"Orchid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... easily on the air, as a man rests his elbows on a balcony, and gave jubilant, ceremonial praises to the sun, or else they moved together on the air in wavering dances intricate and swift, or turned aside to avoid the onrush of some drop of water that a breeze had shaken from a jungle orchid, chilling the air and driving it before it, as it fell whirring in its rush to the earth; but all the while they sang triumphantly. 'For the day is for us,' they said, 'whether our great and sacred father the Sun shall bring up more life like us from the marshes, or whether all the world shall ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... on the way back in the Gem with the girls and Mr. Stonington, told his story. He had prepared the luncheon, and, seeing the girls going out on the little neck of land to gather flowers, he recalled seeing some blooms, of the orchid variety, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... wooded. The old trees, of course, remained intact; but the gardens of the first house, being rambling and old-fashioned, had been done away with, to make room for others on a larger and more imposing scale; and vineries and pineries, orchid-houses, and hot-houses of every description arose rapidly all over the site of the old bowling-green and the wilderness, half kitchen garden, half rosary, that had served to content the former owners of Shadonake, now all lying dead and buried in the chancel of ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... an orchid, Dendrobium speciosum, Smith, N.O. Orchideae. although not a Lily, it is always so called, especially in Sydney, where it ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the dining-room, where, in her slim fairness, Mary was like a pale lily, among all the tulip women, and poppy women, and orchid women, and night-shade women of ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... delicate operation of raising money by bills of accommodation. Habit had given him quite an artistic touch for this kind of thing, and he did his work fondly, like some enthusiastic horticulturist who gives his anxious days to the budding forth of some new orchid or the production of a hitherto unobtainable tulip. It is doubtful whether money procured from any other source was ever half so sweet to this gentleman as the cash for which he paid sixty per cent to the Jews. With these proclivities he managed to rub on from year to year ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... to me belongs, The paltry acres thine; The painted beauty sings thy songs, The lavrock lilts me mine; The hot-housed orchid blooms for thee, The gorse and heather bloom for me, Ride on, ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... in it from men to men. "You here?" I said. "Where aren't you nowadays And what's the news you carry—if you know? And tell me where you're off for—Montreal? Me? I'm not off for anywhere at all. Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways Half looking for the orchid Calypso." ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... paths among the rhododendra and through the private gate into the woods where the bluebells and common orchid were in profusion. Never before had I tasted so completely the fine sense of privilege and ownership. And all this has to end, I told myself, all this ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and low woods from Maine to Minnesota and Washington, southward to Georgia and Missouri, there is a sweet-scented, little yellow-and-brown flower called the yellow lady's-slipper, the plant of which is said to have the same effect when handled as poison-ivy. This flower is an orchid. The stalk, from one to two feet high, bears a single blossom at the top, and the leaves, shaped and veined like those of the lily-of-the-valley, grow alternately down the stem. The plant does not branch. Like the ivy, the yellow lady's-slipper does ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... narrates the remarkable experience of our True Treds in a mountain town in New Jersey, where, while spending a vacation, they discover Maid Mary, the orphan of the orchids, a child of strange fancies and queer tropical influences, who has been made a victim of the orchid seekers to the extent of being kept from her relations until the rare bulb is found by the ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... and hemlocks is to love them for the refreshment there is in their living presence, rather than to consider them merely for the timber value. But the point of view differs immensely with one's occupation. I remember finding in the depths of an Alleghany forest a comparatively rare native orchid, then new to me—the round-leaved or orbicular habenaria. While I was gloating over it with my camera a gray-haired native of the neighborhood joined me, and, to my surprise, assisted in the gloating—he, too, loved the woods and the plants. Coming a little later to a group ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... the spur of this orchid, one of the handsomest and most striking of its clan, and the heavy perfume of the flower, would seem to indicate that only a moth with a long proboscis could reach the nectar secreted at the base of the thread-like passage. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... bird, that is to say, if he has been dwelling on the mental image of this bird, he will recognize one at a distance more quickly than he would otherwise have done. Such a simple mental operation as the recognition of one of the less common flowers, say a particular orchid, will vary in duration according as we have or have not been recently forming an image of this flower. The obvious explanation of this is that the mental image of an object bears a very close resemblance to the corresponding percept, differing from it, indeed, in degree ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... picking up his escort of Gurkhas from their station in the foot-hills: and so on through Kashmir, where spring had already flung her bridal veil over the orchards, and retreating snow-wreaths had left the hills carpeted with a mosaic of colour,—primula, iris, orchid, and groundlings innumerable: over the Zoji-la Pass, into the shadeless, fantastic desolation of Ladak; and on, across stark desert and soundless snow-fields, to Leh, the terminus of all caravans from India and Central ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Bess had stopped to look at a beautiful orchid, in shape itself not unlike some bird ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... sense can perceive. But that of Chelone glabra, as modest and withdrawn as the flower itself, seems hardly to belong in the swamp for all the beauty of the place. It should rather be that of some delicately nurtured plant, some rare orchid of sheltered conservatories, it is so ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... history of the Semitic nations. He took me down to dinner last night, and we talked in the most intelligent manner about the various ways of preparing crabs. He liked them in five styles; I wouldn't subscribe to more than three. That little man with the orchid that daddy has just seized is the author of the last of the 'Rulers of India' series—Sir Somebody Something, K.C.S.I. My unconscionable humbug of a parent probably wants to get something approaching a fact out of him. Daddy's writing a thing for one of the ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... and moaning over the wire; Tremor and emotion choked his throat. This was his ominous message: A taxicab accident almost had killed him two and one half days ago; He had escaped with his body and orchid-lined voice— And not a line in the mornings or evenings! What could I do about ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... attracted by any of them. A certain basic sense of balance had enabled her to see these things were but vain gropings in the dark; that they might flower successfully in abnormal individual cases—orchid growths—but that each was doomed to failure as a universal solution. For mankind in bulk is normal, and its safety lies in a continuance of normality. Ages had evolved the marriage relation as it existed; ages might evolve it into something different as sudden ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... natives call it "a little man's bread," in allusion to the tradition that the Neilgherries were once peopled by a race of dwarfs.[AM] At first it was supposed that these were the bulbs of some orchid, but later another view was held of their character. Mr. Scott, who examined the specimens sent down to him, remarks that, instead of being the product of orchids, it is that of an underground fungus of the genus Mylitta. It indeed seems, he says, very closely allied to, if really ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... exotic. I prefer geraniums to orchids. I have a row of pots of the former on my balcony, and the united efforts of Stenson, Antoinette, and myself have not yet succeeded in making them bloom; but I love the unassuming velvety leaves. Carlotta is a flaring orchid and produces on my retina a ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the newest fashion, an orange-wood walking-stick, and a pair of gray suede gloves. An evening paper lay between his feet, open, as though it had been read, and in his buttonhole there was a single mauve orchid of exquisite beauty and delicacy. The body was quite alone in the compartment, and there was not a scrap of luggage ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... late afternoon, and as all clerical work for the day was now finished, Peter suggested and Mr. Semple readily agreed to a walk in the gardens. There was nothing left in the flower-beds, but the conservatories and the orchid-house were a real feast of pleasure to the lawyer. He went into the outer hall to fetch his stick and coat, and then, turning back towards his host, he made a humorous signal to convey the intelligence that some callers had driven ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... self-esteem for kindly gentleness is but a fancy vain! Thy charms that they can match the olea or orchid, but thoughts inane! While an actor will, envious lot! with fortune's smiles be born, A youth of noble birth will, strange to say, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... as an orchid to cloying tropic airs, she drew on her sheerest chemise, her most frivolous silk stockings. In a dreaming enervated joy she saw how smooth were her arms and legs; she sleepily resented the redness of her wrists and the callouses of the ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Melles, "exists within the mind of every one. Sometimes its existence is unrealized, but it is there. It is there to be developed and brought forth, like the culture of that obstinate but beautiful flower, the orchid. To allow it to remain dormant is to place one's self in obscurity, to trample on one's ambition, to smother one's faculties. To develop it is to individualize all that is best within you, and give it to the world. It is by an absolute knowledge of yourself, ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... the flies who come to his arms under the false pretence of being a quiet leaf, upon which they may light in safety for rest and refreshment. Yet another abandoned member of the same family, relying boldly upon the resources of tropical nature, gets itself up as a complete orchid, the head and fangs being moulded in the exact image of the beautiful blossom, and the arms folding treacherously around the unhappy insect which ventures to seek for honey in ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... sweet williams, pansies, pinks, wallflowers, white violets, stocks, Canterbury bells. Sometimes she came home with wild flowers, and had once given a little dinner with foxgloves for a table decoration. An orchid, a gardenia, even a hyacinth, was never to be seen in the little house. Rosamund confessed that hyacinths had a lovely name, and that they suggested spring, but she added that they smelt as if they had ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... oval and very small. They measure barely two-thirds of a millimetre[8] in length. They stick together slightly and are piled in a shapeless heap which might be likened to a good-sized pinch of the unripe seeds of some orchid. As for their number, I will admit that it tried my patience to no purpose. I do not, however, believe that I am exaggerating when I estimate it as at least two thousand. Here are the data on which I base this figure: the laying, as ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... myself alone with the girl Marcia. I have no very distinct notion of the means by which she accomplished this feat, remembering only hazily that we all ambled over to the conservatory, where a particular variety of orchid seemed to interest the girl. And there we were, I explaining and she listening, the others off somewhere near the entrance to the gymnasium, where I heard Lloyd's voice in bored monotone. I was quite sure in a moment that she hadn't managed to get me ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... volumes, one being a libro d'oro in the shape of a bulky visiting list, the other being a list of his engagements from day to day. He and his accomplishments were a finished work of art between them. But in a larger world his development would have been no more possible than the development of an orchid in the middle ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... lady. She was an orchid, a princess. She ruled father with her little finger—a beautifully manicured, rose-and-white finger, such as he had hardly seen when he was young. There was so much of himself in Ena that Peter yielded to her mandates ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... cried. "Can you not tell when a warning is for your own good? Go back to London! Start tonight! Get away from this place at all costs! Hush, my brother is coming! Not a word of what I have said. Would you mind getting that orchid for me among the mare's-tails yonder? We are very rich in orchids on the moor, though, of course, you are rather late to see ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... people in search of work. If you can't make it pay, leave it alone. You have every facility for buying land, for importing this and that—why don't you settle down and make yourselves at home? A colony, my friend, is not an orchid." ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... deal in most things, flowers among them. He told Julia something about that part of his business, for he and it interested her so much that she asked him leading questions. He explained how the beautiful orchid he wore in his coat had decreased in value lately. A few years ago, when there had been but one specimen with just that marking in all the world, the plant had sold for L900; now that it had been multiplied it was worth ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... I mean the lovely Gladiolus, which grows abundantly under the ferns near Lyndhurst, certainly wild but it does not approach England elsewhere nearer than the Loire and the Rhine; and next, that delicate orchid, the Spiranthes aestivalis, which is known only in a bog near Lyndhurst and in the Channel Islands, while on the Continent it extends from southern Europe all through France. Now, what do these two plants mark? ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... enlargement. They probably serve, as in the case of Drosera, solely for the absorption of water; for a gardener, who has been very successful in the cultivation of this plant, grows it, like an epiphytic orchid, in well-drained damp moss without any soil. The form of the bilobed leaf, with its foliaceous footstalk, is shown in the ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... to the orchid-house, we went through it, and she explained all its beauties, its singularities, and its rarities. When we came out again, I asked myself: "Is she in the habit of doing all this to chance visitors? Would she treat a Brown or a Robinson in the way she ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... "I won't wait till to-morrow. Mary shan't take the chances. Who knows if I shall be here to-morrow? If I drive out to Marleigh I shall just catch Buckton. He will be pottering round that orchid-house of his. He will just be home from the office. He can make me a new will there as well as here. Indeed, I ought not to have ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... great cables, and red blossoms as large as breakfast cups. The huge trees which border the road have their stems and branches nearly hidden by orchids and epiphytes—chiefly that lovely and delicate one whose likeness to a hovering dove won for it the name of the "Flower of the Holy Ghost," an orchid (Peristeria elata) which lives but for a day, but in its brief life fills the air with fragrance. Then the trees change, the long tresses of an autumn-flowering orchid fall from their branches over the road; dead trees appear transformed into living beauty by multitudes of ferns, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... necklace, he might be excused were he slightly annoyed. Nothing of the sort; he only shrugged his shoulders, and said to his nephew, "Your aunt must feel that I give her diamonds from love and not from vanity, as she never lets me have the pleasure of seeing them." The sole ornament of Adriana was an orchid, which had arrived that morning from Hainault, and she had presented its ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the interlacing lower branches, dead and brittle, and creep over the soft brown carpet of fallen needles, dry and slippery, in order to reach a little open glade, moist with springs, where the red wood-lily and the purple-fringed orchid grew,—the high steep rock that jutted out from the woods about half-way up the slope of the Dome, as if to make a narrow view-point of surprise where two people could stand close together and look down upon the broad valley and the blue hills beyond,—the old hemlock, with its big, bent ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... House Orchids, Mr. G. HARDY purchased a Cattleyn Mendelli for 220 guas. Perhaps Mr. CHAMBERLAIN wouldn't bid, having mistaken "Mendelli" for "Mundella." But to have entered the house in a careless fashion, with a "glass (with care)" in his eye, and a two-hundred-and-twenty-guinea Orchid in his button-hole, would have been a great ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... out to dinner that evening, and among other topics the conversation turned upon conservatories. Captain de Vere said that he had a conservatory 200 feet long, but that the Duke of Orchid had one nearly 1,000 feet long. The American here struck ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... one just quoted, mainly evolved from his imagination, like orchids living in the air. It was also about this time that Carlyle wrote to Emerson concerning the Dial that it seemed "like an unborn human soul." The orchid imagination was an influence of the time, penetrating everywhere like ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... 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
... comparison between his somewhat morbid and warped self and the bigness and nobility of his friend passed through Aladdin's mind. He glanced covertly at the strong, emaciated face beside him, and noted the steadiness and purity of the eyes. A little quixotic flame, springing like an orchid from nothing, blazed suddenly in his heart, and for the instant he was the ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... distorts, deforms, and with his strong, fluid line modulates his material as he wills, but he never propounds puzzles in form, as do the rest of the experimentalists. The human shape does not become either a stovepipe or an orchid in his hands. His young mothers are sometimes dithyrambic (as in Madonna) or else despairing outcasts. One plate of his which always affects me is his Dead Mother, with the little daughter at the bedside, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... "Some sort of orchid," was the hotel man's answer. "I don't know much about such things myself, but Mr. Madison, the girls' father, is quite a naturalist, and I guess they take after him. He collects birds, bugs and flowers, and the girls used ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... to the garden what the Orchid is to the greenhouse. Its colors are of the richest—blue, purple, violet, yellow, white, and gray. It blooms in great profusion, for weeks during the early part of summer. It is a magnificent flower. It will ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... features of this cup are the various indications of pleasure and social enjoyment. These being shown by the cake and butterfly, while the orchid in conjunction predicts that the consultant's personal charm and power of attraction will result in a future of wealth ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... Cretan tincture was extracted from a plant which Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny respectively name. The last calls it the Phycos thalassion. This was not a sea-weed, but a lichen—probably the same from which the orchid purple of modern art is prepared. See Birdwood, "Indian Arts," ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the pleasantest friends I had while I was in the Islands was Herr Altman, an orchid collector, who had risked his life a hundred times among the savages of the interior in the pursuance of the passion of his life. "One afternoon," he said, "when we were in the forests of Luzon, my native guides approached me with ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the orchid house at four o'clock, her arms filled with an unprecedented collection for Conny's book. The big yellow four-in-hand coach was standing outside the stable being washed. She examined ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... branches pushed for air. Green conquerors from overhead Bestrode the bodies of their dead; The Caesars of the silvan field, Unused to fail, foredoomed to yield: For in the groins of branches, lo! The cancers of the orchid grow. Silent as in the listed ring Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling, Dumb as by yellow Hooghly's side The suffocating captives died: So hushed the woodland warfare goes Unceasing; and the silent foes Grapple and smother, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... those orchids who make it their business to imitate a fly with their petals. This lie they dispose so cunningly that real flies, thinking the honey is being already plundered, pass them without molesting them. Watching intently and keeping very still, methought I heard this orchid speaking to the offspring which she felt within her, though I saw them not. "My children," she exclaimed, "I must soon leave you; think upon the fly, my loved ones, for this is truth; cling to this great thought in your passage through life, for ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... to analyze and to give the reasons for Germany's development along these meretricious and disappointing lines, but I am the last to admit that the outcome is satisfactory, or that the rest of the world should look to Germany to point out the way of salvation. A steaming orchid-house is not the place to go to learn to grow the fruits of the earth in their due season for the nourishment of a free people. You will find some brilliantly colored flowers there, in the gay uniforms of the artificial tropics, but ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... identified with the orchid, it was perhaps natural and excusable that popular prejudice should have associated the subject of cross-fertilization with the orchid alone; for it is even to-day apparently a surprise to the average mind that almost any casual ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... to recognize what it took still more manliness to recognize,—that she could never love a man of his temperament. It would have been very easy for him to love Mercy. He was not a man of a passionate nature; but he felt himself strangely stirred whenever he looked into her sensitive, orchid-like face. He felt in every fibre of him that to have the whole love of such a woman would be bewildering joy; yet never for one moment did he allow himself to think of seeking it. "I might make her think she loved me, perhaps," he said to himself. "She is so lonely and sad, and has seen so few ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... was, her flesh was all girlhood in one flower of lithe stem, leaf, petal, sepal, and perfume. There was nothing of the opiate poppy, the ominous orchid, or even that velvet voluptuary, the rose. She was like a great pink, sweet, shy, fragrant, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... being filled with importance too, showed it to the doctor and to Mr. Fenton. It was withered and faded in hue, but it was unmistakably an orchid of the ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... it grows freely after a clearing has been made. Nature lays down a green sward directly on the rich virgin mould, and sets to work besides to cover up the unsightly stems and holes of the fallen timber with luxuriant tufts of a species of hart's-tongue fern, which grows almost as freely as an orchid on decayed timber. I was so still and silent that innumerable forest birds came about me. A wood pigeon alighted on a branch close by, and sat preening her radiant plumage in a bath of golden sunlight. The profound stillness was stirred now and then by a soft sighing ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... in the housekeeper's room at Monkland there lived a magpie who had once sought shelter in an orchid-house from some pursuer. As soon as they thought him wedded to civilization, they had let him go, to see whether he would come back. For hours he had sat up in a high tree, and at last come down again to his cage; whereupon, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... those dreadful days when we were riding and walking in the woods, so enchanting in the early summer, with thousands of lilies of the valley and periwinkles growing wild, and a beautiful blue flower, a sort of orchid. We used to turn all the village children into the woods, and they picked enormous bunches of lilies, which stood all over the chateau in china bowls. I loved the wood life at all seasons. I often made the round with W. and his keepers in the autumn when he was preparing a ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... become converted to Ogden, and the New-Yorker, on his side, found pleasant and refreshing this democracy of Governors and cow-punchers. Jode received us at the signal-service office, and began to show us his instruments with the careful pride of an orchid-collector. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... was cruising up the Hudson with a yachting party one Saturday afternoon, the sight of Jay Gould's mansion, upon approaching Irvington, awakened the desire of the women on board to see his wonderful orchid collection. Edward explained his previous association with the financier and offered to recall himself to him, if the party wished to take the chance of recognition. A note was written to Mr. Gould, and sent ashore, and the answer came back that they were welcome to visit the orchid ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... is wet as Spring, And green, with little singings in the grass, And pheasants flying, Gold, green and red, Great, narrow, lovely things, As if an orchid had snatched wings. There are strange birds like blots against a sky Where a sun is dying. Beyond the river where the hills are blurred A cloud, like the one word Of the too-silent sky, stirs, and there stand Black trees ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... orchid she was wearing and tried to pin it on his coat. "I am afraid," said Von Barwig, "that it ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... kneeling worshippers that cover the floor, lighted candle in hand, rocking themselves ecstatically and droning and chanting. A weird scene, in truth. And the coachman was quite right in his surmise as to the difference in temperature. It is hot down here, damply hot, as in an orchid-house. But the aroma cannot be described as a floral emanation: it is the bouquet, rather, of thirteen centuries of unwashed and perspiring pilgrims. "TERRIBILIS EST LOCUS ISTE," says an inscription over the entrance of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Scotsman's knuckles; and the instant he loosed his grip, Corliss carried the canoe up in a mad rush, Frona clinging on and helping from behind. The rainbow-wall curled up like a scroll, and in the convolutions of the scroll, like a bee in the many folds of a magnificent orchid, Tommy disappeared. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... of Mr. Darwin a very different interpretation. The lobster's powerful claw, the butterfly's gorgeous tints, the rose's delicious fragrance, the architectural instinct of the bee, the astonishing structure of the orchid, are no longer explained as the results of contrivance. That simple but wasteful process of survival of the fittest, through which such marvellous things have come into being, has little about it that is analogous to ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... it not strain the imagination to the breaking point to believe that the oak, the cedar, the pine and the palm are all the progeny of one ancient seed and that this seed was also the ancestor of wheat and corn, potato and tomato, onion and sugar beet, rose and violet, orchid and daisy, mountain flower and magnolia? Is it not more rational to believe in God and explain the varieties of life in terms of divine power than to waste our lives in ridiculous attempts to explain the unexplainable? There is no mortification in admitting that there are ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... threaded his way like a Brazilian orchid-hunter through the palm forest in the tiled entrance hall of the "Idealia" apartment-house. One day the christeners of apartment-houses and the cognominators of sleeping-cars will meet, and there will be some jealous and ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... The great orchid family is well known on account of the singular form and brilliant colors of the flowers which have no equals in these respects in the whole vegetable kingdom. As might be expected, there are numerous contrivances for cross-fertilization among them, some of which are so extraordinary ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... Sunday class, and her ideas about God and the way people ought to live are beautiful. She has been to see me several times, and she always brings me a lovely flower of some kind—a rose or lily, and once the sweetest orchid; only one at a time, but always such a beauty. I love to look at it when she is gone, and it almost seems as if she had left part ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... strangely inconsistent character, spiritually minded, but selfish; loving humanity when it is spelled with a capital, but knowing nothing of the individual. The flower of holiness in her heart was like the haughty orchid that blooms in the hothouse, untouched by wind or cold, beautiful to behold but comforting no ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... newly-planted Irish junipers bounding the West-walk; and the three tiers of stately descent from the three green terrace banks to the grassy slopes over the lake. Again the lake was admired, the house admired. Admiration was evoked for great orchid-houses 'over yonder,' soon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that we can learn in nature could no more be covered in a chapter in this book than the same space could cover a history of the world. I have two large books devoted to the discussion of a single kind of flower, the "orchid." It is estimated that there are about two hundred thousand kinds of flowers, so for this subject alone, we should need a bookshelf over a mile long. This is not stated to discourage any one for of course no one can learn all there is to know about any subject. Most people ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... satisfactory for such a purpose. So he traveled to Germany and found the house where lived the famous glass-maker; and it was while waiting alone in the parlor that he saw on a shelf a vase containing what seemed to be a very beautiful fresh orchid." ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... The society had originated with Humfrey Charlecote, for the benefit of the poor as well as the rich; and the summer exhibition always took place under the trees of a fragment of the old Forest, which still survived at about five miles from Hiltonbury. The day was a county holiday. The delicate orchid and the crowned pine were there, with the hairy gooseberry, the cabbage and potato, and the homely cottage-garden nosegay from many a woodland hamlet. The young ladies competed in collections of dried flowers for a prize botany book; ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... situations in the house and a little water, to keep up the vitality sufficient to produce the secretions necessary to carry them safely through the dull days of winter. Look over all growing plants, and see that they do not suffer for want of water. Look to every Orchid, even the smallest growing on blocks or in baskets, they all require attention. Repot or surface dress any that require it. A favourable day to be chosen to wash the lights for the more free admission of that agent most indispensable for their health. The whole to be kept ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... you must write. Get out of your pink tea and orchid atmosphere, and take your heroines out West—away out, beyond the Mississippi, and let them be kidnapped. Or ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... staring, curious, uninvited people on either side of the church, and when the carriage containing the bride drove up, the surge forward to see her was as fierce as though she had been a defaulting bank-president being taken to prison. The police had to intervene. The interior, fern and orchid swathed, very dimly lighted by rich purple stained glass and aristocratic dripping wax candles instead of the more convenient electric imitations, was murmurous with the wonderful throbbing notes of a great organ ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the blood stream of a diseased animal. Yes, by the miracles of the camera we may trace the life of nature even in forms which no human observation really finds in the outer world. Out there it may take weeks for the orchid to bud and blossom and fade; in the picture the process passes before us in a few seconds. We see how the caterpillar spins its cocoon and how it breaks it and how the butterfly unfolds its wings; and all which needed days and months goes on in a fraction of a minute. New ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... established until scrapped in everlasting search for more and more perfect means of freeing body and soul from their congenital thralldom to a host of innumerable masters. Indeed, the history of all life, vegetable and animal, of bacillus, elephant, orchid, gorilla, as well as of man is the history of ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... the iniquitous place where you hang out, and by so doing—were I an ordinary man—would consider that I had paid my just debts and was quits with the world—and with you. But not being ordinary—on the contrary, and without undue pride, denominating myself as a most extraordinary, rare, and orchid-like male creature, I feel that the appended narrative, albeit I do not figure therein as Sir Galahad or King Arthur, is no more than your just due. I relinquish the steel helmet and holy grail adjuncts, and exploit myself to your ribald gaze and half-witted ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... deserts, grow abundantly. Common weeds of cultivation are Fumaria parviflora, a near relation of the English fumitory, Silene conoidea, and two Spergulas (Caryophyllaceae), and Sisymbrium Irio (Cruciferae). A curious little Orchid, Zeuxine sulcata, is found growing among the grass on canal banks. The American yellow poppy, Argemone Mexicana, a noxious weed, has unfortunately established itself widely in the Panjab plain. Two trees of the order Leguminosae, the shisham ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... An orchid, dangling close beside his head, opened slowly, unfolding its delicate petals to the warmth and light of the sun which but recently had penetrated to its shady retreat. A thousand times had Tarzan of the Apes witnessed ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the Cross, nothing about the historical Christ, who had only that which modern thinkers tell us is a revelation of a wrathful God, somehow or other rose to the height of the evangelical conception of God's love as the foundation of the very existence of a people who are His. Like an orchid growing on a block of dry wood and putting forth a gorgeous bloom, this singer, with so much less to feed his faith than we have, has yet borne this fair flower of deep and devout insight into the secret of things and the heart of God. 'He loved the people'— ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you have got!" he said, looking at them admiringly, as Nan sorted the flowers in her lap; and at this unlucky moment they were discovered by Mr. Mayne, who was bringing Lady Fitzroy to see a favorite orchid. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... refraction near the horizon. The breeze had changed, and now blew with gentle strength out of the west, a fair wind for their homeward course, and the strands of Dolores's glorious hair blew about her face like tendrils about an orchid ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... heat found him many miles upon an unfamiliar road, and, heedless of lurking enemies in the undergrowth, he flung himself down in the shade of a mighty orchid-laden tree, while the puzzled ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... "I don't want to offend them. After all, they are my landlords and I have to look to them for anything I want done about the place; they were very accommodating about the new roof for the orchid house. And they lend me one of their cars when mine is out of order; you know how often ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... that. But there'll be thousands of people there, all with gardens of their own, all pointing to things and saying, 'We've got one of those in the east bed,' or 'Wouldn't that look nice in the south orchid house?' and you and I will be quite, quite out of it." I sighed, and helped myself from the ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... forest. The Great House, with its spacious open galleries and verandahs, was surrounded with stone terraces, overflowing with the intense red and orange of the hybiscus and croton bush, the golden browns and softer yellows of less ambitious plants, the sensuous tints of the orchid, the high and glittering beauties of the palm and cocoanut. The slopes to the coast were covered with cane-fields, their bright young greens sharp against the dark blue of the sea. The ledge on which the house was built terminated suddenly ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... no doubt have acted in other parts of the world, and have prevented such an extraordinary development of nectary as has been produced by favourable conditions in Madagascar only, and in one single species of Orchid. I may here mention that some of the large Sphinx moths of the tropics have probosces nearly as long as the nectary of Angraecum sesquipedale. I have carefully measured the proboscis of a specimen of Macrosila cluentius from South America, in ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... best of my knowledge the plant, from the blade of grass to the oak or the orchid, always fulfils its life-span, unless some act or accident cripples or destroys it. I mean that we never see God bringing the shoot above the soil just to nip it before it unfolds. We never see Him bring the bud to the eve of blossoming just to wither it. Having given it its mission He supplies ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... attraction which glass has for the missile of the juvenile thrower, the orchid-house, on the opposite side of the path from the pear-tree, drew the errant ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... dizzy ascent of elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, immense wheat-fields of the West, its ranches, mines, colossal slaughter-houses,—all the formidable traffic of this country of effort and struggle, all its labor,—these are what have made possible this woman, this living orchid, unexpected masterpiece ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... reached personal expression in a new medium in a month or so, and apparently without effort. It was Beardsley's writing that first won Oscar to recognition of his talent, and for a while he seemed vaguely interested in what he called his "orchid-like personality." ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... route, both of which lead to Luz, if desired. The lower, which is the direct route from Gavarnie to Luz, we abstained from taking, preferring the upper road to the right, which leads past fields resplendent with flowers (among which the "bee" orchid is noticeable), ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... towards it would have been of any use, and therefore would not have been inherited and perpetuated so as to prepare for further completion. But many other plants have a structure so marvellous that this objection is continually applicable. Let me only recall one other case, that of the orchid, called Coryanthes macrantha. In this flower there are two little horns, which secrete a pure water, or rather water mixed with honey. The lower part of the flower consists of a long lip, the end of which is bent into ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... a rose-hued room; A wanton-hearted creature she, But beautiful and bright to see As some great orchid just in bloom. ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Gladstone's place as the leading figure in the House of Commons. Chamberlain himself had fought his way up. Those who have seen Chamberlain will never forget him—the long, strong face, the steady, hard eyes, the straight-cut mouth, the rigidly erect, slim body, the unfailing single eyeglass, and the orchid in his buttonhole making a picture which can never be disassociated from will-power, a mind cold and clear, a lucid gift of speech, unflinching courage, and a savage contempt for weakness or inefficiency. He had against him in the House of ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... in the Religion of Humanity; to be true and living she can be nothing which it has thus far entered into the heart of man to call beautiful; and she could only serve to remind us of certain vague longings and aspirations now proved to be as false as they were vain. Art is not an orchid: it cannot grow in the air. Unless its root can be traced as deep down as Yggdrasil, it will wither and vanish, and be forgotten as it ought to be; and as for the cowslip by the river's brim, a yellow cowslip it shall be, and ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... lofty trees, chiefly purple magnolias, with a few oaks, great Pyri and two rhododendrons, thirty to forty feet high (R. barbatum, and R. arboreum, var. roseum): Skimmia and Symplocos were the common shrubs. A beautiful orchid with purple flowers (Caelogyne Wallichii) grew on the trunks of all the great trees, attaining a higher elevation than most other epiphytical species, for I have seen it ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... forward, and she pointed out to him what in the tropic abundance about them she found most beautiful. Sometimes it was the tumbling waters of a cataract; sometimes, high in the topmost branches of a ceiba-tree, a gorgeous orchid; sometimes a shaft of sunshine as rigid as a search-light, piercing the shadow of the jungle. At first she would turn in the saddle and call to him, but as each day they grew to know each other better she need only point with her whip-hand ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... it perished at a very early age. Again, it is well known that with many plants the ovarium may be fully developed, though pollen be wholly excluded. And lastly, Mr. Smith, the late Curator at Kew (as I hear through Dr. Hooker), observed the singular fact with an orchid, the Bonatea speciosa, the development of the ovarium could be effected by mechanical irritation of the stigma. Nevertheless, from the number of the pollen-grains expended "in the satiation of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... wood of oaks, with their branches fringed with the long grey Spanish moss, and a profusion of epiphytes clinging to their bark, some splendidly in flower, showing the fantastic shapes and brilliant colours one sees in English orchid-houses. Cactuses of many species complete the picture of the vegetation in this beautiful spot. This is at the top of the barranca. Then imagine a valley a mile or two in width, with sides almost perpendicular and capped with basaltic pillars, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... buds of Calopogon,—pretty pinkish flowers,—both of which Miss Walters told them were closely related, and, indeed, belonged to the same family as the Arethusa. This was the Orchid family, which contained a large number of beautiful but strange plants, about a dozen of which ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... led along a winding path between banked masses of softly radiant blooms, groups of feathery ferns whose plumes were starred with fragrant white and blue flowerets, slender creepers swinging from the branches of the strangely trunked trees, bearing along their threads orchid-like blossoms both delicately frail ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... its head further, leaving the artist caste to wither in a make-believe refinement. The violent storms at the time of the excitement about the Dreyfus Case did rouse some minds from this torpor, but when they came out of their orchid-house the fresh air turned their heads and they threw themselves into the great passing movement with the same exaggeration that their predecessors had shown in withdrawing from it. They believed that salvation was in the ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... to mount, for the main trunk ended about twelve feet from the ground, and after a little feeling about amongst the dense orchid growth, he soon found a position where he could sit astride, and support his back in a comfortable half-reclining posture, perfectly safe from all risk of falling, so that there was every prospect of a ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... censure. I regard it as the greatest compliment he could have paid him. A wreath may be very pretty in its way, but it is artificial. The flowers are crushed and their fragrance does not blend. How much lovelier is a single violet or orchid in the fields, unhampered by strings and wires, and connected solely with its stalk and the surrounding green leaves. Many of Chopin's compositions are so short that they can hardly be likened unto flowers, but only to buds. Yet is not a rosebud a thousand ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... fragrant stillness of the orchid scented glade, Where the blazoned, bird-winged butterflies ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... ardent love of beauty had characterized this girl, whose covetous gaze wandered from a gorgeous scarlet and gold orchid nodding in dreams of its habitat, in some vanilla scented Brazilian jungle, to a bed of vivid green moss, where skilful hands had grouped great drooping sprays of waxen begonias, coral, faint ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... they might be valuable in selecting frocks for such occasions as mentioned. Violet and orange, both pale and not vivid, offer a delicate harmony of color that is nothing short of exquisite. Old rose and Nile green are equally effective. Orchid, for the person whose complexion can bear it, may be combined with such vivid colors as red, green and blue, presenting a contrast so strong and clear and beautiful that it reminds one of a glorious sunset. Black satin, for the elderly person, is quite festive enough for ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... primrosed banks, of CAMOENS' somewhat zone-confounding vision, had indeed vanished, and in their stead seemed to wave snowy serviettes, to flow champagne-streams, to glitter goblets, and to glow orchid-laden epergnes. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... meant it to be," laughed the Violet. "There's his car! Bring me that orchid wrap when I ring for it." And leaving the admiration of Susette, the Violet hurried down to drink from the cup of the same vintage she was sure would be offered her by Mr. ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... from time to time. Beatrice realized that Trudy felt a greater joy and satisfaction in displaying this not-paid-for cheap machine—having sat up half the night to make the shirred curtains—than Beatrice ever could feel in her tapestry-lined, orchid-adorned limousine. So she began to envy Trudy just as Trudy envied her. Trudy had done nothing but struggle to be able to live, as she termed it; Beatrice had ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... a leaf-clasped stem, this orchid attracts us by its flaunted beauty and decorative form from tip to root, not less than the aesthetic little bees for which its adornment and mechanism are so marvellously adapted. Doubtless the heavy, oily odor is an additional attraction ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... rose, a violet, a sunflower and an orchid and what perfume you are sure to find in each, by the same method. All are flowers and all belong to the same species, just as all human beings belong to the same species. But their respective size, shape and structure tell you in advance and on sight what their respective ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... The line of head, throat, and shoulder was perfect. The delicate, disdainful poise and the gay provocation in the dark, slanting eyes were enough to tell that she was no novice in the game of sex. He judged her an expensive orchid produced in the civilization of our twentieth-century hothouse. Across the bottom of the picture was scrawled an inscription in a fashionably angular hand. Lane moved closer to read it. The words were, "Always, Phyllis." ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... world of gratitude to the young Count for not having waited to see her. She went into her room to undress, and in doing so drew gently from her belt the white orchid. She was about to put it in one of the two vases on the mantel-piece, when her hand paused of its own accord and remained inert; her gaze had been caught by the Duke de Morlay-La-Branche's gardenias in the other vase. Radiant ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... that your hands (that never took mine) your hands that I could see drift over the orchid heads so carefully, your hands, so fragile, sure to lift so gently, the fragile flower stuff— ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... sides, the leaves dipping into the water. It was very secluded, very beautiful, and wonderfully reposeful. Our path lay through a lovely wood, where wild flowers grew in profusion, among them a kind of wild orchid with a delicious perfume, and the small wild arum lily. It is strange that such rare plants should grow there, when one remembers that for six or eight months of the year the land is ice-bound. On the island we visited a small church, within the sacred ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of my dress coat She fastened a delicate orchid last night. It must have cost a pretty penny, at this season—enough, no doubt, to buy the seeds that would reproduce a half-dozen of my grandmother's gardens. And as we moved away in the limousine She asked me why I was so silent. She could not know ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright |
