"Prickly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conciliatory manners, while their admiration and respect had been thoroughly roused and excited by his prowess and valour in the chase. On one occasion, it is recorded, word was brought to Outram of the presence of a panther in some prickly-pear shrubs on the side of a hill near his station. He went to shoot it with a friend, Outram being on foot and his friend on horseback searching through the bushes. When close on the animal, Outram's friend fired and missed, on which the panther sprang forward roaring ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... it; and while he was doing so he entered into this reflection: "How many greedy epicures would think themselves happy, amidst such a variety of delicate viands as I now carry! But to me this bitter, prickly Thistle is more savory and relishing than the most exquisite and sumptuous banquet. Let others choose what they may for food, but give me, above everything, a fine juicy thistle like this ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... The Prickly Comfrey has been recommended as a good forage plant. It yields an abundant crop—or rather crops, for it may be cut several times in the year. The plant is a handsome one, and it might combine the useful with the ornamental if it were cultivated ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... thy numskull for thee, you mandy chap!" said Mrs. Nunsuch, as she helplessly danced round with him, her feet playing like drumsticks among the sparks. "My ankles were all in a fever before, from walking through that prickly furze, and now you must make 'em ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Jacko the hand organ monkey. "They are chestnuts, and they fell off the trees and hit you. No one was throwing stones at you, though the prickly burrs inside of which the chestnuts are, seem ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... platform he watched young De Castro, all covered with prickly-heat, get into a second-class compartment. Kim patronized a third, and was the life and soul of it. He explained to the company that he was assistant to a juggler who had left him behind sick with fever, and that he ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... that half of Marstrand island which looked westward to the sea, unguarded by isles or skerries, there was nothing but bare and barren rocks and ragged headlands thrust out into the waves. Heather there was in brown tufts and prickly thorn bushes, holes of the otter and the fox, but never a path, never a house or any ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... Clinton. I consulted my soldier-servant about it. He was ready to guarantee the washing, but he did not see his way to starching and ironing; so I had to give them up and take to flannels. They were awful at first, and irritated my skin until they brought on prickly heat, and I was almost out of my mind for a few days. However, I have got over it now. What made you go into the ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... to some extent her own fault. At the present stage of her career she was an extraordinarily prickly child, and even to her two sponsors did not at times present a very amiable outside: like a hedgehog, she was ever ready to shoot out her spines. With regard, that is, to her veracity. She had been so badly grazed, in her recent ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... began to pass around the dusky, piquant, Arlesian sausages, and lobsters in their dazzling red cuirasses, prawns of large size and brilliant color, the echinus with its prickly outside and dainty morsel within, the clovis, esteemed by the epicures of the South as more than rivalling the exquisite flavor of the oyster,—all the delicacies, in fact, that are cast up by the wash ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... arrived, is a place of considerable extent; and may contain from eight hundred to one thousand houses. It is fortified in the common African manner, by a surrounding high wall built of clay, and an outward fence of pointed stakes and prickly bushes; but the walls are neglected, and the outward fence has suffered considerably from the active hands of busy housewives, who pluck up the stakes for firewood. I obtained a lodging at one of the king's near relations, who apprized me, that at my introduction ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the flower of a prickly-pear cactus, full of sunlight from behind, which a fairy took the fancy to swell ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... inserted on the calyx, 5 petals, 4 nearly equal, the uppermost broader and shorter. Stamens 10. Filaments very unequal in height, inserted on the calyx, united and woolly at the base. Pistil very short. Stigma thick. Pod rhomboidal before maturity, prickly, containing 2 semi-globose seeds with testa ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... Dot, "is like a little plain, hedged round with prickly pear, and put on the top of a mountain. No one ever comes in, and we never ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... began to chatter, and no dogs barked. Nor could I see any native sheep or cattle. The place, though it had evidently been recently inhabited, was as still as the bush round it, and some guinea-fowl got up out of the prickly pear bushes right at the kraal gate. I remember that I hesitated a little before going in, there was such an air of desolation about the spot. Nature never looks desolate when man has not yet laid his hand upon her breast; she is only lovely. But when man has been, and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... preparation to use at night is made of one ounce of glycerine, half an ounce of rosemary (fluid), and twenty drops of carbolic acid. This is excellent for any irritation of the skin, and also for prickly heat. The face must always be well washed with water and pure soap before applying any of these preparations. If the skin is oily, bathe with diluted camphor (a teaspoonful to a pint of water), but it is injurious to ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... terror and a fascination. She returned to the prickly wreath, sewing on the variegated holly-leaves one by one, with clusters of ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... washing or wear Always shrinks | | Prevents chills and colds Encourages chills and colds | | Prevents and relieves Rheumatism Promotes Rheumatism and similar | | diseases | | Does not irritate the most Causes Rash and other skin | | sensitive skin troubles | | Cures and prevents prickly heat Irritates all skin diseases | | | | | | "They shall be clothed with Linen "And no wool shall come upon | | garments."—Ezekiel 44.17 them."—Ezekiel 44.17 | | "But Flax, that cleanest and best "For wool the ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... sheep-walks of Maryland; a second spring seemed to clothe the fields, but with grief and shame I confess, that of these precious blossoms I scarcely knew a single name. I think the Michaelmas daisy, in wonderful variety of form and colour, and the prickly pear, were almost my only acquaintance: let no one visit America without having first studied botany; it is an amusement, as a clever friend of mine once told me, that helps one wonderfully up and down hill, and must be superlatively ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... out we'll get there; and when we get there we'll find more water, and then you may shave three times a day if you feel so inclined, I'm sorry you have a blister on your off heel, and I sympathize with you because of your prickly-heat. But it's all in the day's work and you'll survive. In the meantime, however, I suggest that you compose your restless New England soul in patience, old man, and enjoy with our uncommunicative Cahuilla friend and myself ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... dawdled languidly on toward the pony beyond. On it came, would have passed to the right; but, under an impulse he in no way understood, the broncho moved to intercept it. Fair in its path, the little beast would still have shifted to give it right of way, for the weed is very prickly; but again the authority he did not question held him in his place, and the three, the man, the horse, and the plant, came together. Then it was the finale began, the real test, the matching of ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... oval in form, about 67 leagues in circumference, and surrounded by towering rocks, which seemed to be meant to protect it from invasion. It was in the year 1325 that the Aztecs paused upon the shore of the lake, and saw, as the sun rose, a splendid eagle perched upon a prickly pear which shot out of a crevice in the rock. It held a large serpent in its claws, and its broad wings were opened towards the rising sun. The Aztecs saw in this a most favourable omen, and there and then set about building themselves a city, laying its foundations upon piles in the marshy ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... The Happy Family went prickly hot. The girls in that neighborhood were held in esteem, and there was that in his tone ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... him he started on his ride from the city of oranges. Oranges grow plentifully enough in Spain, in Malta, in Egypt, in Jamaica, and other places, but within five miles of Jaffa nothing else is grown—if we except the hedges of prickly pear which divide the gardens. Orange garden succeeds to orange garden till one finds oneself on the broad open desert that leads ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... clouds, which were incessantly riven by broad and terrible flashes of silent lightning. A slight westerly breeze was blowing, and evidently impeded the progress of the storm, which was beating up from seaward against the wind. Plunging through prickly thickets and dashing through the turbid brooks, we hastened toward the clearing, committed Cranberry Lodge to the custody of the "hired man," and untied our horses from the saplings to which they were made fast. In another moment we were on the back trail. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... quantity of nettles, which were plentiful near this camp, and having boiled them thoroughly, we made of them a hearty if not quite an appetizing meal. They did not seem unpalatable at the time, and had we possessed salt to add taste and digestibility to our prickly diet, we might have felt quite happy. We supplied the deficiency by mixing with them a double quantity of pepper. At any rate, it was a relief to know that, while nettles lasted near our camp, we should at least ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... furze to cut it, and it was loose and came away in his hand without any cutting. He tried another. That too was loose. He took off his jacket and threw it over his hands to protect them, and seizing an armful of furze pulled, and fell back, a great bundle of the prickly stuff on top of him. True was pulling like mad at the chain. Edred scrambled up; the furze he had pulled away disclosed a hole, and True was disappearing down it. Edred saw, as the dog dragged him close to the hole, that it was a large one, though ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... miles of prairie to traverse before he should reach the Jefferson Fork of the Missouri; how could he hope to hold out such a distance with the fearful odds of several hundred to one against him! The plain, too, abounded with the prickly pear, which wounded his naked feet. Still he fled on, dreading each moment to hear the twang of a bow, and to feel an arrow quivering at his heart. He did not even dare to look round, lest he should lose an inch of that distance ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... dear Colonel Dawson was only playing," she cried. "He only did it to please me. Thank you, Colonel, though you did frighten me just a weeny bit at first." And pulling him down towards her she kissed him heartily upon his prickly cheek. It was ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... appearance. In one only, Charles Island, is water to be found, though in another of considerable extent there are hills and valleys with groves of trees; but the chief vegetation on all of them is the prickly pear, which in most parts ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... are bunches of cactus with prickly leaves. Look out! don't catch your toe in those sea-ferns. Even that sweet green maiden-hair fern might pin down your foot so firmly that it would take a fish's sharp tooth to ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... clatter of the approaching hoofs, he raised his head. One horn, prematurely developed, bent forwards, the other stood up straight and pointed. His sooty black forehead was covered with prickly water-burrs, across his snout was the scar of a large ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... an English dead settlement there ought to be a live one, I reasoned, unless those who are buried here date from Peninsular battles. The first part of the road to Blanche's Castle is level, and bordered with thick growths of prickly pear; there is a view of the sea, and of the Guadalate, spanned by a metal bridge—a Menai on a small scale. Farther on, as we get to a district called La Piedad, the country is diversified by swampy flats at one side and sandy ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... beautiful," said Aimee, "but nothing more inconvenient. See, you are setting your horse's feet into a trap." And she pointed to the stiff, prickly green shoots which matted all the ground. "We must approach by some other way. Let us wait till the ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... early spring, that they would not be easily persuaded to burn. However, we were not likely to submit to a dark and cold bivouac without an effort, and my fellows groped forward through the darkness, till after advancing a few paces they were happily stopped by a complete barrier of dead prickly bushes. Before our swords could be drawn to reap this welcome harvest it was found to our surprise that the fuel was already hewn and strewed along the ground in a thick mass. A spot for the fire was found with some difficulty, for the earth was moist and the grass high and rank. At last there ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... then—at the time of the trouble with her lover," nodded Old Tom; "and it seems as if she'd been feedin' on wormwood an' thistles ever since—she's that bitter an' prickly ter deal with." ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... ground, but near enough for them to leap down: when they let go their hands, they fell softly to the earth. They quickly jumped up, and proceeded as rapidly as the strength of the Princess and the unknown way would allow them through the thickets, underwood, and plains studded with prickly plants, towards ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... whooped and gave chase. The Gauls, sighting the A.P.M. brassard, promptly dumped the hut and dived through a wire fence. Sherlock hitched his horse to a post and followed afoot, snorting fire and brimstone. They led him at a smart trot over four acres of boggy plough, through a brambly plantation, two prickly hedges and a richly-perfumed drain and went to ground inextricably in some mine buildings. He returned, blown, battered and baffled, to the starting-point, to find that some third party had in the meantime removed the Armstrong ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... with Little John. Every day left upon him its mark of development and improvement. Other babies in the neighborhood suffered more or less from "prickly heat," whooping-cough, and cholera morbus, and ailed upon the advent of teeth. Not so Little John. He seemed proof against everything. One day Ellen was called from the beach to attend to some detail ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... spores are at first protected, as we have seen in Coprinus, which belongs to this order, but finally become exposed. Here belong the toadstools and mushrooms (Fig. 51, B), the large shelf-shaped fungi (Polyporus), so common on tree trunks and rotten logs (Fig. 51, C, D, E), and the prickly ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... and uneven, Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind; But hearing thee, or others of thy kind, As full of gladness and as free of heaven, I, with my fate contented, will plod on, And hope for higher raptures, when life's day ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... and new-descending rills Furrow the brows of all th' impending hills. The water-gods to floods their rivulets turn, And each, with streaming eyes, supplies his wanting urn. The fauns forsake the woods, the nymphs the grove, And round the plain in sad distractions rove: In prickly brakes their tender limbs they tear, And leave on thorns their locks of golden hair. With their sharp nails, themselves the satyrs wound, And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground. Lo Pan himself, beneath a blasted oak, Dejected lies, his pipe in pieces broke. See Pales weeping ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... joke, as it were, letting their threshold fall beneath the feet of the caller, and startling him with an explosion and a cloud of yellow powder, suggesting the day pyrotechnics of the Chinese. The prickly-pear cactus encloses its buzzing visitor in a golden bower, from which he must emerge at the roof as dusty as a miller. The barberry, in similar vein, lays mischievous hold of the tongue of its sipping bee, and I fancy, in his early acquaintance, before he has ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... road into a desert green and beautiful with vegetation. Now he passed a blooming azalea or a yucca with clustering bellflowers. The prickly pear and the cat-claw clutched at his chaps. The arrowweed and the soapweed were everywhere, as was also the stunted creosote. The details were not lovely, but in the sunset light of late afternoon the silvery sheen of the mesquite had its ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... splendor, according to aboriginal standards; the fringed seams of his hunting shirt and leggings, fashioned of fine white dressed doeskin, as pliable as "Canton silk crape," were hung with fawns' trotters; his moccasins were white and streaked with parti-colored paint; he had a curious prickly belt of wolves' teeth, which intimated his moral courage as well as sylvan prowess, for the slaying of these beasts was esteemed unlucky, and shooting at them calculated to spoil the aim of ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the faithful patrolling of the beach nothing in the way of pay-sand came to light. Whenever the weather permitted everyone sought shellfish among the rocks, as it had become necessary to gather a quantity sufficient to last during storms. The prickly sea-eggs were now added to the fare. Often however, when the wet snow was hurled unceasingly against the windows for days, the supply of sea-food gave out. Then, for hours, there was hunger in the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... against the morning sky. He could see no trail, so he determined to reach Snake Peak by a direct cross line. The peak would be lost to view when he reached the valley below so he sighted a lonely cedar on the crest of the opposite range and began to climb downward. It was stiff going. The prickly pear cactus and the ollas grew thick and the ground was covered with broken rock that made short work of his already ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... by Quails came to a hole, and one of the keenest-witted picked up a piece of prickly cholla cactus and pushed it into the hole; then they all ran in after it. But Coyote dug out the hole and reached them. When he came to the first quail ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... more than a few straggling small pines and dwarf cedars on the summits of the hills, nine-tenths of the ground being totally destitute of wood, and covered with short grass, aromatic herbs, and an immense quantity of prickly-pear; though the party who explored it for eight miles represented the low grounds on the river to be well supplied with cottonwood of a tolerable size, and of an excellent soil. They also report that the country is ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... as also a low, narrow passage, which branched off in zig-zag windings at the top, and terminated, as their woody path had done, in a solid wall. But again an invisible door flew open, closing behind them; and after walking about a hundred yards through prickly shrubs and entangled brushwood that obscured his sight, Marie paused, and Arthur gazed round bewildered. A seemingly boundless plain stretched for miles around him, its green level only diversified by rocks scattered about in huge masses and wild confusion, as ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... in the snow. He had got an hour and a half the start of us. His tracks led us in the direction of the mountains and the South Platte River, and as the country through which he was passing was covered with prickly pears, we knew that he could not escape stepping on them with his one bare foot, and hence we were likely to overtake him in a short time. We could see, however, from the long jumps that he was taking, that he ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... more poignantly from one who had been through the same educational mill as himself, than if they had merely come from some rough diamond, some artist, some foreigner, even from a doctor like George. And they always made him uncomfortable, like the touch of a prickly leaf; they did not amuse him. Certainly Edward Pierson shrank from the rough touches of a knock-about philosophy. After all, it was but natural ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... punkah, coolies, and prickly-heat,— Pagett was dear to mosquitoes, sandflies found him a treat. He grew speckled and mumpy—hammered, I grieve to say, Aryan brothers who fanned him, in an ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... a little prickly. The men among them, often Free Church ministers, seemed on the lookout for the sort of snubs which Nonconformists often receive from the Anglican clergy at home. The chaplains, especially the Church of England chaplains, appeared to ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... top of her sheet indicated an open sky with scarcely a hint of cloud. Across the bottom she outlined a bit of Sunland Desert she well remembered, in the foreground a bed of flat-leaved nopal, flowering red and yellow, the dark red prickly pears, edible, being a near relative of the fruits she had used in her salad. After giving the prickly pear the place of honor to the left, in higher growth she worked in the slender, cylindrical, jointed stems of ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... prone to the disease. It has also been observed that feed gathered from such grounds, even after prolonged drying, may give rise to the disease. Actinomycosis is not infrequent in cattle in the Southwest and is generally supposed to be the result of eating the prickly fruit of the cactus plant, causing wounds of the mucous membrane and subsequent infection with the parasite. Much additional information of a similar kind must be forthcoming before the source and manner of infection in this disease and its dependence upon external ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... the party now found themselves straitened for want of it, and the journey, too, began to tell upon the horses. Thick scrubs of eucalyptus brush, overrun with creepers and prickly acacia bushes, soon helped to bar the way, and when they at last reached the point of a range, which they named Peel Range, Oxley reluctantly abandoned his idea of making for the coast in a south-west direction, and turned ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... team reached the level ground, the driver lined them out and settled back in his seat with a satisfied grunt. About both sides of the trail at this point grew great thickets of brush—paloverde, the darker mesquites, and grotesque bunches of prickly pear. One of ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... intervention of a noon. The clear yellow sunlight had tempted forth Miss Aldclyffe herself, who was at this same time taking a walk in the direction of the village. As Springrove lingered he heard behind the plantation a woman's dress brushing along amid the prickly husks and leaves which had fallen into the path from the boughs of the chestnut trees. In another minute she ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... that are imported are excellent breakfast fruits, such as the alligator pear, Lechosa prickly pear, pomegranate, tropical mango, ...
— Breakfast Dainties • Thomas J. Murrey
... molecule in size, Rest with you, hum with you, or slanting rise Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view The pearly secret which each tiny fly— Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs Hides in its little breast eternally From you, ye prickly, grim philosophers With all your theories that sound so high: Hark to the buz a moment, my ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... to stop at all," Jack said, "for these loose yellow slipper things are horrid for walking in. I have tried going barefoot for a bit, but there are prickly things in the grass and I soon had to give ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... forsythias were as yellow as scrambled eggs, maples grew knobby with red buds. Among the fresh bright grass came, here and there, exhilarating smells of last year's buried bones. The little upward slit at the back of Gissing's nostrils felt prickly. He thought that if he could bury it deep enough in cold beef broth it would be comforting. Several times he went out to the pantry intending to try the experiment, but every time Fuji happened to be around. Fuji was a Japanese pug, and ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... his flippers tucked down by his side and his little nose just out of the water. No cradle is so comfortable as the long, rocking swell of the Pacific. When Kotick felt his skin tingle all over, Matkah told him he was learning the "feel of the water," and that tingly, prickly feelings meant bad weather coming, and he must swim ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... onward against his will by the voice of misery. The youth followed him closely, his eyes wide open with fear, as they neared the dreaded jungle. In its dark shadows who could say what dangers lurked? They pressed on, however, through trails of prickly foliage, clinging undergrowth, and fallen timber, which lay like so many traps for unwary feet. The cry had sunk to a moan, but the dog's whine was shriller and more urgent as they neared ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the dull red disk of the sun, and spat with eloquence. Then he wiped the sweat from his forehead, and scratched a place where the prickly heat was bothering him. Next, he buttoned up his tunic, and brushed it down neatly and precisely. There was official business to be done, and a man did that with due ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... while Harry, shouting "conceited young jackanapes," pursued him at full speed. I had never seen such rough play or heard such mocking laughter, and I burst into tears, sobbing out my trouble on my uncle's shoulder as he carried me off and laughingly soothed me, pressing the prickly wreath all the while against ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... as everywhere else, tends to self-indulgence, since one extreme produces another. In one part of India, therefore, devotees are swinging on hooks in honor of Siva, hanging themselves by the feet, head downwards, over a fire, rolling on a bed of prickly thorns, jumping on a couch filled with sharp knives, boring holes in their tongues, and sticking their bodies full of pins and needles, or perhaps holding the arms over the head till they stiffen in that position. Meantime in other places whole regions are given over to sensual indulgences, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... cleared of sediment and decayed vegetable matter, revealing the pebbly bottom, fresh and bright, with one or two fish suspended over the centre of it, keeping watch and ward. If an intruder approached, they would dart at him spitefully. These fish have the air of bantam cocks, and, with their sharp, prickly fins and spines and scaly sides, must be ugly customers in a hand-to-hand encounter with other finny warriors. To a hungry man they look about as unpromising as hemlock slivers, so thorny and thin are they; yet there is sweet meat in them, as ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the timber in the creek nearly all white gum, the North of Adelaide native orange, and a new fruit, something similar, that when ripe splits open down the sides whilst still green, and grows on a low prickly shrub, leaf not unlike the orange but longer and when near other trees or shrubs entwines itself round them and grows to a good height. The actual distance today direct is about fifteen miles, as the creek came in my course and receded again ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... we drew in, we descried an ox-cart and a couple of men standing directly on the brow of the hill; and having landed, the captain took his way round the hill, ordering me and one other to follow him. We followed, picking our way out, and jumping and scrambling up, walking over briers and prickly pears, until we came to the top. Here the country stretched out for miles, as far as the eye could reach, on a level, table surface, and the only habitation in sight was the small white mission of San Juan Capistrano, with a few Indian huts about it, standing ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... me think of a chestnut burr," said Kittie resorting to figurative comparisons. "There's lots of good in her, but she won't let any one get at it. If we try, she shuts up and gets prickly. I never thought much about it, until here lately, and then she was so splendid, and knew how to do everything; and, I begin to think that there is ever so much more to her than we think, even if she is queer, and don't seem ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... alone in the wood and very sorry he felt that he had rejected the society of the prickly hedgehog. ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... was silent, motionless, a dead thing in a rocky grave. Maurice saw a faint and misty light among the bare trees. It came from his old home, and now his hand touched the white garden gate, prickly with ice. He pushed it open and stole up the path till he reached the little porch of the cottage. As he stood there his heart beat hard and his breath fluttered in his throat. It seemed to him that there must be some strange ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... how that broad prickly star-shaped plant, Half-down in the crevice, spreads its woolly leaves, All thick and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... A prickly shrub, from five to ten feet high, growing wild in this country and in Europe, on poor, hard soils, or in moist situations, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... raised it on one side to screen us from the wind which came through the cabin walls. Against the wall at our head we fixed up rugs. At our feet, between our bed and the open doorway, we had our blazing fire. And there we slept. We had prickly sensations in our eyes in the morning, but they soon passed away. We took no cold, or none that proved serious at all. And the wolves seemed to ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... of them, indeed—are but one story in height, in the city proper, though often constructed of stone; but in the suburbs they are altogether of one story and built of adobe. Some of the hedges are both striking and effective, consisting of the prickly-pear cactus, which presents an impenetrable barrier to man or beast. The natives prepare a dish of green salad from the tender leaves of the cactus, as we do from dandelions and lettuce, which satisfies a certain appetite, and no doubt ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... dissimulation, and the histrionic quality, just as the peaceful ilex learns to put forth thorns if you expose it to the attacks of devouring cattle. It is this instinct to develop thorns in self-defence, and yet to live a little behind the prickly outposts, that leads to our notion of mystery in woman's nature. Let a man's subsistence and career be subject to the same powers and chances as the success of a woman's life now hangs on, and see whether he too does not become ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... is another story of the High and Far-Off Times. In the very middle of those times was a Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog, and he lived on the banks of the turbid Amazon, eating shelly snails and things. And he had a friend, a Slow-Solid Tortoise, who lived on the banks of the turbid Amazon, eating green lettuces and things. And so that was all right, ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... fauna and flora of the whole country meet in one. All the wild birds pass in their migrations; and the flowers!" Then she would expatiate on the trailing arbutus in April, and the vast sheets of pale blue lupines in early June, and the yellow, sunlike blossoms of the prickly-pear in July, and the red glories of painter's-brush and bittersweet and sumach in September. "No wonder," she would say, "that they have to distribute handbills on the excursion-trains asking people to leave ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... of the opuntia, or prickly-pear cactus, which the Apache call hush, is much used for food both in its fresh state and dried. It is picked from the plant with pincers of split sticks. When the tu{COMBINING BREVE}tza, or burden basket, ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... Monacaboes, are a barbarous and savage people, whose chief delight is in doing injury to their neighbours. On this account, the peasantry about Malacca sow no grain, except in inclosures defended by thickset prickly hedges or deep ditches: For, when the grain is ripe in the open plains, the Monacaboes never fail to set it on fire. These inland natives are much whiter than the Malays of the lower country; and the king of Johor, whose subjects they are or ought to be, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... seen anything like them. Zounds, I'm afire. I have little prickly sensations, like ants running over me. How can you be insensate enough to descend to labour with an houri like that around? Oh, man! To think of an angel like that WORKING—to think of a brute like ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... are of a great height, covered with long prickly leaves; broad-spreading boughs afford an agreeable shade, and bear nuts of a great size, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... film-winged things That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; All modesties of mountain-fawns That leap to covert from wild lawns, And tremble if the day but dawns; All sparklings of small beady eyes Of birds, and sidelong glances wise [141] Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; All piquancies of prickly burs, And smoothnesses of downs and furs Of eiders and of minevers; All limpid honeys that do lie At stamen-bases, nor deny The humming-birds' fine roguery, Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... George's wharf-head the water was deep—deeper than Donald could fathom at low tide—and it was cold, and covered a rocky bottom, upon which a multitude of starfish and prickly sea-eggs lay in clusters. It was green, smooth and clear, too; sight carried straight down to where the purple-shelled ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... her heart tightened anew with intolerable pain.... His glance fell to the expectant face of his companion, and both smiled with profound intimacy as at a meeting where words are needless.... Milly's hand grasped the prickly vines of the hedge, and she held herself still until they had passed. No, it made no difference to her now what they ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... have thought of it. They passed through smoke-vomiting manufacturing towns, where he saw many legs seemingly bearing about umbrellas, but few entire people; they whizzed smoothly past drenched suburbs, wet woodlands, and endless-looking brown moors, covered with dead bracken and bare and prickly gorse. He thought these last great desolate stretches worse than ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... down the pleasantest of the ravines, till it develops into the Prickly Pear River, and past embryo cities,—at present noticeable for nothing except their rivalry of each other,—and hurry on to Last Chance Gulch and the city of Helena. A few emigrants from Minnesota had been here for many months. They made no excitement, no parade, but steadily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... over a sheep, whose fleece he was relieving of a strange growth of burrs and prickly, brambly strands with which ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... wall, which guards one unkempt zone, Where vines and weeds and scrub-oaks intertwine Safe from the plough, whose rough, discordant stone 80 Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine, The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, weaves A prickly network of ensanguined leaves; Hard by, with coral beads, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... they walked along, kept looking at her husband, and her own face was transfigured. Mrs. Zelotes, also, seemed to radiate with a sort of harsh and prickly delight. She descanted upon the hard-earned savings which Andrew had risked, but she held her old head very high with reluctant joy, and her bonnet had a ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... save my love from being starved away from me. In this there was no creeping neither crawling treachery; for all was done with sliding; and yet I was so out of training for being charged by other people beyond mine own conscience, that Carver Doone's harsh words came on me, like prickly spinach sown with raking. Therefore ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... after deer or sheep, they were quite unable to cope with Willis when it came to mountaineering. The climbing was hard, the footing was treacherous, and the sharp rocks tore their moccasins into ribbons. There was endless underbrush, thickets of prickly balsam or laurel—but ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... heard of cases of albinism, prickly skin, hairy bodies, etc., appearing in members of the same family. If strange and rare deviations of structure are really inherited, less strange and commoner deviations may be freely admitted to be inheritable. Perhaps the correct way ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Cucumber. Egyptian Cucumber. Globe Cucumber. Gourd, or Calabash. The Melon. Musk-melon. Persian Melons. Water-melon. Papanjay, or Sponge Cucumber. Prickly-fruited Gherkin. Pumpkin. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... mantle they severed,—now pushed the boat's head up into a wall of weeds, that bent back and let it through the deep cut flooded by the rain, where the wild growth shut off everything but the high hollow of a luminous sky, with ribbon-grasses and long prickly leaves brushing across their faces from either side, here and there a sudden dwarf palmetto bristling all its bayonets against the peaceful night, and all the way singular uncouth shapes of vegetation, like conjurations of magic, cutting themselves out with minuteness upon the vast clear background ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... shoot up as rapidly as the beanstalk of the fairy tale. But inside houses dampness reigns. Green fungus adorns boots and all things of leather, tobacco reeks with moisture, and the white man scratches himself and curses the plague of prickly heat. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... instant he was up to his middle in mud and water. He seized the prickly branches coiling about and above him; he gasped in prayerful pleading, the home teaching still strong in him; but there was no answer, save the crooning night-birds and the croaking frogs. Slimy ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... young mulberry, together with a sweet wilderness of unfamiliar plants, are not to be perfectly enjoyed on a fourfooted animal that stumbles, or on a road full of pitfalls. We shall only say that the Cynara cardunculus, (a singularly fine thistle or wild artichoke;) the prickly uncultivated love-apple, (a beautiful variety of the Solanum,) of which the decoction is not infrequently employed in nephritic complaints; the Ferula, sighing for occupation all along the sea-shore, and shaking its scourge as the wind blows; the Rhododendron, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... New Grenada, 1853. This is a desirable shrub, and one that is perfectly hardy in most parts of the country. It is a charming shrub of bold, bushy habit, with prickly holly-like foliage, and scarlet and yellow, trumpet-shaped pendent flowers, borne in quantity. The shelter of a wall favours the growth and flowering of this handsome shrub, but it also succeeds well in the open if planted in rich, light soil, and in positions that are ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... as he came through the front gate. After looking at it for a few minutes, idle curiosity prompted him to turn it over with his foot, and as he did so three bright brass letters—"R. E. L."—greeted him. He looked sharply at them at first, then his eyes dilated, and a little prickly thrill ran through him. "I wonder if it can be!" he said. Suddenly some convincing feeling seemed to fill his mind, and then he almost ran to the house. On reaching the steps, he sprang up them two at a time, and entered the hall, where he ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... with Sister Bridget I learnt the whole history of her convent life. She was forced to take the veil by her family, much against her will, for she even then felt the prickly sensation of desire, making her cunt throb at the idea of coition with the male sex. She quickly found a friend with similar desires, but more experience, who first taught her all the art of tribadism, and then confessed to having connection with the youngest father confessor. This ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... witness That these same fault-finding beings Can produce such horrid sounds as Those which I have just now heard. Are such tones not like a nosegay Made of straw, and thorns, and nettles, In the midst a prickly thistle? And in presence of this maiden Who the trumpet there is blowing, Can a man then without blushing E'er sneer at our caterwauling? But, thou valiant heart, be patient! Suffer now, the time will yet come When this self-sufficient ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... Nurse is full of prickly pins, Mamma's full of kisses sweet For dimpled hands and ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... felt hat is a daisy for keepin' off the sun, an' that gaudy bit av a rag around his neck keeps the sun and sand from blisterin' the skin. The leather pants is to keep his legs from gettin' clawed up be the thorns av prickly pear an' what not, which he's got to ride through, an' the high heels is to keep his feet from slippin' through the stirrups. A kid c'ud tell ye what he carries the young cannon for, an' why he wears it so low on his hip. Ye've nivver seen him up close, eh Murph'? Well, I'm askin' him down so's ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... out of the name of Luther Burbank, the man who has raised such marvelous flowers in California and has turned the cactus into a food for cattle instead of a prickly nuisance." ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... well as you, William, so let us walk up to it. Oh, I know it now; it is what they call the prickly pear in the West Indies. I am very glad to have found that, for it will ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... seen," answered stork-mamma. "Behind this delightful region there are luxuriant forests, whose branches are interlaced with one another, while prickly climbing plants close up the paths—only the elephant can force a way for himself with his great feet; and the snakes are too big, and the lizards too quick for us. If you go into the desert, you'll get your eyes full of sand when there's a light breeze, but when it blows great guns you may get ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... prickly thing; it tears the husbandman's flesh, as well as destroys the fruit of his field. In like manner the care of the world and the deceitfulness of riches lacerate the man who permits them to grow rank in his heart. The vain man is continually meeting with slights, or ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... that Pool; and near it, then, Was neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen. It was not overgrown with boisterous sedge, Nor grew there rudely, then, along the edge A bending willow, nor a prickly bush, Nor broad-leafed flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush: But here, well ordered, was a grove with bowers; There, grassy plots, set round about with flowers. Here, you might, through the water, see the land Appear, strewed o'er with white ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... their horses' bridles, disarmed about 30 men. This caused an immediate panic, and most of the Hussars fled (closely pursued by our burghers, who shot 10 or 12 of them). The Hussars left behind a Colt-Maxim and a heliograph for our usage. The ground was overgrown here with a prickly, thorny bush, which made it difficult for our foes to escape, and about 20 more were overtaken and caught, several having been dragged from their horses by protruding branches, and with their face and hands badly injured ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... 'em nothin'. Wait till they're frizzlin' in the Red Sea, an' I've worked some of the grease out of 'em. By that time, wot between prickly heat an' high livin', they'll be ready to kill any Gord's quantity ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... is not an animal. It is a spot—at present a lovely spot. I am surrounded by—by nature and all her southern abundance. Mimosa trees, prickly pears, and aloes remind me that I am not in England. Ostriches, stalking on the plains, tell that I am in Africa. It is not much above thirty years since the last lion was shot in this region, [see ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... loved, mashed into premature jam in his small fist; exciting turtles with variegated carapaces, and heads and feet that went in and out; occasional newts from the plashy places; and in autumn, hatfuls of walnuts. There were chestnuts, too, upon whose prickly hulls the preoccupied children would sometimes inadvertently plump themselves. Our father was a great tree-climber, and he was also fond of playing the role of magician. "Hide your eyes!" he would say, and the next moment, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the copse Thick with entangled grass, or prickly furze, With silence lead thy many-coloured hounds In ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... called for an instant remedy and I brought him the blotting paper, instead of smiling at the merry quality of my jest, he pursued me for two hours around my father's farm, and finally cornering me in the Discosaurus shed, larruped me for twenty full minutes with a paddle pulled from a prickly cactus plant in my mother's drawing-room, thorn side down. Indeed most of my early recollections of the old gentleman are inseparably associated with a series of chastisements which, even as he had prophesied when administering them, I have not been able to forget, although I cannot see that any ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... as on the previous day, the scenery being sometimes very picturesque—the prickly palm, and cocoa-nut trees, and numberless shrubs with long waving leaves. Sometimes thickets of the graceful bamboo lined either side of the road; but persons, when carried off as prisoners, are not generally apt to admire the beauty of the scenery. Sunshine ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston |
