"Tuft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Abrudbanya rode two men, one of them wearing an overcoat with silver buttons over his Wallachian dress, and a tuft of heron's feathers in his cap, while at his side hung a curved sword, pistols protruded from his holsters, and a rifle lay across his saddle-bow. His face had nothing of the Wallachian peasant in its features or expression. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... either side. Six or eight men in "dusters," carrying parcels and handbags, projected themselves upon the solitary, rickety carry-all, so that Ransom could read his own fate, while the ruminating conductor of the vehicle, a lean, shambling citizen, with a long neck and a tuft on his chin, guessed that if he wanted to get to the hotel before dusk he would have to strike out. His valise was attached in a precarious manner to the rear of the carry-all. "Well, I'll chance it," the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... range, the slender, straight shoots of PALE SPIKED LOBELIA (L. spicata) bloom early and throughout the summer months, the inflorescence itself sometimes reaching a height of two feet. At the base of the plant there is usually a tuft of broadly oblong leaves; those higher up narrow first into spoon-shaped, then into pointed, bracts, along the thick and gradually lengthened spike of scattered bloom. The flowers are oft en pale enough to be called white. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... planted in the lax hold of these sands had hitherto been unable even to take root, against the unbroken sweep of the winds. M. Bremontier, after many experiments, conceived the idea of planting with the pine seeds the seeds of the common broom, whose hardy tuft should protect the tiny sapling until it could stand by itself. The result surpassed hope; pine forests, protecting in their turn, have sprung up and endured throughout the Landes; they have broken forever the power of the wind-storms; and their pitch and timber are ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... she frequently is. She masquerades in any costume—she accepts the humiliation of any disguise. She is ready to be cast down before swine, or raised high before the eyes of fools. She is used as a tool or a stepping-stone—the humble handmaid of the tuft- hunter and the toady. She is dragged through the mire of the slums to the dwellings of the wealthy and idle. She is hounded up and down the world—the plaything of Fashion, the trap of the unwary, the washerwoman of the unclean who wish to try the ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... clear June days, the bloom of these mountains is beyond expression delightful. Last visiting these heights ere she vanishes, Spring, like the sunset, flings her sweetest charms upon them. Each tuft of upland grass is musked like a bouquet with perfume. The balmy breeze swings to and fro like a censer. On one side the eye follows for the space of an eagle's flight, the serpentine mountain chains, southwards from the great purple ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... this is very rare in men who are given to thought. Though a dark man, he has an extraordinarily fair complexion; his jet-black hair contrasts finely with the lustreless tints of the neck and forehead. He has the tragic head of Louis XIII. His moustache and tuft have been allowed to grow, but I made him shave the whiskers and beard, which were getting too common. An honorable poverty has been his safeguard, and handed him over to me, unsoiled by the loose life ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... we remember in the same place, but that was long, long ago; in fact, it was when in boyhood we had first entered into that awful wilderness. We had reached the top of Ben Muich Dhui early in the day. Our little wallet of provisions we had left on a tuft of heather where we had lain down to rest, and we could not afterwards find the spot. Somewhat tired, and faint with hunger, we descended the rocks by the side of the cataract, believing that Loch Avon, seemingly so small from the summit of the mountain, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... field, a scene of snowballs flying, the vision of a strenuous lighted figure scaling to noble young manhood. Isabella Lawrence's look at him spirited the bright past out of the wretched long-brown-coat shroud of the present, prompting her to grieve that some woman's hand had not smoothed a small tuft of hair, disorderly on his head a little above the left parting, because Isabella Lawrence Finchley could have no recollection of how it used to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... call'd forth the wonder of all who came there, And the Boa Constrictors so slimy and gay, That they seem'd to have painted themselves for the day. The Green-bonnet Monkey, with speckles bespread, Was proud of the verdigris tuft on his head; For it look'd, as he leap'd in his frolic and joy, Like the top of the turban of Rammohun Roy. Dame Tortoise roam'd over the green and beyond, For she pass'd on her pilgrimage right to the pond. As she gazed on the Crocodile ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... Pastor Tuft was walking up and down his study, composing his Sunday sermon. He was a handsome man, with a long, fair face, and dreamy eyes; his wife, Josephine, in the days when she thought she was in love with him, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... foot, and water stood in his eyes; but the red men still kept on with their work, dipping their fingers in ashes occasionally to enable them to take a better hold. Before long his head was completely bald, with the exception of one long tuft upon his crown, called the scalp-lock. This was immediately stiffened and plaited, so as to stand upright and hold a variety of ornaments, which his glum hairdresser fastened upon it. Then two old Indians pierced his nose and ears and hung big rings in the smarting holes. They then took off ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... perhaps a puppy. I sat down on a chair, and the old woman stood up directly facing me. Her face was yellow, half-transparent like wax; her lips were so fallen in that they formed a single straight line in the midst of a multitude of wrinkles; a tuft of white hair stuck out from below the kerchief on her head, but the sunken grey eyes peered out alertly and cleverly from under the bony overhanging brow; and the sharp nose fairly stuck out like ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... precipice as it descended towards the bridge that spanned the brook some hundreds of feet lower down. Already our asses scent a stable, Jesus said; he called after them to stop, and the obedient animals stopped and began to seek among the stones for a tuft of grass or a bramble. I see no place here for a hermitage, Joseph said, only roosts for choughs and crows. There have been hermits here always, Jesus answered. We shall pass the ruins of ancient hermitages farther down on this side above the bridge. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... of ways of knowin' that, sir. You can tell by the size, by its head and feet, and by the tuft of feathers ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... the air. One of the beer-bottles, which the madame had placed on a convenient table, popped as though it were champagne. Fragments of glass and porcelain fell about like hail. The place was lighted by a tuft of three big incandescent globes; and, last of all, one by one, they crashed into atoms, and the room was in total darkness. Then silence fell, startling in contrast to the late confusion, while the pungent odor of burnt gunpowder intruded ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... eyes!" she cried loudly. And before he could say "Jack Robinson" a tuft of the wiry stuff covered his eyebrow. "Keep your face still!" And, to his horror, the gum was daubed from the borders of the beard, halfway up to his eyes, and little prickly ends of hair were held in Peggy's ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... he is silver shod before, "And he is gowden shod behind; "At every tuft of that horse mane, "There's a golden chess[C], and a bell to ring. "This gudely gift sall be her ain, "And let me be lighter o' ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... master, as was to be expected," quoth Roger, cleansing his sword on a tuft of grass, "Sir John of Griswold fell beside me deep-smitten through ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... struggling, in lifting himself up among them. He climbed out to the limb where he had seen the appearances of a bird's nest, but found to his disappointment that there was no bird's nest there. The bunch was only a little tuft of twigs ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... Hotchkiss—you might know her? She has two upper front teeth, is tall, but a good deal inclined to stoop, one rib on the left side gone, has one shred of rusty hair hanging from the left side of her head, and one little tuft just above and a little forward of her right ear, has her underjaw wired on one side where it had worked loose, small bone of left forearm gone—lost in a fight has a kind of swagger in her gait and a 'gallus' way of going with: her arms akimbo and her nostrils ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... many colors, especially since they have been more carefully bred. They vary in form, color, and disposition, and also in the quality of their hair. The standard calls for a small head, with not too long a nose, large eyes that should harmonize in color with the fur, small, pointed ears with a tuft of hair at the apex, and a very full, fluffy mane around the neck. This mane is known as the "lord mayor's chain." The body is longer than that of the ordinary cat in proportion to its size, and is extremely graceful, and covered with long, silky hair, which is crinkly like that of the ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... 17', the variation 3 deg. E. In the afternoon, another little wanderer from the land pitched on the ship, and was so worn out with fatigue, that it suffered itself to be taken immediately, and died a few hours afterward. It was not bigger than a wren, had a tuft of yellow feathers on its head, and the rest of its plumage like that of the linnet. The sparrow, being stronger, lived a long time. These birds plainly indicating, that we could not be at any great distance from the land, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... just something to see it. The flood eddied past, dark and heavy, sweeping over bulwark and bank. The low-stemmed alders that rose on islet and mound seemed shorn of half their trunks in the tide; here and there an elastic branch bent to the current, and rose and bent again; and now a tuft of withered heath came floating down, and now a soiled wreath of foam. How vividly the past rose up before me!—boyish day-dreams forgotten for twenty years,—the fossils of an early formation of mind, produced at a period when ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... At the head of Loch Fyne, near Dunderar, the grim tower of the Macnaughtons—which, from some decorations on it, looks hugely like as if it had been built in the seventeenth century with the stones of an old church—we find a tuft of trees with a dyke round it, called Kilmorich. It is a graveyard evidently, though it may not have been recently opened; the surface is uneven, and several rough stones, which may have been placed ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... generally wear garments over their shirts; the latter, when new, is generally very white, but is used until it gets perfectly dark and disgustingly greasy. They sometimes shave a portion of their head, or else they comb one half of their hair back, the other half front. They occasionally tie up a tuft of hair very tight on the top of the head, rising towards the skies. At other times some allow a long tress of hair to fall over their face: it interferes with their eating, but it has to be put up with. They smear their ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... carriage driving very slowly onwards, when you suddenly hear a sweet female voice carrolling away in all the wildness of nature, and this without knowing whence it comes. On a sudden, coming nearer the bottom of the hill, you see on one side of the road a cottage chimney, peeping as it were from a tuft of trees in a dell, and immediately afterwards, coming in front, behold a girl picking grapes for the press, and chearfully singing over her toil. There are few of these cottages but what have a garden fronting the road, and some of ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... a part of joyous Spring: A gown of grass-green silk she wore, Buckled with golden clasps before; A light-green tuft of plumes she bore ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... were unable to say, though they decided that he was quite young. He was considerably shorter in stature than the Indians they had seen, and Tad wondered if he were not an Eskimo. The guide's head was shaven except for a tuft of black coarse hair on the top, standing straight up, while a yellow bar of paint had been drawn perpendicularly on each cheek. He wore a shirt that had once been white, a pair of trousers, one leg of which extended some six inches below the knee, the other as far above the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... 'Abdul the d——d'; Year that in guise of a herald declaring the close of the tourney Clears the redoubtable lists hot with the Battle of Bays; Binds on the brows of the Tory, the highly respectable Austin, Laurels that Phoebus of old wore on the top of his tuft; ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... which stands a small ruin that looks like the remains of a religious house; it is overgrown with ivy, and were it not that the arch of a window or gateway may be distinctly seen, it would be difficult to believe that it was not a tuft of trees growing in the shape of a ruin, rather than a ruin overshadowed by trees. When we had walked a little further we saw below us, on the nearest large island, where some of the wood had been cut down, a hut, which we conjectured to be a bark hut. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... looking bigger; And in did come the strangest figure; His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red. And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the barber mowed great swaths through tangled thatch with a pair of close-cutting clippers. But instead of making a complete job of it, a thick fringe of hair which resembled a misplaced scalping tuft was left for decorative purposes, just above the forehead. The effect was so grotesque that I had to invent an excuse for laughing. It was a lame one, I fear, for Shorty looked at me warningly. When we had gone on ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... from the life he led in the woods, and amongst the furze of the great heath-like commons, and he saw now the object which had fallen from his pocket. His sluggish manner was cast aside, and, as if suddenly galvanised into action, he sprang forward to secure the little object lying half hidden upon a tuft of ling. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... on the cliff-edge, grave and happy, with the maiden beside him, looking down at the great Atlantic waves as they flung their eternal surge up at the castle rock. His sword lay on the ground at her feet. She was fixing a tuft of flowers in his cap, singing softly as she did so. And he, as he gazed now at her, now at the sea below, looked as if cloud could never come more between the sun and ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... otherwise they used the single stick or "palm" drill. We went to the camp one moonlight night, January 6th, to see a sort of New-Year's dance. They had stripped a cedar tree of all branches but a small tuft at the top, and around this the whole band formed a large circle, dancing and singing. The dancing was the usual hippity-hop or "lope" sideways, each holding hands with his or her neighbours. In the centre stood ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... is five inches and a half: the bill black: the feathers of the head are long, and stand erect like a full crest; from the forehead to the crown they are of a bright blue; from thence to the nape, black like velvet: through the eyes from the bill, a line of black; beneath the eye springs a tuft of the same blue feathers; beneath these and on the chin, it is of a deep blue almost black, and feeling like velvet: on the ears is another patch of blue, and across the back part of the head a band of the same, (in some specimens, ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... which opened into the inner towers of the ancient castle of the Herons. He found himself among rugged, heathy ground, the hollow palm of the island, now suffused with milky opalescence, for the sun was setting. Hardly could Stair see from one tuft to another, but out of the tinted mist swooped first two and then three birds like angels appearing out of a white heaven. Magnified by the mist Stair hardly recognized the green and black summer ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Then the colt would come with a burst of speed, a turbulent rush, out of the underbrush, and, with its keen head-tones of a whinny, all funnily treble and out of tune, dash on in advance. The rider of this preoccupied steed was a grizzled, lank, thin-visaged mountaineer, with a tuft of beard on his chin, but a shaven jowl, where, however, the black-and-gray stubble of several days' avoidance of the razor put forth unabashed. He shook his finger impressively at the jury of view as ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... height would serve very well for the columns, and might form the different aisles or peristilliums, by their different distances and heights. These would look very well near, and the dome rising all in a proper tuft in the middle would look well at a distance." This sort of verdant architecture would perhaps have a pleasing effect, but it is rather too much in the artificial style, to be quite consistent with Pope's own ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... excepting a single bunch. About this bunch he sunk traps in the ground, and threw hay-seed over them, and placed nice ears of sweet-corn beside them. The next morning he had another 'coon. The other trap was sprung also, but it held nothing but a little tuft of long gray fur. That sly fellow had again sat down on the trencher. From this time the 'coons troubled Frank's corn no more, having found other fields where there was more corn and fewer traps. Frank's final conflict with the 'coons was late in the autumn, when the leaves were nearly gone from ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in fairness, be made to do. A ride-ox can be tied up by his nose-bridle; but, if wild or frightened, he will assuredly struggle till the nose-stick be torn out of his nose, and he becomes free. It is, therefore, better to tie the bridle to a tuft of grass, or a slender twig, rather than to a tree or to the saddle-bags. Mounting an ox is usually a troublesome business, on account of his horns. To make ride-oxen quiet and tame, scratch their backs and tails—they dearly love it—and hold salt ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... association &c. (party) 712. volley, shower, storm, cloud. group, cluster, Pleiades, clump, pencil; set, batch, lot, pack; budget, assortment, bunch; parcel; packet, package; bundle, fascine[obs3], fasces[obs3], bale; seron[obs3], seroon[obs3]; fagot, wisp, truss, tuft; shock, rick, fardel[obs3], stack, sheaf, haycock[obs3]; fascicle, fascicule[obs3], fasciculus[Lat], gavel, hattock[obs3], stook[obs3]. accumulation &c. (store) 636; congeries, heap, lump, pile, rouleau[obs3], tissue, mass, pyramid; bing[obs3]; drift; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... some sort. Late in October you may see the yellow or brown foliage of the pines, then ready to fall, surrounding the branches of the previous year's growth, forming a whorl of brown fringe surmounted by a tuft of green leaves of the present year's growth. Their leaves always turn yellow ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... Washington Territories, and in the neighborhood of the great lakes, and inhabits the regions as far [Page 220] north as the Arctic Sea. Its color is yellowish brown. The fur is thicker in winter than summer, and on the neck of the animal the hair is very coarse and hangs in an immense tuft of over a foot in length. The flesh is most excellent food and is much esteemed by trappers. The habits of the moose are in most respects identical with the deer, already described, and like them they form ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... distinguished men, were in the list. Not one of them. Our first writers, it seems, were Lord Chesterfield, Lord Bath, Mr. W. Whithed, Sir Charles Williams, Mr. Soame Jenyns, Mr. Cambridge, Mr. Coventry. Of these seven personages, Whithed was the lowest in station, but was the most accomplished tuft-hunter of his time. Coventry was of a noble family. The other five had among them two seats in the House of Lords, two seats in the House of Commons, three seats in the Privy Council, a baronetcy, a blue riband, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... chirp has in it something aristocratic and supercilious. He looks upon this crumb-scattering as a duty society owes him, and determines generously to leave for the others all he can not eat up himself. But I think I see a tuft on his ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... forward, he turned his head half way round, so that he saw the crouching figure directly at his heels. Then he turned his head still further, and gathered himself for a leap. But Ned was expecting this; and, as quick as a flash, he leaped forward and caught the tuft of hair hanging over his forehead, dropping his gun and seizing at the same moment, with the other hand, the bridle-rein. The mustang made his leap, but the lad held on, and, by a quick, powerful effort threw one leg over his shoulders and slid upon his ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... bosses of silver; the steel bit, too, had cheek pieces of the more precious metal, while to hang from beneath the neck of the steed that was to wear it, there was a large glistening ball of silver, from which streamed a great tuft of scarlet horsehair. ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... diamond sparks. Countless insects (butterflies and bees mostly) lay in masses dead on the snow; they had ventured too high, or the wind had borne them thither, but to breathe their last in these cold regions. A threatening cloud hung over the Wetterhorn, like a fine, black tuft of wool. It lowered itself slowly, heavily, with that which lay concealed within it, and this was the "Foehn,"[A] powerful in its strength when it broke loose. The impression of the entire journey, the night quarters above and then the road beyond, the deep rocky chasms, where the water ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... delicate Nisaeans are all very well for a few minutes over those flat sands of Egypt: but here you need a horse who will go forty miles a day over rough and smooth, and dine thankfully off thistles at night. Aha, poor little man!'—as a jerboa sprang up from a tuft of bushes at his feet—'I fear you must help to fill our soup-kettle in these ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Mrs Reichardt on the cliff high above me. I answered with all the eagerness of despair. Then there came a heavy splash into the water, and I heard her implore me to endeavour to make for a small shrub that grew in a hollow of the rock, at a very short distance from the tuft of seaweed that had become ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... when she had made Peregrine wash his face and hands, smooth the hair ruffled in his nap, freshly tying his little cravat and the ribbons on his shoes and at his knees. To make his hair into anything but elf locks, or to obliterate the bristly tuft that made him like Riquet, was impossible, illness had made him additionally lean and sallow, and his keen eyes, under their black contracted brows and dark lashes, showed all the more the curious variation in their tints, and with an obliquity that varied according ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Your growth instruction to me yields. The One who clothes the lily fair And gives it tender, earnest care— Will he not hear my fervent prayer? The One who notes the sparrow's fall— Does he not love his creatures all? If he so clothes each tuft and tree And gives the birds such liberty, Will he not clothe and care for me? I no more can doubt or sorrow: God will ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... nearer, and I began to perceive my error. Gamekeepers do not usually paint their faces red and green, neither do they wear scalp-locks, a tuft of eagle's feathers, moccasins, and buffalo- hide cloaks, embroidered with representations of war and the chase. This was the accoutrement of the stranger who now approached me, and whose copper-coloured complexion indicated that he was a member of the Red Indian, or, as the late ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... means of weeds specially prepared for the purpose. The weeds commonly called redroot or iron-weed are very good for this. The stems, measuring about a foot and a half in length, are stripped except for a small leaf or tuft of leaves at one end. On the opposite end the root is cut away so as to leave only a small knob which will serve ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... animals which ranged over the country; and the remembrance of those at home in Scotland who would never know what had become of him, made him sick at heart. As these sad thoughts filled the traveller's mind and took away all his courage, his tired eye lighted upon a tiny tuft of moss, showing green and fair even in the parched soil of the desert. It was the Lesser Fork-moss which grows in our shady woods, and beside our ponds and ditches. We should perhaps hardly notice it unless we were shown its beauty by a microscope, for it is one of the smallest ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... pressing back the thick growth we advanced cautiously, and following his example I, too, stepped from tuft to tuft, listening to the beating noise and to the ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... tooth-nipt even it ever 315 Onward moved; still clung on wan lips, sodden as ashes, Shreds all woolly from out that soft smooth surface arisen. Lastly before their feet lay fells, white, fleecy, refulgent, Warily guarded they in baskets woven of osier. They, as on each light tuft their voice smote louder approaching, 320 Pour'd grave inspiration, a prophet chant to the future, Chant which an after-time shall ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... legs, being tied loosely above the calf with dirty white strips of cloth instead of garters. He had no cap, and it was seen that his hair had a "cow-lick" in front; it slanted up from his brow, that is, in a sleek kind of tuft. There was a violent squint in one of his sharp gray eyes, so that it seemed to flash at the world across the bridge of his nose. He was so eager at his work that his clumsy-looking boots—they only ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... of the size of an eagle, and has a brilliant golden plumage around the neck, while the rest of the body is of a purple colour; except the tail, which is azure, with long feathers intermingled of a roseate hue; the throat is adorned with a crest, and the head with a tuft of feathers. The first Roman who described this bird... was the senator Manilius.... He tells us that no person has ever seen this bird eat, that in Arabia it is looked upon as sacred to the sun, that it lives five hundred and forty years, that when it becomes old it builds a nest of cassia and sprigs ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... him in blue and silver, with a rich turban; then appears in purple satin, fringed and looped with gold, with white feathers in her hair; next, in green silk and emeralds; anon, in pale straw-color, with a tuft of flowers; next, in pink and silver, with varied plumes, white, carnation, and blue; then, in brown, with a splendid crescent. As the fortunate Prince beholds each transformation, he is bewildered (as well he may be) to choose which array ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... boy, and to judge by the restless black eyes, a real live wire. He looks me over sort of doubtful, stroking the zippy little chin tuft as he does it, but he ends by ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... triumph, arose. A little while after when the Brahmanas had become silent, a Rakshasa of the name of Charvaka, who had disguised himself as a Brahmana, addressed the king. He was a friend of Duryodhana and stood there in the garb of a religious mendicant. With a rosary, with a tuft of hair on his head, and with the triple staff in his hand, he stood proudly and fearlessly in the midst of all those Brahmanas that had come there for pronouncing benedictions (upon the king), numbering by thousands, O king, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... this person, I expected to have seen some religious adoration paid to him. But, excepting some young plantain trees that lay before him, and upon the awning under which he sat, I could observe nothing by which he might be distinguished from their other chiefs. Omai presented to him a tuft of red feathers, tied to the end of a small stick; but, after a little conversation on indifferent matters with this Bolabola man, his attention was drawn to an old woman, the sister of his mother. She was already at his feet, and had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... isis, clusters of pure tuft-coral, prickly fungi, and anemones formed a brilliant garden of flowers, decked with their collarettes of blue tentacles, sea-stars studding the sandy bottom. It was a real grief to me to crush under my feet the brilliant specimens of molluscs which strewed the ground by thousands, ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... of his new neighbour. A month or two passed on, and no steps seemed taken on the part of the purchaser to avail himself of his new acquisition. Day after day Mr Gillingham Howard looked up to the tuft of trees that crowned the beautiful field beyond his park, and on seeing no symptoms of cutting down, nor other preparations for house-building, began to indulge in the pleasing anticipation that the old gentleman had no intention of the kind; and by cherishing this idea for some time, he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the royal box, where sat a stout, middle-aged man, with a dull, good-humored face, a star and ribbon on his breast, and by his side a woman, ample and motherly, with an ugly tuft of feathers on her head, and a diamond tiara, which lit up her heavy Dutch features like a torch. The King, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... sole and grizzled tuft, That hangs upon his bald and barren crown; And we will sing to see him so rebuff'd, And lend our little mights to pull him down, And make brave sport of his malicious frown, For all his boastful mockery o'er men. For ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... in some of the recorded cases of perforations, carpenter bees have been mistaken for humble bees. The heads of all our Northern humble bees are rather narrow, retreating from the antennae toward the sides, and with a more or less dense tuft of hair between the antennae. The abdomen, as well as the thorax, is always quite densely covered with hair, which may be black or yellowish or in bands of either color. With possibly one or two exceptions, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... was a witch, as her mother and grandmother had been before her. She described, while the crowd listened with intense interest, how Emlyn Stower had introduced her to the devil, who was clad in red hose and looked like a black boy with a hump on his back and a tuft of red hair hanging from his nose, also many unedifying details of her interviews with this ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... goatee is frequently used for a tuft of beard on the point of the chin—what is sometimes called "an imperial," apparently because the late Emperor Napoleon III wore his beard so. His Majesty the Goat is graciously pleased to ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... hand on himself as he did has conquered a world. He didn't want to go, but he went as so many have gone hereabouts. He wanted to stay, but he went against his will, and—and I wish that the grub-hunters, and tuft-hunters, and the blind greedy majority in England could get hold of what he got hold of. Then life 'd be a different thing in Thamesfontein and the little ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in or about the house. To obviate this publication of what it might be desirable to keep secret, Miss Bronte used to take her out for a walk on the solitary moors; where, when both were seated on a tuft of heather, in some high lonely place, she could acquaint the old woman, at leisure, with all that she ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... nigger, walk! De road am dusty, de road am tough, Dust in de eye, dust in de tuft; Dust in de mouth, yous can't talk— Walk, you ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... distichously imbricate, compressed, somewhat keeled, outer margin ciliate, and bearded at the mouth. The ligule is a thin short membranous ridge with a fringe of dense fine hairs. The leaf-sheath enclosing the base of the peduncle is rather long, glabrous with a tuft of short ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... A whiff of warm breath, a little soft tuft on its paw—: and immediately wert thou ready to ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... an old thorn—such a thorn! The long sprays covered with snowy blossoms, so graceful, so elegant, so lightsome, and yet so rich! There only wants a pool under the thorn to give a still lovelier reflection, quivering and trembling, like a tuft of feathers, whiter and greener than the life, and more prettily mixed with the bright blue sky. There should indeed be a pool; but on the dark grass-plat, under the high bank, which is crowned by that magnificent plume, there is something that does almost as well,—Lizzy and Mayflower in ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... heather, her face propped on her hands. Close beneath her eyes was an exquisite tuft of pink bell-heather intergrown with bunchberries. And while a whole vague series of thoughts and memories passed through her mind she was still vividly conscious of the pink bells, the small bright leaves. Sensation ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is just now a mass of rosy buds, and if you blow open its sepals, they are of a bright magenta color inside, but I never yet saw a flower open naturally on this plant. Just as the sepals open at the tips, and you think they are about to expand, they shrivel and fall away, leaving a tuft of greenish yellow stamens in the center. Is it A. Hudsoni? Another species not often seen, but well worth culture, is A. coerulea, a kind with finely cut leaves and purplish blue flowers. Then A. coronaria, The Bride, a pure creamy white ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... heart out; you'd always get what you wanted somehow, and you wouldn't wait for it either; and I'm just the same. I'm not built for giving up, and enduring, and sacrificing. I'm naturally just a tuft of thistle-down, Mark; but living beside Waitstill all these years I've grown ashamed to be so light, blowing about hither and thither. I kept looking at her and borrowing some of her strength, just enough to make me worthy to be her sister. Waitstill is like a bit of Plymouth ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... birches, alders, and dwarf willows. We of the school who lived at some distance came with our dinners put up in little baskets. In the intervals of school hours we would gather round a spring, under a tuft of hazel-bushes, and have a kind of picnic; interchanging the rustic dainties with which our provident mothers had fitted us out. Then, when our joyous repast was over, and my companions were disposed for play, I would draw forth ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... poppy-like blossoms on stalks of from 6 to 9-in. high; the flowers are of various colours, but the principal are scarlet, crimson, blue, purple and white. There are also double-flowered varieties, in which the stamens in the centre are replaced by a tuft of narrow petals. It is an old garden favourite, and of the double forms there are named varieties. They grow best in a loamy soil, enriched with well-rotted manure, which should be dug in below the tubers. These may be planted in October, and for succession ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... comes down to a jetty and squats on his heels. His head is shaved, with the exception of a tuft on the crown. He dips his head in the river, scoops some water up and rinses his mouth with it. He calls on Ganges, daughter of Vishnu, and prays her to take away his sins, the impurity of his birth, and to protect ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Bohemia. The boy rode up with his visor raised,—his face was as fair as a girl's, and glowed under a crown of golden hair. He bore his trophy aloft, and when it was placed as a knightly decoration above the crest of his helmet, he little thought that the triple tuft was to wave for more than five hundred years, even to this day, on England's front, for such it does, and that, next to the crown, there shall be no badge so proudly known as the three feathers which nod above the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... have been any man's back, the innocent back that she had no memory of, that disguised and hid him from her and made him strange to her and utterly pathetic. And then, there was the back of his head, sunk like lead into his pillow. The cropped hair had begun to grow. You could see a little greyish tuft. You wouldn't have known that it was ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... the umpire of the race." The Hare agreed; and away they both started together. But the Hare, by reason of her exceeding swiftness, outran the Tortoise to such a degree, that she made a jest of the matter; and thinking herself sure of the race, squatted in a tuft of fern that grew by the way, and took a nap, thinking that, if the Tortoise went by, she could at any time overtake him with all the ease imaginable. In the meanwhile the Tortoise came jogging on with slow but continued motion; and the Hare out ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... trifle crookedly over the arm of the bench in that weary movement which the first moment of death brings to man, before its chill severity comes. The sun was already low, bathing the mute figure in ruddy light, a gentle zephyr stirred a gray tuft of hair on the pale temple, and the big fly flew back again with a buzz past the white nose, motionless now. Round about, the ripe fruit fell heavily upon the turf, making the whir of the field-crickets cease for a moment. But yonder ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... voyage. Cook, after the usual compliments, presented him with a shirt, a hatchet, some nails, and other trifles. But of all his presents, that which appeared most precious to him, and which excited most cries of admiration from his followers, was a tuft of red feathers ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... burnished the silver and brass ornaments, and rubbed the polished stock until it shone. When not a suspicion of soil or dirt remained any where, the delicate double triggers were examined and set so that they would yield at the stroke of a hair, a tuft of lightly-oiled tow was placed over the nipple and another closed ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... for roots and berries in the forest. Edible plants were ever more hard to find, these past days; but what there were she gathered almost automatically, herself lost in a deep preoccupation. And all at once her hand reached toward a little vine of black berries, each with a green tuft at the end, not unlike gooseberries in ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... bitter Presidential campaign to find a weak spot in the guard, and to send a spark straight into the thickest bunch of wiry sand grass, where the wind could fan it to a blaze and then seize it and bend the tall flame tongues until they licked around the next tuft of grass, and the next, and the next—until the spark was grown to a long, leaping line of fire, sweeping eastward with the relentless rush of a tidal ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... Behind the tuft of pines I met them; never Saw I men scour so on their way: I ey'd ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... high ledge of rock to which I have climbed, not without some unpleasant qualms, I stretch myself out upon a strip of short turf sprinkled with the flowers of the white rock-rose and bordered with candy-tuft, and try to drive out of mind the only disagreeable thought I have at this moment—that of getting down to the path, where I was safe. The worst part of climbing precipitous places is not the going up, but the coming down. Not a human being or dwelling is in sight, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the mangled head on a soft tuft of moss, tenderly as if it were conscious still. His nature was such that no shock, or pain, or sorrow to which humanity is liable, could bend or quell it, so as to deprive him, beyond a brief instant, of self-possession and calmness. It was not insensibility now, and hardly stoicism, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... lay perfectly still; then again he crept forward, shoving his noose carefully along the ground till it got very near the outer circle, to which the birds advanced before beginning to kick up the soil. At length reaching the last tuft of grass which would assist in concealing him, he shoved forward his pole to its utmost extent. Back came one of the birds, and Walter saw that it had actually passed the noose; then round it turned ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... delicate records of two hundred nights To Copenhagen. There, in his golden mask, At supper with Pratensis, who believed Only what old books told him, Tycho met Dancey, the French Ambassador, rainbow-gay In satin hose and doublet, supple and thin, Brown-eyed, and bearded with a soft black tuft Neat as a blackbird's wing,—a spirit as keen And swift as France on all the starry trails Of thought. He saw the deep and simple fire, The mystery of all genius in those eyes Above that golden wizard. Tycho raised His wine-cup, brimming—they ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... and kept out wide till Warrigal cut the tracks, which he did easy enough. We couldn't see a blessed thing. Warrigal rode along with his head down, reading every tuft of grass, every little stone turned up, every foot ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... depict boys as worshipers of wealth, and many pictures have been drawn of the slights and indignities to which boys, whose means are inferior to those of their schoolfellows, are subject. I am happy to believe that this is a libel. There are, it is true, toadies and tuft hunters among boys as among men. That odious creature, the parasite of the Greek and Latin plays, exists still, but I do not believe that a boy is one whit the less liked, or is ever taunted with his poverty, provided he is a good ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... quivered, rested on the arm of his chair; the thick white hair on his massive head glistened in the light from a green-shaded lamp. He was not asleep, for every now and then his sanguine cheeks filled, and a sound, half sigh, half grunt, escaped his thick lips between a white moustache and the tiny tuft of white hairs above his cleft chin. Sunk in the chair, that square thick trunk of a body in short black-braided coat ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... over the ears, depend three other separate curls or locks of hair, each double-braided. Behind the head hang also two other longer curls, and each double-braided. Between these curls, as they detach themselves from the head, the cranium is clean shaven, and the hair or tuft on the crown of the head, whence the several curls depend, covers a very small space. At the end of the braided curls is tied a piece of coloured string or narrow ribbon, the same as is done amongst our little dressy nymphs. The hair is dressed with olive-oil or daubed over with semen, or liquid ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... pushed aside the nurse, who tried to stop him, and there he saw his daughter. She was the loveliest young princess, red and white, like milk and blood, with clear blue eyes and golden hair, but right in the middle of her forehead there was a little tuft of brown hair. ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... to deal with the rich and great. If you treat them as the rest of the world does, you are a tuft-hunter; if you treat them as the rest of the world pretends to, you are a hypocrite; whereas, if you deal with them truly, it is hard not to seem, even to yourself, a bumptious person. I remember trying to tell myself on the launch-trip that ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... still strong and upright. He had still the old duskened features, dark, piercing eyes, and penthouse brows, but the long and pendulous Chinaman moustaches had shrunk till they scarcely covered his mouth. The "devil's jaw" could boast only a small tuft of hair. There were wrinkles in "the angel's forehead." If meddlesome Time had also furrowed his cheeks, nevertheless the most conspicuous mark there was still the scar of that great gash received in the ding-dong fight at Berbera. His hair, which should have been grizzled, he kept ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... does look as if, as Sor Asdrubale says, only rats and spiders congregated within it. And yet—and yet; I have so clear a remembrance, so distinct a consciousness of it all. There was a picture of the daughter of Herodias dancing, upon the altar; I remember her white turban with a scarlet tuft of feathers, and Herod's blue caftan; I remember the shape of the central chandelier; it swung round slowly, and one of the wax lights had got bent almost in two ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... neck of the oxen, and the other, fastened to the first, passed under their belly. Their high withers, their broad dewlaps, their clean limbs, their small hoofs, shining like agate, their tails with the tuft carefully combed, showed that they were thorough-bred and that hard field-work had never deformed them. They exhibited the majestic placidity of Apis, the sacred bull, when it receives homage ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... her with light, irregular movements, glancing aside from time to time, as a tuft of flowers or a feathery spray of leaves attracted her fancy. In a few moments her hands were too full, and her woollen apron of many-colored stripes was raised over one arm to hold her treasures, while a hymn to Saint Agnes, which she constantly murmured to herself, came in little ripples ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... prow. The rifle covered the spot where the canoe must come round the bend. He was on his own land, and he would not allow the guards to regain possession without a fight. He saw the white prow of the canoe shoot out past a tuft of saw-grass on the bend, and laid his eye to the sights. Another stroke of the paddles and the canoe was in full view, and Roger found his front sight bearing upon a button on the silken shirt which stretched ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... until a tall Mr. Man and his little boy stopped and looked at us, and Mr. Store Man came out and lifted up the cover of our box and held us up, one after the other, by the ears, until he came to Tip, one of my brothers who wasn't very smart, but was quite good-looking and had a tuft of white on his ears which made him have that name. Mr. Man's boy said he would take Tip, and Tip giggled and was so pleased because he had been picked first. Mr. Store Man put him in a big paper bag, ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... bright and her teeth small, white and beautifully even; and a woman's soul looked at Bryden out of her soft Irish eyes. He was troubled and turned aside, and catching sight of a frog looking at him out of a tuft of grass he said:— ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... ambush.—The most rudimentary method of hunting in ambush is simply to take advantage of some favourable external circumstance to obtain concealment, and then to await the approach of the prey. Some animals place themselves behind a tuft of grass, others thrust themselves into a thicket, or hang on to the branch of a tree in order to fall suddenly on the victim who innocently approaches the perfidious ambush. The Crocodile, as described by Sir Samuel Baker, conceals himself by his skill in plunging noiselessly. On the bank a group ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... maddened king, the great battle of the Tugela was fought at Endondakusuka in December, 1856, between the Usutu party, commanded by Cetewayo, and the adherents of Umbelazi the Handsome, his brother, who was known among the Zulus as "Indhlovu-ene-Sihlonti," or the "Elephant with the tuft of hair," from a little lock of hair which grew ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... Robin, who was then a plain and dark-colored bird with the scorched feathers of a fire-bringer upon his breast. The other was the Magpie, who at that time was among the most gorgeous and beautiful of all the birds. She had a tuft of bright feathers on her head, and her plumage outshone even that of the Peacock, who has the hundred gleaming eyes of Argus set in his fan-like tail. But the Magpie, in spite of her beauty, was at heart a wicked bird. Think of it! She mocked the dying Saviour in His agony and ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... cut-throat, shave half his head, leaving a tuft of hair on the back by which he kindly assists his victor to decapitate him, expecting a like consideration in return, long drooping moustachios, clad in Turkish clothes, a belt full of cartridges, with revolver and murderous-looking yataghan artistically ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... as observed by Dr. Bessel in 1835, showed that a more or less well-defined tuft of rays emanated from that part of the nucleus which was turned towards the sun; and the rays being bent backward formed a part of the tail. The nucleus, with its emanations, presented the appearance of a burning rocket, the end of which was turned sideways by the force of the wind. And, ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... have become more common in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It is related, that when Charles the Second made his public entry into Rouen, in 1449, he wore a hat lined with red velvet, surmounted with a plume or tuft of feathers; from which entry, or at least during his reign, the use of hats and caps is to be dated; and from that time they took the place of chaperons and hoods, that had ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... continued, "the crowd returned, more excited and noisy than ever. Barricades were erected with wonderful rapidity; two of those were on the boulevard close to the place where I was. I saw a horseman suddenly bound over the first; he wore a tuft of red-and-white feathers in his hat. I saw that it was a staff officer, doubtless carrying some despatch to headquarters. He continued his way, sabre in its sheath, head erect, proud and calm in the midst of insulting shouts from the crowd; stones were thrown at him and sticks ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... moorlands, where I have so long enjoyed the wonders of nature; never, I can honestly say, alone; because when man was not with me, I had companions in every bee, and flower, and pebble; and never idle, because I could not pass a swamp, or a tuft of heather, without finding in it a fairy tale of which I could but decipher here and there a line or two, and yet found them more interesting than all the books, save one, which were ever written ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... interview, which lasted twenty minutes, he kept complaining of headache and of pain in all his limbs. His thin emasculate face seemed to have become so tiny; his hair was ruffled, and his crest of curls in front stood up in a thin tuft. But in the left eye, which was screwed up and seemed to be insinuating something, Smerdyakov showed himself unchanged. "It's always worth while speaking to a clever man." Ivan was reminded of that at once. He sat down on the stool at his feet. Smerdyakov, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... any beast less regal in mien and stature would have looked ridiculous. The majesty of a bull moose, however, is too secure to be marred by the incongruous pettiness of his tail. From the lower part of his neck, where the great muscles ran into the spacious, corded chest, hung a curious tuft of long and very coarse black hair, called among woodsmen the "bell." As he turned to his browsing, his black form stood out sharply against the background of the firs. Far down the silent, glittering slope, a good mile distant, a tall, gray figure on snow-shoes ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... haue seene a man comming from fighting, in a brauerie bringing in his hand foure or fiue mens heads, carying them by the haire of the head: for although they shaue their heads most commonly twise a weeke, yet leaue they a tuft of haire vpon their heads about 2. foote long. I haue enquired why they leaue the tuft of haire vpon their heads. They answered that thereby they may easiler be carried vp into ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... everybody rises and remains standing while they stand, and if they approach you or look at you, you must perform the lowest of "curtsies." The courtesy made to royalty is very like the one I was taught to make when a little girl at Miss Tuft's school in Plymouth. One sinks down instead of stepping back in dancing-school fashion. After dinner the Duchess was pleased to stand until the gentlemen rejoined us; of course, we must all stand. ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... sexual differences to this agency: for we see in our domestic animals peculiarities arising and becoming attached to the male sex, which apparently have not been augmented through selection by man. The tuft of hair on the breast of the wild turkey-cock cannot be of any use, and it is doubtful whether it can be ornamental in the eyes of the female bird; indeed, had the tuft appeared under domestication it would have ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... night she heard him whining at the door. She opened it joyfully. "Where have you been, you dear little good-for-nothing darling Trip?" she said, kissing him, finding, as she did so, that all his hair had been sheared off, except a tuft on the end of his tail. She was so angry that she could not refrain from shedding tears. The puppy shivered, trembled, and whined in the cold, and Miss Dobb was obliged to sew him up in flannel. He looked so funny in his coat, with the ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... stagnant pools formed by the inundations of the Nile. The plant consists of a single stem, rising sometimes to the height of ten cubits; this stem, gradually tapering from the root, supports a spreading tuft at its summit. The substance of the stem is fibrous, and the pith contains a sweet juice. Every part of this plant was put to some use by the Egyptians. The harder and lower part they formed into cups and other utensils; the upper part into staves, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... this amusing voracity, analogous to that of monkeys, and Enjolras grew to a size and weight very uncommon among domestic cats. Then I bethought myself of having him shaved in the style of poodles, in order to bring out completely his leonine appearance. He retained his mane and a long tuft of hair at the end of the tail, and I would not swear that his thighs were not adorned with mutton-chop whiskers like those Munito used to wear. Thus trimmed, he resembled, I must confess, a Japanese monster much more than a lion of the Atlas Mountains or the Cape. Never was a more ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... of which the inhabitants came in crowds to visit the strange vessels. Two kings, especially, were of fine stature and great beauty. They were dressed in deer-skins, with the head bare, the hair carried back and tied in a tuft, and they wore on the neck a large chain ornamented with coloured stones. This was the most remarkable nation which they had until now met with. "The women are graceful," says the narrative published by Ramusio. "Some wore the skins of the lynx on their arms; their head was ornamented ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, among the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... man; but still a wine-merchant. Now the dean's father was—I beg his pardon, had been—a linen-draper; neither well-educated nor well behaved; in short, an unmitigated linen-draper. Consequently the dean's adoration of the aristocracy was excessive. There are few such thorough tuft-hunters as your genuine Oxford Don; the man who, without family or station in society, often without any further general education and knowledge of the world than is to be found at a country grammar-school, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smile went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone, Had walked ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning |
