"Stem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ship's course could be altered, a fearful blow was felt, which made the masts quiver and the ship tremble from stem to stern—another and another followed. The sea dashed up wildly over her, throwing her on her beam ends; then came a fearful crash, and the tall masts fell over her side towards the dark rocks which rose close to her. The ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... watching her intently. "Daddy says it's called that because it is just as easy to prove that Washington never did have punch from it as that he did." Patricia paused to rearrange one particularly wobbly aster, too short as to stem and too big as to head. "Anyhow, it's one of the ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... ilex-trees, ancient and sombre, which, in the long peace of their lifetime, have assumed attitudes of indolent repose; and stone-pines that look like green islands in the air, so high above earth are they, and connected with it by such a slender length of stem; and cypresses, resembling dark flames of huge, funereal candles. These wooded lawns are more beautiful than English park scenery; all the more beautiful for the air of neglect about them, as if not much care of men were bestowed upon them, though enough to keep wildness from growing into ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... clinging roots grew deep and strong; Its stem expanded firm and long; And in the currents of the air ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... teaching the mendicants outside, our Lord compared man to a Saptaparna (seven-leaved) plant, showing them how after the loss of its first leaf every other could be easily detached, but the seventh leaf—directly connected with the stem. "Mendicants," he said, "there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and there are six Bikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant. What are the seven? The seven branches of complete knowledge. What are the six? The six organs of sense. What are ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... particular individuals die when not suffered any longer to retain their memories, their bodies, or even their master passions. Thus human nature survives amid a continual fluctuation of its embodiments. At every step twigs and leaves are thrown out that last but one season; but the underlying stem may have meantime grown stronger and more luxuriant. Whole branches sometimes wither, but others may continue to bloom. Spiritual unity runs, like sap, from the common root to every uttermost flower; but at each forking ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the encreasing disorder. For a moment she thought that she could stem the torrent, and that Raymond could be induced to hear reason from her.—Vain hope! The moment of her influence was passed. He listened with haughtiness, replied disdainfully; and, if in truth, she succeeded in awakening his conscience, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... flying, a technicality that I shall not attempt to explain; she had no flying-jib, nor any of those pipe-stem spars that are got aloft only in port, to make a ship look more like the devil than she otherwise would, and are always sent down and stored away when she goes to sea. Ships, forty years since, carried no spars aloft but such as were stout enough to carry sail upon, in fair weather or ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... that," said Davy. "I'm willing to admit that I've misjudged you, Mr. Kelly—that the better classes owe you a heavy debt—and that you are one of the men we've got to rely on chiefly to stem the tide of anarchy that's rising—the attack on the propertied ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... the making was like a stream overflowing its banks, events overlapping each other like the waves of an inundation. Austria was declaring war with Servia while the diplomats of the great powers were continuing their efforts to stem the tide. The electric web girdling the planet was vibrating incessantly in the depths of the ocean and on the peaks of the continents, transmitting ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... clambered over the thwarts to the stern-sheets, 'Dolph sprang after her, and then with the lightest push the boy had her afloat—so easily indeed that she had almost slid away, leaving him; but he just managed to clutch the gunwale close by the stem ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in garden, by roadway, or on hillside, with its vine-stock, branches, blossom, and fruit, tells of the Father's ideal for men, a unity of life with Himself, and with each other. And every bunch of grapes hanging on one stem, with its many in one, tells of that same ideal, the concord of love with the Father ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... value to him in his after life. We should endeavor, according to some such method as we have indicated, to carry on our reading. "Every man and every woman who can read at all should adopt some definite purpose in their reading, should take something for the main stem and trunk of their culture, whence branches might grow out in all directions, seeking air and light for the parent tree, which it is hoped might end in becoming something useful and ornamental, and which at any rate all along will have had life and growth in it." These ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... time when vernal fruits receive The grateful showers that hang on April's eve; Though every coarser stem of forest birth Throws with the morning beam its dews to earth, Ne'er does the gentle rose revive so soon, But, bath'd in nature's tears, it drops ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... sexes really means, all forbid that ambiguity of language or euphemism of expression should be employed in the discussion." The italics are ours, but the words are Dr. Clarke's; and unmistakably show that the main drift of the book is to stem and if possible to turn the tide of popular conviction which is opening our colleges, new and old, to ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... the sides of the dyke became harder higher up, and did not instantly yield to the pressure of his knees, and by the time Ambrose's hands and shoulders felt nearly wrenched from their sockets, the stem of the osier had been attained, and in another minute, the rescued man, bareheaded, plastered with mud, and streaming with water, sat by him on the bank, panting, gasping, and trying to gather breath and clear his throat from the mud he ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... abounds, small parcels of land can be purchased. On the great plateau the droughts at times cause severe loss, and I have on one occasion observed cattle dying about the plain of thirst, and others whose lives were only saved by feeding them with pieces of succulent palm-stem. On these arid plains water is generally encountered in the subsoil in wells of not extreme depths, and these norias, as the well and windlass are termed, are seen in many places. Laws for the encouragement of stock-raising have been promulgated. The value of Mexican live-stock, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... nonsense!" said Rosa, deliberately tearing the bold "geant" to pieces down to the bare stem, "unless he meant to be comic, and intimate that the gazer was so rash as to come too near the bush, and ran a ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... sheepishly at first, but by-and-by we'd quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp. 'Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers, aren't they, Jack?' he'd say, after chewing his cud, or rather the stem of his briar, for a long while without a word. (He had his pipe in his mouth as often as any of us, but somehow I fancied he didn't enjoy it: an empty pipe or a stick would have suited him just as well, it seemed to me.) 'Those ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... one answered me. Pierre had lighted his pipe, and he was smoking so furiously that, at each puff, he spit out pieces of the stem. Jacques and Cyprien looked into the distance, with drawn faces; while Gaspard, clenching his fists, continued to walk about, seeking an issue. At our feet the women, silent and shivering, hid their faces ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... bunch of white roses, still wet with dew and so fragrant that the whole room was fresh and sweet with their odor, prettily arranged in a bowl on the table, and, at his plate, the largest of all with a pin through the stem. He looked up, smilingly, and nodded at the red-haired girl. "Thank you, Charmion," he said. "That's ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... eager to return home, made no attempt to stem the course of events; and, on the evening of the day after the battle on the Clare side, the drums of the besieged beat a parley, and Generals Sarsfield and Waughup went out and had a conference with Ginckle. A cessation of arms was concluded ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... Chia was so distressed that she clasped Pao-y in her embrace. "You child of wrath," she exclaimed. "When you get into a passion, it's easy enough for you to beat and abuse people; but what makes you fling away that stem of life?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... above the houses, was nearer than the under-currents of the noisy town. Sunlight, lovely full sunlight, lingered warm and still on the balcony. It caught the facade of the cathedral sideways, like the tips of a flower, and sideways lit up the stem of Giotto's tower, like a lily stem, or a long, lovely pale pink and white and green pistil of the lily of the cathedral. Florence, the flowery town. Firenze—Fiorenze—the flowery town: the red lilies. The Fiorentini, the flower-souled. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... off a small twig from a tree at twenty-five paces; and I have even heard it said (I am far from guaranteeing the truth of this) that on one occasion, with the consent of the party whose imprudence thus put his life in peril, he cut half in two the stem of a clay pipe, hardly three inches long, which a soldier ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... first saw her. It was commenced on December 11, and everything went on most favorably. A week after it was begun, when her attention was fully occupied with the diet, massage, etc., I introduced a stem pessary, being tempted to try this instrument, which I rarely use, by the knowledge that she was at perfect rest, and that no form of Hodge had previously been retained. I do not think she ever knew she had it, and it remained in situ for a month, when ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... the doors; the bridegroom puts The eager boys to gather nuts. And now both love and time To their full height do climb: Oh! give them active heat And moisture both complete: Fit organs for increase, To keep and to release That which may the honour'd stem Circle ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... anxious deliberation, and finding it of the poorest possible kind of wood, with a heart to match, Guy Darrell had the audacity to reject, though with great courtesy, the idea of grafting the last plant of his line on a stem so pithless. Though, like men who are at once very affectionate and very busy, he saw few faults in his children, or indeed in any one he really loved, till the fault was forced on him, he could not but be aware that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The fortunes of our country are now standing at the cannon's mouth, and one vote may stem the ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... something, smiled broadly and fatuously as he exclaimed, "Ha," and every now and then blew through the stem of his pipe. Klimov, who was feeling rather unwell, and not at all inclined to answer questions, hated him with all his heart. He thought how good it would be to snatch his gurgling pipe out of his hands ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... right along the wood about a quarter of an inch deep. The portion between these two incisions forms the keel. Then carry the line up the middle of the end A, and repeat the incisions as along the bottom, these making the boat's stem-post. Next turn to the top again, and make a line, similar to the dotted line CC in Fig. 1, about three-eighths of an inch inside the outline of the boat, and then carefully hollow out with a gouge everything inside this dotted line. It must be very carefully done; it is better, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... without yawing. It was now the turn of the lugger. The gun in the stern was carefully trained and, as it was fired, a patch of white splinters appeared in the sloop's bulwarks. A cheer broke from the French. The effect of the shot, which must have raked her from stem to stern, was at once evident. The sloop bore off the wind, until her whole ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... appreciative things about the girl, but didn't dwell upon that detail or make it prominent. The thing which he made prominent was the opportunity now so happily afforded, to reconcile York and Lancaster, graft the warring roses upon one stem, and end forever a crying injustice which had already lasted far too long. One could infer that he had thought this thing all out and chosen this way of making all things fair and right because it was sufficiently fair and considerably wiser ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... types found in this county. He whistled; and out came Pasiance in a geranium-coloured dress, looking like some tall poppy—you know the slight droop of a poppy's head, and the way the wind sways its stem.... She is a human poppy, her fuzzy dark hair is like a poppy's lustreless black heart, she has a poppy's tantalising attraction and repulsion, something fatal, or rather fateful. She came walking up to my new friend, then caught sight of me, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... admirable plant seemed to be in haste to rise and cheer the desolate landscape. Then at its leisure, after other plants had come to its help, it spread its leaves and grew up to a height of about two or three feet. The spreading leaves formed a whorl on the ground, and another about the middle of the stem as an involucre, and on the top of the stem the silky, hairy long-tailed seeds formed a head like a second flower. A little church was established among the earlier settlers and the meetings at first were held in our house. After working hard all the ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... a thin slice across the stem of a rapidly growing plant,—e.g. geranium, begonia, celery,—mount it in water, and examine it microscopically, it will be found to be made up of numerous cavities or chambers separated by delicate partitions. Often these cavities are of sufficient size to be visible to ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... V. "Scarce the first stem uprooted, from the wood Black drops distilled, and stained the earth with gore. Cold horror shook me, in my veins the blood Was chilled, and curdled with affright. Once more A limber sapling from the soil ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Teresa was the first to succumb to the heavy attack, and soon she turned in to shore to save her crew from drowning. Then the Oquendo caught fire in several places, and burning fiercely from stem to stern, she, ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... they are making use of alliances with Austria and Turkey, the two most decadent of their three historic enemies, in order to stem the onrush of Russia, their third and most powerful antagonist. They are a people ever faithful to their alliances even ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... horizontal position of the upper leaves made them look like a collection of small platforms or round table-tops placed nearly on a level. Through the leaves, to the height of a foot or more above them, a slender dead stem protruded, and from a twig at its summit depended a broken spider's web. A minute dead leaf had become attached to one of the loose threads and threw its small but distinct shadow on the platform leaves below; and as it trembled ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... remarkable instance known to me of the direct and prompt action of climate on a plant. It might have been expected that the tallness of the stem, the period of vegetation, and the ripening of the seed, would have been thus affected; but it is a much more surprising fact that the seeds should have undergone so rapid and great a change. As, however, flowers, with their product the seed, are formed by the metamorphosis of the stem and leaves, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... thoughts must hang together when the whiff of a smell, a band playing in the street, a face seen in the fire, or on the gnarled stem of a tree, will lead them into such vagaries at ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... all the happiness of my once high-spirited and high-blooded friend. Let it not be so. EXALT THY LOVE: DEJECTED HEART—and rise superior to such narrow minds. Do not however fancy she will ever be punished in the way you mention: no, no; she'll wither on the thorny stem dropping the faded and ungathered leaves:—a China rose, of no good scent or flavour—false in apparent sweetness, deceitful when depended on—unlike the flower produced in colder climates, which is sought for in old age, preserved even after death, a lasting and an elegant perfume,—a medicine, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... "Tie it to the stem," he commanded. "You're pretty slow," he added gently, and indeed her white fingers blundered with the unaccustomed task. When she had accomplished it, David wound the other end of the thread round a pin stuck in the high black mantel-shelf. The ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... Cristo Luis de Leon dedicated to Portocarrero In Abdiam prophetam Explanatio (1589) and the manuscript collection of his poems. For some reason not very obvious this collection of verses was not published till 1631 when it was issued by Quevedo, who hoped that it would help to stem the current of Gongorism in Spain. The poems, printed forty years after the author's death, appeared too late to affect the public taste. Gongora himself had died in 1627, but his influence was undiminished. Quevedo, who ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... Dickinson of Pennsylvania said the country was not ripe for independence, Witherspoon broke in upon the speaker exclaiming, "Not ripe, Sir! In my judgment we are not only ripe, but rotting. Almost every colony has dropped from its parent stem and your own province needs no more sunshine to mature it." He further declared that he would rather be hanged than desert his country's cause. One of his sons was killed at the ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... truer. I signaled back to Olson: "Let 'er go!" The U-33 trembled from stem to stern as the torpedo shot from its tube. I saw the white wake leap from her bow straight toward the enemy cruiser. A chorus of hoarse yells arose from the deck of our own craft: I saw the officers stand suddenly erect in the boat that was approaching us, and I heard loud cries and curses ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... disappear with a full head—lost rivers, as they are aptly named. Pass to the marine world, and south-west of Bataban, in the Gulf of Xagua (Cuba), a river-fountain throws up a broad white disk like a flower of water on a liquid stem, visible on the violet phosphorescence of the Caribbean Sea. Its impetuous force makes it dangerous to unwary crafts; and, to add to its recognizable characteristics, in its pure waters is to be found the sea-cow—found there and in Manatee Bay and Spring alone. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... his sitting-room upstairs and lit a nargeeleh pipe. He had turned out all the electric burners except one, and as he sat alone there in the small room, so dimly lighted, holding the long, snake-like pipe-stem in his thin, artistic hands, he looked like an Eastern Jew. With a fez upon his head, Europe would have dropped from him. Even his expression seemed to have become wholly Eastern, in its sombre, glittering intelligence, and in the patience ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... be heard no further. The iron discipline of West Point was powerless to stem the torrent of cadet enthusiasm at this public mention of their beloved leader of the year gone by. Up sprang the entire corps, and the rafters rang with the thunder of their cheers—a thunder that seemed to redouble rather than dwindle at sight of ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... has been in decline for more than a decade with falling imports and growing foreign debt. Economic difficulties stem from a chronically depressed level of copper production and ineffective economic policies. In 1991 real GDP fell by 2% and in 1992 by 3% more. An annual population growth of more than 3% has brought a decline in per capita GDP of 50% over the past decade. A high inflation rate has also ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... small, slightly fragrant, in a densely flowered terminal raceme. Perianth of 6 separate, spreading segments; 6 stamens; 1 pistil. Stem: Simple, somewhat angled, 1 to 3 ft. high, scaly below, leafy, and sometimes finely hairy above. Leaves: Alternate and seated along stem, oblong, lance-shaped, 3 to 6 in. long, finely hairy beneath. Rootstock: Thick, fleshy. Fruit: A cluster of aromatic, round, pale red ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... should, in the increased laxity of public morals, become more frequently abused. Its pernicious effects became constantly more apparent, and more decidedly challenged the attention of the comparatively few godly men who endeavored to stem and to control the rapidly widening current of immorality which threatened to overwhelm the land.[33] The powerful intellect of Jonathan Edwards thundered its anathemas upon it; pious divines prayed against it in their closets, and wrestled with it ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... and commenced to preach. He stood with both hands in his pockets, at first, his coat ruffled back, and there was the stem of a clay pipe sticking out of his waistcoat pocket. The pipe fascinated me for a while, but after that I forgot the pipe and was fascinated by the man. Peter's face was one that didn't strike you at first with its full strength, it grew on you; it grew on me, and before he ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... stream system and would inundate much valley land. It aroused articulate opposition at local, state, and Congressional levels, a good deal of which was focused on the key Seneca dam on the Potomac main stem just above Washington—an area where earlier single proposals for dams, first at Great Falls and then at River Bend, had provoked ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... adverse party hid in darkness. To shy at a cow within six feet distance gives no chance at all to his dark antagonist. A pigeon rising from a trap at a suitable distance might be thought a sincere staking of the interest at issue: but, as to the massy stem of a tree 'fort gros et fort prs'—the sarcasm of a Roman emperor applies, that to miss under such conditions implied an original genius for stupidity, and to hit was no trial of the case. After all, the sentimentalist had youth to plead in ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... movement against the Magdalen maker—they have bought bikes and are chasing the girl in bloomers. One-half the great she-world's on wheels—the other wondering how it feels to ride clothespin fashion. Clearly the Women's Rescue League cannot stem the tide— not even with the help of the ICONOCLAST and ex- Governor Hogg; it must either straddle a bike and join in the stampede, climb a fence or get run over. Hevings! is there no help for us—no halting-place this side of hetairism? Are we all pedaling at breakneck pace to the Grove ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Laka, mistress of the hula, 5 Has climbed the wooded haunts of the gods, Altars hallowed by the sacrificial swine, The head of the boar, the black boar of Kane. A partner he with Laka; Woman, she by strife gained rank in heaven. 10 That the root may grow from the stem, That the young shoot may put forth and leaf, Pushing up the fresh enfolded bud, The scion-thrust bud and fruit toward the East, Like the tree that bewitches the winter fish, 15 Maka-lei, tree famed from the age of night. Truth is the counsel ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... But here is another marvel. The Yellow Man, whose name was Kitai, had with him a brown box. In the box was a blue bowl with red marks upon the rim, and within the bowl, hanging from a fine thread, was a piece of iron no thicker than that grass stem, and as long, maybe, as my spur, but straight. In this iron, said Witta, abode an Evil Spirit which Kitai, the Yellow Man, had brought by Art Magic out of his own country that lay three years' journey southward. The Evil Spirit strove day and night ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... my song, Owen swift, and Owen strong, Fairest flower of Roderick's stem, Gwyneth's[1] shield and Britain's gem. He nor heaps his brooded stores, Nor on all profusely pours; Lord of every regal art, Liberal ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... literary attainments. For some years he was a professor in a Southern military school. He has held the position of State Geologist of Indiana, and is the son of the celebrated Robert J. Owen, who founded the Communist Society at New Harmony, Indiana. Every sprig, leaf, and stem on the route suggested to Colonel Owen something to talk about, and he proved to be a very ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... isolated Tuscaroras of the Carolinas. Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, who has discussed "Indian Migrations" in several interesting papers printed in the North American Review, thinks the Iroquois were separated very early from the same original stem which produced the great Dacotah family. The Algonquins were spread most widely over the country when it was first ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... the pervading silence, Domini began to hear the tiny sounds that broke it. They came from the trees and plants. The airs were always astir, helping the soft designs of Nature, loosening a leaf from its stem and bearing it to the sand, striking a berry from its place and causing it to drop at Domini's feet, giving a faded geranium petal the courage to leave its more vivid companions and resign itself to the loss of the place it could no longer fill with beauty. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... difficulty could suggest, yet with incredible rapidity, he crawled to the very top of one of the trees, and tore down a huge leaf, which he threw on the ground, and himself after it, rebounding like a ball. He then laid the leaf on the water, held it by the stem, and told Richard to get upon it. He did so. It went down deep in the middle with his weight. Toadstool let it go, and it shot down the stream like an arrow. This began the strangest and most delightful voyage. The stream rushed careering and curveting down the hill-side, ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... swim, as evening came on, they dressed and went up town. I went along. The kids began "battering" the "main-stem" for "light pieces," or, in other words, begging for money on the main street. I had never begged in my life, and this was the hardest thing for me to stomach when I first went on The Road. I had absurd notions about begging. My philosophy, up to that time, was that it was finer to steal than to ...
— The Road • Jack London
... they hacked with their axes—the sharpest the raven had ever seen—they dug and hauled, and at last they actually got the huge stem turned over on its side, so that the whole tough net-work of roots stood straight up ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... borne in more or less branched clusters, located on the stem on the opposite side and usually a little below the leaves; the first cluster on the sixth to twelfth internode from the ground, with one on each second to sixth succeeding one. The flowers (Fig. 2) are small, consisting of a yellow, deeply five-cleft, wheel-shaped corolla, with a very short ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... of moisture in the soil. The fact that the bark peels easily in the spring depends on the presence of incomplete, soft tissue found between wood and bark during this season, and has little to do with the total amount of water contained in the wood of the stem. ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... attempting to stem the onset of the column dashed against us, better success was secured elsewhere. Another column swept down the other road, upon which there was only an outlying picket. This had to come back on the run before the overwhelming numbers, and the Rebels galloped straight ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... coast along the inhospitable cliffs of Northern Africa and to face the open sea, were more strongly and scientifically built than any vessels hitherto constructed. The Egyptian undecked galleys, with stem and stern curving inwards, were discarded as a build ill adapted to resist the attacks of wind or wave. The new Phoenician galley had a long, low, narrow, well-balanced hull, the stern raised and curving inwards above the steersman, as heretofore, but the bows pointed and furnished ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... clambered into the boat, which at once joined the two others, and then all three lay to, and their occupants watched the Motutapu drifting before the wind, with the red flames enveloping her from stern to stem. ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... cliffs. You take it for a stonecrop—one of those weeds doomed to obscurity, and safe from being picked because they are so uninviting—and you pass it by incuriously. But about June it puts forth its power, and from the cushion of pale leaves there springs a strong pink stem, which rises upward for a while, and then curves down and breaks into a shower of snow-white blossoms. Far away the splendour gleams, hanging like a plume of ostrich-feathers from the roof of rock, waving to the wind, or stooping down to touch ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the girls, too, for the matter of that, were greatly interested in the elegant steam yacht, and they took great pleasure in visiting every part of the vessel from bow to stem. Captain Barforth did all in his power to make all on board the Rainbow feel at home and whenever the boys visited the engine room they were met with a smile ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... of seedlings was smaller. There was little difference in seedlings from nuts planted one and two inches deep but they were noticeably larger than those planted 3 and 4 inches deep. Planting nuts with the radicle end down invariably produced seedlings with undesirable crooks in the root-stem region which made them unsuitable for grafting. Planting nuts radicle end up produced straighter seedlings than planting them on their side. The latter method was the most ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... and gazed in at the window. Mr. Jobling, with the stem of his pipe, performed a brief ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... die. The poor prisoner was frantic with grief and cried, "Is my little one, my joy, my hope, the only thing for which I live, to be taken from me?" Searching, he found that as Picciola had grown taller her stem had had grown larger, and now there was not room enough for it in the crevice between the stones. Her sap,—her life blood,—was running away, as the rough edges of the stones cut into her delicate stem. Nothing could save her but to lift those cruel stones. ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... a prologue chorus ("There shall come forth a Rod out of the Stem of Jesse"), at the close of which the "Bethlehem" scene begins. It is preluded with a quiet but effective pastoral movement for the orchestra, a tenor recitative ("There were Shepherds abiding in the Field"), and a contralto solo announcing the heavenly message to ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... badly out of trim; 'Tis time to calk and grave her; She's foul with stench of human gore; They've turned her to a slaver. She's cruised about from coast to coast, The flying bondman hunting, Until she's strained from stem to stern, And ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... some years, that it was Lewis's purpose to buy a thirty dollar silver watch some day, if he ever got where he could afford it. Today Ida has given him a new, sumptuous gold Swiss stem-winding stop-watch; and if any scoffer shall say, "Behold this thing is out of character," there is an inscription within, which will silence him; for it will teach him that this wearer aggrandizes the watch, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rake, and all that—love flowers nevertheless. For such these plants are more than a relief. Observe my Oncidium. It stands in a pot, but this is only for convenience—a receptacle filled with moss. The long stem feathered with great blossoms springs from a bare slab of wood. No mould nor peat surrounds it; there is absolutely nothing save the roots that twine round their support, and the wire that sustains it in the air. It asks ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... motionless, his own club half raised, the great muscles of his arm now showing under the brown skin as he clinched hard the tiny stem of the weapon. He seemed not perturbed by the menaces of the chieftain, and though unaware that the latter must in time suffer from the violence of his own exertions, nevertheless remained the fuller master of his own forces ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... the first signs of the fresh river water, is the occurrence on the bank of the graceful nibong palm, with its straight, slender, round stem, twenty to thirty feet in height, surmounted with a plume of green leaves. This palm, cut into lengths and requiring no further preparation, is universally employed by the Malay for the posts and beams of his house, always raised several feet above the level of the ground, ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... defeated and forced to retreat. It was in this battle that the Germans made their last stand south of Reims. They had prepared strong positions on the right bank of this river as they moved toward Paris and in these tried to stem the tide of battle without avail. They were pushed back slowly out of these positions, some of which we were shown, and after being driven to the north of Reims, they began, on September 20th, the bombardment that destroyed the ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... nevertheless which might be rendered useful, if carefully and judiciously applied. The young shoots and leaves of chick-weed, for example, may be boiled and eaten like spinach, are equally wholesome, and can scarcely be distinguished from it. The juice expressed from the stem and leaves of goose-grass, taken to the amount of four ounces, night and morning for several weeks, is very efficacious in scorbutic complaints, and other cutaneous eruptions. The smell of garlic is an infallible remedy against the vapours, faintings, and other hysteric affections. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... description, but without its cover, of the metal called latten, was until recently preserved in the church of Enstone, Oxfordshire: the body of this was of a semi-globular form, supported on an angular stem, with a knob in the midst, and in appearance not unlike a chalice. The monstrance, in which the host was exhibited to the people, and which has been sometimes confounded with the pix[182-*], does not appear to have been introduced ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... Here the noisome smell of decaying vegetation nauseated us, for the air in those forest depths is deadly. Beautiful scarlet wax-flowers would gleam high among the dark-green foliage of the giant cotton-tree, whose stem would be covered with orchids and ferns and dense wreaths of creeper, while many other beautiful blossoms flourished and faded unseen. In that dark dismal place there was an absence of animal life. Sometimes, however, by day we would hear the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... I shall revive it.' And then that best of Brahmanas, the illustrious and learned Kasyapa, revived, by his vidya, that tree which had been reduced to a heap of ashes. And first he created the sprout, then he furnished it with two leaves, and then he made the stem, and then the branches, and then the full-grown tree with leaves and all. And Takshaka, seeing the tree revived by the illustrious Kasyapa, said unto him, 'It is not wonderful in thee that thou shouldst destroy my poison or that of any one ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... stretched southeast into the heart of the granite range, its funnel shape producing tremendous tides. When the tide was ebbing that charging phalanx of ice was irresistible, storming down the canyon with race-horse speed; no canoe could stem that current. We waited until the turn, then getting inside the outer fleet of icebergs we paddled up with the flood tide. Mile after mile we raced past those smooth mountain shoulders; higher and higher they towered, and the ice, closing in upon us, threatened a trap. ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... snow when the ship came to Ungava. She had run on a reef in leaving Cartwright, her first port of call on the Labrador coast; her keel was ripped out from stem to stern, and for a month she had lain in dry dock for repairs at St. John's, Newfoundland. It was October 22nd when I said good-bye to my kind friends at the post and in ten days the Pelican landed us safe at Rigolette. Here I had the good fortune to be picked up by a ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... a monstrous big, hollow pumpkin which had a door and windows cut through the rind. There was a stovepipe running through the stem, and six steps had been built leading up to the ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... "all save these dumb people who have been priests of the Tree from generation to generation. To touch its stem is to perish soon or late, for it is the Tree of Life and Death, and in it dwells the ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... sounding boards can be made much thicker than when the cores are rigidly fixed to the sole piece, because the magnetic attraction of the poles has then only to overcome the resistance of the diaphragm. Instead of using a diaphragm, they sometimes fix a stem to one of the cores of the electro-magnet, and mount thereon a light disk of vulcanite, wood, ivory, gutta-percha, or any other substance which it is capable of vibrating. When using this telephone receiver, the disk is pressed to the ear in such a manner that its surface covers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... him, till nothing was left to Randal's father, Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie, but the decayed house, which was what the Germans call the stamm schloss, or "stem hall," of the race, and the wretched ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... freely to philanthropic work, and held liberal European views, seemed pleasant to Nekhludoff as a sample of a quite new and good type of civilised European culture, grafted on a healthy, uncultivated peasant stem. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... bunches or grapes like the currant, on a bush very similar to the currant bush: the leaves of this shrub resemble those of the laurel: they are very thick and always green. The fruit is oblong, and disposed in two rows on the stem: the extremity of the berry is open, having a little speck or tuft like that of an apple. It is not of a particularly fine flavor, but it is wholesome, and one may eat a quantity of it, without inconvenience. The natives make great use of it; they prepare it for the winter by bruising ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... an elsewhere exotic, the Brazilian Camarotta at your feet, furnishes you with a screen. The white flocks of the Acacia verticillata are peeping out from the ranks of those small triangular leaves, which are so singularly attached, without stalks, by one of these angles to the stem. Amidst these pleasant perfumes camphor would be unwelcome, but there is the laurel that yields it. Fennel has here become a tree, in which, like the mustard of the Gospels, the fowls of the air may lodge; we are dwarfs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the chancel; the old books with clasps (that Haag, or Werner, would delight in), and two quite modern stone pulpits or lecterns, with vine leaves twining up them in the form of a cross, the carving of which is equal to any of the old work—the rugged vine stem and the ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... something about not being hungry, and presently Trafford asked, with the stem and ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... rested in the oasis. Mary liked to sit on the grass under an olive-tree near the spring, and let the boy stretch his little soft arms to pluck a flower. He reached it, but did not break it from its stem; he only stroked ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... who dare say 'Halt!' till Right pens its 'Finis' to the story! There is no pathway, but the path through blood, Out of the horrors of this holocaust. Hell has let loose its scalding crimson flood, And he who stops to argue now is lost. Not brooms of creeds, not Pacifistic words Can stem the ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... smoke luxuriously. Birnier stared for a moment, stuck his pipe in his mouth and bit the stem; removed ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... importance and saddest in significance. There were his pipes neatly arranged on a little fretwork rack which hung where bell handles are usually put beside the fireplace. She remembered having seen him replace one of them the last time she was there, and now she went over and touched its cold stem, and her heart swelled. The stand of ferns and flowers which he had arranged with such infinite pains to please the "Boy" stood in its accustomed place, but ferns and flowers alike were dead or drooping in their pots, untended and uncared for, and some ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... three o'clock, and as, with the rising tide, the gale swelled once more to its former violence, the remnants of the barque fast yielded to the resistless waves. The cabin went by the board, the after-parts broke up, and the stem settled out of sight. Soon, too, the forecastle was filled with water, and the helpless little band were driven to the deck, where they clustered round the foremast. Presently, even this frail support was loosened from the hull, and rose and fell with every billow. It was plain ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... like the one they have in the biology class in the high school. Helen took me to the class with her one day and the teacher let me look through it. It was perfectly wonderful. There was a slice of the stem of a small plant there and it looked just as if it were a house with a lot of rooms. Each room ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... crashing through skin and flesh and bone, felling him to the earth. Apollo ran towards him and raised him in his arms. But the head of Hyacinthus fell over on the god's shoulder, like the head of a lily whose stem is broken. The red blood gushed to the ground, an unquenchable stream, and darkness fell on the eyes of Hyacinthus, and, with the flow of his life's blood, his gallant young ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... good gift," said Eric; and afterwards they rode to the seashore and overhauled the vessel as she lay in her shed. She was a great dragon of war, long and slender, and standing high at stem and prow. She was fashioned of oak, all bolted together with iron, and at her prow was a gilded dragon most ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... A sumac tree at the head of the improvised couch gave the necessary shade to the face of the sleeper, while a wild grapevine, after having run over and encircled with its moist green every stone and stem on the island, fulfilled its longing at length in a tumultuous possession of the sumac, making a massive yet aerial patched green curtain or canopy to the fantastic bed, and ending seemingly in two tiny transparent spirals curling up to ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... efforts of isolated Catholic reformers in Germany, to stem the tide of corruption which threatened to sweep the Church into a vortex of ruin, for a long time little impression was made on the vast sea of abuses, and but little permanent good was effected. It almost seemed as though the Poor Clares of Nuremburg, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... stretched out his hand in haste to the nearest flower, lest in a little while he should be no more than a part of the giant's dream. 'O beloved Heart of Melilot!' he cried, and crushed his fingers upon the stem. ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... the great trunk of the rata, with its extensive pedestal of gnarled and twisting roots, that for six or eight feet from the ground branch down all round its base, I see peering round the stem, and from above the roots, a face that I know well; it is that of Tama-te-Whiti. He has made a circuit, got behind the tree, and is now climbing over and among the extended roots, cautiously and silently stealing upon the pig, with intent to drive ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... sea-shore; it is deep and precipitous, and resembles a gully or ravine. The banks on either side are covered with the tree which bears the prickly fig, called in Moorish, Kermous del Inde. There is something wild and grotesque in the appearance of this tree or plant, for I know not which to call it. Its stem, though frequently of the thickness of a man's body, has no head, but divides itself, at a short distance from the ground, into many crooked branches, which shoot in all directions, and bear green and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow |
