"Touchwood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... . . . I grant you,—my comrades then Were called Old Pascal Dubois' Men Half-breeds all of us . . . I, a scamp, The best long-shot in the Touchwood Camp; Muscle and nerve like strings of steel, Sound in the game of bit and heel— There's your guide-book. . . . But, Jeanne Amray, Telegraph-clerk at Sturgeon Bay, French and thoroughbred, proud and sweet, Sunshine down ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and Cnemon seems to have been introduced for little else than to tell his own long story, and listen to that of Calasiris in return. The old Egyptian priest, however, is a sketch of considerable merit. Like Scott's Peregrine Touchwood, though abundantly zealous at all times to serve his friends, he cannot find it in his heart to take any but the most round-about way of doing so; but he is never disconcerted by any of the untoward results of his schemes, and relates to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... looked at her eagerly, as though to shoot into her the mystic comprehensions of love, but the clearing out of her intelligence had already been commenced by the sayings of the peasants which were fructifying in her understanding —her innocence was like touchwood, there was only need for a word to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... "book" was a new inspiration. Rufus Dawes seized upon the English History, which had already done such service, tore out the drier leaves in the middle of the volume, and carefully added them to the little heap of touchwood. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... show you that, lad," replied Pete; and he did. In a very short time after, by means of a little flint he carried in company with his pocket-knife, the back of the blade, and some dry touchwood from a rotting tree, he soon had a fire glowing, then blazing, for there was dead-wood enough to make campfires for ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... consummate libertine, for ever boasting of his love-conquests over ladies of the haut monde. He tries to corrupt Lady Frances Touchwood, but is foiled by Saville.—Mrs. Cowley, The Belle's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... 5th I left the Springs, and after traversing much fine country, with excellent prairie, good soil, clumps of wood, lakelets, and hay swamps, in the Little and Great Touchwood Hills and File Mountain region, I arrived at the South Saskatchewan, at Dumont's crossing, twenty miles from Fort Carlton, on the afternoon of ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... strike deepest at the heart of romance. Colour, mystery, the vastnesses of unexplored space are there, symbolized compactly for the aliment of imagination. It lures the fancy as a fly lures the trout. Mattagami, Peace River, Kananaw, the House of the Touchwood Hills, Rupert's House, the Land of Little Sticks, Flying Post, Conjuror's House—how the syllables roll from the tongue, what pictures rise in instant response to their suggestion! The journey of a thousand miles seems not too great a price to pay for the sight ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... up the fire with additional vigor—made it blaze fiercely—then complained of these abominable coals, which burned like touchwood, and had no heat in them, and wondered whether Mrs. Melwyn would ever have the energy to order sea-borne coal, as he had desired; and then, casting a most ungracious look at the new comer, who stood during this scene, feeling ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... "But 'touchwood'! I'm so sorry. Anyway, you're all right for 'Blighty,'" and to cheer him up I continued in a bantering strain: "You knew how to manage it, eh? Jolly artful, you know." His face lighted up with ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... but, O mystery! What amulet drew her down to that old oak, So old, that twenty years before, a part Falling had let appear the brand of John— Once grovelike, each huge arm a tree, but now The broken base of a black tower, a cave Of touchwood, with a single flourishing spray. There the manorial lord too curiously Raking in that millenial touchwood-dust Found for himself a bitter treasure-trove; Burst his own wyvern on the seal, and read Writhing a letter from his ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... we not all know that when a tree dies its wood decays first, its bark last? It is so, especially in the Tropics. There one may see huge dead trees with their bark seemingly sound, and their inside a mere cavern with touchwood at the bottom; into which caverns one used to peep with some caution. For though one might have found inside only a pair of toucans, or parrots, or a whole party of jolly little monkeys, one was quite as likely to find a poisonous snake four or five feet long, whose bite would have very ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... that has appeared for some time. Every now and then there is some mistaken or overcharged humour—but much excellent delineation of character, the story very well told, and the whole very interesting. Lady Binks, the old landlady, and Touchwood are all very good. Mrs. Blower particularly so. So are MacTurk and Lady Penelope. I wish he would give his people better names; Sir Bingo Binks is quite ridiculous.... The curtain should have dropped ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... vain; he cared little for their danger, so hardened was he by a selfish fear for himself. The fire was gaining ground quickly, for a brisk wind had sprung up, and the long-seasoned timber in the old walls burnt like touchwood. The servant lay insensible on the threshold of the master's chamber; and Miss Anne and Stephen looked out from a front casement upon the gathering crowd, who implored them, with frenzied earnestness, to ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... Moone" (1609), one character, in answer to an inquiry who one of the company is, answers: "I know not certainly, but I think he cometh to play you a fit of mirth, for I behelde pipes in his pocket; now he draweth forth his tinder-box and his touchwood, and falleth to his tacklings; sure his throate is on fire, the smoke flyeth so fast from his mouth; blesse his beard with a bason of water, lest he burn it; some terrible thing he taketh, it maketh him pant and look pale, and hath an ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... upon the bank wild gooseberry and currant bushes may be found, planted by birds carrying off ripe fruit from the garden. A wild gooseberry may sometimes be seen growing out of the decayed 'touchwood' on the top of a hollow withy-pollard. Wild apple trees, too, are ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of Casterbridge, that they used to call 'Wide-O', was a very good man when I was a boy," said Jonathan Kail. "But he's rotten as touchwood ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Fort you pass through the region of the Touchwood Hills, around which are immense plains scored with the tracks of the countless buffaloes which, until a few years ago, roamed in vast herds between the Saskatchewan and Assiniboine. On November 4, and on several ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... huts at Uruana the vegetable substance called touchwood of ants,* (* Yesca de hormigas.) with which we had become acquainted at the Great Cataracts, and which is employed to stop bleeding. This substance, which might less improperly be called ants' nests, is in much request in a region whose inhabitants ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and sun-filled weeks of late summer and early autumn—until the middle of September—Miki and Neewa ranged the country westward, always heading toward the setting sun, the country of Jackson's Knee, of the Touchwood and the Clearwater, and God's Lake. In this country they saw many things. It was a region a hundred miles square which the handiwork of Nature had made into a veritable kingdom of the wild. They came upon great beaver colonies in the dark and ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of business care—I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of yourself!—and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip, just dwindled away like touchwood after you and Judy were born—you are an old pig. You are a brimstone pig. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... pleasant proof That piety has still in human hearts Some place, a spark or two not yet extinct. The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths, The mulberry-tree stood centre of the dance, The mulberry-tree was hymned with dulcet airs, And from his touchwood trunk the mulberry-tree Supplied such relics as devotion holds Still sacred, and preserves with pious care. So 'twas a hallowed time: decorum reigned, And mirth without offence. No few returned Doubtless much edified, and all refreshed. ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... and held it at the right angle between the touchwood, that is, the scrapings, and the sun. The rays passing through the glass increased many times in power and struck directly upon the touchwood. Dick crouched over the wood in order to protect it from the wind, and ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... the Double Dealer, a comedy in which all the powers which had produced the Old Bachelor showed themselves, matured by time and improved by exercise. But the audience was shocked by the characters of Maskwell and Lady Touchwood. And, indeed, there is something strangely revolting in the way in which a group that seems to belong to the House of Laius or of Pelops is introduced into the midst of the Brisks, Froths, Carelesses, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wore glass beads around her neck, and upon her head a black lambskin hood, lined with white catskin. In her hands she carried a staff upon which there was a knob, which was ornamented with brass, and set with stones up about the knob. Circling her waist she wore a girdle of touchwood, and attached to it a great skin pouch, in which she kept the charms which she used when she was practising her sorcery. She wore upon her feet shaggy calfskin shoes, with long, tough latchets, upon the ends ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang |
