"Crotch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yellow sail, was a crooked bough, supported obliquely in the crotch of a mast, to which the green bark was still clinging. Here and there were little tufts of moss. The high, beaked prow of that canoe in which the mast was placed, resembled a rude altar; and all round ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... birch than he bounded up agen just when Old-pot-head's son was a-climbin' thro' the upper branches o' the birch. So he slips over into the top o' the east pine, while I stays in the top o' the west pine, an' the bear sits down in a upper crotch o' the birch. ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... baby's be at three days old: This is the robin's almanick; he knows Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows; So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, He goes to plast'rin' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... that was a little gem. It was so thrilling in its details, and so diametrically different from Mr. Webster's style, that I have often wondered who he got to write it for him. It related to the discovery of a boy by an elderly gentleman, in the crotch of an ancestral apple tree, and the feeling of bitterness and animosity that sprung up at the time between the boy and the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... all hope soured on me, Of my fellow-critters' aid— I jest flopped down on my marrow bones, Crotch deep in the snow, and prayed. By this the torches was played out, And me and Isrul Parr Went off for some wood to a sheepfold That he ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... The emblem of the Ottawas is a moose; of the Chippewas, a sea gull; of the Backswoodsmen, a rabbit; that of the underground tribe, to which I belong, is a species of hawk; and that of the Seneca tribe of Indians is a crotch of a tree. The Ottawa Indians are very nearly extinct in the state of Michigan as there are only two or three families in the state, whose national emblem is a moose, showing them to be descended from pure Ottawa ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... weak crotches and to remove crossing or interfering branches. A crotch formed by two branches of equal size, especially when the split is deep, is a weak crotch and should be avoided. Strong crotches are formed by forcing the development of lateral buds and making almost a right angle branch from the parent ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... seen las' night when I war down hyar afore, a-figurin' ter ketch that thar leetle owel," he said to himself when he had reached the tree and sat in a crotch, ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... at the man, he was a thoroughbred tramp, burly, dirty, generally unkempt, but, unlike most tramps, he looked very much frightened. His position, on a high crotch of an apple-tree, was not altogether comfortable, and although, for the present, it was safe, the fellow seemed to have a wavering faith in the strength of apple-tree branches, and the moment he saw me, he earnestly besought me to take that dog ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... surpass him in the drollery of its expressions. A specimen or two may dispose the reader to turn over the pages which follow in a good-natured frame of mind. "If unconverted men ever got to heaven," he said, "they would feel as uneasy as a shad up the crotch of a white-oak." Some of his ministerial associates took offence at his eccentricities, and called on a visit of admonition to the offending clergyman. "Mr. Dwight received their reproofs with great meekness, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his maps before the young man, and pointed to a certain spot. "There's about fifty different passels of timber in that crotch. I don't aim to need 'em all to-day, but I calc'late on gittin' a sort of fringe around the edge." He drew his finger down the East Branch and up the West Branch in a sort of horseshoe. "Your job's to git options on the fringe—in your own ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... off a long wand from a bush, and seemed to partly split one end of this. Into the crotch he inserted the birch bark. The other end he ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... twelve years of age) climbing one of the willow trees in our old Schmittheimer place. I crept up on him unawares and speedily became satisfied that he was after the eggs in a bird's nest that nestled cozily in a crotch of the limbs. I shouted lustily at the young scapegrace, and his confusion convinced me that my suspicions were correct. I kept him in his uncomfortable position in the tree until I had lectured him severely ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... a crotch in the live-oak against which he had been rubbing, had stepped into the low fork of the tree. Perhaps he had some vague notion to rub both his sides at once as an economy of effort. His front feet had slipped on the wet ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... to-night was light and capricious, yet it was just as the man, who was using that tree as an ambush, established touch between finger and trigger, that the splintered piece of timber broke away from its support and ripped its way noisily downward until a crotch caught and held it. Startled by that unexpected alarm from above, given as though the tree had been a living sentinel, the rifleman jerked his ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... tune that William Crotch (Dr. Crotch) was heard playing before he was two years and a half old, on a little organ that his father, a carpenter, had ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... were engraved many curious pictures, the mystic symbols of the Indians; and as they stood gazing at it an eagle with pointed wings wheeled slowly above them, gazing with clear eyes down into the sunlit vale. From her round nest in the crotch of a sycamore a great horned owl plunged out at their approach and glided noiselessly away; and in the stillness the zooning of bees among the rocks came to their ears like distant music. Beneath their ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... if those wild dogs had come back," said the guardian of the camp, "and the first thing I thought to do was to put the pan of fish I'd cleaned up in the crotch of a tree. Then I went to the camp, and oh! my stars I but it was in an awful mess, with things flung around, and most of our eatables taken, as well as the frying-pan ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... over a forked limb and let it settle in the crotch. Then he slew his head around until he gained the bead he wished. Five minutes passed before he caught sight of his man and then he fired. Jerking out the empty shell he smiled and called out ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... 140) by resting the ties on a ridge-pole supported by a pair of "shears" at each end; the shears, as you will observe, consist of two sticks bound together near the top and then spread apart to receive the ridge-pole in the crotch. ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... of the hills into the brilliant sunset that lay like a wonderful canvas in the crotch of the peaks. A troubled little frown creased her forehead. For the first time there had come home to her the injustice of the social system under which she and her friends thrived. No adequate answer came to her. Verinder and Joyce joined ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... she snatches that book and she gives it a sling. I thought it was going kersplash into the crick. But it didn't. It hit right into the fork of a limb that hung down over the crick, and it all spread out when it lit, and stuck in that crotch somehow. She couldn't of slung it that way on purpose in a million years. We both stands and looks at it ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... to follow their example. The "dudes" regularly came "back from town" with all they could carry without and within; and the cowboys round about swore solemnly that you couldn't put your hand in the crotch of any tree within a hundred yards of the Eatons' ranch-house without coming upon a bottle concealed by a dude being cured of ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... of a twig both birds started forward the male slipped away; the female dropped below the nest, and stood behind a limb, just her face peering through a crotch in my direction. Had I not known she was there, I might have looked the tree over twenty times without finding her. And there she stayed hidden till I was ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... I would like to ask Mr. Simmons in regard to his wiring. We are raising our trees in the same manner, the open-headed trees, and I wanted to ask him where the central ring is placed, in the crotch of the tree ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... edge a birch knoll supported, besides the birches, a single big hemlock. With his belt ax, Thorpe cleared away the little white trees. He stuck the sharpened end of one of them in the bark of the shaggy hemlock, fastened the other end in a crotch eight or ten feet distant, slanted the rest of the saplings along one side of this ridge pole, and turned in, after a hasty supper, leaving the completion of his ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Mississippi through one of its three mouths, and went up the river till he came to an Indian village, where the chief gave him a letter which Tonty, thirteen years before, when in search of La Salle, had written and left in the crotch ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... way." Quonab led to the thicket and selecting a place of many tracks he cut a lot of brush and made a hedge across with half a dozen openings. At each of these openings he made a snare of strong cord tied to a long pole, hung on a crotch, and so arranged that a tug at the snare would free the pole which in turn would hoist the snare and the creature in it high ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of philosophy was quickly stifled as they recognized the gravity which sat upon the face of its enunciator, and Stuart inquired in all seriousness, "But how does he manage it? There's mains'l and jib and tiller—not to mention center board and boom-crotch—and sometimes the reef-points." ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... I said, "come here, Come see a fairy-tale, my dear! Tales told are good, tales seen are best!" The dove was brooding on the nest In the lowest crotch of the apple tree. I lifted her up so quietly, That when she could have touched the bird The soft gray creature had not stirred. It looked at us with a wild dark eye. But, "Birdie, fly!" was Sylvia's cry, Impatient Sylvia, "Birdie, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... gave about Madeira, but I wish you had alluded to Lyell's discussion on land shells, etc.—not that he has said a word on the subject. The whole address quite delighted me. I hear Mr. Crotch[86] disputed some of your facts about the wingless insects, but he is a crotchety man. As far as I remember, I did not venture to ask Mr. Appleton to get you to review me, but only said, in answer to an inquiry, that you would undoubtedly be the best, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... guide. Here were rabbit tracks and every now and then the little sharp tracks of a squirrel. We stopped for lunch under a tall cottonwood-tree, and Arthur pointed out that the trunk, up to a high crotch, was all seamed by bear claws. He said that the black bear climbed the same tree season after season, and told me that, according to the Indians, this was chiefly done when first he came from his winter ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... the tree, well down toward its base. The jolt nearly shook the boy from his perch in a crotch of the tree. Very slowly at first, then with increasing speed the tree began to fall. It came down with a mighty crash, hurling little Lucien some distance ahead of it. He was bruised and shaken and for a few minutes he lay where he had ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... There, in the crotch of a little tree about six feet from the ground, was Billy Manners, while at the foot of the tree was a calf a few months' old bellowing lustily and evidently calling ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... Grinder, and almost fell from his perch. But he managed to save himself, and hung in a crotch, weak and almost helpless, the blood flowing freely and dripping to the ground, where the wolves licked it up eagerly. A few had retreated at the report of the gun, but now all came back, snarling and yelping ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... he can hardly be called an idler. Since his appointment to his precentorship, he has published, with all possible additions of vellum, typography, and gilding, a collection of our ancient church music, with some correct dissertations on Purcell, Crotch, and Nares. He has greatly improved the choir of Barchester, which, under his dominion, now rivals that of any cathedral in England. He has taken something more than his fair share in the cathedral services, and has played the violoncello daily to such audiences as ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Once the glaring light in front moved, then become fixed. There was a light splashing. Instantly Smith realised that the man in front had set his torch in a tree-crotch and was now cowering somewhere behind a levelled weapon. His ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... she involved herself in some enterprise from which she could not extricate herself without his help. Billy had to take heavy logs out of her arms, had to lay a plank across the stretch of creek she could not cross, had to help her down from the crotch of a tree ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... it. "At home," he thought, "they have handles to picks." The handle was put through a hole in the iron. He turned the matter over and over in his mind, how he might put a hole through the stone. But he found no means. He searched out a branch with a crotch at one end. He tied the stone to this with strong cocoa fiber and bark. How his eye glistened as he looked at the new tool! Now he began to work. He first loosened up the earth with his pick, then ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... from 'Volaterrae.' They could see the shimmer of bronze armour in the beech crotch, and the friendly flash of ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... was white with rage. He turned from the tree in which the bear had now found a place of safety behind a crotch, and pointed his arrow at John. The lad saw his danger. Even as the stranger drew the arrow to its head John leaped forward; before the other knew what was happening, John seized him in his arms and with a mighty effort wrenched away the weapon. It was wonderful how easily he mastered ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... Cynthia cocoons will account for some; others will puzzle us until we have found the traces of some insect foe, whose girdling has killed the twig and thus prevented the leaf from falling at the usual time; some may be simply mechanical causes, where a broken twig crotch has fallen athwart another stem in the course of its downward fall. Then there is the pitiful remnant of a last summer's bird's-nest, with a mere skeleton of ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... can't say that I did, though it seems to me there is something like a bunch in that crotch about ten feet from the ground; but the branches sort of screen it. But, Jack, I saw the sun flash from the lens of a pair of glasses, not only once but ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... robin is! No wonder he gets on in the world. He is early, he is handy, he is adaptive, he is tenacious. Before the leaves are out in April the female begins her nest, concealing it as much as she can in a tree-crotch, or placing it under a shed or porch, or even under an overhanging bank upon the ground. One spring a robin built her nest upon the ladder that was hung up beneath the eaves of the wagon-shed. Having ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... arduous marches. The losses in swimming large rivers, from fire, the attacks of predatory animals, hunger, and fatigue, are so great that but few reach the sea, and the remnant always perish there. Mr. W. Duppa Crotch, who has studied the habits of these animals for ten years, now suggests that they are moved by an hereditary instinct, and that their prehistoric home was some country west of Sweden, and now covered by the Atlantic. The ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... surveying them from among the branches of a "Sopsy-vine" apple-tree, munching an apple that he had been able to reach. Whatever agency had boosted him there had left him wedged into the crotch of the limbs so that he could not move, though ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day |
