"Moss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is to-day instead, and early in the morning, that the Ministers may be able to go to their fish dinner at Greenwich. I called on the Duke yesterday evening to know about a Council, but he could not tell me. Then came a Mr. Moss (or his card) while I was there. 'Who is he?' I said. 'Oh, a man who wants to see me about a canal. I can't see him. Everybody will see me, and how the Devil they think I am to see everybody, and be the whole morning with the King, and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Hornberg, and far below the streams tumbled in white foam down the limestone rocks. In front of him, dome upon dome of wooded mountain stood against the sky. It was October, and the air was cool and sharp, woodsmoke and damp moss exquisitely mingled in it with the subtle odours of the pines. Overhead, between the tips of the highest firs, he saw the first stars peeping, and the sky was a clean, pale amethyst that seemed exactly the colour all these ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... The horseman has always at his side a native of the place, who, by pursuing game, or tending cattle, or being often employed in messages or conduct, has learned where the ridge of the hill has breadth sufficient to allow a horse and his rider a passage, and where the moss or bog is hard enough to bear them. The bogs are avoided as toilsome at least, if not unsafe, and therefore the journey is made generally from precipice to precipice; from which if the eye ventures to look down, it sees below ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... no shadows to-day, except such as the trees cast upon the green moss beds and the black rocks. The tops of the tall elms were sere and rusty, but the leaves of the rugged oaks that fringed the canyon's lips shone a rich and glossy brown. All down the sides the poplars and delicate birches, pale yellow, but sometimes flushing into orange and red, stood shimmering ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... and the tide goes down, And ever I hear a song, As the moaning winds, through the moss-hung oaks, Sweep surging ever along: "O massa white man! help de slave, And de wife and chillen too; Eber dey'll work, wid de hard worn hand Ef ell gib 'em de ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... covered with vegetation, led to the railroad track below. I think he must have become rather frightened at his position, because he hesitated long before he resumed his downward course, and when he finally did make the attempt his foot slipped upon the moss-covered rocks and down he fell, scratching and clawing at every shrub within reach. Believing him to be killed, we rushed down the hill and around to the foot of the cliff. It probably took us about fifteen or twenty ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... severe, and the falls of snow were very heavy and frequent. It was fortunate that Humphrey had been so provident in making so large a quantity of hay, or the stock would have been starved. The flock of goats, in a great part, subsisted themselves on the bark of trees and moss; at night they had some hay given to them, and they did very well. It was hardly possible for Edward to come over to see his brother and sisters, for the snow was so deep as to render such a long journey ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... in a moss-grown summer-house at the end of the garden, where she ventured to sit down to put on her stout leather shoes. The children's toys, a ball and a set of ninepins lay on the floor! How many ages ago was it that she had made that sarcastic reply ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is another part of the grounds in its natural state. Here is a large rock, with the mountain-ash rooted in its fissures, overgrown, as you see, with ivy and moss; and from this part of it bursts a little fountain, that runs bubbling down ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... returning to their ancient abodes. Andre's experience among them was of the roughest. The staple of his diet was acorns and tripe de roche,—a species of lichen, which, being boiled, resolved itself into a black glue, nauseous, but not void of nourishment. At times he was reduced to moss, the bark of trees, or moccasins and old moose-skins cut into strips and boiled. His hosts treated him very ill, and the worst of their fare was always his portion. When spring came to his relief, he returned to his post of St. Simon, with ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... saved themselves on the ice, and had only to contend with hunger, snow, cold, and other difficulties to which the most of them had been accustomed from their childhood; but in the open sea the ill-built, weak vessel, caulked with moss mixed with clay, and held together with willows, leaked already with a moderate sea, and with a heavier, was helplessly lost, if a harbour could not be ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... powder was dry, for I had thrown off my flask with my coat before jumping into the sea, and thus I had the means of creating fire. I rubbed wet powder over my handkerchief, and then gathered some dried sticks and moss. After this I found some dead trees, the boughs of which were dry and brittle, and in the exercise I soon grew warm, and had the satisfaction of seeing a great heap of fagots accumulating. I fired my pistol into the handkerchief, which, being saturated with powder, caught the fire, and this I blew ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... visited the stables and the home-farm, with its cow-houses and dairy and piggeries; some the neglected greenhouses, and some the equally neglected old- fashioned alleys, with their clipped yews and their moss-grown statues. No one belonging to the house was anywhere visible to receive them, until the great bell at length summoned them to the plentiful meal spread in the ruined hall. "The hospitality of some people has no roof to it," Godfrey said, when he heard of the preparations. "Ten people will ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... zodiac partially over him, and tried to button his alapaca duster a little closer, but his sleep was troubled by the sociability of the coyotes and the midnight twitter of the mountain lion. He ate moss agates rare and spruce gum for breakfast. When he got to the camp he looked like a forty-day ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... night, near a little spring, he told himself that this was better than being behind prison bars; true, he lacked company, but he had known worse solitude—the "solitary." In it, he had lain on the hard stones; here he had soft moss. If only he could reach out and touch those he hated—the unknown enemy whose face had bent over him a fleeting instant ere he had struck his hand from the gunwale; Dandy Joe and the police agent—if only they, too, were here, the place would have been world ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... in the way of a bed, for it was so dark in the woods that it was impossible to collect moss or leaves to make a soft resting place, and the few leaves and pine boughs which he did gather made his place for sleeping ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... two metres in diameter. They make there a good pile of very dry hay on which they all install themselves, after having carefully protected themselves against the external cold by closing up the passage with stones and calking the interstices with grass and moss. ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... there. It exactly answers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty with utility—and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you admire it; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, grey moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me. I know ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... their gaunt outstretched arms and gray bodies, seamed with time, knobs like human muscles jutted; between the broken bark the red blood showed. From their angry hands, clutching at the air or doubled in imprecation, long strands of gray-green moss hung, waving and coiling, in the night wind. Only one old man was on his hands and knees as if to crawl from the field; but a comrade spurned him with his foot and wound his bony hand about the coward's neck. Another had turned his head to the enemy, ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... her, at one of the many Dinners decreed by Custom. They had to sit Miles apart, with Mountains of unseemly Victuals stacked between them, while some moss-grown Offshoot of the Family Tree rose and conquered his Asthma long enough to propose ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... cleverness in me to wrest a living from this big city, that I long to stand out at the edge of the curbing, and take off my hat, and wave it, and shout, 'Say, you four million uncaring people, I'm Mary Louise Moss, from Escanaba, Michigan, and I like your town, and I want to stay here. Won't you please pay some slight attention to me. No one knows I'm here except myself, and ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... Mr. Moss was the sole employe of the railroad company at White Point flag station. His official hours were long. They extended round the dial of the clock twice daily. Curiously enough, his leisure extended to practically the same limits. The truth was, in summer, anyway, he had no duties that ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... for he stayed not long in a place; and, being the youngest brother, and the house diminished in his patrimony, he foresaw his destiny, that he was first to roll through want and disability, to subsist otherwise before he came to a repose, and as the stone doth by long lying gather moss. He was the first that exposed himself in the land-service of Ireland, a militia which did not then yield him food and raiment, for it was ever very poor; nor dared he to stay long there, though shortly after he came thither again, under the command of the Lord Grey, but with his own colours flying ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... England a fatal mistake arose—an idea that Oliver Sinclair, the King's "minion," whom he had sent to read a manifesto to the army, had been appointed its general—upon which the new bands, disgusted in their turn, fell into a forced retreat, and getting involved in the broken ground of Solway Moss were there pursued and surrounded by the English, miserably defeated and put to flight. "There was but ane small number slain in the field," says Pitscottie, "to wit, there was slain on both sides but twenty-four, whereof was ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... several hours of an artist's time, and its effect is considerably increased by a solitary tower, resembling a moss-trooper's abode, which stands in the middle distance. It is called, as we understood, the Chateau de Crest, and is the relic of a state prison. On passing a corner of rising ground this wild valley disappears, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... more than their enjoyment. We are motes in the midst of generations: we have our sunbeams to circuit and climb. Look at the summits of the trees around us, how they move, and the loftiest the most: nothing is at rest within the compass of our view, except the grey moss on the park-pales. Let it eat away the dead oak, but let it not be compared ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... never got over that loss. She loved her husband devotedly. Long years afterward, when she was old and wrinkled, she placed a little grandson behind her on her horse and took him far into the forest. She set him down beside a moss-covered log. ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... as the horse told him. He took off the saddle and bridle and the armor and hid them in the tree, and made for himself a moss wig; when he put it upon his head all the beauty went out of his face, and he looked so pale and miserable that no one would have wanted ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... portal arched across Like the gateway of some godlike giant's hold Sweep and swell the billowy breasts of moor and moss East and westward, and the dell their slopes enfold Basks in purple, glows in green, exults in gold Glens that know the dove and fells that hear the lark Fill with joy the rapturous island, as an ark ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... three feet across at the top. In following a vaguely defined trail through the wood one day in the early spring, a trail at one time evidently considerably used, it led me to this spot. I looked at the stone enclosure, partly moss-grown. I wondered why, although the ground was wet around it, there was no water in or running from what had evidently been at one time a ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... primeval forest, with great trees, thickets in background, and moss and ferns underfoot. A set in the foreground. To the left is a tent, about ten feet square, with a fly. The front and sides are rolled up, showing a rubber blanket spread, with bedding upon it; a rough stand, with books and some canned goods, a rifle, a fishing-rod, etc. Toward ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... sour, coagulated milk, sometimes mixed with fresh milk or cream, and flavoured with the juice of certain berries; their usual dinner is dried fish, skyr, and rancid butter; and skyr, cheese, or porridge, made of Iceland moss, forms their supper; bread is rarely tasted by many of the Icelanders, but appears as a dainty at their rural feasts with mutton, and milk-porridge. They commonly drink a kind of whey mixed with water. As the cattle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... went along with him, which he did the rather that he thought it might possibly be true, and if it was, he did not know but the apparition might trouble himself: Depones, That they accordingly found the bones in a peat-moss, where peats had been casten above ground, and near to the top of a hill: That the place was distant from Dubrach between two and three miles, between Glenchristie and Glenconie, and about half ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott
... had seated three pairs of children's trouses for young Miss Gowdy, her children are very hard on their trouses (slidin' down the banesters and such). And young Miss Gowdy is onexperienced yet in mendin', so the patches won't show. And Sister Moss had got forty-seven cents for the job, and brung it all, every cent of it, with the exception of three cents she kep out to buy peppermint drops with. She has the colic fearful, and peppermint sometimes ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... it is carried along by a peasant boy in the heat. They usually die of suffocation. But to the German mind that is all right. It is only not right when one kills them instantly and lays them in a cool creel, on fresh wet ferns and moss." ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... give such shall you have," answered the moss-trooper, first pointing with his lance towards the burned village, and then almost instantly levelling it against Lord Lacy. The squire drew his sword, and severed at one blow the steel head from the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... before we tackle the last round," begged Bandy-legs, as they arrived alongside the landmark mentioned by Obed; and without waiting for the others to assent he dropped his pack, and threw himself down on an especially inviting bit of moss, heaving a great sigh of relief; for be it known, Bandy-legs was not especially "mountain out of a mole-hill," as Steve aptly put it, when referring to ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... than for them to get a fire! There are a thousand ways of doing that! Two pebbles! A little dry moss! A little burnt rag,"—and how do you burn the rag? "The blade of a knife would do for a steel, or two bits of wood rubbed briskly together in ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... consummate, warm, wagging his tail, I was going to say like a Christian, I mean like an ordinary dog. Then flashed upon me the solution of the Mystery of Black and Tan in all its varieties: the body, its upper part gray or black or yellow according to the upper soil and herbs, heather, bent, moss, &c.; the belly and feet, red or tan or light fawn, according to the nature of the deep soil, be it ochrey, ferruginous, light clay, or comminuted mica slate. And wonderfullest of all, the DOTS of TAN above the eyes—and who has not noticed and wondered ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... tuft of moss and tossed it from him, as if therewith dismissing the subject. And Priscilla felt a little hurt, though not for worlds would she have suffered ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... placed always in the living-room, and so becomes an intimate part of the family life. On a table set in a corner is represented a rocky hill-side—dusted with flour to represent snow—rising in terraces tufted with moss and grass and little trees and broken by foot-paths and a winding road. This structure is very like a Provencal hill-side, but it is supposed to represent the rocky region around Bethlehem. At its base, on the left, embowered in laurel or in holly, is a wooden or pasteboard representation ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... in a manner somewhat abrupt and unceremonious. It was one of those old wooden houses, which dot our valleys in Virginia almost at every turn—contented with their absence from the gay flashing world of cities, and raising proudly their moss-covered roofs between the branches of wide spreading oaks, and haughty pines, and locusts, burdening the air with perfume. Apple Orchard had about it an indefinable air of moral happiness and domestic comfort. It seemed full of memories, too; and you would have said that ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... ought to have been this morning)—could read writing as well as either you or I. So what does he do, on obtaining the nosegay, but examine it well. The stalks of the flowers were tied up with slips of matting in wet moss. Pierre undid the strings, unwrapped the moss, and out fell a piece of wet paper, with the writing all blurred with moisture. It was but a torn piece of writing-paper, apparently, but Pierre's wicked mischievous ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... there! "What! would you come so far to see antiquity, and then count your steps how near you would approach her?" Eight bells constitute the peal in this venerable old tower. Near by, stand the ivy-clad and moss-covered ruins of portions of the sacred edifices that date back, even to the earlier ages of the Christian era, and from among the dust and rubbish are picked up the broken images of hideous-looking idols that were the ornaments (?) of the temples once standing ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... which send up their flowers only to fructify in the sun, and then sink to ripen one bunch after another. Others, with great cabbage-looking leaves, seem to remain always at the bottom. The young of fish swarm, and bob in and out from the leaves. A species of soft moss grows on most plants, and seems to be good fodder for fishes, fitted by hooked or turned-up noses to guide it into ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... must be admitted that his tone was not bad. The word sank softly into her ear, like small rain upon moss, and it sank into ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... islands over leagues of warm sea, brought on its wings a heavy depressing moisture. In the streets people walked listlessly, perspired, mopped themselves, and abused their much-vaunted climate. Everyone who could manage it was out of town, either on the heights of Moss Vale or the Blue Mountains, escaping from the ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... the footpath that led up to the place on the mountain John had called the Bridge of the Nose. Ellen took that path, often travelled and much loved by her; and slowly, with slow-dripping tears, made her way up over moss wet with the dew, and the stones and rocks with which the rough way was strewn. She passed the place where Alice had first found her she remembered it well; there was the very stone beside which they had kneeled together, and where Alice's ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Robin Hood's barn" is to travel in a roundabout fashion, and "to sell Robin Hood's pennyworths", to sell much below value, as a generous robber might. His "feather" is the Traveller's Joy, his "hatband" the club-moss. His "men" or his "sheep" are the bracken, and his "wind" a wind that brings on a thaw. We are told that Robin could stand anything but a "tho wind". The Red Campion, the Ragged Robin, and the Herb Robert are known in several ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... in relation to what had taken place up the river, Lee saw, on the night of the 30th, that the movement in front of Fredericksburg was a feint, and his real antagonist was at Chancellorsville. He had previously ordered Jackson's corps up from Moss Creek and now advanced with the main body of his army to meet Hooker, leaving Early's division of Jackson's corps and Barksdale's brigade of McLaws' division of Longstreet's corps to hold the heights of Fredericksburg ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... all these people. Then she turned into the woods and sat down on a fallen log. It was the place where they had stopped to rest yesterday, Neckart lying at her feet. There was the imprint still in the dead moss where his arm had lain. She looked guiltily about, and then laid her hand in the broken moss with a quick passionate touch. The baby caught her chin in its fingers. She hugged it to her breast, and kissed it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... tint between almost pure white, brown, yellow, and intense green; in the varieties of the sugar peas we have these same tints, together with red passing through fine purple into a dark chocolate tint. These colours are either uniform or distributed in dots, striae, or moss-like marks; they depend in some cases on the colour of the cotyledons seen through the skin, and in other cases on the outer coats of the pea itself. In the different varieties the pods contain, according to ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... every foot of the rock within reach, but there were no signs of any man's handiwork. The rock was solid, thickly covered with dripping moss and ferns which had flourished in the mist and spray that rose from the foot of the fall. This they had ruthlessly scraped off with their picks. Silently they went out again at the end, and stood hopelessly looking at the fall. It was some time before Harry said, "We must move some ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... it, he grasped her and fairly swung her across a gulley; and again, as she gathered herself to jump, his powerful arm slipped around her body and he lowered her to the moss below, leaving her with red cheeks and a rapid heart to climb ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... was a large edifice, constructed of moss-grown stone, but in a modern and airy style of architecture. The engine came to a pause in its vicinity, with ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they were surrounded by delightful shade animated by hundreds of loud and low voices far away and close at hand. Countless buds were opening under the moss and ferns, strawberries were ripening close to the ground, and the delicate leafy boughs of the bilberry bushes were full of juicy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... road lay swamps, their gaunt trees festooned, or rather garroted, with vines, and draped with gray moss; while all about and among them lay their comrades already prostrate and decaying. On the higher lands fields had been fenced in, and cleared by burning the trees, whose charred skeletons still stood, holding black and fleshless arms to heaven in mute appeal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... 0% permanent crops: 0% permanent pastures: 0% forests and woodland: 0% other: 100% (largely covered by permanent ice and snow with some sparse vegetation consisting of grass, moss, and lichen) ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... brightest of eyes, the quaintest and most twitchy of chins, and looked altogether like a gutta-percha cherub in a chronic state of longitudinal squeeze. They were locked together by two grubby paws, and had each an armful of moss, which they deposited on the floor as they ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... climb up the crags, which looked but one mile from you when you started, so clear against the sky stood out every knoll and slab; the first stars of the white saxifrage, golden-eyed, blood-bedropt, as if a fairy had pricked her finger in the cup, which shine upon some green cushion of wet moss, in a dripping crack of the cliff; the first grey tufts of the Alpine club-moss, the first shrub of crowberry, or sea-green rose-root, with its strange fleshy stems and leaves, which mark the two-thousand-feet-line, and the beginning of the Alpine world; the scramble over the arid waves ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... commencing in the early 1800's, led naturally to the growth of a community around the courthouse. In the vicinity of the crossroads a few buildings antedated the courthouse. Earp's store, probably built in the late 1700's, was one such building, as were dwelling houses reputedly built by the Moss family ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... bosom of this little Grove stood a rustic Grotto, formed in imitation of an Hermitage. The walls were constructed of roots of trees, and the interstices filled up with Moss and Ivy. Seats of Turf were placed on either side, and a natural Cascade fell from the Rock above. Buried in himself the Monk approached the spot. The universal calm had communicated itself to his bosom, and a voluptuous tranquillity spread languor ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... other, and minister to each other whether they will or not. Because He is a God of beauty, He made all things beautiful, of a variety and a richness unspeakable, that He might rejoice in all His works, and find a divine delight in every moss which grows upon the moor, and every gnat which dances in the sun. Because He is a God of love, He gave to every creature a power of happiness according to its kind, that He might rejoice in the happiness of His creatures. And lastly, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... here that his fidelity attains its very pinnacle. Faithful unto death! Again and again, in innumerable instances, he has shown his faithfulness long after the one he loved was dead. The dog in the mediaeval legend that dug his master's grave, covered him with moss and leaves, and then watched there for seven years, until he died himself, has found many a parallel in real life. A well-known dog in the days of the Stewarts was still beside his master's tomb three years after the latter's death; and, in much later times, another dog, at Lisle, refused ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... out of it would have been the easiest thing in the world. I know a good deal of wood-craft, and always can steer a course steadily by having the points of the compass fixed for me by the size and the trend of the branches, and by the bark growing thin or thick or by the moss or the lack of moss on the tree-trunks, and by the other such simple forest signs which are the outcome of the affection that there is on the part of ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... the same as the alpine strawberry, which is said to grow in the mountains of Greece, and thence northward. This was probably the first variety cultivated, though our native species would seem as unpromising a subject for the garden as club-moss ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the very poet of a passion flower, such holy mysteries as its opening petals disclosed to him! To Lucy Grey, who wore pensive curls, and had a sweet voice, he presented constantly fragrant little sprays of mignonette, cunning moss baskets with a suspicion of heliotrope peeping out, and crushed myrtle blossoms between the leaves of her most exquisitely bound books. To Katy Lessing, who rowed a small green boat somewhere up the Hudson in the summer, he confided the fact that water ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bed of the brook that for centuries had cut deep into the soft valley soil. The trees closing overhead made long tunnels through which the sunshine worked in blobs and patches. Down in the tunnels were bars of sand and gravel, old roots and trunks covered with moss or painted red by the irony water; foxgloves growing lean and pale towards the light; clumps of fern and thirsty shy flowers who could not live away from moisture and shade. In the pools you could see the wave thrown up by the trouts as they charged hither ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... ventured to hope that wisdom would descend upon me with the falling leaves of the avenue; and that I should light upon an intellectual treasure, in the Old Manse, well worth those hoards of long-hidden gold, which people seek for in moss-grown houses. Profound treatises of morality—a layman's unprofessional, and therefore unprejudiced views of religion;—histories (such as Bancroft might have written, had he taken up his abode here, as he once purposed), bright with picture, gleaming over a depth of philosophic thought;—these ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... wares led all the rest. "Take it or leave it!" was her selling maxim. When devices came along that saved labour and increased production she refused to scrap the old to make way for the new. Born, too, was the evil of restricted output. Moss began to grow on her vaunted industrial structure. England lagged in ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... yon bank and o'er yon brae, O'er yon moss amang the heather; I'll kilt my coats aboon my knee, And follow my love ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Franklin, Adams, Butler, Marion, Jefferson, and Preble counties. On soil, old logs, and moss in woods. Not previously reported from Ohio, but included under Peltigera canina and Peltigera rufescens. Evidently widely distributed and frequent in the State, ...
— Ohio Biological Survey, Bull. 10, Vol. 11, No. 6 - The Ascomycetes of Ohio IV and V • Bruce Fink and Leafy J. Corrington
... parting blow then. The word historian imports a sage and solemn author, one that curls his brow with a sullen gravity, like a bull-necked Presbyter since the army hath got him off his jurisdiction, who, Presbyter like, sweeps his breast with a reverend beard, full of native moss-troopers; not such a squirting scribe as this that's troubled with the rickets, and makes pennyworths of history. The college-treasury that never had in bank above a Harry-groat, shut up there in a melancholy solitude, like one that is kept to keep possession, had as ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of Scots, daughter of King James V and his wife Mary of Lorraine, was born in December, 1542, a few days before the death of her father, heart-broken by the disgrace of his arms at Solway Moss, where the disaffected nobles had declined to encounter an enemy of inferior force in the cause of a king whose systematic policy had been directed against the privileges of their order, and whose representative ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... the polity which thus assumed a prominent organization have been already indicated. There was no revolution, no radical change. The ancient rugged tree of Netherland liberty—with its moss-grown trunk, gnarled branches, and deep-reaching roots—which had been slowly growing for ages, was still full of sap, and was to deposit for centuries longer its annual rings of consolidated and concentric strength. Though lopped of some luxuriant boughs, it was sound at the core, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Basil, tansy, centaury,— Was the grass of that orchard, hid Love's amazements all amid. Jarring the air with rumor cool, Small fountains played into a pool With sound as soft as the barley's hiss When its beard just sprouting is; Whence a young stream, that trod on moss, Prettily rimpled the court across. And in the pool's clear idleness, Moving like dreams through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl A brindled loach ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... however, one link that connected the people of Wythburn with the world outside. To the north of the city and the mere there lived a family of sheep farmers who were known as the Rays of Shoulthwaite Moss. The family consisted of husband and wife and two sons. The head of the house, Angus Ray, came to the district early in life from the extreme Cumbrian border. He was hardly less than a giant in stature. He had limbs of great length, and muscles like the gnarled ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... park. The turf was dry, the air was still, and although the woods were very silent, and looked mournfully bare, the grass drew nearer to the roots of the trees, and the sunshine filled them with streaks of gold, blending lovelily with the bright green of the moss that patched the older stems. Neither horses nor dogs say to themselves, I suppose, that the sunshine makes them glad, yet both are happier, after the rules of equine and canine existence, on a bright day: neither Helen nor George ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... pressed into service as a smudge-kettle. Every evening about dusk, when the insects first began to emerge from the dark swamps, Charley would build a tiny smoky fire in the bottom of the pail, feeding it with peat, damp moss, punk maple, and other inflammable smoky fuel. This censer swung twice or thrice about the tent, effectually cleared it. Besides, both men early established on their cheeks an invulnerable glaze of a decoction of pine tar, oil, and a pungent herb. Towards ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... any green thing was seen—no more than in smithies. All laborers, of whatsoever sort, were hued like the men in foundries. The black vistas of streets were as the galleries in coal mines; the flagging, as flat tomb-stones, minus the consecration of moss, and worn heavily down, by sorrowful tramping, as the vitreous rocks in the cursed Gallipagos, over which ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... succeed so well in giving to rooms here. There was a cheerful fire burning, an arm-chair drawn up beside it, a sofa on the other side with a neatly arranged sofa-table on which were writing materials. One of the little girls had put a pot of pretty greenhouse moss in a silver basket on this table, and my toilet cushion was made with a place in the centre to hold a little vase of flowers. Here Lady Mary left me to rest before dressing for dinner. I sat down in an easy-chair before the fire, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... difficulty. At last, however, he gained a clump of chestnuts, which he skirted. Behind these rose a dwarf tower topped by a very small dome, pierced by a door. To the left and right of this door, on sockets where ornaments of the Romanesque epoch still were seen under the velvety crust of moss, two stone ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... or shoot is cut into the form of a tongue and inserted into it. The head of the stock is then cut off in a slanting direction, and the two are then tied together, or closely wrapped together, in moss, covered with grafting clay. No book can give directions so clear for grafting, as to enable the young gardener to perform it successfully. He must see it done, try it afterwards, and then ask if he has done it correctly; and to learn grafting and budding ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... "PEP!" said President Moss at the end of the room. He slammed his little white fist into the palm of his other hand. "It's only a little word. It only has three ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... around, up at the trees and down at the green moss, which was on both sides of the woodland path along ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... small spring of water called Pondo Kubang, the only one to be met with till the hill is descended. About two miles from the top, and from thence all the way up, the trees and ground were covered very thick with moss; the trees much stunted, and altogether the appearance was barren and gloomy; to us particularly so, for we could find little or nothing wherewith to build our huts, nor procure a bit of dry wood to light a fire. In order to make one for ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... voice, can Beauty's eye, Can Painting's glowing hand supply A charm so suited to my mind, As blows this hollow gust of wind? As drops this little weeping rill, Soft tinkling down the moss-grown hill; While, through the west, where sinks the crimson day, Meek Twilight slowly sails, and waves her ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... had stepped at once on to damp yielding moss which covered her low cut slippers and whetted her feet as completely as if she had stepped into a brook. Just beyond this moss lay a clear little pool of water, evidently ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... like a wood-cutter under his burden, drags after it a splinter of bark bigger than itself; a beetle makes its way along a blade of grass thrown like a bridge from one stem to another; while beneath a lofty bracken standing isolated in the middle of a patch of velvety moss, a little blue or red insect waits, with antennae at attention, for another little insect on its way through some desert path over there to arrive at the trysting-place beneath the giant tree. It is a small ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... hand had enlarged into an arched cavity. Graven over it in bold Hebraic letters was the word GOD. The graver had no doubt drunk there, and tarried many days, and given thanks in that durable form. From the arch the stream ran merrily over a flag spotted with bright moss, and leaped into a pool glassy clear; thence it stole away between grassy banks, nursing the trees before it vanished in the thirsty sand. A few narrow paths were noticeable about the margin of the pool; otherwise the space around was untrodden turf, at sight of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... was only one narrow path by the river, which was shaded by branches of beeches and willows that hung over this bank into the river. After walking a short distance through this shady path, one found himself before a huge triangular rock covered with moss, which nature had rolled from the top of the mountain as if to close up ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... "What lovely green moss on that bank!" cried the Little Colonel. "Wouldn't it make a beautiful carpet for our playhouse down by ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in thought larger purifications for the pilgrim in whom his prophetic mind discerns one ordained to fulfill this very day a sacred office. "So let him be made clean of all stain, let the dust be washed from him of his long wandering." They ease him upon the moss beside the consecrated spring, remove his greaves and coat of mail. As he revives a little, he asks faintly: "Shall I be taken to-day to Amfortas?" Gurnemanz assures him that he shall, for on this day the burial of Titurel takes place, which Gurnemanz ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... the water lilies bonny and bright Back—to the moss-green trees; I shouted and laughed with a heart as light As a wild rose tossed by the breeze. The mocking bird joined in my reckless glee; I longed for no angel's wing; I was just as near heaven as I wanted to be Swinging ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... the footprints of a real savage bear. The sheep were fast disappearing, and the farmers about were not a little worried. One day I went for a walk into these same woods, and such woods! you Western boys and girls could not possibly imagine them—the old moss-covered logs, and immense trees cut down years ago and left to lie there until all overgrown with mosses and lichens. I never before experienced such a feeling of solitude as in that walk of over a mile in length through those deep ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... I got here? Just azure hills and peace, Green moss and green fern on roads that never cease. And if my heart grows weary of such pleasurings as these, There's a baby who comes romping through the nursery ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... fast—every quiver seemed like the pant of an animal athirst, laid down at a well and drinking; and the well proved quite full, gloriously clear; it rose up munificently of its own impulse; I saw the sun through its gush, and not a mote, Lucy, no moss, no insect, no atom ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the tenant or landlord may turn it into a rabbit-warren, the most fatal policy of all. How hideous they are—those great stretches of downland, enclosed in big wire fences and rabbit netting, with little but wiry weeds, moss, and lichen growing on them, the earth dug up everywhere by the disorderly little beasts! For a while there is a profit—"it will serve me my time," the owner says—but ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... but together forming a continuous and formidable line of defence across the railway. From the south-east of Magersfontein Hill a low scrub-covered spur, or ridge, three miles in length, runs southward to Moss Drift on the Modder. Though not of sufficient height to be fully shown upon the map, it exercised an important influence upon the course of the battle. From the river the ground rises gradually towards the heights of Magersfontein. There are two well-marked knolls upon its surface; one, equidistant ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... with years,' may pass, but 'Conscious Virtue, void of fears,' is poor. 'Halcyon Peace on moss reclined,' is a picture; 'Retrospect that scans the mind,' is nothing; 'Health that snuffs the morning air,' is a living image; but what sense is there in 'Full-eyed Truth, with bosom bare?' and how poor his 'Laughter in loud peals that breaks,' to Milton's 'Laughter, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... knew that she WAS better able to tell what was good for them than they were themselves. After all, without stripping herself naked of every thought, experience, and action since her birth, how could she admit that she was not better able? And slowly, in the white room with the moss-green carpet, she recovered, till there was only just a touch of soreness left, at the injustice implicit in their words. Those two had been 'miserably brought up,' had never had a chance of finding their proper place, of understanding that they were just two callow young things, for whom ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Davie. He was now too frightened to move, and he was sure he heard a lion roar, though it was only his heart beating and thumping; so he sat down on the moss and pine needles, and waited. Joel would surely come back. Meantime a little bird came up and perched on the branch above his head, and sang to him, so ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... at Boesinghe, where the moss is growing round the broken doors and the rank weeds fill the garden, with the stagnant Yser hard by; in Ypres, where the rooks nest in the crumbling Cloth Hall and a man's footsteps ring loud and hollow on the silent square; in Vermelles, where the chalky plains stretch ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... course. Killigrew and Moss minor and the Polkinghornes and Carminow—not Doughty; I didn't like him last time—I don't know why ..." She broke off and bent forward, her tones took on a thrill; "I've ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... zinc-well in which it was packed in moss and cotton-wool, and wondered what he should do with it. He could not leave such a thing about, nor would he take it away. Suddenly an idea struck him, and he repacked it in its case as carefully as he could in the original moss and cotton-wool, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... reeds at the very edge of the water, breathing out the odours of dreamful sleep. The clumsy pollards were each one mass of undivided green. The mill wheel had regained its knotty look, with its moss and its dip and drip, as it yielded to the slow water, which would have let it alone, but that there was no other way out of the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... prospects. The king has humoured the genius of the place, and only made use of so much art as is necessary to help and regulate nature, without reforming her too much. The cascades seem to break through the clefts and cracks of rocks that are covered over with moss, and look as if they were piled upon one another by accident. There is an artificial wildness in the meadows, walks, and canals; and the garden, instead of a wall, is fenced on the lower end by a natural mound of rock-work that strikes the eye very agreeably. For my part, I think there is ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... the shade of the house," and after a moment the two came along the shady terrace whose outer margin was set at intervals with stained and discolored marble nymphs upon pedestals, and between the nymphs with moss-grown stone benches. They halted before a bench upon which, earlier in the day, a rug had been spread out to dry in the sun and had been forgotten, and after a moment's further hesitation they sat down upon it. Their faces were turned toward the house, and every word that they spoke mounted ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine, Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state, Makes me with thy strength to communicate: If aught possess thee from me, it is dross, Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss; Who all, for want of pruning, with intrusion Infect thy sap, and live on ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the air, and the heat of the flames of them glowed upon his face. He turned an inquiring look upon the lady, and saw that she was now seated in an ancient chair, the legs of which were crusted with gems, but the upper part like a nest of daisies and moss and green grass. ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... come from the woods before even the earliest risers were up, and forage in the village. By and bye I discovered that, by lying motionless for an hour or so on the dry moss in the wood, he would at length grow so bold as to allow himself to be seen, but high up among the topmost branches. Then, by means of my binocular, I had the wild thing on my thumb, so to speak, exhibiting himself to me, inquisitive, perplexed, suspicious, enraged by ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... aboard to see about the fire, and Maurice was lying on a bed of dead grass and moss looking into the glowing depths of the fire and allowing his thoughts to go out to the wonderful possibilities of the beckoning future, with Uncle Ambrose as the good fairy who was to lead him into strange lands that he had always wanted to see, when a bit of turf falling upon his ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... afternoons were spent by Etta and her girls in the woods, where, with the aid of such boys as could get away from their work, a store of scarlet, golden, and variegated autumn leaves was laid in, with late ferns and hardy brackens, curious bits of moss, seed-vessels, and dried grass being added to the store. These were all taken to Mrs. Robertson's, whose large garret was offered for their reception and preservation, and after tea the girls ironed and varnished ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... nest, the Goldfinch uses much ingenuity, lichens and moss being woven so deeply into the walls that the whole surface is quite smooth. Instead of choosing the forks of a bough, this Finch likes to make its nest near the end of a horizontal branch, so that it moves about and dances up and down as the branch is swayed by the wind. It might be thought that ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... delightful liberty which reveals in the master of the house so much forgetfulness of greatness, so much courteous hospitality, so much magnificent carelessness. The poets wandered about, arm in arm, through the groves; some reclined upon beds of moss, to the great damage of velvet clothes and curled heads, into which little dried leaves and blades of grass insinuated themselves. The ladies, in small numbers, listened to the songs of the singers and the verses of the poets; others listened to the ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... water and washed the dead man's face, and covered it with fresh green leaves; she brought green boughs and laid them upon him, scattering dead leaves in the spaces between. Then she brought the heaviest stones she could carry and laid them over the dead body, stopping up the interstices with moss. And now she thought the grave-hill would be strong and secure. The night had passed away in this difficult work—the sun broke through the clouds, and beautiful Helga stood there in all her loveliness, with bleeding hands, and with the first tears flowing ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... was quite down before Mr. Beale returned. He looked unnaturally fat, and as he sat down on the moss something inside the front of ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... on her long canvas chair, in the green shade of the Sassetto. All about her was a chaos of moss-grown rocks crowned with trees young and old; a gap in the branches showed her a distant peachy sky suffused with gold above the ethereal heights of the Amiata range; a little wind crept through the trees; the birds ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the needles made a carpet, firm and smooth, figured by the wild woodbine that clambered over the graves; moss had gathered on the head stones, and the wind, in the dark branches above, moaned ceaselessly. About the little plot of ground a rustic fence of poles was built, and the path led to a stile by which ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... with such feelings in it toward Him to whom she had appealed as she had not felt in all her life before, she steadied herself for the shot. For even as she prayed, the deer came on,—came to the big maple, and lifted his muzzle to its highest reach to seize with his tongue a thin streamer of moss that lay against the smooth bark. There he stood, his blue-brown side full toward her, unconscious of her presence. Noiselessly she cocked the piece. Noiselessly she raised it to her face, and, with every nerve drawn to its tightest tension, sighted ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... Henry Hanway was a moss-grown member of the republic and had been one of the original thirteen. It possessed with other impedimenta a moss-grown aristocracy that borrowed money, devoured canvasbacks, drank burgundy, wore spotless tow in summer, clung to the duello, and talked of days of greatness ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... going in a north-westerly direction, from the appearance of the bark on the trees, which on that side was dry and perfectly free from moisture, while on the other, whence the rain generally came, here and there a few fungi and a little moss could occasionally be discovered. Percy did not like to express doubt about the correctness of his friend's opinion, but he was not convinced that he ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... transformed into a tropical bower. From an irregular lattice of boughs across the ceiling orchids fell as if they had grown and bloomed there. These were interspersed with long trails of Spanish moss in which the lights were cunningly disposed. Orchids swayed, too, from the tops of the tall palms which lined the walls, and above the bright mass of the same flowers on the table floated on invisible wires the most vivid and beautiful ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... a fragrant birch-grown road, smelling of fern and wintergreen and sassafras, we moved, the cool tinkle of moss-choked watercourses ever in our ears, mingling with melodies of woodland birds—shy, freedom-loving birds that came not with the robins to the city. Ah, I knew these birds, being country-bred—knew them one and all—the gray ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... and hill, Through moss and muir we sped: Around us roared the midnight storm, Behind us lay ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... carrageen or Irish moss, in a pint and a half of water or milk till it is reduced to a pint; it is a most excellent drink for delicate ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... worn into deep ruts, now sandy and broken with large stones. Down to its edge would come the dwarfed oak, or the mountain ash, or the silver birch, single and small, but lovely and fresh; and now green fields, fenced with walls of earth as green as themselves, or of stones overgrown with moss, would stretch away on both sides, sprinkled with busily-feeding cattle. Now they would pass through a farm-steading, perfumed with the breath of cows, and the odour of burning peat—so fragrant! though not ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... she got wind of where they were going it would soon be all over the bush, and they made up their minds to dodge her. So they pretended to be little brown lizards crawling through the moss, but Miss Fantail wasn't taken in for a moment, but flitted down to them and put her head on one side in her ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... the Troubadours, and would have better suited good old King Rene of Provence than a Paladin of the days of Charlemagne. Goethe has neither the eye of Wouverman nor Borgognone, and sketches but an indifferent battle-piece. Homer was a stark moss-trooper, and so was Scott; but the Germans want the cry of "boot and saddle" consumedly. However, the following is excellent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... winter of almost insufferable length and coldness; * * there are but a few inconsiderable spots fit to cultivate, and the land is covered with a cold spongy moss in place of grass. * * Winter continues at least seven months in the year; the country is wrapt in the gloom of a perpetual fog; the mountains run down to the sea coast, and leave but here and there a spot to inhabit." Some ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... than any of her train, her spirits elated by the sport, and by the speed at which she moved, was much sooner than any of her attendants at the spot where the falcon and heron, still engaged in their mortal struggle, lay fighting upon the moss; the wing of the latter having been broken by the stoop of the former. The duty of a falconer in such a crisis was to run in and assist the hawk, by thrusting the heron's bill into the earth, and breaking his legs, and thus permitting the falcon to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... pillow of moss. You and Cologne stay here, while I go out and see the hospital men. I will assure them no patient of theirs ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... these two long tables great wreaths of flowers and leaves, half buried in moss, made a border of bloom, and over them the light came pouring, while the music sounded nearer and nearer, and the crowd ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... his den, my son," replied the sturdy old man. "When dark came on I found me a dry cave in the side of a knoll, an' dry moss an' sticks ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... like a summer-house in an Oriental garden, with its underground chambers and all manner of appliances for luxurious ease. It has now fallen into decay; the aqueducts and fountains are stilled; the statues are covered with moss, and the gardens are a perfect tangle. It was the device of a Portuguese architect ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... mansion of the master of Hollywood Farm, with its spacious barns and long stretches of stabling, and throwing loving glances among the leaves of its deep belt of woodland where the river sparkled and soft rugs of moss spread their rich luxuriance over an aesthetic ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... pointed out the various properties of this his future possession. Wholly occupied in debating within himself how he was to decline the offer without a downright quarrel, he heard, without understanding a word, all the old gentleman's plans and proposals for building dikes, draining moss, etc.; and, perfectly unconscious of what he was doing, yielded a ready assent to all ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... beautiful of all the bars. From the store one can walk nearly a mile down the river quite easily. The path is bordered by a row of mingled oaks and firs, the former garlanded with mistletoe, and the latter embroidered with that exquisitely beautiful moss which I tried to describe in one of my ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... boundaries were not so marked, as when it passed through the cuttings; and in a little while I found that I must have strayed from it, for I missed underfoot the hard surface, and my feet sank deeper in the grass and moss. Then the wind grew stronger and blew with ever increasing force, till I was fain to run before it. The air became icy-cold, and in spite of my exercise I began to suffer. The snow was now falling so thickly and whirling around me in such rapid ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... thicket, principally composed of a species of buckthorn tree that grew to the height of some thirty feet although of very slender trunk, underneath which was a mass of tangled grass and the same sort of debris from the cliff as that whereon their hut stood. The place was overgrown with moss and beautiful ferns, while several thrushes were to be seen amongst the branches of the trees just like those at home, although the brothers did not think they sang as sweetly: they whistled more in the way of the blackbird. The ground here, too, was quite ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... more resembles me than it can do others. If I must be condemned to rhyme, I should find some ease in my change of punishment. I desire to be no longer the Sisyphus of the stage; to roll up a stone with endless labour, (which, to follow the proverb, gathers no moss) and which is perpetually falling down again. I never thought myself very fit for an employment, where many of my predecessors have excelled me in all kinds; and some of my contemporaries, even in my own partial judgement have outdone me in Comedy. Some little hopes I have ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... my order, has searched our brooks, but could find no such fish as the gasterosteus pungitius: he found the gasterosteus aculeatus in plenty. This morning, in a basket, I packed a little earthen pot full of wet moss, and in it some sticklebacks, male and female; the females big with spawn: some lamperns; some bull's heads; but I could produce no minnows. This basket will be in Fleet-street by eight this evening; so I hope Mazel ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... perfect spot," I thought to myself, for it was the wildest bit of forest I had seen anywhere in this neighbourhood. At one side, not far off, rose a huge gray rock, partly covered on one side with moss, and round about were oaks and a few ash trees of a poor scrubby sort (else they would long ago have been cut out). The earth underneath was soft ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, Rose the firs with cones upon them; Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water. There the wrinkled, old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!" Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this, that lights the wigwam? With his ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... the Enchanted Wood, where the moss grew the greenest and the violets bloomed the sweetest, the fairies lived. It was they who kept the brooks and the springs free from dirt or clog, and tended the wild flowers and watched over the young trees. And they were friends with all the harmless ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... overhanging bushes, at the distance of a mile or two up this narrow but deep creek. Farther up the bayou, and a few rods from it, in an obscure hollow and almost hidden by cypress trees, from which depended curtains and streamers of gray Spanish moss, stood a log building, the rendezvous of the outlaws. The structure was low and long, consisting of three huts so joined as to look ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... infancy knew! The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it, The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell, The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it, And e'en the rude bucket that hung in the well— The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket which hung ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... down at any minute," the farmer answered, "and syne, mind you, you'll be five miles frae Waster Lunny, for there'll be no crossing but by the Brig o' March. If you winna come, I maun awa back. I mauna bide langer on the wrang side o' the Moss ditch, though it has been as dry this month back as a tabbit's roady. But if you—" His voice changed. "God's sake, man," he cried, "you're ower late. Look at ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... for he knew not what. Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though it were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might dictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth smells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind fungus-covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-eared to all that moved and sounded about him. It might be, lying thus, that ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... The LIBRARY AT BLENHEIM is one of the grandest rooms in Europe. The serpentine sheet of water, which flows at some little distance, between high banks of luxuriant and moss-woven grass, and is seen from the interior, with an overhanging dark wood of oaks, is sufficient to awaken the finest feelings that ever animated the breast of a bibliomaniac. The books are select and curious, as well as numerous; and although they may be eclipsed, in both these particulars, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... hilt to the tree, the point to her bare breast, and breathed a prayer to We-sec-e-gea, god of the Crees. She had only to throw the weight of her beautiful body on the blade, sink without a moan to the moss, and pass, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... flower garden of the gods, in a land of rocks and cliffs, with patches of short grass, caribou moss and lichens between. Along a narrowing arm of the mountain, a deep canyon flumed a rushing torrent of icy water from a small glacier on our right. Then came moraine matter, rounded pebbles and boulders, and beyond them the glacier. Once a giant, it is nothing but a baby now, but the ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... reinforcements, he is preparing for a third assault. Meanwhile there is a lull in the battle. Hans, grimed and powder-blackened, may let the breech of his Zuendnadelgewehr cool and may wipe his blood-stained bayonet on the forest moss. He has a moment for a glance into the little gray volume, and it opens in his blackened fingers ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... so many sightless eye-holes in the skull of the past. The tender light pours up streets dank and ill-paved,—into noisome and cavernous dens called houses, where the peasantry of to-day vegetate in contented subservience. It illuminates many a dingy court-yard, where the moss is green on the walls, and gurgling fountains fall into quaint old sculptured basins. It lights up the gorgeous palaces of Rome's modern princes, built with stones wrenched from ancient ruins. It streams through a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... on a moss-covered stone, he put his gun in position on his knee, with the forefinger on the trigger, and remained for some time so motionless that a North American Indian might have envied his powers of self-restraint. Suddenly a twig was heard to snap in the thicket before him. Next moment the striped ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... sharpish wind and small pepper and salt-like sleet beating in my face, that a hot chop and a glass of sherry, if they were to be had round the corner, would make the thing more perfect. There was however nothing to be had round the corner but some Iceland moss, which belonged to the chamois, and an extra allowance ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... seats, laying hemlock branches across till a green roof made it cool and shady inside. There Jill sat or lay among her cushions reading, trying to sketch, sorting shells, drying gay sea-weeds, or watching her crabs, jelly-fish, and anemones in the old boiler, now buried in sand and edged about with moss from ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... to account for the patronymic (as they deemed it) [Greek], son of [Greek]. But why did they tell such savage and revolting stories about the god they had invented? Mr. Muller only says the myth 'would roll on irresistibly.' But why did the rolling myth gather such very strange moss? That is the problem; and, while Mr. Muller's hypothesis accounts for the existence of a god called [Greek], it does not even attempt to show how full-blown Greeks came to believe such hideous stories ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... thought it a lovely place, and volunteered to stay and gather bits of moss and leaves for Daimur to sleep on at night, while he and King Cyril continued ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... she was, in her own way. She was very small, rounded in her figure almost to stoutness, and possessed the tiniest and most beautiful hands and feet. But her greatest charm lay in the face, which was almost infantile in its shape, and delicate as a moss rose. She was exquisitely fair in colouring—indeed, the darkest things about her were her violet eyes, which in some lights looked almost black by contrast with her white forehead ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... sufficient accuracy, before they could accomplish their purpose, or retrace their steps to their dark abodes, the first rays of the morning sun appeared, and they were immediately transformed, and remain to the present time in the shape of two tall moss-grown stones of ten feet in height."[264] This is paralleled by the Merionethshire example of a large drift of stones about midway up the Moelore in Llan Dwywe, which was believed to be due to a witch who "was carrying her apron full of stones for some purpose to the top ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... few drops. Then it smiled on him and got up, and ran down the hill; and Gluck looked after it, till it became as small as a little star, and then turned, and began climbing again. And then there were all kinds of sweet flowers growing on the rocks, bright green moss, with pale pink starry flowers, and soft-belled gentians, more blue than the sky at its deepest, and pure white transparent lilies. And crimson and purple butterflies darted hither and thither, and the sky sent down such pure light that Gluck had ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a high wall, the top of which was finished off with an iron trellis bristling with spikes. A spring leapt from place to place and fell in cascades to the bottom of the rocks decked with wild flowers, moss, ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... peers out, from her crimson repose, On proud Prairie Queen and the modest Moss-rose; And vesper reclines—when the dewdrop is shed On the heart of the pink—in its odorous bed; But Flora has stolen the rainbow and sky, To sprinkle the flowers with ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... wondered why they had come to their land. Perhaps you would like to know. They were musk sheep that had come from the cold, cold north. They were used to treeless, desolate places. They were used to eating moss and young shoots of the willow. They looked something like sheep and something like oxen. Sometimes they are called musk oxen. They looked something like the bison. Sometimes they are called musk bison. Does it seem strange that the musk sheep should leave their cold home and come ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... with everlasting snow. Not a tree was to be seen, nor a shrub even big enough to make a toothpick. The only vegetation we met with was a coarse strong-bladed grass growing in tufts, wild burnet, and a plant like moss, which ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... hour when birds seek shade and leave but few among their fellows to sing, that at a stone's throw from the foot of the hill I came to where a faint bridle-path diverged. And since it was smooth with moss, and Rosinante haply tired of pebbles; since any but the direct road seems ever the more delectable, I too turned aside, and broke into the woods through ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... morning of the 13th, at 3 A.M., Reynolds dispatched Sullivan from the Pass by the main road, and Colonels Marrow and Moss with parts of the 3d Ohio and 2d Virginia (Union) from Elk Water camp, by the path leading past the Rosecrans house, to cut their way to Cheat Mountain summit, but these columns encountered no enemy, and only ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... a magnificent natural avenue of lofty trees (whose brown moss—grown trunks and fantastic boughs were strongly lit up by the blaze of the torches; while the fresh white splinter—marks where the branches had been tom off by the storm, glanced bright and clear, and the rain—drops on the dark leaves sparkled ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott |
