall are so intricate that the runner could never extricate himself, but needs the help of a friend, who will undo a binding so as to free him. The most curious fall I ever saw was when a man, running down a steep slope among trees, ran into a fir tree on the upper side where the snow was lying well up the trunk. He then fell head downwards into the hole below the tree where the snow had not penetrated and, his Skis being caught in the branches, there he hung. Had he been alone, I doubt whether ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... a very little girl some one, probably my mother, read to me Hans Christian Andersen's story of the Little Fir Tree. It happened that I did not read it for myself or hear it again during my childhood. One Christmas Day, when I was grown up, I found myself at a loss for the "one more" story called for by some little children with whom I was spending ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... leisurely across the road not more than ten yards from my front wheel; and on the same day I came upon a green woodpecker enjoying a dust-bath in the public road. He declined to stir until I stopped to watch him, then merely flew about a dozen yards away and attached himself to the trunk of a fir tree at the roadside and waited there for me to go. Never in all my wanderings afoot had I seen a yaffingale dusting himself ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... on the hills against the sky, A fir tree rocking its lullaby, Swings, swings, Its emerald wings, Swelling the song that ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... "I never heard of a stork that when it met with a fir tree demurred as to its right to build its nest there; and I never heard of a coney yet that questioned whether it had a permit to run into the rock. Why, these creatures would soon perish if they were always doubting and fearing as to whether they had a ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... be worth seeing, if the woods were so vastly preferable as he seemed to think. She felt herself to be what she was in his imagination, a part of the nature in which she had grown up, as much as the oldest and tallest fir tree on the hillside. People who spend all their lives in unfrequented regions, feel a sense of property in the air, the earth and the water, which city-bred folks cannot readily understand. They have such an intimate, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... see, says the tree was like a fir tree; and it is remarkable that a Chinese Pharmacology quoted by Bretschneider says the like, which looks as if their information came from a common source. And yet I think Polo's must have been oral. One of the meanings of Luban, from the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... sympathized. "It looks very unchivalrous. But that's merely his want of tact. I believe he meant to protest against your reckless proceedings. What made you come so near the edge of that quarry? The earth might have given way. Haven't you noticed a smashed fir tree at the bottom? Tumbled over only the other ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... pane among the coloured pieces of the window through which, now and then, the wind blew powdery snow. She put her eyes to it and looked out upon a great bare moorland, white under a cold winter moon. Here and there sprang a fir tree, but for the most part the land stretched away to the horizon, empty as death—and as chill. So close to her eye that she must hold her head back in order to see it, rose a great square tower with stretches of tiled roof, mostly snow-covered, spreading out below it; this chapel was the end ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... long ago wandered my thoughts: to the moss-grown beech in which I cut my name and that of a little girl with yellow curls, of blessed memory, with the first jack-knife I ever owned; to the story-book with the little fir tree that pined because it was small, and because the hare jumped over it, and would not be content though the wind and the sun kissed it, and the dews wept over it and told it to rejoice in its young ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... A Fir Tree said boastingly to the Bramble: "You are useful for nothing at all, while I am everywhere used for roofs and houses." The Bramble made answer: "You poor creature, if you would only call to mind the axes and saws which are about to hew you down, ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... hadn't everything on their side—I ought to explain though that in our district were large forests of a kind of pine—there's one in this garden,' and he pointed to a pyramidal fir tree with spreading branches of small pointed leaves spiked at the ends, and with a cone of nuts about the size of a big man's head, hanging from one of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... and will live for years. Sap of the maple affords delicious maple sugar. The sticky sap of the coniferous trees is obtained by making a cut in the bark. Canada balsam, thus obtained, is a clear liquid from a fir tree of the same name. It is the finest of all the turpentines and is used for many purposes in the arts. Enormous quantities of turpentine are obtained from the yellow pines. The pine forests of the Southern states supply nearly all our turpentine. From this by a process of distillation ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... be even harder to guess is that of the word spruce. We now use this word to describe a kind of leather, a kind of ginger beer, and a variety of the fir tree, and also in the same sense as "spick and span." The word used to be pruce, ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... to say when you interrupted me, no sooner was she well out of the way than a red squirrel, who had been watching from the nearest fir tree, saw his chance. It was a rare one. Nobody liked eggs better than he did, or got fewer of them. Like a flash he was over from the fir branches into the pine ones, and ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not dared to go too near the windows for fear of being seen and recognised by Turritella. When night fell he had not succeeded in discovering where Fiordelisa was imprisoned, and, weary and sad, he perched upon a branch of a tall fir tree which grew close to the tower, and began to sing himself to sleep. But soon the sound of a soft voice lamenting attracted his attention, and listening ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... turn to a sheet of newspaper nearby. Instantly this was a burning torch. Dave tried to knock it out with his cane. But before he could reach it a gust of wind seized and whirled it across the opening, flinging it spitefully against a fir tree. ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... They make a wider path, create more force and a better current. It's the same way with men and women. Oh, Rose, there is n't a man in the world that's loved you as long, or knows how to love you any better than I do. You're just like a white birch sapling, and I'm a great, clumsy fir tree; but if you 'll only trust yourself to me, Rose, I'll ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and moved by the death of Chief Justice Field, in April, 1899. It was his custom to read his sermons to me in his study before preaching. He chose for his sermon on April 16, the decease of the great jurist, and his text was Zachariah xi, 2: "Howl fir tree, for the cedar has fallen." Many no doubt remember this sermon, but no one can realise the depths of feeling with which the Doctor read it to me in the secret corner of his workroom at home. But ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... string from his pocket as he spoke, and the two little Bears—who saw there was no use in struggling—submitted to be fastened together to a fir tree. ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... Hills, as I found them in July; but they wear a different garb when winter sets in, when the broad boughs of the fir tree are bent to the ground by the load of snow, and the dark mountains are whitened with it. At that season the mountain-trappers, returned from their autumn expeditions, often build their rude cabins in the midst of these solitudes, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... at the painting. It was a study of a solitary fir tree, growing at the edge of a cliff—wind-swept, rugged. The high precipice on which it stood was only suggested and far below there was a ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... the Kind Friends were waxing impatient and the juvenile contingent was showing violent symptoms of descending prematurely upon the glittering little fir tree which stood in a corner next the stage. Back near the door, feet were scuffling audibly upon the bare floor and a suppressed whistle occasionally cut into the hum of subdued voices. Miss Satterly was growing nervous at the delay, and she repeated her question impatiently to ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... fir tree he sings Morn after morn still, Shy and bold he flits and sings Tinily sweet and shrill. As I go out His song ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... old mother-tengu, who had always laughed at the idea of obeying a little dumpling of a fellow like Kintar[o], flew up to her nest in a high fir tree. Kintar[o] watched to see where it was, and waited till she left it to go and seek for food. Then going up to the tree, he shook it with all his might, until the nest came tumbling down, and the two young squabs of ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... of Christmas-tree in one of the Sunday schools over in the willage to-night, and some o' the teachers came to the guv'nor and asked him for a tree to put some knick-knacks on. So he says to me, 'Simon,' says he, 'go up in the plantation and pull up a young fir tree, and then in the morning put it in the cart and take it over to the school-room.' This was day afore yesterday, in the afternoon. I was busy jist then, so I didn't go to the plantation till 'twas dusk. However, as you know, yer honour, 'tis moonlight, ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... 