"Fern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a gradual ascent over a succession of hills, of which each descent, however steep, leads to a still longer ascent, until you reach the high level of Exmoor. The first six miles are through real Devonshire lanes; on each side high banks, all covered with fern and grass, and topped with shrubs and trees; for miles we were hedged in with hazels, bearing nuts with a luxuriance wonderful to the eyes of those accustomed to see them sold at the corners of streets for a penny the dozen. In ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... is impassable for horses. It has a very picturesque appearance; immense masses of rock—some thousands of tons in weight—which had fallen from the top of the cliff into the bed of the creek. Mr. Kekwick found a number of new plants, among them a fine climbing fern. Light winds, east. Plenty of permanent water in the creek. Latitude, 14 degrees ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... keinen Gegenstand denken, ohne durch Kategorien; wir koennen keinen gedachten Gegenstand erkennen, ohne durch Anschauungen, die jenen Begriffen entsprechen. Nun sind alle unsere Anschauungen sinnlich, und diese Erkenntniss, so fern der Gegenstand derselben gegeben ist, ist empirisch. Empirische Erkenntniss aber ist Erfahrung. Folglich ist uns keine Erkenntniss a priori moeglich, als ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the spring where the maidenhair fern grew thick and spread out wide, perfect fronds on slender brown stems, shading fairy bowers; and where taller ferns grew high and leaned over like a delicate fairy forest; and where the wild violets grew so thick you could not see the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... St. Francis had last restored was very wee, but it had a very long name. It was called the Portiuncola, which meant "the little portion." It was built all among the trees and long grass, and mossy, fern-covered rocks; and the birds sang around it. St. Francis loved the spot very much—it was like home to him—and he spent a lot of time there. Besides, it was not far from the leper settlement, and he had now taken on himself the rather horrible job of serving ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... dusky red,—a deep, substantial hue, very well fit to be close to the ground,—while the yellow, and light, fantastic shades of green soar upward to the sky. These red spots are the blueberry and whortleberry bushes. The sweet-fern is changed mostly to russet, but still retains its wild and delightful fragrance when pressed in the hand. Wild China-asters are scattered about, but beginning to wither. A little while ago, mushrooms or toadstools were very numerous along the wood-paths ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Florent turned round and strolled about, loitering among the flowers. They halted with some curiosity before several women who were selling bunches of fern and bundles of vine-leaves, neatly tied up in packets of five and twenty. Then they turned down another covered alley, which was almost deserted, and where their footsteps echoed as though they had been walking through a church. Here they found a little cart, scarcely larger than ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... mediaeval statistics it was apparently more grown than other cereals. The chief meat of the lower classes then, as to-day, was bacon from the innumerable herds of swine who roamed in the woods and wastes, but in bad years, when food was scarce, the poor ate nuts, acorns, fern roots, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... his skiff under the crowding alders, gathered a big bunch of the purple flag lilies with their silky petals, and started homeward, whistling cheerily as he stepped briskly along the fern-carpeted wood path that wound up the hill under the beeches ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... do my thoughts no longer hover Over the mountains, on that northern shore, Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover Thy noble heart for ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... unheeded. Sounds of labor not far off told that camp was being built. Presently the absent five returned, two of the Mayorunas carrying a crude but strong litter constructed from saplings and giant-fern leaves. McKay rose stiffly ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... closed. We then, as an act of mercy, stole a sheaf of oats from a neighbouring field, and cut the ears off for the horse with our penknives, after which we, in absolute hunger, ate as many grains as we could clean from the husks, and some fern, which we found very bitter. We looked very much like a group of vagrants sitting by the road-side, the possession of the oats being disputed with us by five lean pigs. When after another hour we really succeeded in getting something ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... of direction, of location, had not deserted him. In a little while he came out abreast of Cradle Bay. The Gower house, all brightly gleaming windows, loomed near. He struck down through the dead fern, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the fern leaves and pointed to the lank figure of the tall Alphian, who lay curled up on the grass as if asleep. "He brought me in that flying-machine there; but he has spent all his strength in trying to manage ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... weapons, while the huntsmen brought their pikes, and spears, and javelins, and such other projectiles as were employed in those days in hunting wild beasts. The troop was divided into companies of one hundred, and for banners they bore tufts of grass on wisps of straw, or fern, or other herbage, tied at the top of a pole. The armament was rude, but the men were resolute and determined, and they made their appearance at the gates of the city upon the outside, just in time to co-operate with Remus in the rebellion which he ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... that pass. In truth, she would have had little of her lover's company, if she had liked the chaunt of the choristers better than the cry of the hounds: yet I know not; for they were companions from the cradle, and reciprocally fashioned each other to the love of the fern and the foxglove. Had either been less sylvan, the other might have been more saintly; but they will now never hear matins but those of the lark, nor reverence vaulted aisle but that of the greenwood canopy. They are twin ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... of the Central Alps the Roman used chiefly the Brenner route, which by a low saddle unites the deep reentrant valleys of the Adige and Inn rivers, and thus surmounts the barrier by a single pass. However, a short cut northward over the Chalk Alps by the Fern Pass made closer connection with Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg). The Romans seem to have been ignorant of the St. Gotthard, which, though high, is the summit of an unbroken ascent from Lake Maggiore up the valley of the Ticino on one side, and from Lake ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... fleecy lamb which thus did sever From the white flock, but pass'd unworried By angry wolf, or pard with prying head, Until it came to some unfooted plains Where fed the herds of Pan: ay great his gains Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many, Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny, 80 And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly To a wide lawn, whence one could only see Stems thronging all around between the swell Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell The freshness of the ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... I have forgotten, sent me a collection of fossils—tiny mollusk shells beautifully marked, and bits of sandstone with the print of birds' claws, and a lovely fern in bas-relief. These were the keys which unlocked the treasures of the antediluvian world for me. With trembling fingers I listened to Miss Sullivan's descriptions of the terrible beasts, with uncouth, unpronounceable names, which once ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... when I was little I used to play here a lot and I pretended there were fairies—fern fairies and grass fairies and tree fairies. We'd play together. And when I grew older and began to wish for things that weren't—here, I'd come and tell the fairies because I did not want my mother to know, and, anyway, just telling about them made it seem as nice as having them. So I got to calling ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... after. I keep quantities of both remedies close at hand, for three or four venomous snakes have been killed within a dozen yards of the house, and little G—— is perpetually exploring the long grass all around or hunting for a stray cricket-ball or a pegtop in one of those beautiful fern-filled ditches whose tangle of creepers and plumy ferns is exactly the favorite haunt of snakes. As yet he has brought back from these forbidden raids nothing more than a few ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... tree-ferns, practically the duplicates of the background beyond the globe. Nothing moved save small, fugitive creatures among their fronds. He swung the telescope still farther. The landscape swept by before his eyes. The tree-fern forest drew back. He saw the beginning of a vast and noisome morass, over which lay a thick haze as of a stream raised by the sun. He saw something move in that morass; something huge and horrible with a long and snake-like neck and the tiniest of heads at the end of it. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... ranged against the walls and sheltered by tall palms and flowering exotics. The music was heard to better advantage here than in the hall where the company had first been received; and as the Princess moved to a seat under the pale green frondage of a huge tropical fern and bade her two companions sit beside her, sounds of the wildest, most melancholy and haunting character began to palpitate upon the air in the mournful, throbbing fashion in which a nightingale sings when its soul is burdened with love. The passionate tremor that shakes ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... lived, or what evil deed he had done. Any man might kill him and never pay penalty for it. But, outlaw or not, the poor people loved him and looked on him as their friend, and many a stout fellow came to join him, and led a merry life in the greenwood, with moss and fern for bed, and for meat the King's deer, which it was death to slay. Tillers of the land, yeomen, and some say knights, went on their ways freely, for of them Robin took no toll; but lordly churchmen with money-bags ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... kinds of kangaroos, of the same species, but differing in size and colour. Beasts of prey have never been seen in the colony. The birds are, parrots, cockatoos, and a large one called emus, which have very long legs and scarcely any wings; they in general live upon fern, and weigh from seventy to eighty pounds; there are likewise a number of black swans. The woods abound with a number of dangerous reptiles, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as if her performance was now complete. The next thing she did, however, was to stoop straight down and pluck—quite as if it were all she was there for—a big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became sure she had just come out of the copse. She waited for us, not herself taking a step, and I was conscious of the rare solemnity with which we presently approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it was all done in a silence by this time flagrantly ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... is the point. That letter was from an old friend of mother's, Mrs. Leighton. She has a home up in the country, Sweet Fern Cottage I think they call it, or is it ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... sketching apparatus, she with a volume of Sir Walter Scott, to read aloud to him while he sketched, or to read him to sleep with very often. And then what delight it had been to sit by his side while he lay at full length upon the mossy turf, or half-buried in fern—to sit by him supremely happy, reading or drawing, and looking up from her occupation every now and then to glance at the sleeper's handsome face ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... haunts of coot and hern, I make sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker ...
— Beauties of Tennyson • Alfred Tennyson
... out the beauty of the land, the rolling plains, the soft low hills, the forests and moors folded and hidden in the swathing robe of the night; from the park and gardens floated upward the freshness of acres of thick sward and deep fern thicket, the fragrance of roses and a thousand flowers, the tender sighing of the wind through the huge oaks and beeches bordering the avenues, and reigning like kings over the ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... features in the botany of Cape York, is the occurrence of a palm, not hitherto mentioned as Australian. It is the Caryota urens (found also in India and the Indian archipelago) one of the noblest of the family, combining the foliage of the tree-fern with a trunk a foot in diameter, and sixty in height. It is found in the dense brushes along with three other palms, Seaforthia, Corypha, and Calamus. Another very striking tree, not found elsewhere by us, is the fine Wormia ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... of life. I was barely three. I can remember the majestic gum-trees surrounding us, the sun glinting on their straight white trunks, and falling on the gurgling fern-banked stream, which disappeared beneath a steep scrubby hill on our left. It was an hour past noon on a long clear summer day. We were on a distant part of the run, where my father had come to deposit salt. He had left home early in the dewy morning, carrying me in front ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... sportsmen, deer-stalkers, a piper and two deer-hounds, cooking their supper, and concluding it with the never-failing accompaniment of whisky-toddy. Let us fancy them reposing on a couch of dried fern and heather, and being awoke in the morning with the lively air of "Hey, Johnny Cope." While their breakfast is preparing, they wash and refresh themselves at a pure mountain stream, and are soon ready to issue forth ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... these discontents are soon forgotten; there amid tilth and pasture, gentle hills and leafy hollows of rural Devon, the eye rests and the mind is soothed. By lanes innumerable, deep between banks of fern and flower; by paths along the bramble-edge of scented meadows; by the secret windings of copse and brake and stream-worn valley—a way lies upward to the long ridge of Haldon, where breezes sing among the pines, or sweep rustling ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... decidedly in the affirmative. It is well known that these Aborigines in no instance cultivate the soil, but subsist entirely by hunting and fishing, and on the wild roots they find in certain localities (especially the common fern), with occasionally a little wild honey; indigenous fruits being exceedingly rare. The whole race is divided into tribes, more or less numerous, according to circumstances, and designated from the localities they inhabit; for although universally ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... thought Dick, and he dropped behind a great tuft of withered fern and waited and watched. Billy Seton crawled up without a sound, and lay beside him. Three minutes passed, and then Dick saw a shock of black hair pushed right under a low-growing blackthorn, a dozen yards ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... into our fern-house, which is just beyond here," she said. "We have got such exquisite maidenhairs and such a splendid Killarney fern. Come; you ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... hidden receptacle, and as the girls looked down into it they saw that it was half filled with curious little fern baskets. ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... patera filled with white anemones; on another table near by stood a silver one filled with the same flowers, pink and yellow. Each was circled round the edge with fringing masses of maiden-hair fern. Every lounge and chair had a low, broad foot-stool before it, ruffled with the chintz; and in one corner of the room were a square pink and white and green Moorish rug, with ten or a dozen chintz-covered pillows, ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... about with such a powerful flight over the water, and then hovered apparently motionless, as though looking at their beautiful bodies reflected on the bright surface. On one bank, too, a bright little green lizard was captured, and carefully secured, to place in one of the fern cases; besides which there were rose beetles, watchmen, spiders, and tiny flies, that Fred considered were neither curious nor pretty, but which Mr Inglis said were quite the contrary, being both curious and ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... Down on Fern Avenue, which is a wide, grassy road and no avenue at all, Uncle Roger Allan is carefully painting his chicken coops. Roger Allan is a tall, twinkling, smooth-shaven old man, and he lives in a house as twinkling and as ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... those who fly to firearms if Nature sends a rare migrant creature of air, or earth, or water, in their way.” Go through our English lakes, as the writer did recently, after not having visited them for several years, and you will find, for instance, the falls of Lodore, where once the parsley-fern abounded, now entirely stript of it. Just as—to take a parallel case—in a certain stream in Borrowdale, where some years ago the writer caught so many trout that the widow, in whose cottage he lodged, offered to keep him any length of time gratis, so long ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... cottages, being frequently that of a cross, would hurt the eye by the sharp angles of the roof, were it not for the cushion-like vegetation with which they are rounded and concealed. Varieties of the fern sometimes relieve the massy forms of the stonecrop, with their light and delicate leafage. Windows in the roof are seldom met with. Of the chimney ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely local fern (Schizoea pusilla) growing in the pine barrens of New Jersey, affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible genesis of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South. It was at one time supposed ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... sea in the south, The hills of olive and slopes of fern Whiten and glow in the sun's long drouth, Under the heavens that beam and burn; And all the swallows were gather'd there Flitting about in the fragrant air, And heard no sound from the larks, but flew ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... had lost its way Amid the grass and fern; A passing stranger scooped a well Where weary men might turn; He walled it in, and hung with care A ladle at the brink; He thought not of the deed he did, But judged that Toil might drink. He passed again; and lo! the well, By summer never dried, Had cooled ten thousand parched tongues, And ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... property; for robberies of gardens and houses were daily and nightly committed. Damage was also received from the little stock which remained alive; the owners, not having wherewith to feed them, were obliged to turn them loose to browse among the grass and shrubs, or turn up the ground for the fern-root; and as they wandered without any one to prevent their doing mischief, they but too often found an easy passage over fences and through barriers which were now grown weak and perishing. It was however ordered, that the stock should ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... days the villagers sought high and low for the missing child, and then, on the morning of the third day, to the delight of the distracted parents, their boy was found sleeping peacefully upon a bed of fern within a few yards of the place where his mother had last seen him. He was perfectly well, quite happy, and entirely ignorant of the length of time that had elapsed. And he had a wonderful ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... live? Oh, just anywhere—all about; among the fern, in the long grass, down on the sands, in all the places babies love to ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... prefer to meet with a little resistance, and despise a bed that is made too comfortable. Self-sown ones often come up much more vigorously through the hard path than when the seed has fallen within the border. The way to grow the parsley fern is said to be to clap a good big stone on his crown very early in the spring, and let him struggle out at all corners from underneath it. It is undoubtedly a comfort to rock-plants and creeping things to be planted with a stone over their feet ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a gravelly slope, and across a strip of swale, through which flowed the stream that farther on widened into the Hollow. A small jungle of dog-roses, elder, and blackberry tangled the banks of the stream, spreading into flanks of cinnamon-fern that crept ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... trenched by the Boers at great expense of labour; they were evidently expecting we should attack and perhaps turn them out of Majuba, although the slope of the hill on the south side is quite too precipitous for such an operation. I picked up some fern and plants near where Colley fell, as a memento. We took an hour and a half to get down again, meeting General Buller and his Staff walking up to inspect the hill, and I rode back ten miles to Volksrust blessed with a headache from the steep climb and strong air. The view from the top of Majuba, ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... met above them in angry amazement; then one hand reached back to the willow branch, the girl dropped from sight, and he heard her rustle from branch to branch, and then heard the light, swift sound of running feet through the fern, and dying away in ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... once to your cabin, or will cease to breed disaffection in my crew, and groundless alarm in my passengers, by instilling your own childish, ignorant fears. The ship has been underlogged a hundred miles, sir; and but for my caution in lying to for clear weather we should be groping among the Fern Isl——" ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... still, but for the sudden fall Of cupless acorns dropping to the ground, Or rabbit plunging through the fern-stems tall, Half-startled ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... intolerable thickets of Small pine, a groth much resembling arrow wood on the Stem of which there is thorns; this groth about 12 or 15 feet high inter lockd into each other and Scattered over the high fern & fallen timber, added to this the hills were So Steep that I was compelled to draw my Self up by the assistance of those bushes- The Timber on those hills are of the pine Species large and tall maney of them more than 200 feet high ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Cor burn to the Tyne, our way lies eastward by the side of the river, which here, after splashing and sparkling over the shallows below Corbridge, narrows again to a deeper stream of swifter current, and flows between green meadows and leafy woods, fern-clad steeps and level haughs, all the way down to Ryton, where the picturesque aspect of the river ceases, and it becomes an industrial waterway. On this reach of the river are several ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... ribbon. Place them on their side with long ribbon streamers coming from underneath each one and in the center of the three place another white bell, open side up, holding an infant doll to represent the new year. Intertwine a few sprays of asparagus fern or smilax. ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... industrious skill interrupted only by little flirts and snatches of endearment, frugally cut short by the common-sense of the tiny house-wife. They had brought their work nearly to an end, and had already begun to line it with fern-down, the gathering of which demanded more distant journeys and longer absences. But, alas! the syringa, immemorial manor of the catbirds, was not more than twenty feet away, and these "giddy neighbors" ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... twilight close about their throats. Only my heart makes answer. Eager vines Go up the rocks and wait; flushed apple-trees Pause in their dance and break the ring for me; Dim, shady wood-roads, redolent of fern And bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant, Look back and beckon ere they disappear. Only my heart, only my heart responds. Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side All through the dragging day,—sharp underfoot ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... balls and fringes, partially concealing bookshelves swollen with black school-texts. Her eye was arrested by crossed scabbards of fretted wood upon the dull green wall, and whereever there was a high flat eminence, some fern waved from a pot of crinkled china, or a bronze horse reared so high that the stump of a tree had to sustain his forequarters. The waters of family life seemed to rise and close over her head, and she ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... soil was undulating and fertile, presented many features of beauty; beyond it, all was sterile, bleak, and barren. Long tracts of brown heath-clad mountain or not less unprofitable valleys of tall and waving fern were all that the eye could discern, except where the broad Shannon, expanding into a tranquil and glassy lake, lay still and motionless beneath the dark mountains, a few islands, with some ruined churches and a round tower, alone breaking ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the stream, she came at last to another wood—not a wild wood like the first, but a tame, domesticated wood. The dead limbs were cut away, and the ground was neatly brushed up under the trees. The brook flowed sedately between fern-bordered banks, under rustic bridges, and widened occasionally into pools carpeted with lily pads. Mossy paths set with stepping-stones led off into mysterious depths that the eye could not penetrate: the leaves were just out enough to half hide and to tantalize. The grass was starred with ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... will not deny that there was a certain mixture of roguery; for I had remarked, that if I chose for an irksome study a half-shaded old trunk, to the hugely curved roots of which clung well-lit fern, combined with twinkling maiden-hair, my friend, who knew from experience that I should not be disengaged in less than an hour, commonly resolved to seek, with his books, some other pleasant little spot. Now nothing disturbed me ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the tarn sparkled like a mirror and on its farther side, where a clump of dark pines overhung a beach of silver sand, the hillslopes shone with yellow grass, relieved by the green of fern and belts of moss. The spot was picturesque; the old house, with its low, straight front and mullioned windows, round which creepers grew, had a touch of quiet beauty. Osborn was proud of Tarnside, although he sometimes ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... of their daily life, and the cold calculation, the lack of sentiment displayed in wooing, I think Puritan husbands and wives were happy in their marriages, though their love was shy, almost sombre, and "flowered out of sight like the fern." A few love-letters still remain to prove their affection: letters of sweethearts and letters of married lovers, such as Governor Winthrop and his wife Margaret; letters like the words of another Margaret—a queen—to ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... creation, they would stare fashionably at the antlered heads which the great slow deer raised out of a forest of bracken that promised to autumn lovers such cover as was never seen before. And now and again, as the amorous perfume of chestnut flowers and of fern was drifted too near, one would say to the other: "My dear! What a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Seminary once held quite a place in literary circles, Cornelius C. Felton, afterward president of Harvard College, being its "chore boy" (the remains of his parents lie in the cemetery near by). Fanny Fern, the sister of N.P. Willis, the wife of James Parton, the celebrated biographer, as well as two sisters of Dr. Alexander Vinton, pursued their studies here, together with Miss Flint, who married Honorable Daniel P. King, member of Congress for the ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... it, and Basavriuk said, "You are just in time, Peter: to-morrow is St. John the Baptist's day. Only on this one night in the year does the fern blossom. I will await you at ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of mignonette would be to her too gay a posy for the Lord's House and the Lord's Day. And balmier breath than was ever borne by blossom is the pure fragrance of green growing things,—southernwood, mint, sweet fern, bayberry, sweetbrier. No rose is half so fresh, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... stock it had to bear, whether of trees, or corn, or cattle, hogs, or mushrooms, or mankind. The farm was not so large or rambling as to tire the mind or foot, yet wide enough and full of change—rich pasture, hazel copse, green valleys, fallows brown, and golden breast-lands pillowing into nooks of fern, clumps of shade for horse or heifer, and for rabbits sandy warren, furzy cleve for hare and partridge, not without a little mere for willows and for wild-ducks. And the whole of the land, with a general slope of liveliness and rejoicing, spread itself well to the sun, with a strong ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... act of kicking out a dung fire. Rajah headed directly toward them, the fire evidently being in the line of path he had chosen. This rare and unexpected freedom, this opportunity to go whither he listed, was as the giant fern he used to eat in the days when he was free and wild ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... against their enemies; but I have never seen any reason to believe that this is so with the three species observed by me, namely, Prunus laurocerasus, Vicia sativa, and V. faba. No plant is so little attacked by enemies of any kind as the common bracken-fern (Pteris aquilina); and yet, as my son Francis has discovered, the large glands at the bases of the fronds, but only whilst young, excrete much sweetish fluid, which is eagerly sought by innumerable ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... especially adapted to the gown of the matron, or wherever a touch of lavender is desired. It is effectively combined with violets, or lilies-of-the-valley and maidenhair fern. The petals are made of satin ribbon one and one-quarter inches wide and of the peculiar pinkish lavender orchid shade. There are five petals in all—each calls for seven inches of ribbon. If possible, three of the petals should be one or two shades ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... the hoarse wind is raving, Rocks where the weary floods murmur and wail, Wilds where the fern by the furrow is waving, Reeled with the echoes that rode on the gale; Far as the tempest thrills Over the darkened hills Far as the sunshine streams over the plain, Roused by the tyrant band, Woke all the mighty land, Girded for battle, from ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... bending to the light wind, which had just, as though in mischief, blotted out the dream-world in the water, and set it rippling eastwards in one sheet of living silver, broken only by a cloud-shadow at its further end. Fragrance was everywhere—from the trees, the young fern, the grass; and from the shining west, the shadowed fells, the brilliant water, there breathed a voice of triumphant beauty, of unconquered peace, which presently affected George ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... normal central capsule. A field of such poppies was grown, and M. Goeppert, with seed from this field, obtained still this monstrous form in great quantity. Deformities of ferns are sometimes sought after by fern-growers. They are now always obtained by taking spores from the abnormal parts of the monstrous fern; from which spores ferns presenting the same peculiarities invariably grow.... The most remarkable case is that observed by Dr. Godron, of Nancy. In 1861 that botanist observed, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... dark eyes fixed on the setting sun. There was no sound save the breathing of her horse, the far sweet trailing song of a spotted sparrow, the undertones of some hidden rill welling up through matted tangles of vine and fern ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... walk," observing the wild flowers; a "fern walk," discerning the delicate tracery of the fern in its cool haunts; a "tree walk", noting the different trees—all are natural ways of interesting boys in ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... handicraft, is fashioning a set of wagon- wheels, the track of which Wall soon be visible. The wild forest is shrinking back; the street has lost the aromatic odor of the pine-trees, and of the sweet-fern that grew beneath them. The tender and modest wild-flowers, those gentle children of savage nature that grew pale beneath the ever-brooding shade, have shrank away and disappeared, like stars that vanish in the breadth of light. Gardens are fenced in, and ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tutor, sympathising fully with the ardent pursuits of boyhood, had been over-indulgent in the matter of granting whole Wednesdays, instead of half-holidays. Any excuse sufficed. Skating on inland ponds in the winter; fishing in the bay, as the year wore on; and, latterly, digging for primrose or fern roots in Brattlesby Woods. But Philip Price was beginning to find out by results that too much play and not enough work was making dull scholars of his pupils, and he had determined to stand out firmly against any more indulgences in the future. It was high time that ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... deep, umbrageous woodlands fragrant with fern, dreaming noons, shimmering in the heat, with the locust drowsily shrilling; warm and silver nights, made musical by the loves of many mocking-birds; the waste places green tangles of blossoming weed, the roads a-flutter with hovering yellow butterflies, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... If Gerald had not thought of tying her hands someone would certainly have been scratched. As it was Mabel's hand was scraped between the cold rock and a passionate boot-heel. Nor will I tell you all that she said as they led her along the fern-bordered gully and through the arch into the wonderland of Italian scenery. She had but little language left when they removed her bandage under a weeping willow where a statue of Diana, bow ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... August, woodcocks are to be found in elevated spots, such as mountains covered with large trees, or in warm open places on their slopes. At the first approach of cold weather they leave the hills, and come down into the plains, concealing themselves in the underwood, or the fern, or in the high grass, when the snow begins to fall. The woodcock is a melancholy bird, and somewhat misanthropic. Its habits are eminently anti-social; it flies but little, so little indeed that its wings seem scarcely of any use, and ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... The woods were at first of recent growth, dense, and utterly impenetrable; the ground, instead of being clothed with grass and shrubs as in the woods of Europe, was everywhere carpeted with Lycopodiums (fern-shaped mosses). Gradually the scene became changed. We descended slightly from an elevated, dry, and sandy area to a low and swampy one; a cool air breathed on our faces, and a mouldy smell of rotting vegetation ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... looked out, wishing the children a happy Christmas. Then we dressed, for there was a great deal to do. Papa had many services in church, Chinese, English, and Dyak. I had the wreaths to make. The church had been decked with moss fern the day before, but the flowers must be added in the morning, or they would be faded. So Julia and I made a crown of French marigolds to hang on the cross over the altar, two large wreaths for either side, and one at the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... him. He then changed clothes with a peasant in order to conceal himself. The peasant was discovered by the pursuers, who now redoubled the diligence of their search. At last, the unhappy Monmouth was found, lying in the bottom of a ditch, and covered with fern; his body depressed with fatigue and hunger; his mind by the memory of past misfortunes, by the prospect of future disasters. Human nature is unequal to such calamitous situations; much more the temper of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... when we had left the uplands of Boulogne behind us, lay along the skirts of that desolate marsh in which I had wandered, and so inland, through plains of fern and bramble, until the familiar black keep of the Castle of Grosbois rose upon the left. Then, under the guidance of Savary, we struck to the right down a sunken road, and so over the shoulder of a hill ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... out of the village, and paused among the trees and fern on the summit of the hill above, to take breath, and to look down at the beautiful sea. Suddenly the captain gave his leg a resounding slap, and cried, "Never knew such a right thing in ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... seen of its kind. In many places the trees formed long aisles and vaulted colonnades and arches so regular that it seemed as though they had been planted by the hand of man. Elsewhere the chaos of tree and shrub, flower and fern and twining root was so indescribable, that it seemed as if chance and haphazard had originated it all; but the mind of our hero was cast, if we may say so, in too logical a mould to accept such ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... of view this distinction is of small importance. AEsthetically, the Law of Crystallization is probably as useful in ministering to natural beauty as Vitality. What are more beautiful than the crystals of a snowflake? Or what frond of fern or feather of bird can vie with the tracery of the frost upon a window-pane? Can it be said that the lichen is more lovely than the striated crystals of the granite on which it grows, or the moss on the mountain side ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... a cotton-tail. A snake slid, hissing, out of sight under a jungle of fern. A butterfly, dull brown and ocher, settled upon a branch in the sunlight, where it began slowly opening ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... part of July when Margaret returned home. The forest trees were all one dark, full, dusky green; the fern below them caught all the slanting sunbeams; the weather was sultry and broodingly still. Margaret used to tramp along by her father's side, crushing down the fern with a cruel glee, as she felt it yield under her ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... "I thought fern would suit your hair better than anything else," said Tom; "and so I got these leaves," and he picked out ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... long and eight miles wide, with the shape of an oyster. The coconut plantation covered the west side. From the white beach the palms ran in serried rows quarter of a mile inland, then began a jungle of bamboo, gum-tree, sandalwood, plantain, huge fern, and choking grasses. The south-east end of the island was hillocky, with volcanic subsoil. There ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... was quite unacquainted with its mysteries—the fern-glades, the woodbine tangles, and the stream, that, if you listened attentively, you could hear faintly ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and mark our progress towards the foot of the hill. I was particularly struck, during the walk, with the richness of the undergrowth in most places, and recognised many berries and plants that resembled those of my native land, especially a tall, elegantly formed fern, which emitted an agreeable perfume. There were several kinds of flowers, too, but I did not see so many of these as I should have expected in such a climate. We also saw a great variety of small birds of bright plumage, and ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... wicked Mal-sum thought in his heart, 'What would it matter even if he knew the truth? I shall slay him before he can harm me.' So he answered truly, 'By the stroke of a fern-root only can I be slain. ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... back, and, bending forward, rested its broad loop over his head. Upon the first his companion placed two more packs; then, stooping beneath the weight of 240 pounds, the packers at a jog-trot set off uphill and down, over rugged rocks and fallen timber, through fern-covered marsh and dense underbrush. Coming to an opening in the wood at the far end of the portage, they quickly tossed their burdens aside, and back again they ran. Nowhere could one see more willing workers. You heard no swearing or grumbling about the exceedingly ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... artistic, not in that sense. I tried her once with a harpsichord I picked up cheap in Wardour Street, and a reproduction of a Roman stool. The thing was an utter failure. A cottage piano, with a photo-frame and a fern upon, it is what the soul cries out for in connection with Robina. Dick is not artistic. Dick does not go with peacocks' feathers and guitars. I can see Dick with a single peacock's feather at St. Giles's Fair, when ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... rutty lane by this time, a lane with banks rich in ferns and floral growth, and here came Blanche and Eva and the youngest boy, released from Latin grammar and Greek delectus at an earlier hour than usual. The car was sent on to the wood, and Bessie and her two sisters produced their fern trowels, and began digging and delving for rare specimens—real or imaginary—assisted by Mr. Jardine, who had more knowledge but less enthusiasm ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... papers—on the Fern Owl; Mr. Rennie's interesting Notes on the Cleanliness of Animals; Mechanism of the Voice in Singing; the Vision of Birds of Prey; New species of British Snake; Animalculae in Snow; Habits of the Chameleon; Peculiarity of the Negro Stomach; Growth of Spanish ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... she cried, and everyone gathered round to see what she had found. Even Susie peered into the hole, and poked a bit of fern gently at the toad, which sat there ...
— The Kitchen Cat, and other Tales • Amy Walton
... road beyond I continued to idiotize, unable to see dryads dancing in the moonlight (as she and I saw them in the same spot to-night), careless that Nature was distilling magic perfume for us from tree and fern and wild flower, our eyes shut to the fact that elves disguised as Indian lilies were using silvered ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... said Reggie, pressing the earth round the roots of the last fern and then rising; 'it's a jolly long time it has taken us. ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... got these home. William just hates me in green, but I would have them. They make one think of fern-leaves and the deep woods, don't they?" said she, standing before the mirror with childish admiration of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... weiss ein Land, wo aus sonnigem Gruen Um versunkene Temple die Trauben bluehn, Wo die purpurne Woge das Ufer besauemt, Und von kommenden Saengern der Lorbeer traeumt; Fern lockt es und winkt dem verlangenden Sinn, Und ich kann nicht ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... width, pointed to the higher plant world that was to come. Between these gaunt towering trunks the graceful tree-ferns spread their canopies at heights of twenty, forty, and even sixty feet from the ground, and at the base was a dense undergrowth of ferns and fern-like seed-plants. Mosses may have carpeted the moist ground, but nothing in the nature of grass or ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... out of a dense fern-brake, slipped down a mossy-lipped stone, and ran across the path at their feet. From the valley arose the mellow song of meadow larks, while about them, in and out, through sunshine and shadow, fluttered ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... woods. Forest as a topographical suffix denotes a wild uncultivated tract of hilly or common land, more often than not quite bare of trees. The great expanse of Radnor Forest is well known to the writer and not even a thorn bush comes to the mind in picturing its miles of fern-clad billowy uplands. ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual summer—or of the Hesperides, (if they were flat, and not close to Atlas,) golden apples and all, I would give away in an instant, for one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady fern. ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... extraordinary glow of radiance. Of course there were orchards after orchards of orange trees covered with fruit, white houses smothered in flowers, gardens overrun with roses, tall groups of eucalyptus trees giving an impression of elegant nakedness, long lines of pepper trees with frail fern-like branches, and these things continued for the rest of the way; but they would have been as nothing without that beautiful, great bland light. The twins had had their hot summers in Pomerania, and their July days in England, ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... to the place where my childhood had dwelt, To the hearth where in early devotion I knelt— The fern and the bramble grew wild in the hall, And the long grass of summer waved green on the wall: The roof-tree was fallen, the household had fled, The garden was ruined, the roses were dead, The wild bird flew scared from her ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... she had ceased to be a dryad in a wood, it was to become the Armida of an enchanted garden. She could have no idea of the figure she presented to a connoisseur in girls as from a background of palms, fern-trees, and banked masses of bloom she stared at him with lips half parted ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... head, he may not touch food with them or engage in any other employment; he is fed by another person with food cooked over a sacred fire. He cannot be released from the taboo before the following day, when he rubs his hands with potato or fern root which has been cooked on a sacred fire; and this food having been taken to the head of the family in the female line and eaten by her, his hands are freed from the taboo. In some parts of New Zealand the most sacred day of the year was that appointed for hair-cutting; ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... spills for centuries, perhaps silently adding, year by year, another layer of aromatic springiness to poor Tom's bed. Flinging his tired body on this grateful couch, burying his head in the crushed sweet fern of his pillow with one deep-drawn sigh of pleasure,—there, haunted by no past and harassed by no future, slept God's fool as sweetly ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... near it, and near, too, to the boys, who could now distinguish their long, erect ears, slender limbs, and graceful motions—resembling, in fact, those of the common hare. Their colour, however, was different. It was a rusty fern, lighter underneath, but in no part—not even under the tail—did any white appear. It was a beautiful sight to behold these innocent little creatures, now nibbling at the blades of grass, now leaping a few feet over the sward, and then settling comically upon their haunches. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... chance assemblage of wild youth, who might see fit to take the work in hand. There were formalities that must be observed, songs to be chanted, prayers to be recited. It was necessary to bear in mind that when one deflowered the woods of their fronds of ie-ie and fern or tore the trailing lengths of maile—albeit in honor of Laka herself—the body of the goddess was being despoiled, and the despoiling must be done with all ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... eat a wheat-ear, because they call it here a fern-knacker; but since he knew it was a wheat-ear, he is extremely concerned. You are desired to acquaint Miss Smith that the Duchess was upon the brink of leaving off painting the first week she came here, but hath since ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... like a pressed fern," said Winnie. "Do you remember the fad we had for pressed flowers and skeleton leaves? We used to keep them inside all ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... occupations they often considered it expedient to escape detection by assuming invisibility, and for this object sought the assistance of certain plants, such as the fern-seed[17]. In Sweden, hazel-nuts were supposed to have the power of making invisible, and it may be remembered how in one of Andersen's stories the elfin princess has the faculty of vanishing at will, by putting a wand in ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... of your readers want something odd and interesting in the way of plants let them try one of your Little Monarch Fern Balls. I have had rather hard luck with mine. I received the Fern Ball about a year ago, and every member of the family except myself condemned it at once as being "no good," but I kept it watered and ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... know, surely, the Hemlock spruce of America; which, while growing by itself in open ground, is the most wilful and fantastic, as well as the most graceful, of all the firs; imitating the shape, not of its kindred, but of an enormous tuft of fern. ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... asseverating, "It is her home—she knows it—the place she loves like that." And when they had made their wide round, down the lane, up a grassy dell, into his park, where he had to show her some trees that must come down; when they had skirted the park, along its mossy, fern-grown wall, and under its overhanging branches, until, once more, they were on the common and the white of Valerie's cottage glimmered before them, he voiced this protest, saying to her, as he watched her eyes, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... development of the race.—Considering which—the apparently cruel paradox and irony of it—Honoria swung down past the scattered hawthorns, thick with ruddy fruit, across the fragrant herbs and short, sweet turf, through the straggling fern-brakes, which impeded her progress, plucking at her skirts, careless of the rich colour and ample ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... long, on the second story. In this garden, which is perhaps a hundred feet square by forty in height, rise clumps of Italian cypress and laurel from beds of emerald turf and blooming hyacinths. In the centre a fountain showers over fern-covered rocks, and the gravel-walks around the border are shaded by tall camellia-trees in white and crimson bloom. Lamps of frosted glass hang among the foliage, and diffuse a mellow golden moonlight over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... of science, not as some think to divest this universe of its wonder and mystery, but, as in the case before us, to point out the wonder and the mystery of common things. Those fern-like forms, which on a frosty morning overspread your windowpanes, illustrate the action of the same force. Breathe upon such a pane before the fires are lighted, and reduce the solid crystalline film to the liquid condition; then watch its subsequent resolidification. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... rich red blood in Hester, and the flavor of the sweet-fern and the bayberry are not truer to the soil than the native sweetness of our little Phoebe! The Yankee mind has for the most part budded and flowered in pots of English earth, but you have fairly raised yours as a seedling ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... might be fair and full, after its kind; and at least some little bird might be the better for it. All around her, too, the life of the world that had so troubled her,—who could tell, in the tangle of green, where the good and the gift might ripen and fall? Every little fern-frond has ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... lofty pity for Vick, have stopped to allow her to get nearer to them. With their fine noses in the air, and their proud necks compassionately turned toward her, they are waiting, while she pushes, panting and shrieking, through the stout fern-stems; then, leap cruelly ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Abgeschiednen betracht' ich gern, Stuend' ihr Verdienst auch noch so fern; Doch mit den edlen lebendigen Neuen Mag ich ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... And first her fern-seed doth bestow, The kernel of the mistletoe; And here and there as Puck should go, With terror to affright him, She night-shade strews to work him ill, Therewith her vervain and her dill, That hindreth witches of their will, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... those ferns. They were not quite so slender and tapering and gothic as the ferns we see to-day. They were a trifle more lush and ragged, and their tips were sometimes almost rounded. But Ab noted little of fern or bird. It was only the general sensuousness that was upon him. The smell of the pines was a partial tonic to the healthy, half-awakened man, and, though he lay back upon the rugged wooden bed and half dozed again, nature had aroused him a trifle beyond the point of relapse into ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... must be the internal force and the external stimulus. Neither is enough by itself. A rose will not flower in the dark, and a fern ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... drive; the porch was bright with flowering plants arranged in tiers; a parlourmaid opened the door as though she conferred a privilege and, as Henrietta passed through the hall, she had glimpses of a statue holding a large fern and ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... if a glimpse of very rich park land is needed, it would be worth while to walk three miles north to Plashetts, which combines a vast tract of wood with a small park notable at once for its trees, its brake fern, its lakes, and its water fowl. But if one would gain it by rail, Isfield is ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... rock, and dingle buff with littered fern, green holly copse where lurked the woodcock, and arcades of zigzag oak, Frida kept her bridal robe from spot, or rent, or blemish. Passing all these little pleadings of the life she had always loved, at last she turned the craggy corner into the ledge ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... very much to one side. There was a look of mild astonishment on her large face, and well there might be. For though the arm-chair stood on a carpet, to the left of it, miraculously skirting the carpet-border, there was a dashing water-fall. On her right stood a Grecian pillar with a giant fern-tree on either side of it, and in the background towered a gaunt ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... and under his guidance they followed the river-bank for some distance, and then turned aside into a wood in which Gilbert Fenton had never been before. He said so, with an expression of surprise at the beauty of the place, where the fern grew deep under giant oaks and beeches, and where the mossy ground dipped suddenly down to a deep still pool which reflected the sunlit sky through a break in the dark foliage ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... stood in the fading light, These men of battle, with grave, dark looks, As plain to be read as open books, While slowly gathered the shades of night. The fern on the slope was splashed with blood, And down in the corn, where the poppies grew, Were redder stains than the poppies knew; And crimson-dyed was ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... concealed, the upper one breaking upon the view of the delighted spectators and announcing Act II of the play. It is a night scene in a wood near Athens; mossy banks and green trees; clouds and twinkling stars in the heavens; forms of fairies sitting about like humming birds, or resting in nodding fern leaves. They sing in quick, short rhymes, suiting the ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... not there. In all probability he would never be there again to work. Another boy was sitting on his bench in the screen-room, another boy was watching rainbow coal and fern-marked slate. This thought in Bachelor Billy's mind was a sad one. He pushed the empty car on the carriage, and sat down on a bench by the window to consider the subject ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... of the observations made during his stay at Rio, when tropical nature was still a fresh and unexplored page to the young observer, are wonderful. Cabbage palms, liana creepers, luxuriant fern leaves—roads, bridges, and soil—planarian worms, frogs which climbed perpendicular sheets of glass, the light of fireflies, brilliant butterflies, fights between spiders and wasps, the victories of ants over difficulties, the habits of monkeys, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... is, as far as I know, an early breeder at Naini Tal; common as the bird is I have only found one nest and that on the 24th April; it was a shallow slenderly built structure of fine roots, chiefly of maiden-hair fern, in a rough outer casing of twigs, placed on a horizontal bough overhanging a nullah about fifteen feet from the ground. The tree had moderately dense foliage, and was about twenty-five feet high in a small ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... case-knife, was discovered. It was the opinion of the surgeon, who afterwards examined the body, that the blade had been broken by coming in contact with one of the rib bones; and it was by this that he accounted for the slightness of the last mentioned wound. I looked carefully among the fern and long grass, to see if I could discover any other token of the murderer: Thornton assisted me. At the distance of some feet from the body, I thought I perceived something glitter. I hastened to the place, and picked up a miniature. I was just going to cry ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... says he believes will prove of as good account to him now as the other did at that rent. From the 'Change to Captain Cocke's, and there, by agreement, dined, and there was Charles Porter, Temple, Fern, Debasty, whose bad English and pleasant discourses was exceeding good entertainment, Matt. Wren, Major Cooper, and myself, mighty merry and pretty discourse. They talked for certain, that now the King do follow Mrs. Stewart wholly, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of bushy hollies which afforded a shelter from the wind, and sat down under it, some tufts of dead fern, crisp and dry, that remained from the previous season forming a sort of nest for them. But it was cold, nevertheless, on this March night, particularly for Grace, who with the sanguine prematureness of youth in matters of dress, had considered it spring-time, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Trevor proposed a stroll through the conservatories, and while the elders stopped to admire a fern or a rare exotic, Will and Gwenda roamed on under the palms and greenery to where a sparkling fountain rose, and flung its feathery spray into ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... away from mortal eyes danced the Fairy folk. Fire-flies hung in bright clusters on the dewy leaves, that waved in the cool night-wind; and the flowers stood gazing, in very wonder, at the little Elves, who lay among the fern-leaves, swung in the vine-boughs, sailed on the lake in lily cups, or danced on the mossy ground, to the music of the hare-bells, who rung out their merriest peal in honor of ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... Broom Road, which curved and twisted through a lush growth of flowers and fern-like algarobas. The warm air was rich with perfume, and overhead, outlined against the stars, were fruit-burdened mangoes, stately avocado trees, and slender-tufted palms. Every here and there were grass houses. Voices and laughter rippled through ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... was young, every pore was open, and every stalk was swollen with racing currents of juice. God was palpably present in the country, and the devil had gone with the world to town. Flossy catkins of the later kinds, fern-sprouts like bishops' croziers, the square-headed moschatel, the odd cuckoo-pint,—like an apoplectic saint in a niche of malachite,—snow-white ladies'-smocks, the toothwort, approximating to human flesh, the enchanter's night-shade, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... various species of heath-berries, cranberries, bilberries, &c., furnishing the poor with a source of profit, and the rich of luxury. What a pleasure it is to throw ourselves down beneath the verdant screen of the beautiful fern, or the shade of a venerable oak, in such a scene, and listen to the summer sounds of bees, grasshoppers, and ten thousand other insects, mingled with the more remote and solitary cries of the pewit and the curlew! Then, to think of the coach-horse, urged on his sultry stage, or the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... since then, but I do not remember to have seen a landscape more beautiful in its peculiar English character than that which I now gazed on. It had none of the feudal characteristics of ancient parks, with giant oaks, fantastic pollards, glens covered with fern, and deer grouped upon the slopes; on the contrary, in spite of some fine trees, chiefly beech, the impression conveyed was, that it was a new place,—a made place. You might see ridges on the lawns which showed where hedges ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are nearly equal in age, and similar in education, tastes, and sentiments." In another letter, written after she had lost both her sisters, she says, "Emily had a particular love for the moors; and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne's delight; and, when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon." Let any one, who would understand ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Aros. Houses of course there were—three at least; but they lay so far on the one side or the other that no stranger could have found them from the track. A large part of the Ross is covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger than a two-roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather in between them where the vipers breed. Any way the wind was, it was always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jaquetta to come with him at once, and the log huts and fern trees danced before her eyes as the blue spectacles had done before mine; but she did not like to leave me, and Fulk would not encourage it, for we both thought her much too young and too tenderly brought up to be sent out to a wild settler's life alone ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heat of the earth in this climate is 48 degrees, those tender trees which will bear bending down, are easily secured from the frost by spreading them upon the ground, and covering them with straw or fern. This particularly suits fig-trees, as they easily bear bending to the ground, and are furnished with an acrid juice, which secures them from the depredations of insects; but are nevertheless liable to be eaten by mice. See additional notes, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... her pet "pash" Would be a nice car at the door, To motor all day without fagging— Not to drive nor to start up the thing. Oh! the joy to see someone else dragging A tow-rope or greasing a spring! Then a fifth murmured, "What about fishing? Fern and heather right up to your knees And a big salmon rushing and swishing 'Mid the smell of the red rowan trees." So the train of opinions drifted And thicker the atmosphere grew, Till piercing the voices uplifted Rang a sound ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... distant booming of the mountain. From this point to the Bosco the scenery is described as a dreary region, but the tract of the wood showed some beautiful places resembling an English park, with old oaks and abundant fern. "Here we found flocks browsing; they are much exposed to sheep-stealers, who do not touch travelers, calculating with justice that men do not carry much money to the summit of Etna." The party passed the Casa degli Inglesi, which registered a temperature of 31 deg., and then continued ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... woman wants to have her regular nap," she told them. "Frances, take Mrs. Kennedy to the fern walk and show her the famous 'Newbury Bubble' among the rocks. I want to be rid of you both ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
