"Brier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... calm, stately bedchambers, where men had been born, and died; where royal guests had lain in long-ago summer nights, with big bow-pots of elder-flowers set on the hearth to ward off fever and evil spells. The terrace, where in old days dames in ruffs had sniffed the sweet-brier and southern-wood of the borders below, and ladies, bright with rouge and powder and brocade, had walked in the swing of their hooped skirts the terrace now echoed to the sound of brown boots, and the tap-tap of high-heeled shoes at two and eleven three, and ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... On their left, the tall grove rang with the music of birds, and was gay, through all its light-green depths, with the pink blossoms of the wild azalea. The hedges, on either side, were purple with young sprays, and a bright, breathing mass of sweet-brier and wild grape crowned the overhanging banks, between which the road ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hills the goldenrod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... practical, and merits consideration. In this working-day world of ours there is so much unavoidable pain, and so much annoyance which we cannot overlook, that sensible people cushion corners and shrink aside from brier-pricks. We do ourselves actual physical harm when we lose temper; the tart speech takes virtue out of us. A woman would better fatigue herself by righting an untidy chamber than scold a servant for neglecting it. Foreigners comment surprisedly upon ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Nelly Brown, hae we wander'd o'er the lea, Where grow the brier, the yellow bloom, an' flowery hawthorn-tree; Or sported 'mang the leafy woods, till nicht's lang shadows fell— Oh, we ne'er had thoughts o' partin' then, my ain dear Nell! And in winter, Nelly Brown, when the nichts were lang an' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a substantial ball of dead leaves will be noticed, swung amid a tangle of brier. No accident lodged these, nor did any insect have aught to do with their position. Examine carefully the mass of leaves and you will find a replica of the gray squirrel's nest, only, of course, much smaller. This handiwork of the white-footed ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... shadowy glades, And gaze, as one who is not satisfied With gazing, at the large, bright, breathing sea, The forest glooms, and shifting gleams between The fine dark fringes of the fadeless trees, On gold-green turf, sweet-brier, and wild pink rose! How rich that buoyant air with changing scent Of pungent pine, fresh flowers, and salt cool seas! And when all echoes of the chase had died, Of horn and halloo, bells and baying hounds, How ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... good, till their patrimonies be consumed, and that they have spent more in seeking than the thing is worth, or they shall get by the recovery." So that he that goes to law, as the proverb is, [516]holds a wolf by the ears, or as a sheep in a storm runs for shelter to a brier, if he prosecute his cause he is consumed, if he surcease his suit he loseth all; [517]what difference? They had wont heretofore, saith Austin, to end matters, per communes arbitros; and so in Switzerland (we ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... one side of the cave and there the others saw an automobile runabout standing and on the seat two men dressed for a tour. They were talking to a third man, who was lounging against a front wheel, smoking a brier-root pipe. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... fellow, and the soldier deserved his 'Solace.' Many of them among us are poor indeed. 'Boys!' exclaimed a wounded volunteer to two comrades, as they paused the other day before a tobacconist's and examined with the eyes of connoisseurs the brier or bruyere-wood pipes in his window, 'Boys! I'd give fifty dollars, if I had it, for four shillins to buy one of them ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... retired, and not an unlovely spot. A brick wall, splashed with ochre and gray lichens, enclosed six generations of dead Burwells and their next of kin. A locked gate kept out trespassers. Long streamers of brier and wild berry bushes, purple and ashy with the mantling sap drawn upward by the March sunshine, were matted over the older graves; a spreading "honey-shuck" tree arose near the middle of the badly kept square, and smaller trees flourished ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... one side, and through these set the sun, so that on the hottest days the garden was in sufficient shadow by the time the morning's work was done. There was a little grass-plot, large enough for a basket-chair and a rug. There was a hedge of Penzance sweet-brier opposite the backdoor and the window at which Langholm wrote, and yet this hedge broke down in the very nick and place to give the lucky writer a long glimpse across a green valley, with dim woods upon the opposite hill. And then there were ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... pathless steep, through oaks and ashes of mushroom growth to a height of perhaps two hundred feet. It was troublesome climbing, for there was an undergrowth of brier and bramble which tore my clothes, and the sharp crags which jutted in all directions out of the ground cut my feet; nevertheless, I progressed rapidly, outstripping Spira and Mr Popham, and keeping alongside ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... aristocracy did not do well on this soil. Baronial castles, with hot and cold water in them, were often neglected, because the colonists would not forsake their own lands to the thistle and blue-nosed brier in order to come and cook victuals for the baronial castles or sweep out the baronial halls and wax the baronial floors for a journeyman juke who ate custard pie with a knife and drank tea from his saucer through ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Brier Bush, by Mr. Ian Maclaren—a work too popular to excite suspicion; and arranged the method of secret correspondence with great rapidity. Logan then rushed up to Merton's room, hastily communicated the scheme to him, and overcame his objections, nay, awoke in him, by his report of ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander ever where, Swifter than the moones sphere; And I serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her orbs upon the green: The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... highway primitive woodland that will give you an impression of what it must have been three hundred years ago. Here you will see heavy forest growths consisting of oaks, for the most part, with maple and elm, and here and there a tangle of green brier and barberry, interspersed with several varieties of blueberry ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... silver reach of river calms, Do those large eyes behold me still? With me one little year ago:— The chill weight of the winter snow For months upon her grave has lain; And now, when summer south-winds blow, And brier and harebell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod, Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak, The hillside flowers she loved to seek, Yet following me where'er I went With dark eyes full of love's content. The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... thine: Thou art an Elme my husband, I a Vine: Whose weaknesse married to thy stranger state, Makes me with thy strength to communicate: If ought possesse thee from me, it is drosse, Vsurping Iuie, Brier, or idle Mosse, Who all for want of pruning, with intrusion, Infect thy sap, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... they?" exclaimed Daisy Jenkins, giving a slight yawn, and looking longingly out at the tennis courts as she spoke. "I suppose it's the way with fashionable folk. For my part, I call it rude. Mrs. Meadowsweet, may I run across the garden, and pick a piece of sweet brier to put in the front of my dress? Somehow I ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... not into whose hands this paper will fall, but it is my earnest, perhaps dying entreaty that it may be placed in the hands of my parents, my sister, Dr. Brier, or Howard Pemberton, all of whose addresses ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... on brier and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountainside or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name. "Bobolink, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers, ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... plucked a honeysuckle bough and brought it back to the silver column of the beech; and lastly, glancing up from the rosy sprig within her hand, she saw a man coming toward her, down the path that she had thought hidden, holding his arm before him for shield against brier and branch, and looking curiously about him as for a thing which he had come out ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... instead of mastering such of the facts they met with as could be captured easily-which facts would have betrayed the hiding-places of others, and these again of others, and so ad infinitum-they overlooked what was within their reach, and followed hotly through brier and brake after an imaginary ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... am I afraid," answered Brother Rabbit, in a low voice. "I am afraid you will turn me loose in the brier patch. Please do not throw ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... blanket around her, and twined some of the berries amongst her own jet black hair. She had scarcely finished this employment, when she heard quick approaching footsteps, and, glancing round, saw De Valette pushing heedlessly through brier and bush, and Hero trotting gravely at his side. A loud bark from the dog next foreboded a discovery; but both he and his master had halted on the summit of the bank, apparently to survey the occupant ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... to the bend of the Valley River over a stretch of sandy land pre-empted by the cinque-foil and the running brier, the country of the woodcock and the eccentric kildee. We could hear the low, sullen roar of the river sweeping north around this big bend, long before we came to it. Under the stars there is no greater ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... spikenard blossom on my lawn, The brier fades, the thistle is withdrawn. Behold, where glass-clear brooks are flowing, The splendor of the myrtle blowing! The garden-tree has doffed her widow's veil, And shines in festal garb, in verdure pale. The turtle-dove ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... crests as pagod ever decked, Or mosque of Eastern architect. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; 205 For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o'er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dewdrops sheen, The brier-rose fell in streamers green, And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, 210 Waved in the west-wind's ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... deserts, Through dense scrub and tangled brier, They passed with hearts undaunted, And with steps that would not tire; Through morass and flooding waters, Undismayed by toil and fears, At their chief's command, with salient hand, ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... kilted up my linsey skirt, and hung up my little jacket, necessary for protection against the evening air, on a bough out of the wekas' reach, whilst I followed F—— through tangled creepers, "over brake, over brier," towards the place from whence the noise of falling trees proceeded. By the time we reached it, our scratched hands and faces bore traces of the thorny undergrowth which had barred our way; but all minor discomforts were forgotten in the picturesque beauty of the ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... to be found upon Rose-trees and Brier bushes, little red tufts, which are certain knobs or excrescencies, growing out from the Rind, or barks of those kinds of Plants, they are cover'd with strange kinds of threads or red hairs, which feel very soft, and look not unpleasantly. In most ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... I want to give up every thing, every thought, every affection, in short, my whole self, to my offered Saviour. Then would His kingdom come, and His will be done. Instead of the thorn would come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier the myrtle-tree. How precious, how holy, how peaceful, that kingdom! Oh! if I may yet hope; if mercy is left, I beseech Thee, hear and behold me, and bring me "out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... lap of the Alps from its own hardily-nursed wild-brier, by the same tenderly-diligent hand[27] that brought home to us those other half-disclosed twin-buds of Helvetian tradition, you behold a third, like pure, more expanded blossom. Twine the three, young poet! into one soft-hued and "odorous chaplet," ready and meet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... slow and painful. Dangling brier vines drew blood from arms and face, and sharp thorns repeatedly lacerated hands and knees. At each move forward he had to pause and remove the dead branches and twigs from his path lest their cracking should betray him to the campers. At last, however, he could catch the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... theatres on the hills; the commerce of the world seeks its port; the luxury of the Orient flows through its marble streets. You are there one day when the sea has receded: the plain is a pestilent marsh; the temples, the theatres, the lofty gates have sunken and crumbled, and the wild-brier runs over them; and, as you grow pensive in the most desolate place in the world, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, and offers to relieve you of all that which creates artificial distinctions in society. The higher the civilization ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... open-work straw hats and muslin pelisses,—your Aunt Laura and I,"—began Mrs. Ripwinkley, as she had begun all those scores of times before. "Mother put them on for us,—she dressed us just alike, always,—and told us to take each other's hands, and go up Brier and down Hickory streets, and stop at all the houses that she named, and that we knew; and we were to give her love and compliments, and ask the mothers in each house,—Mrs. Dayton, and Mrs. Holridge ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... in it, that you never can refuse! You are mounted on strong shoulders, that'll never, never fail, Though you pray'd with tongue of sinner, just to plant you where they choose. Though the brier patch is nigh you, looking up with thorny faces, They never wait to see how you like the situation, But down you go a rolling, through the penetrating places, Nor scramble out until you give the cry of approbation. Oh! pleasant ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... part of her citizenship, and the riches of her forests and mountains even now just beginning to pour into the laps of the people, a great future is inevitable for Kentucky, "The land of the China Brier." ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... put it into my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord Lovers, in memory of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance? and would she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and despise me ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected, and always from that time say to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the mediaeval speculation on their meaning. His letters to his wife from the Alps and Pyrenees record his impressions with a painstaking and detailed accuracy which does not forget the black-and-yellow spider performing somersaults on an imperceptible thread hung from one brier to another. The emotion after an hour on the Rigi-Kulm "is immense." "The tourist comes here to get a point of view; the thinker finds here an immense book in which each rock is a letter, each lake is a phrase, each village is ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, And all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: And it shall be to the Lord for a name, For an everlasting sign that shall not be ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... not yet ready for active service in the field; he obeyed orders, however, and took the field as directed. On his approach the enemy retired down the Savannah River, and Ashe, dividing his force, was so unfortunate as to fall into an ambush on Brier Creek, where his men, who were raw, undisciplined troops, were taken ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... I am the sickest bird That ever sat on brier; And I wad mak' my testament, Gudeman, if ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... late fugitive. Although some hours had already elapsed since his arrival in camp, and he had presumably refreshed himself inwardly, his outward appearance was still disheveled and dusty. Brier and milkweed clung to his frayed blouse and trousers. What could be seen of the skin of his face and hands under its stains and begriming was of a dull yellow. His light eyes had all the brightness without the restlessness of the mongrel race. They ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... way through fiscal brake and brier, the open becoming more discernible with each effort, till in February, 1876, Congress rounded off their strong box with the neat capping of a million and a half. The entire cost of administration and construction was thus covered, and the association distinguished from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... have lost communication with the front. A small cavalry raid cut the Savannah Railroad and telegraph, this morning, at Brier Creek, twenty-six miles from here. Gen. Wheeler was, yesterday, confronting the enemy's infantry at Sandersville. An officer, who left Macon on the 23d, states that one corps of the enemy was still confronting us there; our force not exceeding ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the fox-glove, the wild brier-rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of grey plovers, in an autumnal morning, without feeling an ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the music growing nearer that quickened her breathing, or only the closeness of the night, shut in between the wild grape-vine curtains, swung from one dark cedar column to another? She caught the sweet-brier breath as she hurried by, and now, a loop in the leafy curtain revealed the pond lying black in a hollow of the hills, with a whole heaven of stars reflected in it. Old John stumbled along over the stones, cropping the grass as he went. Dorothy tugged at his halter and ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... then another, Rankin said nothing; then he knocked the ashes from the bowl of his brier and laid it upon ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... and rode triumphant to the shore. Inside the Peak, over the harbor, the gulls were congregated, some fluttering over the water, some riding on its surface, some flying in circles over the heights, now green and soft with the thick fresh grass of spring. Down the spine of the cliff the tangle of brier-wood and brambles, though not leafless, still showed brown, and the long trails which were lifted and bowed down as the sudden gusts of wind swept over them, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... stack were close in front, with only a narrow strip of garden between, for there was not much heed paid to flowers, and few kitchen vegetables were grown in those days, only a few potherbs round the door, and a sweet-brier bush ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stop talking as if the cases were synonymous! You were married! It's revolting to me to hear you keep saying that you 'understand.' There's no more likeness between you and Edith than there is between a lily growing in a queen's garden and a sweet-brier rose springing up on a ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... expect to spend the whole day in the open, for a hungry rambler is not likely to be an acute observer. A notebook and a lead pencil, carried in handy pockets, should not be forgotten. Donning an old suit of clothes, you can roam where you will, threading your way through brier and bush, wading the bog or the shallow stream, dropping upon your knees, even flinging yourself upon the ground, to spy upon a wary bird flitting about in ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... The first Aletes, born in lowly shed, Of parents base, a rose sprung from a brier, That now his branches over Egypt spread, No plant in Pharaoh's garden prospered higher; With pleasing tales his lord's vain ears he fed, A flatterer, a pick-thank, and a liar: Cursed be estate got with so many a crime, Yet this is oft the stair by ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... case, disclosed twin brier pipes, silver-mounted, with alternative stems of various lengths and diverse mouthpieces—all reposing on soft couches of fawn-tinted stuff, with a crimson, silk-lined lid to serve them for canopy. A rich and costly array! Everybody ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... "lain low," saunters out, and complains of Brer Rabbit that he is too stuck up. In the sequel Brer Rabbits begs Brer Fox that he may "drown me as deep ez you please, skin me, scratch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by the roots, en cut off my legs, but do don't fling me in dat brier patch;" which, of course, Brer Fox does, only to be informed by the cunning Brer Rabbit that he had been "bred en bawn in a brier patch." The story is a favourite one with the negroes: it occurs in Col. Jones' Negro Myths of the Georgia ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... so glossy black, The priest his lips began to smack, Full fain to pluck the fruit; But, woe the while! the trunk was tall, And many a brier and thorn did crawl Around ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way; Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch, Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay: For misery is trodden on by many, And being low never ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... described. It was white as snow, and had about it all those traits of neatness and good taste which are, we regret! to say, so rare among, and so badly understood by, our humbler countrymen. The front walls were covered by honeysuckles, rose trees, and wild brier, and the flower plot in front was so well stocked, that its summer bloom would have done credit to the skill of an ordinary florist. The inside of this cottage was equally neat, clean, and cheerful. The floor, an unusual thing then, was tiled, which gave it a look ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... consistent than that it be a fact. Indeed, facts are not necessary in stories, and they are dangerous. Ian Maclaren says that the only part of his stories that has been severely criticised is a drowning episode, which was a fact, and the only one he ever used. Yet to those who have read "The Bonnie Brier Bush," the old doctor is as well known as any person who lives across the street; he is real to us, though he never lived. "Old Scrooge" and "Brom Bones" are better known than John Adams is. A good character or a good story need not be drawn from facts. Indeed, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Apple seed and apple thorn; Wire, brier, limber-lock, Five geese in a flock, Sit and sing by a spring, ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... we wander here, We eye the rose upon the brier, Unmindful that the thorn is near, Among the leaves; And tho' the puny wound appear, Short ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... cabin. When it came night and the hemlocks began to sob they had not returned. The little man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it with logs. He puffed fiercely at a heavy built brier, and regarded a thousand shadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the approach of the unknown, crackling the twigs and rustling the dead leaves. The little man arose slowly to his feet, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... wi' me to yonder howe, bonnie Peggie, O! Down ayont the gowan knowe, bonnie Peggie, O! When the siller burn rins clear, When the rose blooms on the brier, An' where there is none ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... delicious days of my childhood. But they are gone—they are gone! Long rambles on the sea-shore with Margaret, and in the corn-fields with Raby; now nutting in the copse or gathering brier roses in the lanes; setting out our strawberry feast under the great elm-tree on the lawn or picking up fir-cones in the Redmond avenue. Spring flowers and autumn sunsets—bright halcyon days of my youth made ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... other facts I put before my friends while they listened in glum silence—indeed, with hardly a move except the pipes carried mechanically to their lips or down. Tommy's brier was empty, but his teeth were tight upon the stem and I saw the muscles of his jaws working, as though grinding ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... subscribed for a few days previous by the persistent, efforts of an indefatigable canvasser. A white tidy covered the back of the rocking-chair, and another the back of the lounge. An old-fashioned pitcher filled with sweet-brier and some of the old-time flowers, such as bachelors' buttons, London pride, blue rocket and jump-up-johnnie stood on a kind of sideboard and showed a desire to make the room ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... penetrating and translucent verdure without one shadow where the palette of Veronese, the riot of purple, and of blonde tresses may find sleep. Rural delights! murmurous and gorgeous decorations! gardens thick with brier and rose! French landscapes planted with Italian pines! villages gay with weddings and carriages, ceremonies, toilettes, and fetes stunned with the noise of violins and flutes leading the bridal of Nature and the Opera to a Jesuit fane! Rustic ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... the women, and the larger boys, with only a negligible sprinkling of really little children. Every woman and child in the two rows was armed with a savage-looking whip of willow, hickory, or even green brier, and the still more savage intention of using these whips to the utmost extent of their speed ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... harm. malagueno of Malaga, a seaport of southern Spain. malaventurado unlucky. maldecido accursed. maldecir to curse. maldicion f. malediction, curse. maldito cursed. maleza bramble, brier. malhadado ill-fated. malhechor, -a malefactor. malo bad, wicked. malograr to fail, end unhappily. manantial m. source, spring. manar to distil, abound in. mancebo youth, clerk. mandar to command; send. manera manner. maniatar to manacle. manifestar ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... thy way by force, Toil-spent and bramble-torn, Thou'lt fell the tree that checks thy course, And burst through brier and thorn: And, pausing by the river's side, Poor reasoner! thou wilt deem, By casting pebbles in its tide, To cross ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... Mr. Thomas Cadge was darkened with disapproval, he shifted his stubby brier pipe to the other corner of his mouth, edged a little from his seat on the sunny front stoop and, craning his neck around the corner of his house, revealed an unwashed area extending from ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... The boys were nothing loath to fall to on the sea banquet the old salt spread before them, and so busy were they despatching the sailor's cooking, that it was not till after they concluded the meal and Bluewater Bill had his old brier pipe going that they came down to the discussion of what each of the boys had uppermost in his mind—namely, the history of Bluewater Bill's discovery of the lost treasure ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... cheek, which mek' him run erbout as fast as he can. An' byme-by somefin' grab' li'l' Mose by de aidge of he coat, an' he fight' an' struggle' an' cry' out: "Dey ain't no ghosts. Dey ain't no ghosts." An' dat ain't nuffin' but de wild brier whut grab' him, an' dat ain't nuffin' but de leaf ob a tree whut brush' he cheek, an' dat ain't nuffin' but de branch ob a hazel-bush whut brush he arm. But he downright scared jes de same, an' he ain't lose no time, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... the bones standing up. This boy whom Dick contemplated was quite a different being. His face was no longer white, it was instead a mixture of red and brown, and both tints were vivid. Across one cheek were some brier scratches which he had acquired the day before, but which he had never noticed. The red-brown cheeks were filled out with the effects of large quantities of good food digested well. As he bent over ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... interests of true sportsmanship, they must have those annual massacres I certainly should admire to see what execution a picked half dozen of American quail hunters, used to snap-shooting in the cane jungles and brier patches of Georgia and Arkansas, could accomplish among English pheasants, until such time as their consciences mastered them ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... sunset on this same hot evening the sergeant in charge of the little signal-party at the Picacho came strolling forth from his tent puffing at a battered brier-root pipe. Southward and a few hundred feet below his perch the Yuma road came twisting through the pass, and then disappeared in the gathering darkness across the desert plain that stretched between them and the distant Santa ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... thoroughly disapprove of her. I always avoid her company as much as I can without violating the laws of hospitality; but when we do speak or converse together, it is with the utmost civility, even apparent cordiality on her part; but preserve me from such cordiality! It is like handling brier-roses and may-blossoms, bright enough to the eye, and outwardly soft to the touch, but you know there are thorns beneath, and every now and then you feel them too; and perhaps resent the injury by crushing them in till you have destroyed ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... wistful faces, and dumbly pleading with me to accept them and their promises; yet I carelessly passed them by. I see worse. I see the rents in the hedge, where I forced my wilful way into forbidden fields, and only regained my path after weary wandering, brier-torn, and none the better for my folly. Lost faces come before me which I might have gladdened oftener. Voices sound in my ear whose tones I might have made happier if I would. Withheld sympathy rises up before me deploring its wasted treasure. How can any one ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... wants; and the difficulty of securing anything from the houses without danger of detection was almost insurmountable. But we felt encouraged as we thought of what we were striving for, and sped on our way. But the way was hard, for sometimes we got completely stuck in brier patches, and had to turn and go back, in order to find a way out. Old logs and driftwood, that had been piled up year after year, were other obstacles in our way; and one can imagine how hard it was to make our way through such a mass of brush and forest by the dim light of the stars as they ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... left-faced, and left the spot. After enticing the enemy for three miles or so we struck a brier-patch and had to sit down. When we were ordered to throw up our toes and surrender we obeyed. Five of my best staff-officers fell, suffering extremely ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Colonel of the 1st Rowan Regiment, with Alexander Dobbins as Lieutenant Colonel; James Brandon, 1st Major, and James Smith, 2d Major. He was attached to General Lincoln's army when General Ashe was defeated at Brier Creek, and composed one of the members of the court-martial to inquire into that unfortunate affair. Colonel Locke commanded the forces which attacked and signally defeated a large body of Tories assembled ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... hut stood in a little patch of garden ground with a brier hedge all round it, in that byway which lies between Laeken and Brussels, in the heart of flat, green Brabant, where there are beautiful meadows and tall, flowering hedges, and forest trees, and fern-filled ditches, and a little piece of water, deep and cool, where ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... are twenty minutes' walk from the village, seem to be insignificant enough; they consist of the ridges of a few decrepit walls, from four to six feet high, which extend among the brier bushes. Archaeologists call them the aqueducts of Seranus, the Roman camp of Holderlock, or vestiges of Theodoric, according to their fantasy. The only thing about these ruins which could be considered remarkable is a stairway to a cistern cut ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... man; "good, honest, stick tobacco, smoked out of a well-seasoned brier, is good enough for me—unless one can get hold of a real, genuine Havana, you know; but they are scarcely to be had ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... off one side, he did, an' he say, 'Le's give 'im his chice, wheder he'd er ruther be tho'd in de fire or de brier-patch; an' ef he say de fire, den we'll fling 'im in de briers; an' ef he say de briers, den we'll fling 'im in de fire.' So dey went back ter de Rabbit, an' ax 'im wheder he'd er ruther be tho'd in de ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... Paradise. Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, Or from the shade of saintly palms, Or silver reach of river calms, Do those large eyes behold me still? With me one little year ago:— The chill weight of the winter snow For months upon her grave has lain; And now, when summer south-winds blow And brier and harebell bloom again, I tread the pleasant paths we trod, I see the violet-sprinkled sod, Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak The hillside flowers she loved to seek, Yet following me where'er I went With dark eyes full of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... the King with smiles Said: "Speak to him, my dear. He tells the truth. Thy parents wandered through a desert land Beneath a cruel sun. Impossible It was to carry thee through brier and brush." Down at his sister's feet the young prince knelt. Then Bidasari clasped him in her arms. The brave young prince to them recounted all The sorrows of his parents. Much he wept, And they wept, too, as he the story told. Then sat they down to dine. And afterward ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... of roote much like vnto the which in England is called the 'China root' brought from the East Indies. And we know not anie thing to the ctrary but that it maie be of the same kind. These roots grow manie together in great clusters and doe bring foorth a brier stalke, but the leafe in shape far vnlike; which beeing supported by the trees it groweth neerest vnto, wil reach or climbe to the top of the highest. From these roots while they be new or fresh beeing chopt into small pieces ...
— A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land Of Virginia • Thomas Hariot
... summit of the hill, descended on the other side, and followed the road through the woods until they reached the brier patches, fruit trees; and the garden of vegetables, with big beds of sage, rue, wormwood, hoarhound, and boneset. From there to the lake sloped the sunny fields of mullein and catnip, and the earth was molten ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... dull green spikes, and in the wind Hisses, and the neglected bramble nigh, Offers its berries to the schoolboy's hand, In vain—they grow too near the dead. Yet here, Nature, rebuking the neglect of man, Plants often, by the ancient mossy stone, The brier-rose, and upon the broken turf That clothes the fresher grave, the strawberry plant Sprinkles its swell with blossoms, and lays forth Her ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... wild roses, not natives, but naturalized immigrants from foreign lands, that have escaped from gardens, is Shakespeare's CANKER-BLOOM, the lovely DOG ROSE or WILD BRIER (R. canina), that spreads its long, straggling branches along the roadsides and banks, covering the waste lands with its smooth, beautiful foliage, and in June and July with pink or white roses. Because it lacks the fragrance of sweetbrier, which it otherwise ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... her father, wondering at her silence, "how are the roses getting on? And I hope you have not forgotten the sweet-brier that you promised ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... a pipe a good deal, and he preferred it to be old and violent; and once, when he had bought a new, expensive English brier-root he regarded it doubtfully for a time, and then handed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... upland pastures, sown with gold, and sweet With the keen perfume of the ripening grass, Where wings of birds and filmy shadows pass, Spread thick as stars with shining marguerite; To haunt old fences overgrown with brier, Muffled in vines, and hawthorns, and wild cherries, Rank poisonous ivies, red-bunched elderberries, And pied blossoms to the heart's desire, Gray mullein towering into yellow bloom, Pink-tasseled milkweed, breathing dense perfume, And swarthy vervain, ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... distorted the marble smile into a grimace, which gave a leer to the remaining features. As the boy looked at it he laughed suddenly, and his voice startled him amid the droning of bees. Then he sat up and glanced at his brier-scratched feet stretched upon the slab, and laughed again for the sheer ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Hippy's long absence, announced her intention of going out to look for him, and was giving her companions directions about signaling her when Hippy Wingate came strolling into camp, his clothing torn and his face scratched from contact with brier bushes. "Hulloa, folks," he ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... on a plantation on Brier Creek in Baldwin County. My ole marster was Mr. Sam Hart. He owned my mother. She had thirteen chillen. I was de oldest, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... ay, O ay—the winds that bend the brier! A star in heaven, a star within the mere! Ay, ay, O ay—a star was my desire, And one was far apart, and one was near: Ay, ay, O ay—the winds that bow the grass! And one was water and one star was fire, And one will ever shine and one will pass. ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... trial trips were made in this couch, at first only into the front garden, and then into the long strip of bowling-green at the back. And how the little invalid did enjoy the fresh, sweet summer air, fragrant with honeysuckle and sweet-brier, and all the more delightful to him from the whiff of strong salt and even tar corning up from the shore. Harry felt as if he should soon be well and strong again if he were only to have such nice ...
— The Good Ship Rover • Robina F. Hardy |