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 11 ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... grave under a little fir tree near by, and lined it with wild flowers and leaves, and even then hesitated to cover the body with the earth. At last he bethought himself of the fanciful costume which the skeleton and his wife had given him, and in this he carefully wrapped his dead pet. He had not one regret at leaving the bespangled ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... the cap, with all its treasures, carefully under the shade of a tiny fir tree near the side of the brook and then ran ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... spot specimens of the productions of every country in the world unite! Shrubs and trees, whose natural climates are as opposite as the Antipodes, here flourish in the most astonishing manner. We were shown a rose tree brought from Pekin and a fir tree brought from the highest part of the Himalaya Mountains; many have been brought to this country, but Mr. Beckford's is the only one that has survived. Here are pine trees of every species and variety—a tree that once vegetated at Larissa, in Greece, Italian pines, Siberian pines, ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... above all the 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 ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... northern Europe, are made of wood from the fir tree; at their thickest part, in the centre, they are between four and five inches in width. Here, where the foot rests, there is a piece of birch bark fastened, over which there is a loop, and through this loop the foot passes. That part of the skee under the foot is concave, and here it is thickest, ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... smile on his lips and raised his sword. The crowd drew back. He was full ten inches taller than Kenric of Bute, and the muscles of his broad bare chest were as the roots of a tree that rise above the ground; as the nether boughs of the fir tree were his strong and hairy arms. Little cause did he see to shrink from combat with the youth who ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, And all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: And it shall be to the Lord for a name, For an everlasting sign that shall not ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... that night, until the dawn began to separate each fir tree from the black mass of the forest. Twice in the night, with shame I confess it, I opened my door and looked down the little passage-way; and twice I closed the door and threw myself upon my bed in an agony of torment. It was ten o'clock when a knock at the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... instance I will give of his interest and his knowledge. We were passing under a fir tree when we heard a small song in the tree above us. We stopped and I said that was the song of a golden-crested wren. He listened very attentively while the bird repeated its little song, as its habit is. Then he said, "I think that is exactly the same song as that of ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... and the handsomest man in the village; nearly six feet tall, straight as a fir tree, and black as a bull-moose in December. He had natural force enough and to spare. Whatever he did was done by sheer power of back and arm. He could send a canoe up against the heaviest water, provided he did not get mad and break his paddle—which he often did. He had more muscle than ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... the lower classes chiefly subsist on the following articles:—oatmeal-bread, made in thin cakes (strongly resembling the havver-bread of Scotland) and baked only twice a-year. The oatmeal for this bread is, in times of scarcity, which in Norway frequently occur, mixed with the bark of elm or fir tree, ground, after boiling and drying, into a sort of flour; sometimes in the vicinity of fisheries, the roes of cod kneaded with the meal of oats or barley, are made into a kind of hasty-pudding, and soup, which is enriched with a pickled herring or mackerel. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... shall turn to a lin, [1] In Glenfern ye'll hear the din; When frae Benenck they shool the sna', O'er Glenfern the leaves will fa'; When foreign geer grows on Benenck tap, Then the fir tree will ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... me"—and Jamie broke down utterly behind a fir tree, so tender a thing is a cynic's heart—"that fouk 'ill tak a man's best wark a' his days withoot a word an' no dae him honour till he dees. Oh, if they hed only githered like this juist aince when he wes livin', an' lat him see he hedna laboured in vain. His reward hes come ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... you'll noan sing to me. Why sud you bide silent while you've crossed the sea? Are you brokken-hearted, Sin frae home you've parted, Leavin' far frae Yorkshire moors your nests i' t' tall fir tree? ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... Bodo and One-Ear climbed a fir tree near the edge of a cliff. They were watching a big-nosed rhinoceros. It had just rooted up an oak tree with its twin-tusked snout. Now it was tearing the trunk into strips as we tear a stalk of celery. The boys watched it grinding the wood ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... of his deeds being manifest in his bearing. Those tried by fire are sure of themselves, and it shows in their eyes. Besides, Jack MacRae was twenty-four, clear-skinned, vigorous, straight as a young fir tree, a handsome boy in uniform. But he was not quick to apprehend that these things stirred a girl's fancy, nor did he know that the gloomy something which clouded his eyes made Betty Gower ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... elm and ragged hickory trees. Here, for a space, there was little undergrowth, and save under the heaviest of the trees the ground was green with short, coarse grass. Danton took a hatchet from the canoe, and trimmed a fir tree, heaping armfuls of green boughs at the foot of an oak near the top of the slope. Over these he threw a blanket. The maid came slowly up the hill, in response to his call, and with a weary little smile of thanks she sank upon the fragrant ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... about it, including its site. All the Saints from afar were ordered to come to Nauvoo, "with all your gold, and your silver, and your precious stones, and with all your antiquities, . . . and bring the box tree, and the fir tree, and the pine tree, together with all the precious trees of the earth, and with iron, with copper, and with brass, and with zinc, and with all your most ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Thunder Oak and the first Christmas tree. A wonderful old Doctor this—reflected Roger wonderingly. He knew so many different things—how to scare away tears and all about mistletoe and Druids, and still another story about a fir tree which Roger opined respectfully was nothing like so good as Sister Madge's story of the Cedar King ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... was very still and bathed in a cold half-light. Over everything lay a thick covering of white. The lawn, the sidewalks, the street, the roofs of houses were hidden by it; the top of the fence was outlined with it; great mantles draped the post tops and the fans of the fir tree; every branch and twig of every tree bore its burden; Martin, wielding a very broad wooden shovel, was engaged in clearing a way to the front gate. Just as Bobby looked out, the milkman, his vehicle on runners and his team decorated with the strings of bells ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... the whole charge of her; and, large as she was, he made her move with ease, and said, "Me think she go there well, though great blow wind!" He did not know that I meant to make a mast and sail. I cut down a young fir tree for the mast, and then I set to work at the sail. It made me laugh to see my man stand and stare, when he came to watch me sail the boat. But he soon gave a jump, a laugh, and a clap of the hands when for the first time he saw the sail ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... man looked so sorrowful that the courtiers said to the king: 'He is very young to die. Let him play a tune if it will make him happy.' So, very unwillingly, the king gave him leave; but first he had himself bound to a big fir tree, for fear that he should be ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... on the banks of the river Tweed, in Scotland, a fox sat watching a brood of wild ducks feeding in the river. Presently a branch of a fir tree floated in their midst, which caused them to rise in the air, and after circling round for some time, they again settled down on their feeding ground. At short intervals this was repeated, the branch floating from the same direction, ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... and the moon shone out, feeble, no doubt—for she is but in her first quarter—and her beams fell right through an opening in the wood, and revealed the figure of a little child seated at the foot of a fir tree. Alone in the Forest at that time of night! My heart seemed to stand still, and I said to myself, 'Elsie is right after all. That can only be some spirit child, some ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... white in the center of the picture? Does it help to give emphasis to the principal figures? Does the artist use his colors in proper tones and shadings? Does he succeed in making the birds seem really to fly? Do you see the face in the fir tree? How are the eyes indicated? Are the lines and patches that make the face any different from those that indicate other leaves on the tree? Why then does it look like a face? Does the face have an expression of surprise? ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... greater the enjoyment—the nearer the approach to real life. Casuistry is of no avail; the fact is obvious; Nature flings treasures abroad, puffs them with open ups along on every breeze, piles up lavish layers of them in the free open air, packs countless numbers together in the needles of a fir tree. Prodigality and superfluity are stamped on everything she does. The ear of wheat returns a hundredfold the grain from which it grew. The surface of the earth offers to us far more than we can consume—the grains, the seeds, the fruits, the animals, the abounding products are ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... children, especially, are glad to substitute and alter ideas for which one word stands, so that they expand or contract its meaning haphazard. Bow-wow may first mean a dog, then a horse, then all animals, and a child who was once shown a fir tree in the forest said it wasn't a fir tree, for fir trees come only ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... persecution of New England, let us open The Twice-Told Tales and read the story of The Gentle Boy, a Quaker child of six, found sobbing on his father's newly-made grave beside the scaffold under the fir tree. Let us enter the solemn meeting house, hear the clergyman inveigh against the Quakers, and sit petrified when, at the end of the sermon, that boy's mother, like a Daniel entering the lion's den, ascends the pulpit, and ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... came to Boveyhayne lane, he said to her, "Isn't there a longer way, Mary!" and she laughed at him, bantering him because of his sudden desire for exercise; but she yielded to him, and they took the longer road that led them past the Roman quarries to the fir tree, standing in isolation where the main ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the woods stood a nice little Fir tree. The place he had was a very good one; the sun shone on him; as to fresh air, there was enough of that, and round him grew many large-sized comrades, pines as well as firs. But the little Fir wanted so very much to be ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... whom I had observed to be wonderfully swollen about the chest and pockets, had turned out a great many various stores—the British colors, a Bible, a coil of stoutish rope, pen, ink, the log-book, and pounds of tobacco. He had found a longish fir tree lying felled and cleared in the inclosure, and, with the help of Hunter, he had set it up at the corner of the log-house, where the trunks crossed and made an angle. Then, climbing on the roof, he had with his own hand bent and run ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is of the character of the fir tree as regards its ramification placed in stages round its main stem; and its branches spring, 4 or five or 6 [together] opposite each other; and the tips of the topmost shoots form a pyramid from the middle upwards; and the walnut and oak form a ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... 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 brave. ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... up when she saw him, and her heart beat with fear, for she did not know him. But when he had told her who he was, in her great joy she forgot all her sufferings, and they seemed as nothing to her. He was a very handsome man, as straight as a fir tree. They sat down together and she told him all her adventures, and he wept with pity at the tale. And then he ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... A fir tree grew near the house; and from this he broke a twig, which he planted in the ground, saying: "This twig shall become a tree, and shall bring forth fruit ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... fall of the yellowing leaves and the flight of the migrating song-birds overhead. His eye grew calmer, his brow more smooth, as he walked silently onward; he drew a long breath, almost like one of relief; then he stopped short, and leaned against the trunk of a tall fir tree, looking absently before him, as though he had forgotten the reason for his proposed interview with his cousin. Hugo grew impatient. They had left the garden, and were walking down a grassy little-trodden lane between two tracks of wooded ground; it led to the tiny hamlet at the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... belonging to its past, its present and its future. In a fir tree, for example, there are the stumps or scars of dead branches, which once represented its foremost growth; there are the branches with their needles spread out to the air; there are the buds at the end ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... he gave such a tug to his tail that it broke short off, and he rolled away into the forest as fast as his legs could carry him. At this sight the fox held his sides for laughing, and then scampered away in another direction. By-and-by he came to a fir tree, and crept into a hole under the root. After that he did ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... had filled the basket with strawberries, and then had wandered into the forest. They sat down upon a mossy bank under a fir tree, to rest. ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... is treed." That was a welcome word. We slackened our pace, knowing that the dogs would hold him till we arrived, and we needed our breath for the next act. So on a trot we came over a rise of ground and saw, away up on the limb of a tall straight fir tree, a bear that looked very formidable and large. The golden rays of the rising sun were shining ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... of all kinds. During the year 1860, however, in the month of July, I came across a community with an unusually large stock of slaves, and I observed a few slaves mingled with their masters leaving the nest, and marching along the same road to a tall Scotch-fir tree, twenty-five yards distant, which they ascended together, probably in search of aphides or cocci. According to Huber, who had ample opportunities for observation, the slaves in Switzerland habitually work with their masters ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... an eminence. On the top of the hill the Saracens had a castle, from which they were driven (p.187), and all the fortifications destroyed excepting one tower, now the town clock tower. By the roadside, about half-way between Cogolin and St. Tropez, is a very large fir tree. 32 m. N.E. from Hyres and 26m. S.E. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... her cruel mouth, and Martha was afraid. The old woman whispered to the old man: "I have a word for you, old fellow. You will take Martha to her betrothed, and I'll tell you the way. You go straight along, and then take the road to the right into the forest ... you know ... straight to the big fir tree that stands on a hillock, and there you will give Martha to her betrothed and leave her. He will be waiting for her, and ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome |
