"Birch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which we passed. The pine, spruce, and fir trees, of the greatest variety of form, were completely coated with frozen snow, and stood as immovable as forests of bronze incrusted with silver. The delicate twigs of the weeping birch resembled sprays of crystal, of a thousand airy and exquisite patterns. There was no wind, except in the open glades between the woods, where the frozen lakes spread out like meadow intervals. As we approached the first station there were signs ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the bow of a canoe, where the paddle at every stroke comes within eighteen inches of them. I know nothing which can be eaten that they will not take, and I had one steal all my candles, pulling them out endwise, one by one, from a piece of birch bark in which they were rolled, and another pecked a large hole in a keg of castile soap. A duck which I had picked and laid down for a few minutes had the entire breast eaten out by one or more of these birds. I have seen one alight in the middle of my canoe and peck ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... attending to some little thing that needed fixing about the canoe; and Owen, who had never set eyes on a cedar boat of this delicate character, willingly lent a hand to the accomplishment of the task, satisfied to just handle such a dainty wizard craft, which in his eyes, accustomed to canoes of birch, or even dugouts, and others made of animal skins, assumed the character of something almost too pretty ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... was birch'd! there I was bred! There like a little Adam fed From Learning's woeful tree! The weary tasks I used to con!— The hopeless leaves I wept upon!— Most fruitless ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... with an order of fine or entertainment. The formal method of outcasting consists in seating the culprit on the ground and drawing the tribal mat over his head, from which the turban is removed; after this the messengers of the eight companies inflict a few taps with slippers and birch brooms. It is alleged that unfaithful women were formerly tied naked to trees and flogged with birch brooms, but that owing to the fatal results that occasionally followed such punishment, as in the case of the five kicks among Chamars (tanners) and the scourging ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... The small round dots all over the young stem, which become long rifts in the older parts, are breaks in the epidermis, or skin of the stem, through which the inner layers of bark protrude. They are called lenticels. They provide a passage for gases in and out of the stem. In some trees, as the Birch, ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... and most biting laws, The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds, 20 Which for this fourteen years we have let slip; Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave, That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers, Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch, Only to stick it in their children's sight 25 For terror, not to use, in time the rod Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees. Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; And liberty plucks justice by the ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... "what are you two amateurs about? As usual, I'm ready to begin before Rex is awake!" and stepping to the edge he landed his flies with a flourish in a young birch tree. Rex came and disengaged them, and he received the assistance ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... an Indian letter. Here it is." Malachi then produced a piece of birch-bark, of which the ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... years since were naughty, the schoolmaster of the period was not accustomed to punish them by appealing to their sense of honour. If a boy wanted a flogging, in those days, the educational system seized a cane, or a birch-rod, and gave it to him. Mr. Gallilee entered his wife's room, with the feelings which had once animated him, on entering the schoolmaster's study to be caned. When he said "Good-morning, my dear!" his face presented ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... girls stir the cocoons with those whisks of peeled birch?" inquired Pierre curiously. "What are ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... screen. Whence arises the harmony that strikes us in the wildest natural landscapes,—in the relative shapes of rocks, the harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning spring,—compared with the visual effect from the greater number of artificial plantations?—From this, that the natural landscape is effected, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... with crimson and orange, which gradually faded into soft purple and deeper blue in the upper sky. There were mountains all about them, some darkly green with fir, spruce, and pine, others of brighter and tenderer tints in their dress of oak, maple, and birch, while here and there arose one bald and gray, all of solid rock, with now and then a patch of moss clinging to its time worn sides, but giving variety to the scene and enhancing by ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... also objectionable, and should be replaced by fences, or better still open palings, especially about houses which are occupied during the fall of the leaf, and in the winter. Trees for planting near houses should be chosen in the following order: Conifers, birch, acacia, beech, oak, elm, lime, and poplar. Pine trees are the best of all trees for this purpose, as they collect the greatest amount of rainfall and permit the freest evaporation from the ground, while their branchless stems offer the least resistance to the lateral ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... enough to hit him, but one golden feather only fell down, and the bird flew away. The man took the feather and carried it to his brother, who looked at it and said, "It is pure gold!" and gave him a great deal of money for it. Next day the man climbed into a birch-tree, and was about to cut off a couple of branches when the same bird flew out, and when the man searched he found a nest, and an egg lay inside it, which was of gold. He took the egg home with him, and carried ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... their confidence. His lordship was keenly alive, also, to the influence of the press, and subsidised various papers to oppose the Young Irelanders. He did not display as much caution in this department of his policy as he did vigour and sagacity in other directions. He hired a man named Birch, who edited a paper called the World, which was very ably conducted. The terms on which his excellency put himself with Mr. Birch were discreditable to the government, and the spirit in which he wrote and acted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... twilight and studied Latin, keeping my mind on the text; save when a squirrel ventured out and glided bushy trained and sinuous before me, or the marble birches with ebony limbs, drew me to gloat on them. The white birch is a woman and a goddess. I have associated her forever with that afternoon. Her poor cousin the poplar, often so like her as to deceive you until ashen bough and rounded leaf instruct the eye, always grows near her like ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... scratched, wrenched, bridled, fangled, birchen, hardened, strengthened, quickened, &c. almost frighten us when written as they are actually pronounced, as rapt, scratcht, wrencht, bridl'd, fangl'd, birch'n, strength'n'd, quick'n'd, &c.; they become still more formidable when used contractedly in the solemn style, which never ought to be the case; for here instead of thou strength'n'st or strength'n'd'st, thou quick'n'st ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the plate and apple to her father, and went with them into the forest. They walked about and gathered blackberries. All at once they saw a spade lying upon the ground. The wicked sisters killed Little Simpleton with it, and buried her under a birch tree. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... and looked about her helplessly. She found herself in a small spinney of young birch-trees, filling up the extremity of a triangular field into which she had come. Not a sign of the hounds, or, indeed, of any living creature was to be seen in any direction. She did not feel inclined to go on—or even to go back home with ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... years ago, an exasperating, soft-headed boy brought a colossal fortune into the Ring. I never pitied him much; I only longed to see him placed in the hands of a good schoolmaster who knew how to use a birch. This piteous wretch, with his fatuous airs of sharpness, was exactly the kind of game that the bookmakers cared to fly at; he was cajoled and stimulated; he was trapped at every turn; the vultures flapped ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... which will bear retelling, and to which Mr. Henty, whose careful study of details is worthy of all praise, does full justice.... His adventures are told with much spirit; the escape when the birch canoes have been damaged by an enemy is ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... wood now on either side, the high pines, breathing their fragrance out into the darkness, and, like ghosts amongst them, the silver stems of birch-trees. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... house of birch bark under the trees. But it hasn't any stove-pipe!" said Flaxie, who had never forgotten that unfortunate house ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... topmost source—fons et origo—of our chosen river. This single spring, crystal-clear and ice-cold, gushing out of the hillside in a forest of spruce and yellow birch and sugar maple, gave us the clue that we must follow for a week ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... produce of any other country). "This identity and slow movement," he says, "are not inconsistent with an immense amount of change, which must exist if there is any real life." In fact, there were periods of relative progress, repose, and decay, and every age had its peculiar character. Birch, Lepsius, or Marriette could at once tell you the age of a statue, inscription, or manuscript, by the characteristic signs which actually ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... physick, however, he was made at Oxford, in December, 1657; and, in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an account has been given by Dr. Birch, he appears busy among the experimental philosophers, with ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... "but I learned to paddle a canoe pretty well. I'd rather have a good row-boat, though, than any birch I ever saw. If you run one of them on a sharp stone, it may be cut ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... with the march that still lengthen'd before him, He stopp'd by the way in a sylvan retreat; The light shady boughs of the birch-tree waved o'er him, The stream of the mountain fell soft at ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of the holly; and the massy gloom of the yew and other evergreens was pierced and irradiated by the scarlet berries of various shrubs, or by the puce-coloured branches and the silvery stem of the birch. The Fleurs de lys had gradually neared the shore; and in the deep waters upon this part of the coast there was so little danger for a ship of much heavier burthen, that she was now running down within pistol shot of ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... and village assemble themselves together, both men, women, and children, olde and young, all indifferently, and goe into the woodes and groves, hilles and mountaines, where they spend the night in pastyme, and in the morning they returne, bringing with them birch bowes and braunches of trees to deck their assembly withal. . . . They have twentie or fourtie yoke of oxen, every oxe having a sweete nosegay of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these draw home this Maypole (this ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... give pre-eminence to the cut-leaf weeping birch. Possessing all the good qualities of the white birch, it combines with them a beauty and delicate grace yielded by no other tree. It is an upright grower, with slender, drooping branches, adorned with leaves of deep rich green, each leaf being delicately ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... myself apart from all the rest, or else my efforts will make no show," he said, and he left the edge of the forest where they were walking on low silky grass between old birch trees standing far apart, and went more into the heart of the wood, where between the white birch trunks there were gray trunks of aspen and dark bushes of hazel. Walking some forty paces away, Sergey Ivanovitch, knowing he was out ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the winding ways of the river there were birch and beechen thickets in glory of leaf; big water-lilies spread their white beauty against the old black timbers of the water-mills; and in the quaint, ancient places of the old streets, under the gables and beams, pots of basil, and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... important pollen must be carried by the wind or by the bees, and as it blows against the mother part of the plant-flower she catches it and pushes it downward to the seed babies. The wind scatters the pollen of the oak tree, the hazlenut, the walnut, the birch, the willow and many others; for, without the good kind wind or the bees, the pollen would never find its way to many a mother flower, and the "fertilization" of the seed could not ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... greater is the change we made from that low, small, stifling, gloomy, mephitic room, into the glorious open air, the loch lying asleep in the sun, and telling over again on its placid face, as in a dream, every hill and cloud, and birch and pine, and passing bird and cradled boat; the Black Wood of Rannoch standing "in the midst of its own darkness," frowning out upon us like the Past disturbed, and far off in the clear ether, as in another and a better world, the dim Shepherds of Etive pointing, like ghosts at noonday, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... with the little Prince, kicking the ragga ball, or sailing miniature praus out into the river, and off toward the shimmering straits. But often they sat cross-legged and dropped bits of chicken and fruit between the palm sleepers of the wharf to the birch-colored crocodiles below, who snapped them up, one after another, never taking their small, cruel eyes off the brown faces that ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... alba. BIRCH-TREE.—Is in great use and of considerable value on some estates for making brooms, and the timber for all purposes of turnery-ware and carving. The sap of the Birch-tree is drawn by perforating the bark in the early state of vegetation. It is fermented, and makes ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... kitchen garden, also a succession of steps, and beyond as the ravine widened were small meadows, each with a big stone in the midst. The gulley, (or goyle) narrowed as it rose, and there was a disused limestone quarry, all wreathed over with creeping plants, a birch tree growing up all white and silvery in the middle, and above the house and garden was wood, not of fine trees, and interspersed with rocks, but giving shade and shelter. The opposite side had likewise fields below, with one grey farm house peeping in sight, and red cattle feeding in one, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... sad state of art and literature in England, neglected equally by Conservatives, Liberals and Radicals. What has been done for the endowment of research? What is our equivalent for the Prix de Rome? Since the death of Dr. Birch, who can fairly deal with a Demotic papyrus? Contrast the Societe Anthropologique and its palace and professors in Paris with our "Institute" au second in a corner of Hanover Square and its ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... mankind, these gentlemen might very well spare their reproof and correction, for there is not through all Nature another so callous and insensible a member as the world's posteriors, whether you apply to it the toe or the birch. Besides, most of our late satirists seem to lie under a sort of mistake, that because nettles have the prerogative to sting, therefore all other weeds must do so too. I make not this comparison out of the least design ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... concerned, you need not be disappointed. Not in Van Huyn's time, nor for nearly two centuries later, could the meaning of that engraving have been understood. It was only when the work was taken up and followed by Young and Champollion, by Birch and Lepsius and Rosellini and Salvolini, by Mariette Bey and by Wallis Budge and Flinders Petrie and the other scholars of their times that great results ensued, and that the true ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... sporidia are similar, and the conidia would also appear to partake of the character of Stilbospora. We may remark here that we have seen a brown mould, probably an undescribed species of Dematiei, growing in definite patches around the openings in birch bark caused by the crumpent ostiola of the perithecia of Melanconis ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... wife and he earnestly attended them at least twice a year—but they were sufficiently exotic to make him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... by two of the strongest boys in the school, who were devoted to me; their business was to join me in dragging the tyrant to a bench, over which he was to be laid, and his bare posteriors heartily flogged, with his own birch, which we proposed to wrest from him in his struggle; but if we should find him too many for us all three, we were to demand the assistance of our competitors, who should be ready to enforce us, or oppose anything that might be undertaken for the master's relief. One of ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... day when all were away I stole my fathers gun. It was a double barreled muzzle loader, one barrel shot and the other rifle. I had quite an experience—I saw a partridge just as I entered the woods budding in the top of an old birch tree. I leveled the gun up against an old ash tree and fired I had never before fired a gun, I held it rather loosely aginst my shoulder and the recoil lamed my arm and bloodeyed my pug noose. But this was soon forgotten when I saw I had plugged my meat. In haste I began to load to prepare for another ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... and Dr. Walker marked the progress of the ascending sap, and found likewise that as soon as the leaves became expanded the sap ceased to rise; the ascending juice of some trees is so copious and so sweet during the sap-season that it is used to make wine, as the birch, betula, and sycamore, acer pseudo-platinus, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... a stirring spectacle. The shores of the Penobscot River were then a trackless wilderness; the placid bosom of the river itself had seldom been traversed by a heavier craft than the slender birch-bark canoe of the red man; yet here was this river crowded with shipping, the dark forests along its banks lighted up by the glare of twoscore angry fires. Through the thickets and underbrush parties ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... made the most of the time remaining, and were so good all over the kingdom that a very millennium seemed dawning. The school teachers used their ferrules for fire wood, and the king ordered all the birch trees cut down and exported, as he thought there would be no more call for them in his ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... particular works of creation, you will find how curious journeyman Nature has been to trim up the vegetable beaux; observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet of white satin is worn by the birch." The fault is not in any inaptness of the images, nor in the mere vulgarity of the things themselves, but in that of the associations they awaken. The "prithee, undo this button" of Lear, coming where it does and expressing ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... come to herself and well at ease,—my word! but he did serve out Wat and me! Wat gat the worst, by reason he was the elder, and had (said Father) played the serpent to mine Eva: but I warrant you I forgat not that birch rod for a week or twain. Good lack! we ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... consternation he suddenly appeared from behind a hayrick. I was so startled that I turned to fly, and in my precipitancy tripped on a tussock and fell. Mr. Diggles came to my assistance, and, when he had helped me to my feet and brushed me down with a birch broom he was carrying, I could do nothing less than buy another ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?— By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch tree! The Oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year; And whistled and roar'd in the winter alone, Is gone,—and the birch in its stead is grown.— The Knight's bones are dust, And his good sword rust;— ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... of his reel, the rush of a brown mountain stream with its fringe of silver birch and stunted alder, the white side of a leaping salmon, and the gasp of that noble fish towed deftly into the shallows at last, afforded him a natural and unmixed pleasure. He loved the heather dearly, the wild hillside, the keen pure air, the steady setters, the flap and cackle of the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... to left and right hid the sun. Great trees, too, pine and chestnut, walnut and oak, leaned towards each other from the opposing banks, and together with the overhanging rocks, mantled with fern, made a twilight of the pass beneath. Here and there the silver stem of a birch stood up tall and straight, and looked a ghostly sentinel. "Do you hear it still?" demanded Landless when they had gone some distance ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... kept covered so to save it from passing feet. Here also is the greatest picture of that great soul Luke Kranach, who had sincerity enough in his paining to atone for all the swelling German sculptures in the world. It is a crucifixion, and the cross is of a white birch log, such as might have been cut out of the Weimar woods, shaved smooth on the sides, with the bark showing at the edges. Kranach has put himself among the spectators, and a stream of blood from the side of the Savior falls in baptism upon the painter's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... you dog, why don't you stand on your head, or shout, or something? Here, I am well enough to go up to town after all. Syd and I are going to see about his uniform. The Sirius—well, you two have luck at last. Here, hi! you, sir! Put down that confounded birch-broom, and come here." ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... children are pleased, thought I, why should not others be amused also? In a few days Dr. Birch's young friends will be expected to reassemble at Rodwell Regis, where they will learn everything that is useful, and under the eyes of careful ushers continue the business of ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the poor little children sit at the other end of the table, whispering and shivering, debarred the vent of all natural spirits, for fear of making a noise; and strangely uniting the idea of the domestic hearth with that of a hobgoblin, and the association of dear papa with that of a birch rod." ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... got settled down on our claim, I went up on the hill lookin' for a likely piece of birch to make an ax-handle out of. But it was pretty hard to find the right kind, and I kept a-goin' and kept a-goin' for nigh on two hours. Wasn't in no hurry to make my choice, you see, for I was headin' down to the Forks, where I was goin' to borrow a log-bit from ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... sighs, but he quickly recovers. 'After all, I have written a good many volumes.' 'And what would art be without life, without love?' He has a verse on that subject; I wish I could remember it for you. His verse is always so winsome, so delicate, slender as the birch tree, elegiac like it; a birch bending over a lake's edge reminds me of Verlaine. He is a lake poet, but the lake is in a suburb not far from a casino. What makes me speak about the lake is that for a long time I ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... given both to the bamboo and to the yellow cane, which grew plentifully both in the islands of the Greek Archipelago and in Southern Italy, as notably at Cannae in Apulia, where it gave a name to the scene of the great battle. The virga was also used, a rod commonly of birch, a tree the educational use of which had been already discovered. The walls of Pompeii indeed show that the practice of Eton is truly classical down to ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... settlement, where the trail that came up from the railroad thirty miles away forked off into two wavy ribands that melted into a waste of snow. Lander's consisted then of five or six frame houses and stores, a hotel of the same material, several sod stables, and a few birch-log barns; and its inhabitants considered it one of the most promising places in Western Canada. That, however, is the land of promise, a promise that is in due time usually fulfilled, and the men of Lander's were, for the most part, shrewdly practical ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... letter from his father awaiting him at the Halifax post-office. The squire had discovered his blunder, and sent the money, and the way in which Dennis immediately began to plan purchases of all sorts, from a birch-bark canoe to a bearskin rug, gave me a clue to the fortunes of the O'Moores. I do not think he would have had enough left to pay his passage if we had been delayed for long. But our old ship was expected any hour, and when she came in we made our way to her at once, and the upshot of ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... compared with Greece, Egypt, and the Orient, will be apparent when we remember that the dawn of art in these countries lies hidden in the shadow of unnumbered ages, while ours stands out in the light of the very present. This is well illustrated by a remark of Birch, who, in dwelling upon the antiquity of the fictile art, says that "the existence of earthen vessels in Egypt was at least coeval with the formation of a written language."[1] Beyond this there is acknowledged chaos. In strong contrast with this, is the fact that all precolumbian ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... Christmas and bent the knee to the Lord of Misrule! Such fantastic foolery is inconceivable in a Puritan community, and the Maypole which was its emblem was the most inconceivable of all. This "flower-decked abomination," ornamented with white birch bark, banners, and blossoms, was the center of the tipsy jollity of Merrymount. As Morton explains: "A goodly pine tree of eighty foote was reared up, with a peare of bucks horns nayled on somewhere near to the top of it: where it stood as a faire sea mark for directions how to find ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... spotted with diamond stars and striped with black bands. On the other side of the river, in a wide, natural meadow, the moonlight rested quietly on the pastures, where it was spread out like a sheet. Some birch-trees scattered here and there over the savannas, sometimes blending, according to the caprice of the winds, with the background, seemed to surround themselves with a pale gauze—sometimes rising up again from their chalky foundations, hidden in the darkness, formed, as it were, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. Among the kinds of forest trees whose remains are found in the continental deposits of the Cretaceous are the magnolia, the myrtle, the laurel, the fig, the tulip tree, the chestnut, the oak, beech, elm, poplar, willow, birch, and maple. Forests of Eucalyptus grew along the coast of New England, and palms on the Pacific shores of British Columbia. Sequoias of many varieties ranged far into northern Canada. In northern Greenland there were luxuriant forests of magnolias, figs, and cycads; and a similar ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... last Thursday, and went by railway to Riviere de Loup. There I had a fall, and hurt my ribs. Next day I drove over the, new, Temiscouata road to the Lake, and thence took a birch bark canoe and two men and paddled down the Lake, and down the river Madawasca to Little Falls, where I arrived in a drenching storm of rain at one o'clock in the morning—having had 'perils by water.' Our canoe leaked, and we damaged ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... hour's rapid walking brought him to the river. Here he plunged into a thicket of willows, and emerged on a sandy strip of shore. He carefully surveyed the river bank, and then pulled a small birch-bark canoe from among the foliage. He launched the frail craft, paddled across the river and beached it under ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... this one's drawback that he had passed the No Admittance sign of the workshop and got the trade secrets of the boss business at his finger ends. The pupil smiled sometimes when he recalled the first great rencounter with the master. The birch and frown no longer terrified. Evidently the Boss knew this, and failing the birch, dangled ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... struck a heavy game trail, and could see deer and bear tracks not over a day old. I filled the magazine of my rifle and plunged along at a fast pace. Here and there were thick clumps of quaking asp, mountain birch, and on the creek banks were choke cherries and plum trees. Great springs of water bubbled out of the earth, and by one of these springs I found some of the Sheep Eaters' lodges. They were decayed and fallen to the earth, but the rounded stones with which they warmed the water were there, ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... my father with a variety of trees, such as hazel, alder, lime, hornbeam, birch, privet, and dogwood, and with a long line of hollies all down the exposed side. In earlier times he took a certain number of turns every day, and used to count them by means of a heap of flints, one of which he kicked out on the path each time ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... story of Samson and the Philistines, of David and Goliath, of the prophets Elijah and Elisha; and after these came the New Testament stories and parables. Assisted by my uncles, I began to collect a library in a box of birch-bark about nine inches square, which I found quite large enough to contain a great many immortal works,—Jack the Giant-Killer, and Jack and the Bean-Stalk, and the Yellow Dwarf, and Blue Beard, and ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... through a pleasant fringe of beech and birch and maple trees to a beautiful brook, which was easily crossed on stones, then up the bank on the other side into an open pasture with scattering spruce and other trees. Now I began to look for my bluejays. I disturbed ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... mounted detachment, had made a rush to Loon Lake, where, in a rattling encounter during which Sergeant Fury was severely wounded, he completed the defeat of Big Bear. Two days or so afterwards our scouts crossed Gold Lake in birch canoes and secured the release of the remaining prisoners of Big Bear, the others having come in to our lines after the fight at Frenchman's Butte, where Constable Donald McRae, still happily surviving, was wounded, but refused to leave the ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... B. Emery, Lieutenant. Henry Eden, Lieutenant. John Lort Stokes, Lieutenant and Assistant Surveyor. Alexander B. Usborne, Master. Benjamin Bynoe, Surgeon. Thomas Tait, Assistant Surgeon. John E. Dring, Clerk in charge. Benjamin F. Helpman, Mate. Auchmuty T. Freeze, Mate. Thomas T. Birch, Mate. L.R. Fitzmaurice, Mate.* William Tarrant, Master's Assistant. Charles Keys,** Clerk. Thomas Sorrell, Boatswain. John Weeks, Carpenter. A corporal of marines and seven privates, with forty seamen ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... criticism that many who read the book hesitated to express an opinion until they had heard the verdict from England. When the English received the book, however, they fairly devoured it, and it became one of the most widely read tales of the early nineteenth century. Harvey Birch, the hero of the story, is one of the great characters of our ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... coasts, it had undermined and rafted-down the goodlier timber of the forest; and on these rough clearings it now set and tended primrose gardens, and planted woods of willow, and made a favourite of the silver birch. Through all these friendly features the path, its human acolyte, conducted our two wanderers downward, - Otto before, still pausing at the more difficult passages to lend assistance; the Princess following. From time to time, when he turned to help ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bustled out of the door of the cabin where his carriole had stopped. It was larger than most of the other cabins of the place, which Northwick remembered curiously well, some with their logs bare, and some sheathed in birch-bark. He remembered this man, too, when his white moustache, which branched into either ear, was a glistening brown, and the droop of his left eyelid was more like a voluntary wink. But the gayety of his face was the same, and his welcome was so cordial, that a fear ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... considerable quantities of both Indian corn and petit-ble,[1] beans and the folles avoines,[2] or wild rice; while the squaws added to their quota of merchandise a contribution in the form of moccasins, hunting-pouches, mococks, or little boxes of birch-bark embroidered with porcupine-quills and filled with maple-sugar, mats of a neat and durable fabric, and toy-models of Indian cradles, snow-shoes, canoes, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... house was a yard, where chickens, turkeys, and guinea- fowls, were kept; and in the front, looking towards the west, was laid out a fine garden, well provided with evergreens, such as holly, yew, and pine-trees, and amongst these, also, many birch and ash- trees flourished. ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... a-looking, sir," said Samson, in as husky a voice. "There, they've got a ladder up against the big long window, and they're swarming up it. They'll be indirectly, and drive the long-haired gentlemen flying like leaves before a noo birch broom." ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... was her name. Vocation, school-teacher. Present avocation, getting lost in the snow. Age, yum-yum (the Persian for twenty). Take to the woods if you would describe Miss Adams. A willow for grace; a hickory for fibre; a birch for the clear whiteness of her skin; for eyes, the blue sky seen through treetops; the silk in cocoons for her hair; her voice, the murmur of the evening June wind in the leaves; her mouth, the berries of the wintergreen; fingers ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... at a neighbouring farm-house, where there lived one of Mr. Walsingham's tenants; a man of the name of Birch, a respectable farmer, who was originally from Ireland, and whose son was at sea with Captain Walsingham. The captain had taken young Birch under his particular ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... pedagogue; and he could smell anything savoury nearly a mile off, if the wind lay the right way. Moreover, he knew that if he put his fingers in the fire that he would burn himself; that knives cut severely; that birch tickled, and several other little axioms of this sort which are generally ascertained by children at an early age, but which Jack's capacity had not received until at a much later date. Such as he was, our hero went to sea; his stock in his sea-chest being very abundant, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... haunt, and shows shapely beards and comely faces and toilettes ranged about the wall. The bowl is lit, and the punch is burnt and sent round in scalding thimblefuls. So a good hour or two may pass with song and jest. And then we go home in the moonlight morning, straggling a good deal among the birch tufts and the boulders, but ever called together again, as one of our leaders winds his horn. Perhaps some one of the party will not heed the summons, but chooses out some by-way of his own. As he follows the winding sandy road, he hears the flourishes grow fainter and fainter in the distance, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great rock shaped like a giant's helmet, and behind it a high green knoll, clustered thick with birch and pine?" ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... its groves of birch Still looks the tower of Kallundborg church, Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair, Stood Helva of ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... specimen in which one end was wood, little changed, and the other pure jet; and Chaptal tells us, that at Montpellier there are dug up whole cart-loads of trees converted into jet, though the original forms are so perfectly preserved that he could often detect the species; and, among others, he mentions birch and walnut. What is even more remarkable, he found a wooden pail and a wooden shovel converted into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... was the second son of Simon Butler, Esq., of Appletree, in the county of Northampton, by Miss Ann Birch, daughter of Thomas Birch, Esq., of Gorscot, in the county of Stafford. His family, for amplitude of possessions, and splendor of descent and alliances, had vied with the noblest and wealthiest of this kingdom, but was reduced to slender circumstances ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... distance it was about the same width as near the mouth, and the course, which was generally west, had been interrupted by islands and sandbars. The timber consisted chiefly of elm; they saw pine burrs, and sticks of birch were seen floating down the river; they had also met with goats, such as we have heretofore seen; great quantities of buffaloe, near to which were wolves, some deer, and villages of barking squirrels. At the confluence of White river with the Missouri is an excellent position ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... Barracks of the Riders of the Plains. I had about a hundred miles to travel alone. Well, I got along the first fifty all right. Then came trouble. In a bad place of the hills I fell and broke an ankle bone. I had an Eskimo dog of the right sort with me. I wrote a line on a bit of birch bark, tied it round his neck, and started him away, trusting my luck that he would pull up somewhere. He did. He ran into Vandewaters's camp that evening. Vandewaters and Pierre started away at once. They had dogs, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... prisoner and sentenced to be shot, when his bride appeared upon the scene with her pockets full of the money she had made by the sale of her jewels, and, bribing the guards, escaped with her husband into the birch woods, where they hid in caves and slept on leaves, all the time in danger of their lives, until they finally found their way to Buda-Pest and liberty. This city Jokai has made his home; in the winter he lives in the heart of the town, in the summer just far enough outside of it to have a house ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... But the Lancelot in its original form was held by so competent an authority as the late M. Gaston Paris to have been one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of French prose texts. (Cf. M. Paris's review of Suchier and Birch-Hirschfield's Geschichte der Franz. Litt.) The adventure in question is a 'Gawain' adventure; we do not know whence it was derived, and it may well have been included in an early version of the romance. Apart from the purely literary question, from the strictly critical point ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... than the necessities of life. But Colonel Zane's house proved an exception to this. Most interesting was the large room. The chinks between the logs had been plastered up with clay and then the walls covered with white birch bark; trophies of the chase, Indian bows and arrows, pipes and tomahawks hung upon them; the wide spreading antlers of a noble buck adorned the space above the mantel piece; buffalo robes covered the couches; bearskin rugs lay scattered about ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... that, if you pluck them at almost any time during the winter, a day's bright sunshine will make them open in a glass of water, and thus they eagerly yield to every moment of April warmth. The blossom of the birch is more delicate, that of the willow more showy, but the alders come first. They cluster and dance everywhere upon the bare boughs above the watercourses; the blackness of the buds is softened into rich brown and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... a huge birch branch tossed about in the surf. It was quite green and fresh and had a white stem; possibly it had fallen off a pleasure-boat. He dragged it ashore, shook the water off and carried it to a gully where he put it up, wedged ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... garden, oh, the tangled paths by the tiny pond! Oh, the little sandy spot below the tumbledown dike, where I used to catch gudgeons! And you tall birch-trees, with long hanging branches, from beyond which came floating a peasant's mournful song, broken by the uneven jolting of the cart, I send you my last farewell!... On parting with life, to you alone I stretch out my hands. ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... whom mother earth doth nourish. After this bill has been read a third time, whosoever is made, said, or portrayed to be god, I vote he be delivered over to the bogies, and at the next public show be flogged with a birch amongst the new gladiators." The next to be asked was Diespiter, son of Vica Pota, he also being consul elect, and a moneylender; by this trade he made a living, used to sell rights of citizenship in a small way. Hercules trips me up ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... should escape through some unknown fissure of the rock. His neighbors strongly remonstrated against the perilous enterprise; but he, knowing that wild animals were intimidated by fire, and having provided several strips of birch-bark, the only combustible material he could obtain that would afford light in this deep and darksome cave, prepared for his descent. Having accordingly divested himself of his coat and waistcoat, and having a long rope fastened about his legs, by which he might be pulled back ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... grew poor and poorer, Till the dells alone would hear me, Only the deaf fir-trees listen? Not in life is she, my mother, She no longer is aboveground; She, the golden, cannot hear me, 'T is the fir-trees now that hear me, 'T is the pine-tops understand me, And the birch-crowns full of goodness, And the ash-trees now that love me! Small and weak my mother left me, Like a lark upon the cliff-top, Like a young thrush 'mid the flintstones In the guardianship of strangers, In the keeping of the stepdame. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild-woods, thickening green; The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar, 'Twin'd amorous round the raptur'd scene: The flowers sprang wanton to be prest, The birds sang love on every spray; Till too, too soon, the glowing west, Proclaim'd the speed of ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... reason, for as the horses climbed the crest of the long hill the lady in green was by his side on the box. He looked anxiously ahead, and there, in a hedge of young alder bushes, he saw something stirring, and, unless he was greatly mistaken, a birch broom lay on the ground ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... walked Andy. There were parts of those hills where he walked that probably nobody, not even the Indian, ever traversed. Anything could happen there—where the woods are dark with pine or sunny with birch, and where echoes are the only memory (and they never last long). It was so far away, up in through there; as I've said, anything could happen there and we would never hear of it. All day long the cold brooks run down, brown from the juices of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... or even with ethical ones, aesthetic judgments may no doubt look uncertain and "subjective.'' The proposition "this tree is a birch'' seems to lend itself much better to critical discussion and to general acceptance or rejection than the proposition "this tree is beautiful.'' This circumstance, as Kant shrewdly suggests, helps to explain why we have come ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... know how many fair young birch trees he sacrificed to build a summer-house for himself and his staff to drink beer in, and gaze over the country, at St. Quentin, at Soissons and a hundred conquered towns and villages! Now he's obliged to look from St. Quentin at the summer-house—and how ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... thee as much wealth as thou desirest.' Thus addressed, O king, Gautama cheerfully set out from that place, eating on the way, to his fill, fruits sweet as ambrosia. Beholding the sandal and aloe and birch trees that stood along the road, and enjoying their refreshing shade, the Brahmana proceeded quickly. He then reached the city known by the name of Meruvraja. It had large porches made of stone, and high walls of the same material. It was also surrounded on every side with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... prehistoric genius found that the more a log was hollowed out the better it would float; and so the dug-out was invented. Log, raft, and dug-out all belong to the first and simplest type, in which there are no artificial parts to fit together. The second type is exemplified by the birch-bark canoe, which has three parts in its frame—gunwale, cross-bars, and ribs—and a fourth part, the skin, to complete it. The third type is distinguished from the second by its keel, as clearly as vertebrate animals are distinguished ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... from spoiling. After I had taken all I could carry, she showed me where the horses were, and urged me to take the one belonging to the chief, since it was clever and gentle. At first I had compunctions of conscience, but no choice was left me, and I had to do it. I made a rude bridle of birch bark, and jumping on the horse, came here just ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... departed, till they found That butt was out and heard the mournful sound." He praised a poacher, precious child of fun! Who shot the keeper with his own spring gun; Nor less the smuggler who th' exciseman tied, And left him hanging at the birch-wood side, There to expire;—but one who saw him hang Cut the good cord—a traitor of the gang. His own exploits with boastful glee he told, What ponds he emptied and what pikes he sold; And how, ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... of this kind of one bough of every common tree,—oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, etc.; in fact, if you are good, and industrious, you will make one such study carefully at least three times a week, until you have examples of every sort of tree and shrub you can get branches of. You are to make two studies of each bough, for this reason,—all ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... paper, and taken Master B.'s bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no better behaviour than would most unquestionably have brought him and the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... country. They were returning home for the holidays in high glee, and promising themselves a world of enjoyment. It was delightful to hear the gigantic plans of the little rogues, and the impracticable feats they were to perform during their six weeks' emancipation from the abhorred thraldom of book, birch, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... kind indeed, but also a check in his success. Blinkhampton was not going quite right. Blinkhampton was a predestined seaside resort on the South Coast, and Iver, with certain associates, meant to develop it. They had bought it up, and laid it out for building, and arranged for a big hotel with Birch & Company, the famous furnishers. But all along in front of it—between where the street now was and the esplanade was soon to be—ran a long narrow strip, forming the estate of an elderly gentleman named ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... behind the green birch trees—amid whose boughs hung gay lamps—and the rose bushes which surrounded a fountain of perfumed water, and Eva had already followed the Swiss knight across the threshold when she saw among the branches at the end of the room the Countess Cordula, at whose feet ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you. The cedar will burn all right, but it is a good thing to have the birch. We shall have a supper worth while in a few minutes. Stacy, get busy ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... The green-birch fire snapped merrily in the range. The draft sang in the flue. Outside, a soft, feathery snow was falling, for winter came early in the uplands of Vermont this past year. To Cora McBride, however, the winter meant only hardship. Within another week she must go into town ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... thought, as she stopped at a bend of the road where there were traces of recent demolitions, and a great field of green corn was evidently going to reclaim the waste place, and presently swallow it up. Behind where the vanished cottages had stood there stretched a glade of birch-trees, with their low twisted stems rising from little knolls of turf so mossy and steep, that the drills of turnips and potatoes could not possibly be ranged there without destroying their symmetry, even though the crooked birch-trees were to be ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... bought you shall be given to Nannie Cameron, and you shall wear your old one to the kirk. How will that suit your vanity? And you may be off to bed now directly, without any supper. There are twigs enough for a birch rod, my lady, if bed does not bring you to a better frame of mind. Run in now, and don't let me see your face before six o'clock ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... visiting Sydney; a desire to return by way of the Bras d'Or lake, the "arm of gold," the inland sea of Cape Breton, that makes the island itself only a border for the water in its interior. And as the navigation is frequently performed by the Micmac Indians, in their birch-bark canoes, I determined to be a voyageur for the nonce, and engage a couple of Micmacs to paddle me homewards, at least one day's journey. The wigwams of the tribe were pitched about a mile from the town, and ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... colouring. This variety is such, and so harmoniously preserved, that it leaves little cause of regret when the splendour of autumn is passed away. The oak-coppices, upon the sides of the mountains, retain russet leaves; the birch stands conspicuous with its silver stem and puce-coloured twigs; the hollies, with green leaves and scarlet berries, have come forth to view from among the deciduous trees, whose summer foliage had concealed them; the ivy is now plentifully apparent upon ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... admitted as more serious evidence. The abuse of innocent foreign words or syllables by comparison or confusion with indecent native ones is a simple and school-boy-like sort of jest for which Master Hey wood, if impeached as even more deserving of the birch than any boy on his stage, might have pleaded the example of the captain of the school, and protested that his humble audacities, if no less indecorous, were funnier and less forced than Master Shakespeare's. As for the other member of Webster's famous triad, I fear that the most indulgent ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, bass-wood, maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these mortals blended their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-like picturesqueness; a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance. Here ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... boys, four in all, fairly carved a farm out of the big forest that covered the cold rocky hills. Giant work it was for them in such heavy timber—pine, hemlock, maple, beech and birch—the clearing of a single acre being a man's work for a year. The place where the maples were thickest was reserved for a sugar grove, and from it was made all of the sweet material they needed, and some besides. Economy of the very ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... declared, "manifestly deranged." In 1872 Arthur O'Connor, a youth of seventeen, fired an unloaded pistol at the Queen outside Buckingham Palace; he was immediately seized by John Brown, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment and twenty strokes of the birch rod. It was for his bravery upon this occasion that Brown was presented with one of his gold medals. In all these cases the jury had refused to allow the plea of insanity; but Roderick Maclean's attempt in 1882 had a different issue. On this occasion ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... and the ringstraked horse and the cavalry of the State—two men in tatters—and the herald who bore the silver stick before the King, would trot back to their own place, which lay between the tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a dark birch-forest. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... night. They expect to find, if St. Nicholas is pleased with them, that the hay and carrots have disappeared, and that their shoes are full of presents; but that if they have not been good enough, the shoes will just be as they were the night before, and a birch-rod stuck into the hay. But, as you may suppose, it always turns out that St. Nicholas is pleased. The presents are there, and amongst them there is sure to be a gingerbread figure of the saint, which they may eat or not, as they ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... package is a mixture of all the varieties above mentioned, to the number of 122; with a box of birch bark, containing twenty-nine little infants' scalps of various sizes; ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... trust-worthy of your attendants to guard, by multiplying them against the accidental losses to which they will be exposed. A further guard would be, that one of these copies be on the cuticular membranes of the paper-birch, as less liable to injury from damp ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... said Mr Lathrope, reflectively, "that you'll find that thar jolly-boat a heap bigger and a pile heavier than them birch-bark canoes of the lumber men and Injuns I was a talkin' about; and yet, they're heavy enough to cart along fur any raal sort o' distance, you bet, fur ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... stars shone in the tips of the birch trees. Ridgeley did not come, and when they went back to the house, they found that he had been called to New York on an urgent case. He would not return until the ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... the girls of the Go-Ahead Club made their paddles fly for another half-hour. Then they were in sight of a white birch, to the top of which was fastened a ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... penance may be commuted with priests so it may with gendarmes. Delinquents contrived to purchase their escape from the bastinado by a sum of money, and French gallantry substituted with respect to females the birch for the cane. I saw an order directing all female servants to be examined as to their health unless they could produce certificates from their masters. On the 25th of December the Government granted twenty-four hours longer to persons ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... surrounded by the fascinating specious life of the store, but drifting merely superficially upon it. The great place, with its columns of artificial marble and white censers of upward-shining electricity, glimmered like a birch forest by moonlight. Silver and jewels and silks and slippers flashed all about him. It was a marvellous education, for he soon learned to estimate these things at their proper value; which is low, for they have little to ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... drove me with two horses; one sits in the basket like a goldfinch, looking at God's world and thinking of nothing.... The plain of Siberia begins, I think, from Ekaterinburg, and ends goodness knows where; I should say it is very like our South Russian Steppe, except for the little birch copses here and there and the cold wind that stings one's cheeks. Spring has not begun yet. There is no green at all, the woods are bare, the snow has not thawed everywhere. There is opaque ice on the lakes. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... grizzly had not yet learned of a might greater than his, where he had not yet surrendered his sovereignty to man. Here the moose—mightiest of the antlered herd—reached full maturity and old age without ever mistaking the call of a birch-bark horn for that of his rutting cow. Young bulls with only a fifty-inch spread of horns and ten points on each did not lead the herds, as in the more accessible provinces of the North. All things were in their proper balance, since the forest had gone unchanged for time ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... themselves among oaks, aspens, pines, cedars, and birch, and they rode on a turf that was thick, soft and springy. But Selim neighed his approval and Boyd pulled down to a walk. A little farther on both dismounted at ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... leaves grow greener while you wait," Kitty Clark said, reining her horse beside a chuckling brook and pointing to a near-by birch grove. "I feel just like this water. I want to run as fast as I can, calling, 'Spring is here! Spring is here!' Don't you perfectly love this odor of growing things? Listen to that phoebe! Doesn't it sound as if he were ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... to birch-chewing prefer these tender yellow-green leaves tinged with red, when newly put forth in June—"Youngsters" rural New Englanders call them then. In some sections a kind of tea is steeped from the leaves, which also furnish the old-fashioned embrocation, wintergreen ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... "The March of the Pilgrims" came to an abrupt end. John Lansing Birch laid down his viola and bow, whirled about, and flung out his arms in despair. "Oh, this crowd is hopeless!" he groaned. "Never mind any other instrument, providing yours is heard. This march is supposed to ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... dry: it is brittle, of a deep-red colour, inclining to purple, an open grain, and crystalline structure. In the process of toughening, the surface of the metal in the furnace is first well covered with charcoal; a pole, commonly of birch, is then held into the liquid metal, which causes considerable ebullition, owing to the evolution of gaseous matter; and this operation of poling is continued, until, from the assays which the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... belonging to them personally, and their husbands will not touch them without having previously obtained their permission."[179] Among the Menomini a woman in good circumstances would possess as many as from 1,200 to 1,500 birch-bark vessels, and all of these would be in use during the season of sugar-making.[180] In ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... wood, and immediately setting to work, collected all the sticks we could find. We had no time to build a hut, and all we could do was to put up a few slabs of birch-bark close to the fire, creep in under them, ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... Sweden by the fairy-story teller Hans Christian Andersen. Reader, will they strike you as pleasantly as they did me? I know not. Let us glance them over. They have at least the full flavor of the North, of the healthy land of frost and pines, of fragrant birch and of sweeter meadow-grass, and simpler, holier flowers than the rich South ever showed, even in her ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Master Farwell. You know we of the lonesome In-Place make friends with strange objects; everything in nature talks to us, if we will but listen. You have taught me to listen, too. Back a piece in the woods are a strong young hemlock and a little white birch. For years I have watched and tended them. When I was a small girl I likened the hemlock to you, sir, and there was I, leaning and huddling close to you, like the ghostly stripling of the woods. Well, I noticed to-day, Mr. Farwell, the birch stands ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... fortunately had decreased its speed to negotiate an abrupt turn in the road, suddenly shot down a slope at the left, turned around once and stopped with a disconcerting abruptness, its radiator against a four-inch birch tree. Clint and Amy picked themselves from the bottom of the tonneau and stared, more surprised than frightened. Behind them, on the level road, a wheel—present investigation showed that it was the forward left ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... he saw, or fancied he saw, on the knee-shaped crag above, the slouched figure of a buccaneer silhouetted against the sky. It was not the bearded giant called Herriot, but another, Jeremy was sure. He had no time for conjectures, for they plunged into the thicket and birch limbs ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... a little woodland glen, with a streamlet tumbling through it. She sat with her back to a snowy birch-tree, gazing into the eddies of a pool below; and he lay beside her, upon the soft, mossy ground, reading out of a book of poems. Images of joy were passing before them; and there came four ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... foot, and entered a lofty hall, hung with helmets, pikes, breast-plates, bows, cross-bows, antlers etc., etc. Opposite her was the ancient chimneypiece and ingle-nook, with no grate but two huge iron dogs, set five feet apart; and on them lay a birch log and root, the size of a man, with a dozen beech billets burning briskly and crackling underneath and aside it. This genial furnace warmed the staircase and passages, and cast a fiery glow out on the carriage, and glorified the steep helmets and breast-plates of the dead Rabys ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... received with the scant courtesy of a poor relation, the introducer reviled as a crank or condemned as a heretic and crucified. Generally speaking, the professional educator confines himself pretty closely to his birch and his textbooks, being quite content to propagate, as best he may, the ideas of others. Neither the birch nor the text-book, it may be well to remark, constitutes the world's stock of wisdom, but only an incidental furtherance thereto—the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ran at first along the edge of the forest, then along a broad forest clearing; they caught glimpses of old pines and a young birch copse, and tall, gnarled young oak trees standing singly in the clearings where the wood had lately been cut; but soon it was all merged in the clouds of snow. The coachman said he could see the forest; the examining magistrate could see nothing but the trace horse. ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... there was scarcely heart to trim and deck the Christmas-tree; to tell the children to prepare for the visit of the Christ Kindlein on Christmas Eve, who would bring good gifts to the good, but would leave the naughty to Pelsnichol to come and whip them with his great birch. In some villages like ours an old man disguised with a long beard and gown, and a great bag, would go about at Christmastide to the houses where the people had expected him, and would carry the gifts to the children, and would show others who were naughty the birch, and give them nothing. ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... Furry Ones," he continued, after pressing down the tobacco in his pipe, "were born in a dry, warm, roomy den in the bank, under the roots of an old birch that slanted out over the water. The front door was deep under water. But as the old otters had few enemies to dread, being both brave and powerful, they had also a back entrance on dry land, hidden by a thicket of fir bushes. The two ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hundreds for every franc that they advanced towards the expenses of the undertaking. With cheerful haste, therefore, they agreed to pay the cost of the expedition. La Verendrye was delighted and lost no time in employing such persons as he needed—soldiers, canoe-men, and hunters. Birch-bark canoes were procured and laden with provisions, equipment, and packages of goods to trade with the Indians; and in the early summer of 1731 all was ready for the great western journey. With La Verendrye ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... our extended wings," sing the wild swans. "Let us bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs (rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green valley, up over the snow-drifts, to the mountain's ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... came when, having to live in a town, these pilgrimages had to be suspended. The wearisome work on which I was engaged would not permit of them. But I used to look now and then, from a window, in the evening at a birch-tree at some distance; its graceful boughs drooped across the glow of the sunset. The thought was not suspended; it lived in me always. A bitterer time still came when it was necessary to be separated from those I loved. There is little indeed in the more immediate suburbs of London ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... Duke of Shrewsbury, the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of Ranelagh, and Rear-Admiral Byng, have been entirely omitted. The first is not given by Reed, and includes in Birch the single word "none"; the second is not given either by Birch or Reed, but appears only in "The Crypt"; the third is given only by Nichols; and the last is not given by Birch ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... that time was equal in goodness to the best that can now be purchased. In like manner, a yard of velvet, about the middle of Elizabeth's reign, was valued at two and twenty shillings. It appears from Dr. Birch's life of Prince Henry,[*] that that prince, by contract with his butcher, paid near a groat a pound throughout the year for all the beef and mutton used in his family. Besides, we must consider, that the general turn of that age, which no laws could prevent, was the converting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... weighed out of its uprightness by the wet snow, snapped in his face and blinded him with its damp burden; and he knew long before nightfall that another night in the woods was inevitable. He could feed the horse on young twigs of beech and birch; fresh moss, and new-peeled bark (fodder the animal would have resented with scorn under any other conditions); but hunger has no law concerning food. Scott himself was famished; but his pipe and tobacco were a refuge whose ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... antlers lifted, Saw two eyes look from the thicket, Saw two nostrils point to windward, And a deer came down the pathway, Flecked with leafy light and shadow. And his heart within him fluttered Trembled like the leaves above him, Like the birch-leaf palpitated, As the deer ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... Cheselden, 12 ounces; and Pare in 1570 removed a calculus weighing nine ounces. Sir Astley Cooper remarks that the largest stone he ever saw weighed four ounces, and that the patient died within four hours after its removal. Before the Royal Society of London in 1684 Birch reported an account of a calculus weighing five ounces. Fabricius Hildanus mentions calculi weighing 20 and 21 ounces; Camper, 13 ounces; Foschini, 19 ounces six drams; Garmannus, 25 ounces; Greenfield, 19 ounces; Heberden, 32 ounces; Wrisberg, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... breath. The safe disappearances he had read about flashed through his mind. But he didn't believe it. It couldn't be! Yet, there was the empty corner with the birch panels forming the back of the show-windows, and no safe. In a daze, he walked over to the corner, intending to feel about with his hands and make sure the safe was really gone. Before he got there, there flashed into sight in place of the safe, a barrel of dark ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... planted trees of many kinds from many climes, until he has an arboretum hardly equaled anywhere. There are pines in endless variety—from the Sierra and from the seashore, from New England, France, Norway, and Japan. There flourish the cedar, spruce, hemlock, oak, beech, birch, and maple. There in peace and plenty are the sequoia, the bamboo, and the deodar. Eucalypts pierce the sky and ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock |
