"Thistle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consequence I altered one scene, and dragged out Arthur Onslow by the head and heels—the good boy of the piece; and we found he was never missed, but the whole much lightened by throwing this heavy character overboard. Next night "The Rose, Thistle, and Shamrock": Mr. Knox laughed, and seemed to enjoy ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the rule. He had evidently made up his mind that the road to the Landslip was not a congenial one. In vain the boy who drove him cheered him onwards, in vain Denys tugged at his bridle, in vain Audrey walked in front holding out an inviting thistle. At length Mrs. Henchman got ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... moose Mahskoodaysay, n. a quail Mahnoomenekashee, n. a mud-hen Mezhesay, n. a turkey Mesahmaig, n. a whale Mahzhahmagoos, n. trout Mahnoomin, n. rice Mezheh, adv. everywhere Magwah, adv. while Manmooyahwahgaindahmoowin, n. thankfulness Meshejemin, n. a currant, (fruit) Mahzahn, n. a thistle Mahjegooday, n. a petticoat Menekahnekah, adv. seedy Mejenahwayahdahkahmig, n. pity Mahmahdahwechegawenebun, it was a strange custom Menesenoo, n. a hero Mesquahsin, n. brick, which signifies, red stone Mesahowh, that is Moosay, n. a worm Moong, n. a loon ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... fellow whose face resembles a bare belly?" resumed Gervaise. "And the little one, with small eyes framed in red eyelids, pared down and slashed up like a thistle head?" ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... insect-product to which I would draw attention, is a saccharine substance resembling dark honey. Mr. Loftus, who obtained it near Kirrind, 13th July, 1851, and whose specimen is in the British Museum, states that it is exuded from a species of thistle when pierced by a Rhynchophorous insect; but he fails to inform us for what purposes it is used by ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... laughing. "Because it appears to me horrible, to see a poor girl lost and buried in some ugly and selfish man, and become, as they say seriously, the better half of the monster—yes! a fresh and blooming rose to become part of a frightful thistle!—Come, my dear count; confess there is something odious in this conjugal metempsychosis," added Adrienne, with ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... never entered the filthy place but once. There were two sons and a daughter. Oh, how immortally beautiful that girl was! Such velvet darkness in the eye, such statuesque lines, such rose-leaf color, such hair—'hair like the thistle-down tinted with gold,' as John Mills, the Scotch poet-player, sang. The old man Raynier worshipped her, perhaps as a wild beast loves its whelp. But he had all sorts of fanciful names for her, Heart's-ease and Heart's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... she put in his button-hole; a thistle, thorns and all, would have been precious to him if her hands had touched it, and he would have torn his fingers against the prickles with an exquisite sense ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... of his old home. It has spread very rapidly, and on thousands upon thousands of acres it has rooted out the native grasses and taken full possession of the soil. Another plant has a history which would be ludicrous if it were not so serious, and that is the thistle." ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... children came: a lovely little blonde daughter with a head of thistle-down. Everybody adored the child. It was the first exquisite blonde thing that had come into the family, a little mite with the white, slim, beautiful limbs of its father, and as it grew up the dancing, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... Cobweb,' said the foolish clown, 'kill me the red humble bee on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr. Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Mr. Cobweb, and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be sorry to have you overflown with a ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... better took place in the face of the country, and the wretched horses they still had left began to pick up a little. At last, when their rations were quite exhausted, they sighted a ship at anchor in Thistle Cove. She turned out to be the MISSISSIPPI, whaler, Captain Rossitur, and once more Eyre had to thank fortune for ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... conjugate the verb 'to be' than to lack a knowledge of the chemical properties of the food we eat, and the suitability of it to our organism. Yet the latter bears direct and intimate relation to man's physical, mental, and moral well-being, while the former is but a 'sapless, heartless thistle for pedantic chaffinches,' as Jean ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... expense of their journey to Windermere?—And wherever any one among the labouring classes has made even an approach to the sensibility which drew a lamentation from Burns when he had uprooted a daisy with his plough, and caused him to turn the 'weeder-clips aside' from the thistle, and spare 'the symbol dear' of his country, then surely such a one, could he afford by any means to travel as far as Kendal, would not grudge a two hours' walk across the skirts of the beautiful country that he was ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... went back to the Little Country to be counsellor at law to its people in time of need, and a father to Solon Denney and his two children. Solon could direct large affairs acceptably, but he and his babes were as thistle-down in ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... old and cranky or something like that?" teased Jane. Her hair was bursting from her cap like an over-ripe thistle, and her cheeks were velvety in a rich glow of early winter tints. She hardly looked too old even for skipping ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... may bloom for England, The lily for France unfold; Ireland may honor the shamrock, Scotland her thistle bold; But the shield of the great Republic, The glory of the West, Shall bear a stalk of the tasseled corn— Of all our wealth the best. The arbutus and the golden-rod The heart of the North may cheer; And the mountain laurel for ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... by every fall of dew; and bears his works as his fruit, as the fablier of old bore his fables. Why attach one's self to a master, or graft one's self upon a model? It were better to be a bramble or a thistle, fed by the same earth as the cedar and the palm, than the fungus or the lichen of those noble trees. The bramble lives, the fungus vegetates. Moreover, however great the cedar and the palm may be, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... fence out the infected. Geographical boundaries are no barriers against contagion. Rivers and mountains are easily crossed by corrupting example. Ardent spirits, like all other fluids, perpetually seek their level. In vain does the farmer eradicate from his fields the last vestige of the noisome thistle, while the neighboring grounds are given up to its dominion, and every wind scatters the seed where it listeth. The effort against intemperance, to be ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... the Star- Child entered it gladly. Yet did its beauty profit him little, for wherever he went harsh briars and thorns shot up from the ground and encompassed him, and evil nettles stung him, and the thistle pierced him with her daggers, so that he was in sore distress. Nor could he anywhere find the piece of white gold of which the Magician had spoken, though he sought for it from morn to noon, and from noon to sunset. And at sunset he set his face towards home, weeping bitterly, ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... road. Here and there a tall straggling plant of purple lithospermum has found a footing, and flourishes aloft its dark violet tiara of blossoms; while bright tufts of wall-flower send up their tongues of flame from an old tomb peering above the wall, as if from a funeral pyre. The St. Mary thistle grows at the foot of the walls in knots of large, spreading, crinkled leaves, beautifully scalloped at the edges; the glazed surface reticulated with lacteal veins, retaining the milk that, according to the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... opportunity of writing a few lines to you, my dear uncle, as I have a chance of sending it ashore by the revenue cutter Thistle, which is lying alongside of us. Between us, we have just captured a rascally smuggling lugger, with a cargo of lace, silk, and spirits. You will, I am sure, be surprised and grieved to hear that among the crew of the lugger was James Walsham. ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... Leoni!—Angels rest his soul! He was a woodman, and could fell and saw With lusty arm. You know that huge round beam Which props the hanging wall of the old chapel? Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree He found a baby wrapt in mosses, lined With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool As hang on brambles. Well, he brought him home, And reared him at the then Lord Velez' cost. And so the babe grew up a pretty boy, A pretty boy, but most unteachable— And never learnt a prayer, nor told a bead, But knew the names of birds, ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk Pashing their life out, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... the staff is very plain, but the pommel is ornamented with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. The fleurs-de-lis with which this sceptre was originally adorned have been replaced by golden leaves, bearing the rose, shamrock, and thistle. The cross is variously jewelled, and has in the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... by whose command Was form'd this Machiavelian plot, Not leave a thistle on thy land; Then who will own thee ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Macey, good-humouredly. "Donkey enjoys his thistle as much as a horse does his corn, or you did chewing ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... make light of pain and discomfort. He needs no Aristotle to teach him the value of habits; he is soon forced to use them as defences against his pet weaknesses; above all he finds that self-denial has its reward in perfect health; that the thistle pain, too, has its flower. It is a truism that 'Varsity athletes generally succeed in life, Spartan discipline proving itself incomparably ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... skin, the edible flesh, and the hidden stone of the fruit. The conspicuous racemes of the choke-cherries, or the shining scarlet globes of the cultivated fruit, fairly shout aloud to the birds—"Come and eat us, we're as good as we look!" But Mother Nature looks on and laughs to herself. Thistle seeds are blown to the land's end by the wind; the heavier ticks and burrs are carried far and wide upon the furry coats of passing creatures; but the cherry could not spread its progeny beyond a branch's ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... grasshoppers Leapt about the grasses And the thistle-burs; And the whispered chuckle Of the katydid Shook the honeysuckle ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... kind of cactus, of which they make needles, grows abundantly on the mountains round Ollantay-tampu. It is called ahuarancu. They set fire to the cacti as a war signal. Zegarra calls it a thistle. The word in the Justiniani text ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... stared, open- mouthed—while over the whole brilliant scene that remarkable silence brooded, like the sultry pause before the breaking of a storm. Triumphant, reckless, panting,—scarcely knowing what she did in her excitement,—Pequita, suddenly running backward, with the lightness of thistle-down flying before the wind, snatched the flag of the country from a super standing by, and dancing forward again, waved it aloft, till with a final abandonment of herself to the humour of the moment, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the sluggard; I hear him complain, You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again. I passed by his garden, I saw the wild brier, The thorn, and the thistle, grow broader and higher; The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags; And his money he wastes, till he starves ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... double that in an hour. I just jotted that down as I came up the valley from Paw-paw in the Chattanooga Limited. Why, just lookin' out of the cyah windo' would give me notions. I saw a thistle. Down she went on the list, an' down went whistle next her, suggested by our locomotive. Thistle. Whistle. Look at those disgraces. Look at the dead wood in 'em. Are not they just congested all up with pitfalls for the young? Once we get to work at Arkansopolis, and ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... straight to his work, And fill'd all the stockings, then turn'd with a jerk; And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle: But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, 'Happy Christmas to all, and to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... roulette; now, when the old lady's personality had been so clearly and typically revealed as that of a rugged, arrogant woman who was "tombee en enfance"; now, when everything appeared to be lost,—why, now the Grandmother was as merry as a child which plays with thistle-down. "Good Lord!" I thought with, may God forgive me, a most malicious smile, "every ten-gulden piece which the Grandmother staked must have raised a blister on the General's heart, and maddened De Griers, and driven Mlle. de Cominges ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wanting in this book some of the intenser qualities of the author's work; and their absence is made up for by much happy description after a quieter fashion. The burst of jubilation over the departure of the snow, which forms the prelude to 'The Thistle,' is full of spirit and of pleasant images. The speech of the forest in 'Sans Souci' is inspired by a beautiful sentiment for nature of the modern sort, and pleases us more, I think, as poetry should please us, than anything in Chronicles and Characters. