"Twig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drunk from gold? Can a silver dish the forest hold? A rocking twig is the finest chair, And the softest paths lie through the air. Farewell, farewell ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... cut on a sharp blade of grass, and my dress is caught on an amaranth twig. Wait for me ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... what happens in the case of the red coral of commerce. A minute polype, fixed to the rocky bottom of the deep sea, grows up into a branched trunk. The end of every branch and twig is terminated by a polype; and all the polypes are connected together by a fleshy substance, traversed by innumerable canals which place each polype in communication with every other, and carry nourishment to the substance of the supporting stem. It is a sort ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... pronasci potest."—WACHTER, Glossary (quoted in "Notes and Queries," 3rd series, vii. 157. In the same volume are several papers on the origin of the word). Dr. Prior derives it from mistl (different), and tan (twig), being so unlike ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the lonely isle of St. Helena without cutting a twig from the willow that drooped over the grave of Napoleon, prior to the removal of the body by the government of Louis Philippe. Many of them have since been planted in different parts of Europe, and have grown into trees as large as their parent. Relic-hunters, who are unable to procure ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... again. After a weary hour the son turned to Rikiu: "Father, there is nothing more to be done. The steps have been washed for the third time, the stone lanterns and the trees are well sprinkled with water, moss and lichens are shining with a fresh verdure; not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the ground." "Young fool," chided the tea-master, "that is not the way a garden path should be swept." Saying this, Rikiu stepped into the garden, shook a tree and scattered over the garden gold and crimson leaves, scraps of the brocade ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... Indian traversing the Montana never feels himself alone. Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of the wind, in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the bird—everything, even to the bending twig wet with dew—for him has language, distinct personality. The forest is alive in its depths, has caprices, periods of anger; it avoids the thicket under the tread of the huntsman, or again presses him more ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... it was an Indian, and that he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... old Parson True, lay in the great bed opposite the window. A thin little twig of a man, he was still animated, at times, by the power of a strenuous and dauntless spirit. His hair, brushed straight back from the overtopping forehead, had grown snowy white, and the eager, delicate face beneath wore a strange pathos from the ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... tickling his nose with a twig of wild honeysuckle. He said 'Bother the flies!' twice, and ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... snow lay thick upon the ground. Upon the branches of trees it persistently hung, each added layer clinging tenaciously because there was no breath of wind to send it to the ground. Occasionally a dead twig, weighted too heavily by the increasing fall of snow, broke suddenly and dropped noiselessly into a bed of feathery flakes, thus joining its sleeping companions, ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... life-long battle with the spirit of Spanish absolutism, and he was already girding himself for his life's work. He assumed at once for his device a fallen oak, with a young sapling springing from its root. His motto, "Tandem fit surculus arbor," "the twig shall yet become a tree"—was to be nobly justified ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... accommodation of travelers. There was a fine grove for picnic purposes within easy reach, which was also frequently used for camp-meeting purposes. Gnarly old live-oaks spread their branches like a canopy over everything, while the sea-green moss hung from every limb and twig, excluding the light and lazily waving with every vagrant breeze. The fact that these grounds were also used for camp-meetings only proved the broad toleration of the people. On this occasion I distinctly ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... whom I wished most earnestly to avoid. She was standing on the edge of the cliff, her hands behind her, gazing seawards, and though I stopped short at the sight of her, and for a moment entertained wild thoughts of flight, it was not possible for me to carry them out. A dry twig snapped beneath my feet, and, turning quickly round, she had seen me. She came forward at once, and for some reason or other I knew that she was glad. She smiled upon me ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on being one of the best pistol-shots in the army. While riding in the country, he would often put his horse into a gallop, and with a pistol in each hand, never fail to cut off, in passing, the heads of the ducks or chickens which he took as his target. He could cut off a small twig from a tree at twenty-five paces; and I have even heard it said (I am far from guaranteeing the truth of this) that on one occasion, with the consent of the party whose imprudence thus put his life in peril, he cut half in two the stem of a clay pipe, hardly three inches long, which ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... this we have from our own nature a great lesson of sweetness, that in such a death as this there is no pain nor any bitterness, but as a ripe fruit is easily and without violence detached from its twig, so our soul without affliction is parted from the body in which it has been. And just as to him who comes from a long journey, before he enters into the gate of his city, the citizens thereof go forth to meet him, so the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... fire was burning cheerfully, sending long streamers of wood smoke into the morning air. On the bricks sat a billy-can full of water just on the boil, and, as it bubbled up, Grizzel threw in a small handful of tea, giving it a stir round with a cherry twig. She let it bubble again while she counted ten, then lifted the can to one side and put the lid on. She had begged a cup of warm, frothy milk from the milk-boy's pail as he came up the hill. The damper was sitting on the hot bricks, ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... fetched along one of those hand-electric torches, did you, Jack?" he exclaimed. "Well, a flashlight never had a better chance to make itself useful than right now. It's going to be a picnic from here on. I can see every little twig and blade of grass; and as for our trail, a fellow could follow it with one eye shut. Thank goodness! our troubles for the day are ended; unless it comes on to rain cats and dogs ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... an ill-disposed woman, named Susy Martin, living in Salisbury. Mr. Pike, who dwells near this Martin, saith she is no witch, although an arrant scold, as was her mother before her; and as for the girl, he saith that a birch twig, smartly laid on, would cure her sooner than the hanging of all the old women in the Colony. Mistress Weare says this is not the first time the Evil Spirit hath been at work in Hampton; for they did all remember the case of Goody Marston's child, who was, from as fair and promising an ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in brown velvet with a tiny twig of holly perched among furry trimmings, hurried up the steps and into the vestibule. Richard met Ruth halfway, his face alight, his ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... tree to be desecrated?" "Has the idolater broken off dry bark, or green boughs; has he taken from it a staff, or a twig, or even a leaf—it is desecrated." "Has he trimmed it for the sake of the tree?" "It is forbidden." "Has he trimmed it, but not for the sake of the tree?" "It ...
— Hebrew Literature
... Shu[u]zen spoke—"'A twig broken on the flowering branch of plum, and the whole is to be cut off.' Such the words of Kuro[u] Hangwan Yoshitsune. Kiku, you are a vile, treacherous woman; undeserving of Heaven's favour and the kindness ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... disappeared, it would often suddenly dart out, and again vanish twenty or fifty yards further on. On one or two occasions the insect was detected{33} reposing, and it could then be seen how completely it assimilates itself to the surrounding leaves. It sits on a nearly upright twig, the wings fitting closely back to back, concealing the antennae and head, which are drawn up between their bases. The little tails of the hind wing touch the branch, and form a perfect stalk to the leaf, which is supported in its place by the claws ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... subdivided and re-subdivided into haunches, which again are divided and re-subdivided. Here between two limbs another branch is jammed, in a stationary fornication which is reproduced in diminished scale from bough to twig to the top of the tree. There it seems the trunk is a phallus which mounts and disappears into a skirt of leaves or which, on the contrary, issues from a green clout and plunges into the glossy belly ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... a thin reed and tipped with thorns of the nopal. Sometimes it is shot from a diminutive bow, like an arrow. But a more interesting way is to hurl it by means of a primitive throwing-stick, which is nothing but a freshly cut twig from a willow (jaria) about six inches long, left in its natural state except for the flattening of one end on one side. The spear is held in the left hand, the stick in the right. The flat part of the latter is placed against ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... often careened, repaired, and adorned since that time, I see nothing ridiculous in declaring that it is the same ship; any more than in saying the oak I planted an acorn thirty years ago, is the same tree I saw spring up then a little twig, which not even a moderate sceptic will deny; though he takes so much pains to persuade plain folks out of their own existence, by laughing us out of the dull notion that he who dies a withered old fellow at fourscore, should ever be considered as the same person whom his mother brought ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... to ride his master's horse to place them in his belt, and he gave him orders to let all the king's horses get before him, and as he should overtake one horse after the other, to take one of the twigs and strike the horse with it over the crupper, and then let that twig fall; and after that to take another twig, and do in like manner to every one of the horses, as he should overtake them, enjoining the horseman strictly to watch when his own horse should stumble, and to throw down his cap on the spot. All these things did the youth fulfil, giving a ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... this stuff jointed and moving. If I can do that, I will trouble you for style; anybody might write it, and it would be splendid; well-engineered, the masses right, the blooming thing travelling - twig? ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the wind especially caught everything in a throttling violence. The bright short grass lay all one way like brushed hair. Every shrub in the garden tugged at its roots like a dog at the collar, and strained every leaping leaf after the hunting and exterminating element. Now and again a twig would snap and fly like a bolt from an arbalist. The three men stood stiffly and aslant against the wind, as if leaning against a wall. The two ladies disappeared into the house; rather, to speak truly, they were blown into ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... me," he thought in his little round head as he tried to wriggle across the road and couldn't because his back was so stiff. "Now I am an old man and I shall never see another summer. Good-bye." And Fuzzy Caterpillar rolled himself up in a gray blanket and hung himself on the end of a dried twig. "This is the last of me," he said once more as the dried little grub he now was rattled around in ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Almost the clearest picture of Carl I have is the eager look with which he scanned the people stepping out of our car at the station, and the beam that lit up his face as he spied us. There is a line in Dorothy Canfield's "Bent Twig" that always appealed to us. The mother and father were separated for a few days, to the utter anguish of the father especially, and he remarked, "It's Hell to be happily married!" Every time we were ever separated ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... twig from a near-by tree and cast it upon the ground at her feet. Again she waved her wand—and the twig turned to a gleaming sword, richly engraved, that seemed to the silent watchers to tremble slightly in its ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... as much as an ox could, 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 in your hands for them to lick. They soon learn their names, and come to be ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... time passed, the winter came and was gone again, and another springtime was at hand, with its new life stirring in blade and twig and branch, and its mystical call ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... farther astray—swayed alternately by the spirit of the stoic and the spirit of the little child. But little Poosk was made of sterling stuff, and the two spirits had a hard battle in him for the mastery that wintry afternoon. His chase of the rabbit was brought to an abrupt conclusion by a twig which caught one of his snow-shoes, tripped him up, and sent him headlong into the snow. When snow averages four feet in depth it affords great scope for ineffectual floundering. The snow-shoes kept his feet near the surface, and the depth prevented ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... and carried them to sunny places; but at last she grew very impatient, and one morning, when she was all alone in the garden, very much provoked that they had not made their appearance, took a twig and explored; and the first poke brought to light the little seeds, as shiny and brown as when they left the apple. It was a great disappointment, and Polly caught them up, and threw them as far away as she could, and with tears in her ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... shape, with a colossal tree standing in its centre,—a live-oak with trunk full forty feet in girth, and branches spreading like a banyan. Though an evergreen, but little of its own foliage can be seen, only here and there a parcel of leaves at the extremity of a protruding twig; all the rest, great limbs and lesser branches, shrouded under Spanish moss, this in the moonlight showing white ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... still in the country of the Weezee, of whose curious customs they had an opportunity of seeing more. Both sexes are inveterate smokers. They quickly manufacture their pipes of a lump of clay and a green twig, from which they extract the pith. They all grow tobacco, the leaves of which they twist up into a thick rope like a hay-band, and then coil it into a flattened spiral, shaped like a target. They are very ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... answer, "Pluck but a branchlet of the Tree and plant it in thy garden; 'twill at once take root and in shortest time be as gross and fair a growth as that in yonder copse." So the Princess broke off a twig, and now that she had secured the three things, whereof the holy woman spake to her, she was exceeding joyful and turning to the Bird said, "I have in very deed won my wish, but one thing is yet wanting ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... renders one receptive of every influence. Through the little copse she walked slowly, with her cloak folded about her, lingering to imbibe the sense of shelter, the sunset filtered in purple through the mist of woven spray and twig, the companionship of growth not sufficiently dense to band against her the sweet home-feeling of a young and tender wintry wood. It was therefore just on the edge of the evening that she emerged from the place and began to cross the meadow-land. At one hand ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... bears the title of "Odes and Miscellaneous Poems, by a Student of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh," Edinburgh, 1790, 4to. These lucubrations, which attracted no share of public attention, were followed by "The Guinea Note, a Poem, by Timothy Twig, Esquire," Edinburgh, 1797, 4to. His next work is entitled, "An Introduction to the History of Poetry in Scotland, with Illustrations by David Allan," Edinburgh, 1798, 4to. This work, though written in a rambling ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... you can use, Mr. Mellowtone," I continued, removing from the twig some of the handsomest ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... it was six o'clock, and thus wanted two hours to daybreak. Hurriedly I left the inn and went out again. A rimy frost had come upon every twig and bush and tree, and in the light of the moon the ice crystals sparkled as though the spirits had scattered myriads of precious stones everywhere. But I thought not of this. I made my way toward the spot from which I thought I had heard the sound come, and ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... little bird has had its supper, and now it is getting ready to go to sleep here, quite secure and content, never troubling itself what its food will be, or where its lodging on the morrow. Like David, it 'abides under the shadow of the Almighty.' It sits on its little twig content, ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... twig stirring or a shadow moving. All was dead quiet. The main Chinese camp on this side was placed in H——'s abandoned compounds—that we had discovered long ago—but the battalions there were now apparently asleep with not so much as a sentry out. So, gaining confidence, I pushed ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... before she became aware that she was very hot and tired and hungry. Her shoes were soaking wet, her skirts and stockings splashed with mud; one shoulder was being sunburned where a twig had caught and ripped her white flannel waist; and Seth's red silk handkerchief around her neck was scarcely a deeper ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... prosperity, he had added a wife and family to his cares, but the dawn was speedily overcast. Everything retrograded with him towards the verge of the miry Slough of Despond, which yawns for insolvent debtors; and after catching at each twig, and experiencing the protracted agony of feeling them one by one elude his grasp, he actually sunk into the miry pit whence he had been extricated by ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... an effort to better my position in the manner I had been directed. Mrs Reichardt had thrown a heavy stone into the water among the sharks, the loud splash of which had driven them away. Before they again made their appearance, I had caught a firm hold of the twig, and flung myself up into ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... them; it is one of Aunt Prue's favorite sayings: 'The Christian should be like a little bird, which sits on its twig and sings, and lets God ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... backs; look that your braw cradle at home be the fairer spread up. Not that I am wishing ill to little Harry, God forbid! So ride your way, for these are the last words ye'll ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last twig that I'll ever cut in the bonny woods ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... before the trees begin to bud and blossom, the sap rises and works its way up into every bough and branch and twig of the tree. Sap is a liquid which flows through the tree much in the same way that blood flows through our veins, and the sap is the life-giving element of the tree, just as the blood is of ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... would open his eyes and yawn, realize once more how good life was, and plunge forthwith upon his still sleeping brothers and sisters, tumbling them triumphantly into the midst of a new romp before they knew whether they were on their heads or their heels. A twig, a leaf, or a stone would be endowed with the attributes of some cunning and fierce quarry, to be stalked, run down, and finally torn in sunder with marvellous heroism, with reckless, noisy valour. The sun shone warm and sweetly over all, there beside the immemorial Sussex Downs; life and the ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Drechsler's money had gone a long way, and now those who had prepared it thought there never had been such a beautiful tree. True, every child in the Forest had had on former occasions a tree of their own at Christmas time—none so poor but some small twig was lit up, though the lights might be few; but this one, ah, that was a different matter—no such tree as this had ever been seen in ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... conquered the whole tree, and after stripping its huge limbs bare, clothed them with its own wan masses, they always looked to me like so many gigantic Druid ghosts, with flowing robes and beards, and locks all of one ghastly grey, and I would not have broken a twig off them for the world, lest a sad voice, like that which reproached Dante, should have moaned ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... him into a scraggly orchard, and he broke a crotched limb from a tree. With a "leg" of this twig clutched firmly in either hand he stumped about on the sward until ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... I think. We porochial pots is to pass all our time a-prospecting for Stink! Doctor DUDFIELD thinks WE should inspeck, periodical, all privit dwellings, Discover and show up defecks, sech as fumings and leakings, and smellings, As "lurk unsuspected about," which the tenants theirselves do not twig, And the landlords, in course, don't remove. Well, your tenant is mostly a pig, And your landlord is sometimes a 'og; still between 'em we jest slip along, But do dooty for both of 'em? Snakes! that is coming it slightly too ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... whenever Lenore's hair caught its rays, it shone like gold. The proud eye, the delicate mouth, the slender limbs of the noble girl took his fancy prisoner. She laughed, and showed her little white teeth—he was enraptured; she broke off a twig, and struck the shrubs with it as she passed—it seemed to him that they bent before her in homage ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... thou pleasure to be cross in talk; But thou with mildness entertain'st thy wooers; With gentle conference, soft and affable. Why does the world report that Kate doth limp? O sland'rous world! Kate like the hazel-twig Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels. O! let me see thee walk: thou ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... had once come to the office a blind man with a knotted twig and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cypher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds; and tried ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the watching Thomas, no distant clanging of the Chapel bell. How strange they all seemed, looking back from this safe harbour. The aunts, the Warlocks, Thurston, Mr. Crashaw, Caroline—all of them. There the imagination set fire to every twig—here the imagination was not needed, because ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... happened that none of them had mentioned, because they were not sure enough that it would. A brown thrush, catching the unusual atmosphere of the orchard that morning, selected the tallest twig of an apple tree and showed that ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... guide you, first, the map; second, sun; third, shadows; fourth, wind; fifth, compass; sixth, your bent-twig blazing, there will be little, if any, danger of being lost. But you must constantly keep on the alert and refer frequently to these guides, especially when deflecting from the course first taken after leaving camp. At every turning, stop and take your bearings anew; you cannot ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... was soberly walking down the path looking spindly in every way: long, thin legs and a long thin body that were for all the world like a stick. Probably you have seen the Walking Stick many times and thought him just a twig. If you hadn't been in such a hurry you might have seen something interesting. Each time he picked up a leg, he seemed to wave it in the air before he put it down again. That was, I suppose, because he had to, each leg was ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... Phil and Martin had developed an equal interest in outdoors. The Landis boy often came running into the Reist yard calling for Amanda and exclaiming excitedly, "I found a bird's nest! It's an oriole this time, the dandiest thing way out on the end of a tiny twig. Come on ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... think of that springtime homemaking, and then this poor little widow would give a little bird gasp. That was all. One day she had searched hard for food for her young, for as they grew bigger they demanded more and were more arrogantly hungry. As she perched to rest a moment upon a twig, beneath which in the grass were a few late dandelions, she felt coming over her a weakness she could not resist. As a matter of fact, the bird mother had been overworked and so killed. Birds, overpressed, die as human beings do. So the mother bird, after a few moments, fell off ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... oh, Paradise!" hummed Amy Raeburn that same Sunday morning as, the last to leave the Manse, she ran after her mother and sisters. The storm of the two previous days had newly brightened the landscape. Every twig and branch shone, and the red and yellow maple leaves, the wine-color of the oak, the burnished copper of the beech, were like jewels ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... in mid-lake, of the poisonous yew-tree in the middle of the wood, shedding its crimson cups on the dank earth. How he lingered by certain black waterpools hedged on every side by drooping wych-elms and black-stemmed alders, watching the faint waves widening to the banks as a leaf or a twig dropped ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... that's all I beg, and I'll find out whatever there is to be found. It is damnably out of my way embarking at ——-, but I had best keep clear of Lunnon. And I tell you what, if these youngsters have hopped the twig, there's another bird on the bough that may prove a goldfinch after all—Young Arthur Beaufort: I hear he is a wild, expensive chap, and one who can't live without lots of money. Now, it's easy to frighten ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Battle Plume,"' answered Helga, 'and "Gullfaxi" means "Golden Mane." I don't suppose, if you are to get on the horse at all, it would matter your taking the sword too. And if you take the sword you will have to carry the stick and the stone and the twig ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... a little leaf was heard to cry and sigh, as leaves often do, when a gentle wind is blowing. And the twig said, "What is ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ses the dark man, shaking his 'cad; "if they was all as fly as you, I might as well put the shutters up. How did you twig I ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... varied outlines of the clumpy foliage began to assume or imitate—say rather SUGGEST other shapes than their own. A light wind began to blow; it set the boughs of a neighbour tree rocking, and all their branches aswing, every twig and every leaf blending its individual motion with the sway of its branch and the rock of its bough. Among its leafy shapes was a pack of wolves that struggled to break from a wizard's leash: greyhounds would not have strained so savagely! I watched them with an interest that ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... still. But after they had listened for a while they discovered that it wasn't so still as it had seemed. Every bird and insect, each leaf and blossom, was busy, preparing its dinner, or else just growing. A twig rustled as a little garter snake squirmed into the thicket. A little gray nuthatch looked for its lunch on a locust tree, crawling over the trunk head-downwards, while, on a branch overhead, a crested flycatcher perched watching, watching, then ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... turned, in response to this diplomatic advance, and leant his right elbow on the back of the seat, and his chin on his right palm. He put his left leg over his right leg, and thus his left foot swayed like a bird on a twig within an inch of Helen's flounce. The parasol covered the faces of the just ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... the corner by the cupboard the sheet inside it, the saucepan on the hearth, the pail on the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then, with professional movements, she closed the dead woman's large eyes, put a plate on the bed and poured some holy water into it, placing in it the twig of boxwood that had been nailed to the chest of drawers, and kneeling down, she fervently repeated the prayers for the dead, which she knew by heart, as a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... must have been a twig sticking up in the ice," declared Cora, before Nancy could reply. "You can't ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... now goes to work to set his trap; planting it upon the shore, in some chosen place, two or three inches below the surface of the water, and secures it by a chain to a pole set deep in the mud. A small twig is then stripped of its bark, and one end is dipped in the "medicine," as the trappers term the peculiar bait which they employ. This end of the stick rises about four inches above the surface ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... stage no one was safe. The war party might at any moment find itself ambushed by the very ones it hoped to surprise. The snap of a twig; the dropping of a fruit from some tall tree; each sudden sound was interpreted as the twang of a hostile bow. Overwrought nerves peopled the jungle with spectral enemies; they found relief in ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... troops secretly long for them—but on the whole the "passive resistance" of the democrats seems to me only a seasonable expression for what is usually called fear. Yesterday I dined with the King. The Queen was amiable in the English fashion. The enclosed twig of erica I picked from her sewing-table, and send it to keep you from being ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... that had alighted and now set to singing on the topmost twig of a lofty pear-tree near by; and with his first note Jane reappeared. And while we listened, unstirring, to that rich, undaunted voice, I had good opportunity to observe her, and not, I think, without her knowledge, not even without ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... victory over the French fleet. He told me, too, that he had the same object in view, when, the summer before, he refused my application, to go and see the grand review on Bagshot Heath. It was, however, at too late a period that he began to check my patriotic ardour; he had, himself, "bent the twig," and it had grown too powerfully in the direction which he had given to it to be directed to any other. Although I was no politician at that time, yet my bosom glowed with as sacred a love of country, with as strong a predilection for ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... She paused, with her twig broom raised and dripping, and scanned him eagerly. "Is it anything about the ship that came yesterday? I heard among the women that it is the war-vessel of Eric's kinsman, Thorkel Farserk, just come back from ravaging the Irish ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the great Cicadeae were everywhere lighting on the ground, when they uttered a short sharp creaking sound, and anon disappeared, as if by magic. Beautiful whip-snakes were gleaming in the sun: they hold on by a few coils of the tail round a twig, the greater part of their body stretched out horizontally, occasionally retracting, and darting an unerring aim at some insect. The narrowness of the gorge, and the excessive steepness of the bounding ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... could see the fire clearly, and as he came across, I was thinking how animal-like he looked, when I fancied I saw a movement, and before I could be sure, there was a flash, a loud report, and a twig dropped from over my head upon one of ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... spring, summer or autumn. We all love the park in those seasons. Many do not know how beautiful the bare trees look in winter with their gray or brown branches. There is no more exquisite sight in the world than to see these trees coated with glistening ice out to the tiniest twig, or to see them ridged with pearly white snow. It is a merry sight to see the ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... aconites, perked up their pretty heads in Mary's cottage garden, and throughout all nature there came that inexplicable, indefinite, soft pulsation of new life and new love which we call the spring. Tiny buds, rosy and shining with sap, began to gleam like rough jewels on every twig and tree—a colony of rooks which had abode in the elms surrounding Weircombe Church, started to make great ado about their housekeeping, and kept up as much jabber as though they were inaugurating an Irish night ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... heavily from side to side, drunk with gladness and plenty. Here the peach was beginning to droop over a wall. There, and yonder again, beyond, ranks of fig-trees, that had so muffled themselves in their foliage that not the nakedness of a twig showed through, had yet more figs than leaves. The crisp, cool masses of the pomegranate were dotted with scarlet flowers. The cape jasmine wore hundreds of her own white favors, whose fragrance forerun the sight. Every breath ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... wooden or horn implements are often found. The vases are of various shapes, all provided with handles, and are covered with ornaments, some made with the fingers of the potter, others with the help of a twig or some fine string. On the other hand, there are no hatchets of foreign rock; commerce and intercourse with people at a distance had ceased, or at least become rarer. The tools are fixed into handles of stag horn, which are found in every stage of manufacture. The personal property ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... or of hers, that could, for an instant, have allowed one to suppose that there had been anything in their intercourse which either could have wished to hide. As to her, I could as soon have suspected of impurity the pearly drops that hung lightly on each twig of the hawthorn bushes that we passed, as her young life of one evil action, or her young mind of one evil thought. The deep blue waters of the little lake that lay stretched at our feet, were not more calm and more ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... were interrupted by his eldest daughter who asked him for a leaf of the lime-tree, which she wanted for a sunshade for her doll. He stepped on the seat and raised his hand to break off a little twig, when a constable appeared and rudely ordered him not to touch the trees. A fresh humiliation. At the same time the constable requested him not to allow his children to play on the graves, which was ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... with golden and silvery spots. Hence the word chrysalis (Fig. 14, b), from the Greek, meaning golden, while the Latin word pupa, meaning a baby or doll, is indicative of its youth. In this state it hangs suspended to a twig or other object; while the silk worm, and others of its kind, previous to moulting, or casting their skins, spin a silken cocoon, which envelops ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... lived a girl named Toody. She was not very big, as you can believe when I tell you that all the shrubs in the garden were taller than she, and all the flowers nodded over her head. In this same house lived Toody's cousins, Kitty, and Crocus, and Twig, and Tiny—only Tiny was a little dog, not a little boy. And here, too, lived ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... dabbling my fingers in the spring down in the old stone spring house, and standing on the cold, wet rocks in my bare feet. And there's the winter mornings, Eliot, when the trees are covered with sleet till every twig twinkles like a diamond. And the frost on the window-panes—oh, if I could only lay my face against the cold glass now, how good ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... has omitted one of his definitions, coque qui enveloope le grain, that is, the husk, or hull. Mr. Wedgwood might perhaps found an argument on this in support of our old friend Rac and his relation to huskiness; but it seems to us one of those trifles, the turned leaf, or broken twig, that put one on the right trail. We accept Mr. Wedgwood's derivative signification of refuse, worthless, contemptible, and ask if all these terms do not apply equally well to the chaff of the threshing-floor? It is more satisfactory ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... now. Tearing a loose shred from his tattered trousers, he soaked it in a little puddle, then stuffed it in his mouth. He clasped his jack-knife in one fist and a twig in the other. He drew up his belt. He took that precious hat off and stuffed it in his pocket, campaign buttons and all. Ah, no, he did not throw it away. He ripped off another rag and tied it fast around his neck and he bound his scarf around his forehead. He knew all ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Clearly before her did she see that small picture: the hill, and the tree, and the winding road, imaged as if mirrored in the iris of an eye. And in her memory she was upon that road, and the hill rose beside her, and the little tree was outlined, every twig ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... hold upon life. While sitting one evening under the trees by the roadside, my attention was called to the unusual conduct of half a dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An elderly man was moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turned upward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that the shank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certain spot, the twig would gradually bend downwards until it had ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... "Twig the yellow beggar, will you, Gib?" said McGuffey; "one eye half open for all the world like he was winkin' at us ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... over some difficulty in his sketch, Lampron shuffled his feet; a twig broke, some leaves rustled-Jeanne turned round and saw me looking at her, Lampron ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... him on the edge of the jungle while I went into the forest to get some luscious twigs for his dinner. One has to have a very sharp hatchet to cut down these twigs; it takes half an hour to sharpen the hatchet because if a twig is mutilated an elephant will ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... his dug-out to the stake, while Ben, who informed him that his name was Toner, got a willow twig with a crotch at the thick end, and strung his fish on it ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... A twig cracked sharply under Pollyanna's foot, and the man turned his head. With a cry of dismay Pollyanna ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... hole in the ground most of your life, and are pretty near ripe to be laid away in another one, smaller I grant you, but dark and deep, according. We'll never get Lahoma back the same as when we let her flutter forth hunting a green twig over the face of the waters. She may bring back the first few leaves she finds, but a time's going to come...." He broke off abruptly, his eyes wide and troubled, as if already viewing ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... natural to attribute it to the cessation of vegetation, and the want of nourishment which the leaves experience at that season, when the course of the sap is interrupted. The vessels of the leaf contract, dry up, and soon after, that organ is detached from the twig on which it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... that of one ready to flee, terrified but uncertain. As the noises within died down she relapsed from her tense pose and showed her face to Vaucher in the light of the lamp. It was Madame Bertin. She did not see him where he waited, and all of a sudden her self-possession snapped like a twig you break in your fingers. She was weeping, leaning against the wall, weeping desolately, in an abandonment of humiliation and impotence. But Vaucher was not moved when he told ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... may I present you with this sprig of it," cutting off a small twig, and presenting it at the same instant ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... respect to discovering the proper place to dig wells. There were certain persons, I do not remember what they were called, whether water doctors or water witches, who professed to be able, with the aid of a small hazel crotched twig, which was held firmly in both hands with the crotch inverted, to tell where a well should be sunk with a certainty of finding water. The process was simply to walk about with the twig thus held, and when the right place was reached, the forked twig would turn downwards, ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... a big iron cage, where the 'ose plays upon you like fun; A lawn, or a house a-fire, CHARLIE, could not be more thoroughly done. Sez I, "I'm insured, dontcher know, mate; so don't waste the water, d'ye 'ear?" But he didn't appear to arf twig. He seemed jest a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... distributed and the teacher asks the pupils to examine them and to describe all marks and projections that can be found on the twig. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... far as eye could reach, to sparkle in the sunshine. The sky was greenish grey and without a cloud. The stillness of the world was magical; in the miles of landscape which were visible, nothing stirred. The snapping of a twig sounded like the crashing ruin of a forest giant. The gliding of the sled across the snow, and the padding footsteps of the huskies, thundered down the tunnel of the river through the pines like the galloping of heavy artillery over ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... sat there, letting thoughts happen dreamily rather than producing them of gray matter, he did not know. A slight sound, the snapping of a twig, brought his mind to alertness without causing the slightest ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... I am quite confident I heard a sound as of a broken twig outside the garden-wall. The doctor and the admiral are in deep discussion about ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Christmas, pure and crisp. Wherever one looks, one's eyes water cruelly. For my part, I am very thankful that it did not occur to God to make the world always white. I hate snow's blinding livery. Each tiniest twig on the dry harsh trees is overladen with snow. It is a wonder that they do not break under it; nor is there any wind to shake down and disperse it. Tempest is white; the church is white: the whole world colorless and blinding. I have been in the habit of looking ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... taller palm; on past the one long grave of the Rough Riders—along the battle-line of the first little fight—through the ghastly, many-coloured masses of hideous land-crabs shuffling sidewise into the cactus and shuffling on with an unearthly rustling of dead twig and fallen leaf: along the crest of the foothills and down to the little town of Siboney, lighted, bustling with preparation for the wounded in the tents; bustling at the beach with the unloading of ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... Stryte. Next door to a angel—that's wot you are. She's the angel. Tell 'er I said so—that's if you can, you twig? And say that when I 'eard that nearly all the gay old crowd o' pupils 'ad gone away, day before yesterday, I could 'a blooming well cut me throat, thinkin' she'd gone too. Becos' when I swore in for the Town Guard, it was with the idear—mind you rub that in!—of strikin' ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... tongue. Let this be about an inch long. Hold this to the ground with the cut side down. Bank soil over this. At and under the tongue the new shoots will start, and the new gooseberry bush grow from this. This new plant may be cut off from the parent. If the twig will not stay bent down in this position, cut a forked piece of wood which shall act as a pin. Do you picture this? A branch bent so that not far from the parent plant it is buried under ground with the rest of the root protruding from ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... maiden whose loveliness inspires the most impassioned expressions in Arabic poetry," Lane states, "is celebrated for her slender figure: She is like the cane among plants, and is elegant as a twig of the oriental willow. Her face is like the full moon, presenting the strongest contrast to the color of her hair, which is of the deepest hue of night, and falls to the middle of her back (Arab ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... among the serried tree-trunks. The slender birches had faded utterly, the stately beeches resembled dim ghosts of trees and only the spruces retained, imperfectly, their shape and form. Thurston was country bred, and, lifting high his feet to clear bramble trailer and fallen twig, he walked by feeling instead of sight. The beck moaned a little more loudly, and there was a heavy astringent odor of damp earth and decaying leaves. When beast and bird were still again it seemed as if Nature, worn out by the productive effort of summer, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... and night-time. Everything seemed to be saying to man: 'Rest, brother of ours; breathe lightly, and grieve not, thou too, at the sleep close before thee.' I raised my head and saw at the very end of a delicate twig one of those large flies with emerald head, long body, and four transparent wings, which the fanciful French call 'maidens,' while our guileless people has named them 'bucket-yokes.' For a long while, more than an hour, I did not take my eyes ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... in this starry night, a twilit avenue with two side aisles of pitch darkness. Here and there stone benches were disposed between the trunks. There was not a breath of wind; a heavy atmosphere of perfume hung about the alleys; and every leaf stood stock-still upon its twig. Hither, after vainly knocking at an inn or two, the Berthelinis came at length to pass the night. After an amiable contention, Leon insisted on giving his coat to Elvira, and they sat down together on the first bench in silence. Leon made a cigarette, which he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
