"Prune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to propriety. And truly, I should think, that the play was begun with a design to draw more amiable characters, answerable to the title of The Tender Husband; but that the author, being carried away by the luxuriancy of a genius, which he had not the heart to prune, on a general survey of the whole, distrusting the propriety of that title, added the under one: with an OR, The Accomplished Fools, in justice to his piece, and compliment to his audience. Had he called it The ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... city and drove out the other party, so that the fighting never ceased either inside or outside the gates. The peaceful country round about had been laid waste and desolate. The peasants did not dare go out to till their fields or prune their olive-trees. Mothers were afraid to let their little ones out of their sight, for hungry wolves and other wild beasts prowled ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... the family at the dinner-table, and it was received with rejoicing. The little girl alone was silent. But, doubtless, she had not heard what he said, for she was intent upon a huge piece of dried-prune cobbler. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... for novelty; but if you are true to your own vision, as heretofore you have been, you will always be original and personal in your work. In stating your opinion on the structural character of man, bird, or beast, always wilfully caricature; it gives you something to prune, which is ever so much more satisfactory than having constantly to fill gaps which an unincisive vision has caused, and which will invariably make work dull and ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... flower is not without honor, save in its own country. We have only to prepare a border of leaf mould, take up the young plant without injuring the roots or allowing them to dry, hurry them into the ground, and prune back the bush a little, to establish it in our gardens, where it will bloom freely after the second year. Lime in the soil and manure are fatal to it as well as to rhododendrons and azaleas. All they require is a mulch of leaves kept ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... know all about grandad and all the various and sundry uncles and forbears that earned us the name of being bad; it makes darn interesting stuff to tell now and then to some of the fellows who were raised in a prune orchard and will sit and listen with watering mouths and eyes goggling. I've been a hero, months on end, just for the things that my grandad did in the seventies. Of course," he pulled his lips into their whimsical ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... In a well-greased baking-dish place one-quarter of the noodles, bits of butter or other fat, add one-half of the prunes, then another layer of the noodles, butter or fat, the remaining prunes, the rest of the noodles. Pour over the prune juice and spread crumbs over top and bake in a moderate oven until ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... came to pass that the master of the vineyard went forth, and he saw that his olive-tree began to decay; and he said: I will prune it, and dig about it, and nourish it, that perhaps it may shoot forth young and tender branches, ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... Bacon or brave Raleigh spake; Or bid the new be English, ages hence, (For use will father what's begot by sense) 170 Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong, Rich with the treasures of each foreign tongue; Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line: Then polish all, with so much life and ease, You think 'tis nature, and a knack to please: But ease in writing flows from art, not chance; As those move easiest who have ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... their serious compositions, by throwing out the signs of our substantives which are essential to the English language. Nay, this humour of shortening our language had once run so far, that some of our celebrated authors, among whom we may reckon Sir Roger L'Estrange in particular, began to prune their words of all superfluous letters, as they termed them, in order to adjust the spelling to the pronunciation; which would have confounded all our etymologies, and have quite ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... quite spring-like. Prune cherry trees and currant bushes. Transplant plum tree sprouts. Messrs. Biddle and Drew finish preparing their vessel, and anchor ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... o' little ways like this an' entertained me fine; but it was mighty hard to wring any useful work out of him. He used to prune the rose vines, and now and again he'd do a little dustin'; but once when I had to bake sourdough bread, I pointed out that the garden needed weedin', an' explained to him just what effect weedin' had on garden truck. He sez to me, "My motto is, 'Competition ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... yourself—to criticise your gestures until after they are made. You can't prune a peach tree until it comes up; therefore speak much, and observe your own speech. While you are examining yourself, do not forget to study statuary and paintings to see how the great portrayers of nature have made their subjects express ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... because he counteth all his own, "he cannot commit simony, though he would never so fain." But how strongly and agreeably to reason these things be spoken, we are not as yet able to perceive, except perchance these men have plucked off the wings from the truth; as the Romans in old time did prune and pinion their goddess Victoria, after they had once gotten her home, to the end that with the same wings she should never more be able to flee away from them again. But what if Jeremy tell them, as is afore rehearsed, ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... in Spanish and Italian, father in English—ay, even the child's papa and the infant's daddy—all come from one root. But this cutting away of superfluities to get at the root, is precisely what a 'prentice hand should not attempt; like an unskilled gardener, he will prune ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... Prune thou thy words; the thoughts control That o'er thee swell and throng:— They will condense within thy soul, And change ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... agricultural Cropping, table of Cuckoo, note of Diseases of plants Drainage reports Evergreens, to transplant, by Mr. Glendinning Farming in Norfolk, high Farming, Mr. Mechi's, by Mr. Wilkins Farming, rule of thumb, by Mr. Wilkins Fruit trees, to root prune Gardeners' Benevolent Institution, by Mr. Wheeler Gardening, villa and suburban Grapes in pots Guano frauds Highland Patriotic Society Kew, Victoria Regia at Peel, Sir R., death of Pike, voracity ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... memory in old Grandpa's brain, as if he could almost recall when he, a young soldier of the North, had taken his fill of sweet, black-seeded, carnation-tinted pulp at some plantation in the harried South. And now he ate greedily till the last prune was gone, when Johnnie had Buckle throw all of the green rinds into the sink. (It was this attention to detail which invested his games with reality.) Then, the repast finished, Grandpa fretted to be away, whirling ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... therefore, how unjust it is to despise any one for the plainness of his dress, and the rusticity of his manners. You may understand a little Latin, but you know not how to plough, sow grain, or reap the harvest, nor even to prune a tree. Sit down with being convinced that you ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... the solstice sixty days being fled, Arcturus leaves the holy Ocean's bed And, shining, burns the twilight; when that shrill Child of Pandion opens first her bill— Before she twitters, prune your ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... while she led me, blinking, into the light. A tall stranger, a lady in prune-coloured silk, sat in ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... He held up his hand for inspection. "Look at that blister. It's as big as a dime and feels like a prune. They're not done yet and they'd induce you to duplicate it if they ever got you into their clutches. So long as it's all in the family I think one blister is about sufficient. Better lay low for a ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... followers; but each of those who graze apart, and who represent the superabundant supply of self-reliant animals, have one flank and the rear exposed, and it is precisely these whom the lions take. Looking at the matter in a broad way, we may justly assert that wild beasts trim and prune every herd into compactness, and tend to reduce it into a closely-united body with a single well-protected leader. That the development of independence of character in cattle is thus suppressed below its otherwise natural standard by the influence of wild beasts, is shown by the greater ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... prune potato-trees and artichokes, I wonder, And cultivate the silo-plant, which springs (I hope it springs?) In graceful foliage overhead?—Excuse me if I blunder, It's really inconvenient not to ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind, The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime. No longer now the winged habitants, That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,— 220 Flee from the form of man; but gather round, And prune their sunny feathers on the hands Which little children stretch in friendly sport Towards these dreadless partners of their play. All things are void of terror: Man has lost 225 His terrible prerogative, and stands ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... thing, Must we no longer live together? And dost thou prune thy trembling wing To take thy flight ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... this new spring, whereof The leaves and flowers flush into shoot, I might have succour and aid of Love, To prune these branches at the root, That long have borne such bitter fruit, And graft a new bough, comforted With happy blossoms white and red; So pleasure should for pain atone, Nor Love slay this tree, nor instead Plant any ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... "Prune juice! She'd 'a' made a regular sucker outa you. Good thing I got you away. A big mountain o' blood and bone like you fallin' for a dash o' cake frosting like that little hasher. Hiram, you've got a man's body and a man's brains, and ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... go! That's the sort of stuff I'll have to listen to from now on. I hope to goodness you choke on a prune! That's about all you'll get there; prunes and boiled rice. I'm not sure about the rice, either, at the second's table. I think the second simply has prunes. Boiled prunes for breakfast, roast prunes for dinner and dried prunes ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... just lately. A friend once consulted me casually about a picture on which he was at work, and complained that a row of trees in it was without sufficient interest. I was fortunate enough to be able to help him by saying: "Prune them freely and put a magpie's nest in one of them," and the trees became interesting at once. People in trees always look well, or rather, I should say, trees always look well with people in them, or indeed ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... along to you. We can look after ourselves out of the office, but what we want is someone to help in case they try to rush us there. In brief, a fighting editor. At all costs we must have privacy. No writer can prune and polish his sentences to his satisfaction if he is compelled constantly to break off in order to eject boisterous toughs. We therefore offer you the job of sitting in the outer room and intercepting these bravoes before they can reach us. The salary we ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... than a dozen apple trees and cuttings, and is going to bring some young fig trees. Thus we shall have quite an orchard, if they grow, but the "if" is a big one. The people do not seem to take any trouble with their fruit trees and hardly ever prune them. Perhaps they are disheartened on account of the rats. Most of the orchards are a long way off in ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... introduced and that society might have been much happier without it. The practical statesman has a very different task to perform. He has to look at things as they are, to take them as he finds them, to supply deficiencies and to prune excesses as far as in him lies. The task of furnishing a corrective for derangements of the paper medium with us is almost inexpressibly great. The power exerted by the States to charter banking corporations, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... packed, transported and cared for in the field, the quicker will the roots take hold and the vines make the vigorous start on which so much depends. The nurseryman should be requested not to prune much before packing and to pack the vines well for shipping. The vines should be heeled-in as soon as they reach their destination. If the vines are dry on arrival, they should be drenched well before heeling-in. It sometimes happens that the vines are shriveled and shrunken from excessive ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... gentlemen, to men that are hungry, pig, with prune sauce, is very good eating. But, gentlemen, you are my guests, make what alterations you please. Is there anything else you wish to retrench or ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... ashamed of making such a fuss," she continued, "but there are some subjects too horrible even to dwell upon or speak of, and that is one. I am going into the garden, Lance; perhaps you and Mr. Ford would like your cigars there? I am going to prune a favorite rose tree ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... may be true. We have seen very conclusively that when you prune even a little you are going ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... responsive to such applications, and I have seen the defoliation of prune trees in New York State ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... habit;" whilst its offspring, the imperial gage, "grows freely and rises rapidly, and has long dark shoots." The famous Washington plum bears a globular fruit, but its offspring, the emerald drop, is nearly as much elongated as the most elongated plum figured by Downing, namely, Manning's prune. I have made a small collection of the stones of twenty-five kinds, and they graduate in shape from the bluntest into the sharpest kinds. As characters derived from seeds are generally of high systematic importance, I have thought it worth while to give drawings ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... th' sthreets iv Paris in a chariot pulled be eight white horses amid cries iv 'Veev Higgins,' 'Abase Castile,' et cethra, fr'm th' populace. An' manny a heart beats proud in Goshen that night. That's th' way ye think iv it, but it happens diff'rent, Hinnissy. Th' soap king, th' prune king, an' th' porous plaster king fr'm here won't stir up anny tumult in Paris this year. Th' chances ar-re th' prisidint won't know they're there, an' no wan'll speak to thim but a cab dhriver, an' he'll say: 'Th' fare fr'm th' Changs All Easy to th' Roo de Roo is eighteen thousan' ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... their armour clashed Smitten with swords, with lances, and with darts. Spears plunged into men's flesh: dread Ares drank His fill of blood: struck down fell man on man, As Greek and Trojan fought. In level poise The battle-balance hung. As when young men In hot haste prune a vineyard with the steel, And each keeps pace with each in rivalry, Since all in strength and age be equal-matched; So did the awful scales of battle hang Level: all Trojan hearts beat high, and firm Stood they ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... is his Vnckles teaching. This is Worcester Maleuolent to you in all Aspects: Which makes him prune himselfe, and bristle vp The crest of Youth ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... interrupts Constance once more. "Then, no doubt, he has pruned away half the garden shrubs. Old Jerry always is seized with a desire to prune things, the moment he ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... they leave Phthiotic Tempe, Crannon's homes, and the fortressed walls of Larissa; to Pharsalia they hie, 'neath Pharsalian roofs they gather. None tills the soil, the heifers' necks grow softened, the trailing vine is not cleansed by the curved rake-prongs, nor does the sickle prune the shade of the spreading tree-branches, nor does the bullock up-tear the glebe with the prone-bending ploughshare; squalid rust ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... strong, with locks of a sort I have never before tried. Their dogs are faithful. They gather in and keep their kine and their asses and their hens under their hands at night. Their cattle graze and return at the proper hour in charge of the children. They prune their fruit trees as carefully as our barbers attend to men's nostrils and ears. The old women spin, walking up and down. Scissors, needles, threads, and buttons are exposed for sale on stalls in a market. They carry hens by the feet. Butchers sell dressed portions of fowls ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... before you came to it," said Sally. "You wouldn't think it to look at him, but he was once a prune-eater among the proletariat, even as you and I. Mrs. Meecher looks on him ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... (Vav Zayin Mem Resh Tav) is thus in the construct with the word God, exactly as in Judges v.23, Is. ix. 18, Eccl. iii. 18. As for the word vezimrat (Vav Zayin Mem Resh Tav) it has the meaning which the same root has in Lev. xxv. 4 ("thou shalt not prune") and in Is. xxv. 5; that is to say, "to cut". The meaning of our verse, then, is: "The strength and the vengeance of our Lord have been our salvation." One must not be astonished that the text uses vayehi (Vav Yod He Yod) (imperfect changed to past) ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... April to pinch and prune the vines, which must be cleaned from all cankered and unhealthy leaves or other substances, to preserve them from insects. In July they should also be gone over, and pruned and nailed, where requisite. All walls and stakes should then be attentively examined, to ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... over to Red and informing that person that he, Red, was a worm-eaten prune and that for half a wink he, Johnny, would prove it. Red grabbed him by the seat of his corduroys and the collar of his shirt and helped him outside, where they strolled about, taking pot shots at ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... ye see a prune that won't swell. Ye put 'em all in water alike, an' most on 'em gits fat an' smooth, but this one stays small an' shriveled up. There's no accountin' fer ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... two days after this that something happened to Alice. You see she had been sent to the store for a yeast cake and some prunes, for her mamma was going to make prune bread—that is, bread with prunes in it, and it's very nice, I assure you, for I've ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... "Matthew Wald," which is itself the history of a lunatic as full of horrors, and those of no very different kind, as the Confessions themselves. That editing, and perhaps something more than editing, on Lockhart's part would have been exactly the thing necessary to prune and train and direct the Shepherd's disorderly luxuriance into the methodical madness of the Justified Sinner—to give Hogg's loose though by no means vulgar style the dress of his own polished manner—to weed and shape and correct and straighten the faults of the Boar of the Forest—nobody ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... his legs I don't b'lieve he'd holler 'Stop thief!' but when it comes to my fruit, as I'm that proud on it grieves me to see it picked, walking over the wall night after night, I feel sometimes as it's no good to prune and train, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... into the family of Negrepelisse, and for him this meant a family connection with the Marquise d'Espard, and a political career in Paris. Here was a fair tree to cultivate in spite of the ill-omened, unsightly mistletoe that grew thick upon it; he would hang his fortunes upon it, and prune it, and wait till he could gather ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... to the ground floor, inhabited by old Madame Prune, my landlady, and her aged husband; they are absorbed in prayer before ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... there is no teaching more frequently insisted upon in the Old and in the New Testament as the truth of a judgment, now, or in the future, upon the misdeeds or sins of men. Let criticism prune and cut as it will, while it exhibits the deplorably low standard of morality once prevalent among the Hebrew peoples, and therefore prevalent among their Gods, their Elohim, Adonai and Jahveh, one thing, at least, is undeniable—that that which is recognised as immoral is ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... its flowers are poor little sickly things compared to the roses on a bush that is planted in proper soil, and carefully tended and pruned, and watered. So would the little girl turn out if she grew up in bad company and did not have a mother to guard and guide her,—to prune her when she was growing careless. Everything in this world has a meaning, and when mother tells you that you must not do a certain thing you very much want to do, she has a very good reason for telling you not to ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... are passing a prune-orchard, when, as though for our especial benefit, a couple of peasants working there begin singing aloud, and with evident enthusiasm, some national melody, and as they observe not our presence, at my suggestion ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... and put my ear to the door, but they did not come in at once. Mr. Thoburn made a speech, saying how happy he was that they were all well and able to go back to civilization again, where the broiled lobster flourished like a green bay tree and the prune and the ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... still He trains the branch of good Where the high blossoms be, And wieldeth still the shears of ill To prune and prime His tree. ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... indecorous adventure befell our friend Maistre Estienne le Gout, my lord the duke would turn it into the funniest of rondels, all the rhymes being the names of the cases of nouns or the moods of verbs; and Maistre Estienne would make reply in similar fashion, seeking to prune the story of its more humiliating episodes. If Fredet was too long away from Court, a rondel went to upbraid him; and it was in a rondel that Fredet would excuse himself. Sometimes two or three, or as many as a dozen, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from which the fountain is supplied was above, and that an Arab was washing a flock of sheep in it! We continued our walk along the side of the mountain to the other end of the city, through gardens of almond, apricot, prune, and walnut-trees, bound each to each by great vines, whose heavy arms they seemed barely able to support. The interior of the town is dark and filthy; but it has a long, busy bazaar extending its whole length, and a cafe, where we procured the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... decrease &c 36; abrasion. V. subduct, subtract; deduct, deduce; bate, retrench; remove, withdraw, take from, take away; detract. garble, mutilate, amputate, detruncate^; cut off, cut away, cut out; abscind^, excise; pare, thin, prune, decimate; abrade, scrape, file; geld, castrate; eliminate. diminish &c 36; curtail &c (shorten) 201; deprive of &c (take) 789; weaken. Adj. subtracted &c v.; subtractive. Adv. in deduction &c n.; less; short of; minus, without, except, except for, excepting, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... likewise see good minced-pie Here standing swaggering on the table; The lofty walls so large and high I'll level down if I be able; For they be furnished with good plums, And spiced well with pepper and salt, Every prune as big as both my thumbs To drive down bravely the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... part of its leaves at once, in the spring of the year, but if the thick wood be cut out from time to time, new leaves will continue to push below the parts so cut off during the whole season; and, accordingly, the Chinese are particularly attentive to prune afresh in the autumn, in order to obtain a supply of young leaves in the after spring. The thermometer at this place, on the 9th of November at sun-rise, stood at 64, and at noon in ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... from the first is tinged with venous blood, or even when the sputum is very bloody, of the prune-juice variety, the heart is in serious trouble, and the right ventricle has generally become weak and possibly dilated. The heart may have been diseased and therefore is unable to overcome the pressure in the lungs ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... authorship of the bad jokes he took pains to circulate.[81] The proceedings of the Legislature he regarded with real alarm whenever their object was to alter what the public voice pronounced capable of amendment, or prune what was judged superfluous. The vote of the House of Commons on the 1st of March, for discontinuing the services of one of the Lords of the Admiralty, and that given on the 2nd of May for getting rid of one of the Postmasters-General, his Lordship called "stripping the Crown ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... which is their ruling passion gone crooked. And then comes a new revelation and a great simplifying. They want to live face to face with God without a screen of ritual and images and priestcraft. They want to prune life of its foolish fringes and get back to the noble bareness of the desert. Remember, it is always the empty desert and the empty sky that cast their spell over them—these, and the hot, strong, antiseptic sunlight which burns up all rot and decay. It isn't inhuman. It's the humanity of one ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... the evenings (he slept at my father's) he would pick up my books and amuse himself with talking to me about them, laugh at my crude enthusiasms, clear up some difficult passage, prune away remorselessly the trash that had crept into my little collection, until, one day, returning from Cincinnati, where business had called him, he brought with him a store of books inexhaustible to my inexperienced eyes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... from the tree on account of our being wild and uncivilized," said Pee-wee. "I can make ink out of prune juice and we can write with a stick like hunters do when ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in poverty and pain, To this small farm, the last of his domain, His only comfort and his only care To prune his vines, and plant the fig and pear; His only forester and only guest His falcon, faithful to him, when the rest, Whose willing hands had found so light of yore The brazen knocker of his palace door. Had now no strength to lift the wooden latch, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... those two towns fall for this: 'Manager Soandso is to be congratulated upon securing for his next week's attraction Mr. Suchandsuch's elaborate production of the great London success, 'The Rancid Prune,' with the following all-star cast of metropolitan favorites.' And some of them, ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... hands. There were the words, words horrible to the democratic imagination, and Webster was proclaimed an aristocrat, and an enemy to the common people. But the delay in the publication of the oration may also be supposed to have been due to his desire to prune all its grand passages of eloquence of every epithet and image which should not be rigorously exact as expressions of his genuine sentiments and principles. It is probable that the Plymouth oration, as we possess it in print, is a better oration, in respect to composition, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... over his sceptre, and turned gardener. Constantine wrote twenty books of husbandry. Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him, bragged of nothing more than of his orchard, hi sunt ordines mei. What shall I say of Cincinnatus, Cato, Tully, and many such? how they have been pleased with it, to prune, plant, inoculate and graft, to show so many several kinds of pears, apples, plums, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... soup; 3 saltines; Swiss cheese and rye bread sandwich; 1 square butter; prune whip, soft custard sauce; 1 ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... future, accepts the martyrdom of the present. They feel loneliness in their own age, while with universal survey viewing the beacon-lights of history across the peaks of generations. Their seat of life is the literary faculty, and they prune and torture themselves only to maintain in this the highest intensity and capacity. They are in some sort rebels battling against time, not the humble well-doer content simply to live and bless God. Between them and living men there is the difference which exists between analytical and geometrical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... own home. Nature, too, seemed tenderer of it than of other wildnesses, and had set the seal of her choice upon it with every gift of fern and vine and moss and lichen. No axe had invaded these solitudes for years except to prune away a too riotous undergrowth along the cart-path: the trees grew in grand natural aisles, and to look through the noble colonnade into mysterious vistas of copsewood gloom and stillness was for me to thrill with that blissful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... these fundamental principles in mind we may safely outline a method of pruning an apple tree. As the desired end is different so will the method of pruning a young tree differ from that of an old one. There are five important things for which to prune a ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... now, if you will yourselves watch a few birds in flight, or opening and closing their wings to prune them, you will soon know as much as is needful for our art purposes; and, which is far more desirable, feel how very little we know, to any purpose, of even the familiar creatures ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... a workshop, back of his home, was a thin, stooped figure, gray as a wolf, wrinkled as a prune, and stained about the mouth by tobacco. His eyes, beneath their overhanging brows of gray, were singularly sharp and brilliant. Garrison made up his mind that the blaze in their depths was none other than ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... this variety breeds confusion, and makes, that either we lose all, or hold no more than the last. Why do we not then persuade husbandmen that they should not till land, help it with marl, lime, and compost? plant hop-gardens, prune trees, look to bee-hives, rear sheep, and all other cattle at once? It is easier to do many things and continue, than to do one ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... of prune-coloured silk, with coral beads and coral coloured stockings. But her dress was both shabby and soiled, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... proportions. To sixty gallons of clear rectified spirits, put one pound of sweet spirit of nitre, one pound of cassia buds ground, one pound of bitter almond meal, (the cassia and almond meal to be mixed together before they are put to the spirits) two ounces of sliced orris root, and about thirty or forty prune stones pounded. Shake the whole well together, two or three times a day, for three days or more. Let them settle, then pour in one gallon of the best wine vinegar; and add to every four gallons, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... so harsh? why with remorseless knife Home to the stem prune back each bough and bud? I thought the task of education was To strengthen, not to crush; to train and feed Each subject toward fulfilment of its nature, According to the mind of God, revealed In laws, congenital with every ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... seriousness of life is proved by the fact that he had observed and understood the flighty character of Funny Face. When Funny Face acquired a titbit, Darwin took up a hump-backed position near at hand, his bright little eyes fixed on his friend's activities. Funny Face would nibble relishingly at his prune for a moment or so; then an altogether astonishing butterfly would flitter by just overhead. Funny Face, lost in ecstasy would gaze skyward after the departing marvel. This was Darwin's opportunity. In two hops he was at Funny Face's side. With great deliberation, but most businesslike ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... East Indian fruit with a stone, of the prune genus. Crude or preserved myrobolans were a more important article of commerce in the Middle Ages than now. There were five varieties, one of which, the Mirobalani citrini, were so named because they were lemon-colored. Heyd, Histoire du Commerce du Levant ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... fairies' eyes, dismally fray'd! His ensuing voice came like the thunder crash— Meanwhile the bolt shatters some pine or ash— "Thou feeble, wanton, foolish, fickle thing! Whom nought can frighten, sadden, or abash,— To hope my solemn countenance to wring To idiot smiles!—but I will prune thy wing!" ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... little chromos and boxed them in gaudy frames, many of whose atrocities were aggravated by panels of plush of a color that could hardly be described by any other name than fermented prune. Over the corner of these they had thrown "throws" or drapes of malicious magenta horribly figured ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... several months aware how far his Prune Minister had gone on the Catholic question in Ireland. But those who were weary of Pitt's ascendancy, were, of course, interested in giving him this important information. The minister himself, wrapped in his austere self-reliance, did not volunteer explanations ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... believe it ever does any one any good to be humbled!" maintained Jane, stoutly and with reason. "Especially if it's a poor, frail little soul that aint got no mother! I did what I thought best, though I can't afford it no way in the world! To prune and dress a lie aint going to make it grow into a truth!" She rose. "I guess I'll see if Henry Jonas'll be willing ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... experience, or is willing to give time for the mastery of this subject, I should advise that he employ an experienced gardener to prune his vines after the second year. It is a brief task, but a great deal depends upon it. In selecting a man for the work I should require something more than exaggerated and personal assurances. In every village there ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... stole softly back, and this time the City Mouse had something new to show: he took the little Country Mouse into a corner on the top shelf, where a big jar of dried prunes stood open. After much tugging and pulling they got a large dried prune out of the jar on to the shelf and began to nibble at it. This was even better than the brown sugar. The little Country Mouse liked the taste so much that he could hardly nibble fast enough. But all at once, in the midst of their eating, ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... clouds, away, and welcome day, With night we banish sorrow; Sweet air blow soft, mount larks aloft To give my Love good-morrow! Wings from the wind to please her mind, Notes from the lark I'll borrow; Bird, prune thy wing, nightingale sing, To give my Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Notes ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... "complete sets" is a perverted one which usually goes with a love for the shell of the book rather than its meat. It is better far to prune out the obscure works and buy, a few at a time if necessary, the best known works of favorite authors, than to clutter up one's bookshelves with volumes which will never be opened. Partial sets acquired in this way can be of uniform edition and gain in value from those ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... a prune stone. "You give Magnus Derrick my compliments and tell him he's a fool." "What ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... Vows," repeating his first success; and on January 8, 1821, he benefited as Octavian in the "Mountaineers," a play associated with the early glories of Edmund Kean. In this year, also, he made his first and only venture as a manager, boldly taking the Prune Street Theatre, Philadelphia, and giving a successful performance of "Richard III.," which not only pleased the audience, but brought him a few dollars of profit. He made many attempts to secure a regular engagement in one of the Western circuits, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... studied, not in metaphysical ethics, but in popular novels. The aim of the modern historian is to compile a Times newspaper of events which happened three or four, eight or ten centuries ago. The aim of the modern philosopher is to tabulate mountains of research, and to prune away with agnostic non possumus the ancient oracles ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... piano once, but I cannot deliberately set to work on such things again. I gave them all up when I became a writer, really, I suppose, because I did not care for them, but nominally on the grounds of "resolute limitation," as Lord Acton said—with the idea that if you prune off the otiose boughs of a tree, you throw the strength of the sap into the boughs you retain. I see now that it was a mistake. But it is too late to begin again now; I was reading Kingsley's Life the other day. He used to overwork himself periodically—use up the grey matter at ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is a picturesque little town which in peace time is famous as the centre of the Servian prune trade. Its cobbled streets are, in the main, spacious and well planned. There still remain a few relics of the Turkish occupation—overhanging eaves, trellised windows, and the like—but these one must needs seek in the by-ways. I picture ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... keep their wives in leading-strings. I do not mean to marry any one, but if I should be left to such a piece of folly, it must be to one who will take me for better for worse; just as I am, and not as a wild plant for him to prune till he has got it into a shape to suit him. now, Aunty, promise me one thing. Never mention Dr. ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... south or south-west wall, and may be increased by seeds, by budding, or by grafting. The profuse brilliant orange-coloured berries of the C. Lelandii (Mespilus) ensures it a place on walls and trellises. A sunny position gives best results. Prune in March. ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... solstice, then the star Arcturus [1325] leaves the holy stream of Ocean and first rises brilliant at dusk. After him the shrilly wailing daughter of Pandion, the swallow, appears to men when spring is just beginning. Before she comes, prune the vines, for it ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... a plum having certain qualities not possessed by all plums. All prunes are plums, but not all plums are prunes. The final test as to whether a plum is a prune is the ability to dry without fermenting with the pit still remaining in the fruit. If a plum cannot dry without fermentation unless the pit is removed, it is not a prune. Prunes for drying, like other fruits, should be ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... handsome, melancholy, passionate, respectful but desperate, a user of most choice English; with large black eyes, smooth white forehead, and jetty curls, now sunk, Mr. Perry says, to the covers of prune boxes. The heroine, too, was sensitive and melancholy. When alone upon the seashore or in the mountains, at sunset or twilight, or under the midnight moon, or when the wind is blowing, she overflows into stanza ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... and in the shelter of our houses; summer and winter they are seen flying under our English skies; they mate and nest and bicker round our cathedrals and our cottages; they are noisy and turbulent and unrestrained before us, as if we were no more than the hedges we plant and prune; they are irrepressible as street-arabs, and arrogant as monarchs. If all human life were by some unimagined catastrophe swept from the length and breadth of England, the cawing of the rooks would sound as certainly, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Benicia, very pale and very pretty, her transparent skin faintly reflecting the pink of the satin coverlet. By the bed sat an old woman of the people. Her ragged white locks were bound about by a fillet of black silk; her face, dark as burnt umber, was seamed and lined like a withered prune; even her long broad nose was wrinkled; her dull eyes looked like mud-puddles; her big underlip was pursed up as if she had been speaking mincing words, and her chin was covered with a short white stubble. Over her coarse smock and gown she ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... trees; orchards of prune and peach and cherry, mile after mile. Orange trees in small wayside gardens heavy-laden with golden fruit. Tall accacias a mass of canary colored bloom. Opulent palms shivering against a gray sky. Close mountains green and dense with ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... in the Hall. The general he got mair nairvous, and his leddy mair melancholy every day, and yet there wasna any quarrel or bickering between them, for when they've been togither in the breakfast room I used often tae gang round and prune the rose-tree alongside o' the window, so that I couldna help hearin' a great pairt o' their conversation, though ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... prune at the best," Pink said stubbornly, "but I am not going to let you go into that place alone. You can rave all ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with themselves proceed The men, who write such verse as we can read! Their own strict judges, not a word they spare, That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care; Pour the full tide of eloquence along, Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong; Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line; Then polish all with so much life and ease, You think 'tis nature, and a knack to please; But ease in writing flows from art, not chance, As those move easiest who ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... piastres to Bacon or to Bungay. The rubbish is salable enough, sir; and my advice to you is this: the next time you go home for a holiday, take 'Walter Lorraine' in your carpet-bag—give him a more modern air, prune away, though sparingly, some of the green passages, and add a little comedy, and cheerfulness, and satire, and that sort of thing, and then we'll take him to market, and sell him. The book is not a wonder of wonders, but it will ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Ceylon suffered from a bad attack of leaf disease in July, "a large surface of young and succulent leaves were ready to receive the spores of the Hemeleia." The germination of the spores was rapid, and the young leaves were soon destroyed. The planter then, he says, should manure and prune so as to grow matured leaves during those months when the least damp and wind may be expected. And the same remarks are evidently equally valuable as regards rot, and show us the necessity of modifying our manurial ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... even allowed his house to become the seat of learning in which Sabbatai and nine chosen companions studied the Zohar and the Cabalah from dawn to darkness. Often they would desert the divan for the wooden garden-balcony overlooking the oranges and the prune-trees. And the richer Mordecai grew, the greater grew his veneration for his son, to whose merits, and not to his own diligence and honesty, he ascribed ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... said d'Artagnan. "Draw up this note for us, Aramis; but by our Holy Father the Pope, cut it short, for I shall prune you in my turn, I ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all other creatures that possess Earth, air, and sea. Then let us not think hard One easy prohibition, who enjoy Free leave so large to all things else, and choice Unlimited of manifold delights: But let us ever praise him, and extol His bounty, following our delightful task, To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers, Which were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet. To whom thus Eve replied. O thou for whom And from whom I was formed, flesh of thy flesh, And without whom am to no end, my guide And head! what thou hast said is just and right. For we to ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... enjoyment, as the dram-drinker is less wise than the calm imbiber of the fragrant vintage of the Garonne. With Burke's common sense I began, and with it I end. Depurate vice of all her offensiveness, and you prune her of half her evil. Let not your love of indulgence be so inordinate as to purchase short pleasure by impairing health, neglecting duty, or, while promoting your own self-complacency, allow yourself to become permanently revolting to society, by offending more senses as ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... writings—runs a wonderful sense of power. He was not one to seek out the right word or prune a sentence; his strength is manifest in his laxities. He believed that no task, intellectual or physical, was beyond him; so he wrote as he swam, taking his ease, glorying in his vitality, secure in a reserve of strength equal to anything. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... leafy lane Looked city-ward, then stooped to prune again Her vines and simples, with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the gardener's sake, you would try and make a better appearance. I heard him remark this morning that he almost despaired of your ever bearing fruit, or looking even presentable. I am sure we each have the same soil to draw our nourishment from, and one hand to prune away our deformities." ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... Tzer are less abrupt than those on the north and descend gradually into the Leschnitza Valley, out of which rise the lesser heights of the Iverak Mountains. Both these ranges are largely covered by prune orchards, intersected ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... a very good table d'hote at my bin for twelve Groschen. Wine is paid for extra, and at the rate of from 12 to 18 Groschen the bottle. The sort usually drunk here is the Medoc. The prices of articles of prune necessity are dearer in Berlin than either at Dresden or Vienna; particularly the article of washing, which is dearer than in any country ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye |