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old horse was turned out to find what he could among the rocks on the barren hill-side. Lame and sick, he strolled along the dusty roads, glad to find a blade of grass or a thistle. The boys threw stones at him, the dogs barked at him, and in all the world there was no ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again. It is like molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful like the imperfections in ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... let in the light, and then escorted the ladies home. But Thumbelina could not sleep that night; so she got out of bed, and plaited a great big blanket of straw, and carried it off, and spread it over the dead bird, and piled upon it thistle-down as soft as cotton-wool, which she had found in the field-mouse's room, so that the poor little thing should ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... one belonging to the centre shaft of the middle window on the lower floor has twisted round it two branches out of which grow the cusps. While at the sides there is no distinct abacus, in the centre it is always square and moulded. The cusps end in knobs like thistle-heads, and are themselves rather branchlike. In the hollow between the shafts and the framing there are sometimes square or round flowers, sometimes twisting branches. Branches too form the framing of all, ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... morning, I set out to find my noble long-eared steed, Edward; but although I roamed about for an hour and a half I could not discover him anywhere, so breakfasted and searched again, but to no purpose. I gave him up as having been drowned whilst browsing on the toothsome but truculent thistle or gorse. I looked at my plough and cart in dismay, saying, "Man proposes, and an ass disposes." But shortly after this dismal reflection, judge of my joy when I heard his musical voice lifted up in sweet song, and borne to my enraptured ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... the romantic, A hundred thousand have run frantic— There's not a hideous highland spot, (Long fallowed to the core by Scott)— No rill, through rack and thistle dribbling, But has its deadlier crop of scribbling. Each fen, and flat, and flood, and fell, Gives birth to verses by the ell— There Wordsworth, for his muse's sallies, Claims all the ponds, the lanes, and alleys— There ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... yaks the ground is almost everywhere bare and barren, and yet these great beasts roam about and thrive excellently. They live on mosses and lichens, which they lick up with the tongue, and for this purpose their tongues are provided with hard, sharp, horny barbs like a thistle. In the same way they crop the velvety grass, less than half an inch high, which grows on the edges of the high alpine brooks, and which is so short that a horse cannot ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... crickets' bones, And daintily made for the nonce; For fear of rattling on the stones With thistle-down they shod it; For all her maidens much did fear If Oberon had chanced to hear That Mab his Queen should have been there, He would not ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... blows me fairly away!' she said, jumping up and floating off to the mill door like any thistle down, on ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... wire is down. We lie in the long grass and crush dandelions between our two cheeks till the milk comes out on our faces. We hold each other tight and the wind tip-toes all over us and pelts us with thistle-down. ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... law and order, the eye of a country gentleman and a justice of the peace, the spectacle was scandalously disreputable. It was moss-grown; it was worm-eaten; it was broken right in the middle; through its four socketless eyes, neighbored by the nettle, peered the thistle:—the thistle!—a forest of thistles!—and, to complete the degradation of the whole, those thistles had attracted the donkey of an itinerant tinker; and the irreverent animal was in the very act of taking ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... eyebrow to brown evetide, How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere, Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide. God! of whom music And song and blood are pure, The day is never darken'd That had thee here obscure. Chirping none, the scarlet cicalas crouch'd in ranks: Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk gray: Scarce the stony lizard suck'd hollows in his flanks: Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay. Sudden bow'd the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard, Lengthen'd ran the grasses, the sky grew slate: Then amid a swift flight of wing'd seed white as curd, Clear ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... is a' my merry young men, Whom I gi' meat and fee, To pu' the thistle and the thorn, To ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... there is vitality still in the roots. The "Mightier" than the "strong man" must now come and pluck up the roots. The work of eradication thus accomplished, the absolute reign of Christ will be established. The heart will now become the Garden of the Lord, without briar, thorn, or thistle. Relieved of these hindrances, the ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... well authenticated, they would have been incredible. So it is with plants; cases could be given of introduced plants which have become common throughout whole islands in a period of less than ten years. Several of the plants, such as the cardoon and a tall thistle, which are now the commonest over the wide plains of La Plata, clothing square leagues of surface almost to the exclusion of every other plant, have been introduced from Europe; and there are plants which now ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Belladonna, writes Mr. Conway, is esteemed in Bohemia a favourite plant of the devil, who watches it, but may be drawn from it on Walpurgis Night by letting loose a black hen, after which he will run. Then there is the sow-thistle, which in Russia is said to belong to the devil; and Loki, the evil spirit in northern mythology, is occasionally spoken of as sowing weeds among the good seed; from whence, it has been suggested, originated the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... caterpillars wend their way in the short grass by the wayside, where the wild carrot and the purple bull-thistle are coming ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... home wid ourselves as wise as we come, as the man said when he'd axed his road of the ould black horse in the dark lane. There's no good goin' further, for the whole gang of them's scattered over the counthry agin now like a seedin' thistle in ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... saucy fellow prowled about promiscuously a while, assailing one and another in French, to about as much purpose as one might have tried to storm the walls with discharges of thistle down; all smoked and drank as before. But as several other visitors arrived, and it became evident that if we did not come to see the castle, it was not likely we came for any thing else, a man was fished up from some depths unknown, with a promising bunch of keys. He sallied forth to that part ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... goldfinch. This is one of the last birds to nest, seldom hatching its eggs till late in July. It seems as if a particular kind of food were required to rear its brood, which cannot be had at an earlier date. The seed of the common thistle is apparently its mainstay. There is no prettier sight at this season than a troop of young goldfinches, led by their parents, going from thistle to thistle along the roadside and pulling the ripe heads to pieces for the seed. The plaintive call of the young is one of the characteristic ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... defence of religion, or as marks of honour on officers who have distinguished themselves by their valour and address. This dignity being personal, dies with the individual so honoured. The initials of our own orders are:—K.G., Knight of the Garter; K.T., Knight of the Thistle; K.S.P., Knight of St. Patrick; G.C.B., Grand Cross of the Bath; K.C.B., Knight Commander of the Bath; G.C.H., Knight Grand Cross of the Hanoverian Guelphic Order; K.H., Knight of the Hanoverian Guelphic Order; G.C.M.G., Grand Cross of St. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... seen her clinging to a drunken or brutal husband, and read in letters of fire upon her forehead her curse? But God did not say the curse was good, nor bid Adam enforce it. Nor did he say, all men shall rule over thee. For Adam, not Eve, the earth was to bring forth the thorn and the thistle, and he was to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow. Yet I never heard a sermon on the sin of uprooting weeds, or letting Eve, as she does, help him to bear his burden. It is when she tries to lighten her load that the world is afraid of sacrilege ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... merry On a bun and glass of sherry), If we've nothing in particular to do, We may make a Proclamation, Or receive a Deputation - Then we possibly create a Peer or two. Then we help a fellow-creature on his path With the Garter or the Thistle or the Bath: Or we dress and toddle off in semi-State To a festival, a function, or a FETE. Then we go and stand as sentry At the Palace (private entry), Marching hither, marching thither, up and down and to and fro, While the ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... visited the Villa of the Grand Duchess Helena of Russia, he wore no jewel save the diamond- studded star presented to him by the Czar. At the reception given by the "English Colony" to Sir Walter Scott, the great sculptor wore a modest thistle-blossom in his lapel, which caused Lord Elgin to offer odds that if O'Connell should appear in Rome, Thorwaldsen would wear a sprig of shamrock in his hat and say nothing. The thistle caught Sir Walter, and the next day when he came to call on the sculptor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Lilly left India in 1862 he was given a silver pitcher and a silver tray.[19] The pitcher (13 inches high and 7-1/2 inches in diameter) has a tall, slender neck with a decided downturn to the pouring lip and a hinged lid with a thistle flower as a knob. The neck is engraved on each side with a design of grape leaves and grapes. The bowl of the pitcher has eight panels embossed with scrolls of vines and flowers. Both the tray and the pitcher are marked "Allen and Hayes." ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... all the friends and families of the prisoners together on the public square. Then they dug five graves. Then five Japanese officers came stalking across the public square, whisking at the thistle-tops with swords as they came; and then walked up to these innocent Russian boys, and whacked off ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... which the careful farmer must contend are the wild garlic, tribby weed, dog fennel, two varieties of the common daisy, oxeye daisy, St. John's wort, blue thistle, common thistle, pigeon-weed, burdock, broad and narrow-leaved dock, poke-weed, clot-bur, three-thorned bur, supposed to have been introduced from Spain by the Merino sheep, Jamestown or "jimson" weed, sorrel, and, in favorable ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... I was taken to hear Anton Rubinstein. What a marvelous instrument the piano was, to be sure, when its keys were moved by a touch that was at one moment all fire and flame, and the next smooth as velvet or soft and light as thistle-down. What had my home piano in common with this wonder? Why did all the efforts at piano playing I had hitherto listened to sink into oblivion when I heard this master? What was the ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... wilderness, involuntarily brought to mind that beautiful passage of Ossian, [330] relating to the daughter of Reuthamir, the "white-bosomed" Moina:—"I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls, and the voice of the people is heard no more. The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out of the windows, the rank grass of the wall waved round its head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina, silence is in the house.... Raise the, song ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... my troth, I have no moral meaning; I meant, plain holy-thistle. You may think, perchance, that I think you are in love: nay, by'r lady, I am not such a fool to think what I list; nor I list not to think what I can; nor, indeed, I cannot think, if I would think my heart out of thinking, that you are in love, or that ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... with sensation-seekers, all of them in advance discounting their hero, and showing in broad light their gigantic stupidity. One of this motley finds in McClellan a Norman chin, the other muscle, the third a brow for laurels (of thistle I hope), another a square, military, heroic frame, another firmness in lips, another an unfathomed depth in the eye, etc., etc. Never I heard in Europe such balderdash. And the ladies—not the women and gentlewomen—are worse ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... family had arranged that Mr. Alexander should attend, instead of his brother; and as the said Mr. Alexander was deservedly celebrated for possessing all the pertinacity of a bankruptcy-court attorney, combined with the obstinacy of that useful animal which browses on the thistle, he required but little tuition. He was especially enjoined to make himself as disagreeable as possible; and, above all, to black-ball the Tauntons at ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... snowflake falls, then a few others, soft as the spray of the thistle in the early days of October. Gently as the fairy balloons of the dandelion they float through the air and rest upon the withered leaves of the white oaks. Soon they come faster, and now the forest-crowned ridge half a mile away which was in plain sight a minute ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Carline Thistle. Of the class Confederate Males. The seeds of this and of many other plants of the same class are furnished with a plume, by which admirable mechanism they perform long aerial journeys, crossing lakes and deserts, and are thus disseminated far from the original ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... not envy our young cousin James of Scotland his ass's bite of a thistle, having such flowers as these gillyflowers on the chimney-stacks ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... is the face or card of the mariner's compass. It was anciently called the fly. Card may perhaps be derived from the Italian cardo, a thistle, which the face of the compass may be supposed to resemble. On the complete circle of the compass there are thirty-two lines drawn from the centre to the circumference to indicate the direction of the wind. Each quarter of the circle, or 90 deg., contains eight lines ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, James, Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, Lord Bruce and Elgin, a peer of the United Kingdom, knight of the most ancient and most noble Order of the Thistle, and Governor General in and over all Her Britannic Majesty's provinces on the continent of North America and in and over the island of Prince Edward—who, after having communicated to each other their respective full powers, found in good and due form, have ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... for a moment or two like a thistle-down blown hither and thither by the caprice of the wind, scarcely seeming to touch the ground, upborne by the music-tide. Throughout her career she was always at her best when she took those first few moments about the stage and waited for ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... said the fairy, as she flew like thistle-down through the air or tripped over the heads of the flowers; but in her haste she flew into a spider's web, which held her so fast that, although she struggled again and again, ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... of thistle-down, why can't you get fat and rosy as you ought? There, kiss your sister Kate, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... the foundations must be laid otherwise. It takes the bloom off the freshness of young writers if they are determined to exhibit the last new words that are in, or out of season. New words have a doubtful position at first. They float here and there like thistle-down, and their future depends upon where they settle. But until they are established and accepted they are out of place for children's use. They are contrary to the perfect manner for children. We ask that their English should ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... I jeopardised my life in your good cause, and I fear no charge of cowardice more than I fear thistle-down." ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... not the only one. I have found nests, but sparsely inhabited it is true, on the trunks of trees, in the seams of the rough bark of oaks. Among those whose support was a living plant, I will mention two that stand out above all the others. The first was built in the lobe of a torch-thistle as thick as my leg; the second rested on a stalk of the opuntia, the Indian fig. Had the fierce armour of these two stout cactuses attracted the attention of the insect, which looked upon their tufts of spikes as furnishing a system ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... carried out into its conceivable varieties of form. How many such varieties might have been produced if these fringes of the Giulietta, or those already alluded to of Lucia nivea, had been repeated and enlarged; as the type, once adopted for complex bloom in the thistle-head, is multiplied in the innumerable gradations of thistle, teasel, hawkweed, and aster! We might have had flowers edged with lace finer than was ever woven by mortal fingers, or tasselled and braided with fretwork of silver, never ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... words, all the deities that were present, having first filled the court with murmurs, answered in this manner: 'Great goddess, be pleased to reflect a little on the animosities such a choice may create among the rival flowers; even the worthless Thistle will pretend to deserve the crown, and if denied, will perhaps grow factious, and disturb your peaceful reign.' 'Your fears are groundless,' replied the goddess; 'I apprehend no such consequence; my resolution is already fixed; hear, therefore, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... was so brave and so comely, and that could overtake a deer at its greatest speed, and see a thistle thorn on the darkest night, the wife he took was Eibhir of the plaited yellow hair, that was the foreign sweetheart of the High King ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... by a flowering peach, A youth with a little blue wren held speech. With his back to a tree and his feet in the grass, He watched the thistle-down drift and pass, And the cloud-puffs, borne on a lazy breeze, Move by on their errand, above the trees, Into the ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the great Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and Delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay your very Daymoth has capabilities in this kind; and ever organises something (into its own Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and of mute dead air makes ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... be deftly cutting the outline of a thistle on a spruce staff he was carving for the boy. Donald watched him in silence as he worked in the fading light. The sun had set behind the chain of near hills, and the plateau where they were camping was gray with shadows. Through the dusk they ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... one so closely connected with Lucy, although that one was the very person who had deprived him of all he valued on earth. So it fell out that Sir Hugh Horsingham and Ned Meredith were supping at the Rose and Thistle in close alliance, the table adjoining them being occupied by those staunch Hanoverians, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... first Christmas of his reign "was a high festival at Court, when his Majesty, preceded by heralds, pursuivants, &c., went with their usual state to the Chapel Royal, and heard a sermon preached by his Grace the Archbishop of York; and it being a collar day, the Knights of the Garter, Thistle and Bath, appeared in the collars of their respective orders. After the sermon was over, his Majesty, Prince Edward and Princess Augusta went into the Chapel Royal, and received the sacrament from the hands of the Bishop of Durham; and the King offered the byzant, or wedge ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... which did not exist. He was like a sailor who has put out to sea in an ornamental boat, and finds that his sail is useless, the ropes not made to work, and the rudder immovable. The long, buoyant wind of the world blew away like thistle-down the conventions which had seemed so secure a foundation. But he discovered in himself a wonderful curiosity, an eagerness for adventure which led him boldly to affront every peril; and the unknown lands of the intellect are every bit as dangerously fascinating ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... centrepiece is enclosed within a transverse oval band inscribed "CANADA POSTAGE" at the top, and "THREE PENCE" below. Above the beaver is an Imperial crown which breaks into the oval band and divides the words "CANADA" and "POSTAGE." This crown rests on a rose, shamrock, and thistle (emblematic of the United Kingdom) and on either side are the letters "V R" (Victoria Regina, i.e. Queen Victoria). In each of the angles is a large uncolored numeral "3". Mr. Howes tells us that this stamp was designed by Sir Stanford Fleming, a ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... Mounsier get your weapons in your hand, & kill me a red hipt humble-Bee, on the top of a thistle; and good Mounsieur bring mee the hony bag. Doe not fret your selfe too much in the action, Mounsieur; and good mounsieur haue a care the hony bag breake not, I would be loth to haue you ouerflowne with a hony-bag signiour. Where's Mounsieur ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... there awa, until Ah dinna ken what's to be the end o' it! Aye, an' the next thing they've gotten intill their bit heids is that they must get a bit o' an idolatrous music boax for the kirk! Yon bit thistle heid o' a schoolmaister cam' till me aboot the thing the day; ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... THISTLE.—This is a pleasant sign of strength, endurance, and affection; it also shows a desire to remove obstacles from the path of those who ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... master. The question is not what compost, what manure, makes fruitful the soil; we need not report to the Lord of the soil the history of our manures; let us treat the ground as seems best, if only we bring sacks to His granary in autumn. Nay, do not I also tickle the palate of my ass with a thistle-bunch, so heartening ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... deeply and was silent. So, too, was the actress, for some moments; then, softened almost to tears, half closing her eyes, and letting her fancy float away like thistle-down over town and country, upland, valley, and moor, she said softly,—"Dear Burleigh Grange, how lovely it must be now! What a verdurous twilight reigns under the old elms of the avenue!—in what a passion of bloom the roses are unfolding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... stone and sand enriched by many flowers that seemed to crown the river pool with a garland, or weave a wreath for Bride's grave in the sand. Here were pale gold of poppies, red gold of lotus and rich lichens that made the sea-worn pebbles shine. Sea thistle spread glaucous foliage and lifted its blue blossoms; stone-crops and thrifts, tiny trefoils and couch grasses were woven into the sand, and pink storks-bill and silvery convolvulus brought cool colour to this harmony ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... and 11 mm. wide, and is then introduced into the decomposition flask, which contains 6 to 8 grms. of chromic acid, care being taken that the chromic acid does not come into contact with the substance under analysis. The decomposition flask is fitted with a thistle funnel, and is connected to the reversed condenser and apparatus shown in the figure. Fifty c.c. of concentrated sulphuric acid are run into the flask. During the whole of the operation a gentle current of air (free from carbon dioxide) is passed through the apparatus. The asbestos plate underneath ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... feelings that drew me homeward. At my departure their tomb had been hidden in the morning mist. Beholding it in the sunshine now, I felt a sensation through my frame as if a breeze had thrown the coolness of September over me, though not a leaf was stirred, nor did the thistle- down take flight. Was I to roam no more through this beautiful world, but only to the other end of the village? Then let me lie down near my parents, but not with them, because I love a green ...
— Fragments From The Journal of a Solitary Man - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... see you have gathered round the wonder of the day. Our dear Lucien has revived the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Just as the gods used to turn into strange vegetables and other things to seduce the ladies, he has turned the Chardon (the Thistle) into a gentleman to bewitch—whom? Charles X.!—My dear boy," he went on, holding Lucien by his coat button, "a journalist who apes the fine gentleman deserves rough music. In their place," said the merciless jester, as he ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... name, of country—he is even without God in the world. He converses only with the spirits of the departed; with the motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his head; the fox peeps out of the ruined tower; the thistle waves its beard to the wandering gale; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind! The ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... for the benefit of others. I am for this synthetical method on a journey in preference to the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards. I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... conquers us. You come and take our land and our game, and we at last have to beg of you for food and shelter. Then you take our daughters, and we know not where they go. They are gone like the down from the thistle. We see them not, but you remain. And men say evil things. There are bad words abroad. Brother, what have you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... goose aroused the sentinels and saved Rome from the Gauls, and the pain from a thistle warned a Scottish army of the approach of the Danes. "Had Acre fallen," said Napoleon, "I should have changed the face of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... of young girls, daintily costumed, in robes with long fluttering sleeves... And old Japanese proverb declares that even a devil is pretty at eighteen: Oni mo jiu-hachi azami no hana: "Even a devil at eighteen, flower-of-the-thistle." ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... up to avoid imaginary dangers, and then back again to see a horse rolling on the ground, the gaunt man standing and slashing over it at a rent and fluttering mass of grey that streamed and wrapped about them both. And thick and fast as thistle-down on waste land on a windy day in July the cobweb ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... couple (say, the female) returns to the trees where they are accustomed to meet, and after a time, becoming impatient or anxious at the delay of her consort, utters a very long, clear call-note. He is perhaps a quarter of a mile away, watching for a frog beside a pool, or beating over a thistle-bed, but he hears the note and presently responds with one of equal power. Then, perhaps, for half an hour, at intervals of half a minute, the birds answer each other, though the powerful call of the one must interfere with his hunting. At length ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... reproved the thistle; but the thistle maintained his abominable heresy so stoutly that the little vine and the daisy and the violet were quite at a loss to know which of the two to believe,—the old oak-tree ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... green! The meeting-house has them, lantern-like, wide and high, in three sashes—white meeting-house, seat alike of government and religion, with its terraced steeple, with its classic porches north and south. Behind it is the long shed, and in front, rising out of the milkweed and the flowering thistle, the horse block of the first meeting-house, where many a pillion has left its burden in times bygone. Honest Jock Hallowell built that second meeting-house—was, indeed, still building it at the time of which we write. He had hewn every beam and king post in it, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... never recovered from his degradation on that day: and in June 1562, the Magistrates directed the portraiture of the Saint, which had served as their emblem, to be cut out of the city standard, as an idol, and a Thistle to be inserted, "emblematical (as a recent writer remarks) of rude reform, but leaving the Hind which accompanied St. Giles, as one of the heraldic supporters of the city ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... later Father Payne stopped to look at a great sow-thistle that was growing vigorously under a hedge-row. "Did you ever see such a bit of pure force?" said Father Payne. "I see a fierce conscious life in every inch of that plant. Look at the way he clips himself in, and strains to the ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which would surely have gone up from Paris and Strasburg and Basel and Zurich. Estienne and Gessner would hardly have felt acute sorrow at a flout put upon Julius Caesar Scaliger. Crooked-tempered as he was, Cardan, compared with Scaliger, was as a rose to a thistle, but there were reasons altogether unconnected with the personalities of the disputants which swayed the balance to Cardan's advantage. The greater part of Scaliger's criticism was worthless, and the opinion of learned Europe weighed overwhelmingly ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... have seen Mrs. Wiggin, the sweet author of "Birds' Christmas Carol," but she had a dangerous cough and could not come. I was much disappointed not to see her, but I hope I shall have that pleasure some other time. Mr. Hutton gave me a lovely little glass, shaped like a thistle, which belonged to his dear mother, as a souvenir of my delightful visit. We also met Mr. Rogers... who kindly left his carriage ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Yes, yes, no doubt. Well (brightening), anyhow, we may as well step over to the "Crown and Thistle," and crack ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... capital greatly increased. A desirable project—but the cost! The Montyon prize of 2000 francs has been awarded to M. Mosson, for his method of drying and preserving vegetables for long sea voyages, as published a few months ago. M. Naudin states, that a certain kind of furze or thistle, of which cattle are very fond, may be made to grow without thorns—an important consideration, seeing that at present, before it can be used as food, it has to undergo a laborious beating, to crush and break the prickles with which it is covered. As the plant thrives best on poor soils, which might ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... be the flower is on the top of the pericarp as in pomegranate, apple, pear, plum, and myrtle ... for these have their seeds below the flower.... In some cases again the flower is on top of the seeds themselves as in ... all thistle-like plants'.[36] Thus Theophrastus has succeeded in distinguishing between the hypogynous, perigynous, and epigynous types of flower, and has almost come to regard its relation to the fruit ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... quiet yet busy life of a scholarly and somewhat artistic young man to whom robust health has been denied. In addition to the many dignities of his rank, including four orders of knighthood, belonging to the Garter, the Thistle, the Star of India, and the Order of St. Michael and St. George, he became a D.O.L. of Oxford in 1876, and in the following year a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. A less characteristic honour given him was the rank of a colonel in ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... find my voice and interrupt the thistle-brained creature. "What put these fantasias into ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... the merchants of the city to come in and buy everything that makes life worth living! All the dainties an aspirant to gout could wish for were, according to our "Official Gazette," to be had for the asking. At the hotels, "Highland Cream Whiskey" was for ever arriving; and "O.K." (another thistle!) kept "licking 'em all" with monotonous invincibility. Iced beer was on tap; the champagne was sparkling; the wine needed no bush. The cheese was still alive (on paper). Cakes, hams, jams, biscuits, potted fish, flesh, and good red herring were, so to speak, ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Clive; "is a most remarkable head for accounts: he must have inherited that from my grandfather, you know, who made his own fortune: all the Newcomes are good at accounts, except me, a poor useless devil who knows nothing but to paint a picture, and who can't even do that." He cuts off the head of a thistle as he speaks, bites his tawny mustachios, plunges his hands into his pockets and his ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... certainly be so perceptible to us, wanting its fragrance, and, with a nauseous smell, would not probably be admitted, as I may say, into the rank of agreeableness, though it is in reality a beautiful and pleasing object; nor, supposing the thistle, or any other ugly flower, possessed of the fragrance of the rose, should we therefore think it an object of taste, any more than we can think the form of an elephant beautiful, though endued ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... short to everyone. She was a wisp of a woman with little hands as dry and yellow as parchment. Her voice had a quavering falsetto break in it and her laugh, when there was occasion, was dry and withery and short-lived like a piece of thistle-down. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... swelled into a mighty shout as the Scotchmen vaulted over the barrier into the arena. It was a nice question for connoisseurs in physical beauty as to which team had the best of it in physique. The Northerners in their blue jerseys, with a thistle upon their breasts, were a sturdy, hard-bitten lot, averaging a couple of pounds more in weight than their opponents. The latter were, perhaps, more regularly and symmetrically built, and were pronounced by experts to be the faster team, but there was a massive, gaunt ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Amaziah of Judah after the conquest of the Edomites challenged to battle King Jehoash of Samaria, whose territory had at that time suffered to the utmost under the continual wars with the Syrians, the latter bid say to him: "The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife;—then passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon and trode down the thistle. Thou hast indeed smitten Edom, and thy heart ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... not germane to their nature. It is, indeed, a radical vice in Calvinistic reasoning that, because God is omnipotent, He can as easily therefore create virtue in a free being as He can waft the down of the thistle on the breeze. It is quite true that "whatsoever the Lord pleased that did He in heaven and in earth" (Ps. cxxxv. 6). But the question is—What is His pleasure in regard to the production of virtue? Is it a forced or free thing? Every good man will cheerfully ascribe to God the praise ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... hansom," said Lady Enid Thistle, some five minutes later, as she and the Prophet stood together upon the kerb in front of the rabbit shop. "I feel much ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... thistle-down were his feet, but no sooner had the Giant felt their tread than he gave a great start, and lifting his hand struck himself a tremendous blow upon his forehead. Pease-Blossom would have been crushed to death had he not managed to spring, ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... and good; We'll ask them, we'll ask them to join in your play, And your mother shall give you a long holiday. From Erin, from Erin, the cotter shall bring, To twine a gay garland, her shamrock of spring; In her plaid, in her plaid, Scotia's daughter shall come, With the thistle that grows on her mountains at home; The peasant, the peasant of France shall be there, And add to the chaplet his lily so fair; Dark glancing, dark glancing, the daughter of Spain, With the bloom of her orange shall join the gay train; And leaving, and leaving ...
— The Keepsake - or, Poems and Pictures for Childhood and Youth • Anonymous
... pods dip here; The blow-ball of the thistle slip, And no wind breathing—but my lip Next to your anxious cheek and ear, To tell you I am near, my love, To tell ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... at the moment," she answered, "at the 'Sign of the Blue Thistle.' He has with him his secretary, Donovan; his valet, and two serving-men. They have their lodgment in four rooms on the second floor; he is bid to the ball at the Duchess of Gordon's to-night and at eleven to-morrow leaves in his private coach ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... power of multiplication of an animal or plant when taken into a new environment, removed from conditions which held it in check, as the introduction of the mongoose into Jamaica, the rabbit into Australia, the thistle into New South Wales and the water-plant ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... tube is then filled with the amalgamated zinc (Note 1) to within 50 mm. of the top, and on the zinc is placed a plug of glass wool. If the top of the tube is not already shaped like the mouth of a thistle-tube (B), a 60 mm. funnel is fitted into the tube with a rubber stopper and the reductor is connected with a suction bottle, F. The bottle D is a safety bottle to prevent contamination of the solution by water from the pump. After preparation for use, ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... just large enough to accommodate an ordinary 18 x 2 cm. test-tube. The mouth of the tubular Chamberland candle 15 x 1.5 cm. is closed by a perforated rubber cork into which fits the end of the stem of a thistle headed funnel, whilst immediately below the butt of the funnel is situated a rubber cork to close the mouth of the filter flask. When the apparatus is fixed in position and connected to an exhaust pump, the cultivation is poured ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... action. He, indeed, knows neither the origin of his deeds nor their results. From the field in which he thought that he had sown thorns, we have gathered our vintage, and the fig-tree that he planted for our pleasure is as barren as the thistle, and more bitter. It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... if one will, the other horn of the dilemma. That, too, one will find as ill a resting place as an upright thistle. Let the wages,—as with Mr. Bellamy,—all be equal. The managers then cannot vote themselves large emoluments if they try. But what about the purple citizens? Will they work, or will they lie round in their purple garments and loaf? Work? Why should they work, their pay ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... the Tramp Royal," in which a man declares that he can endure anything in the way of hunger or horror, but not permanent presence in one place. In this there is certainly danger. The more dead and dry and dusty a thing is the more it travels about; dust is like this and the thistle-down and the High Commissioner in South Africa. Fertile things are somewhat heavier, like the heavy fruit trees on the pregnant mud of the Nile. In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... ancient patterns were scriptural or mathematical; the age ruled the prevailing taste and fashion, and everything in and out of Nature has had its turn and its day. Then, again, nationality goes for something: the Frenchman is fond of his lis and the Scot of his thistle. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... rolled into hollows rich in mulcted earth; parachutes, buoyed on thistle silk, sailed from distant jungle plants; every swirl of breeze brought spores of lichens and moss, and even the retreating water unwittingly aided, having transported hither and dropped a cargo of living things, from tiniest plant to seeds of mightiest mora. Though in the few allotted hours ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Newstead, [2] the hollow winds whistle: [ii] Thou, the hall of my Fathers, art gone to decay; In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle Have choak'd up the rose, which late bloom'd in ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... love's bosom, hugged it fast, And with Leander's name she breathed her last. Neptune for pity in his arms did take them, Flung them into the air, and did awake them Like two sweet birds, surnam'd th' Acanthides, Which we call Thistle-warps, that near no seas Dare ever come, but still in couples fly, And feed on thistle-tops, to testify The hardness of their first life in their last; 280 The first, in thorns of love, that sorrows past: And so most beautiful their colours show, As none (so ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Parnapishtim, at the suggestion of his wife, reveals the 'secret of life' to Gilgamesh just before the latter's departure. The ship is brought nearer to the shore, and Parnapishtim tells Gilgamesh of a plant that wounds as a thistle, but which possesses wonderful power. Gilgamesh departs on the ship, and with the help of Ardi-Ea finds this plant, which is called 'the restoration of old age to youth.' It is a long journey to the place. The plant grows at the side or at the bottom of a fountain. ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... foot] A thistle. And there, next to it, a briar. And nettles, too! I am tired of pulling these things up to keep the garden pleasant for us ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... rode Geraint into the castle court, His charger trampling many a prickly star Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones. He look'd and saw that all was ruinous. Here stood a shatter'd archway plumed with fern; And here had fall'n a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: And high above a piece of turret ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Mignon, with black eyes and a melancholy smile, singing Bellini's soft, touching songs. From Scotland Memory's sprite appears as a powerful lad with bare knees; the plaid hangs over his shoulder, the thistle-flower is fixed on his cap; Burns's songs then fill the air like the heath-lark's song, and Scotland's wild thistle flowers beautifully fragrant as the fresh rose. But now for Memory's sprite from Sweden, from Upsala. He comes thence in the form of a student—at ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... the School-master, "you cannot raise grapes on a thistle farm. Any unbiassed observer looking around this table," he added, "and noting Mr. Whitechoker, a graduate of Yale; the Bibliomaniac, a son of dear old Harvard; the Doctor, an honor man of Williams; our legal friend here, a graduate of Columbia—to say nothing ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... minute to review a few of the events of my past life, I cannot agree with those pessimists who tell us we are the victims of chance; that our fates and our fortunes have nothing more certain to guide them to a good or a bad end than yonder thistle-down which is the sport of ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... The lustre of the season begins to dim, the foliage of the trees and woods to tarnish, the plumage of the birds to fade, and their songs to cease. The hints of approaching fall are on every hand. How suggestive this thistle-down, for instance, which, as I sit by the open window, comes in and brushes softly across my hand! The first snowflake tells of winter not more plainly than this driving down heralds the approach of fall. Come here, my fairy, and tell me whence you come and whither you go? What brings you to ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... there was about my partner—a whimsical humor, a slight mocking sound in his voice, which pleased me; he took nothing seriously; everything he said was as light as a thistle-down; he reminded me of the wit of grandmamma and the Marquis; ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... by the condemnation of the serpent; the condemnation of the volitional proprium is meant by the condemnation of Eve and the condemnation of the intellectual proprium by the condemnation of Adam; sheer falsity and evil are signified by the thorn and thistle which the earth would produce for Adam; the loss of wisdom is signified by the expulsion from the Garden; the Lord's care lest holy things of the Word and the church be violated is meant by guarding the way to the tree of life; moral ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg |
