"Midsummer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... months, the stocks contain fewer bees than at any other season. It is then that a numerous family is important, for the purpose of creating animal heat to rear the brood, if for nothing else. One bee is of more consequence now than a half dozen in midsummer. When the hive stands in a bleak place, the bees returning with heavy loads, in a high wind, are frequently unable to strike the hive, and are blown to the ground; become chilled, and die. A chilly south wind is equally ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... the army of midsummer travel was immobilized to let the other army move. No more wild rushes to the station, no more bribing of concierges, vain quests for invisible cabs, haggard hours of waiting in the queue at Cook's. No train stirred except ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... following headed straight towards one of these apparent sheets of water, and I was even meditating a bathe, but, lo! when I was a hundred yards or so off, it began to dwindle and disappear, and I found nothing but the same endless stretch of grass, burnt up by the midsummer sun. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Every midsummer there was a great meeting. Men from all over Iceland came to it and made laws. During the day there were rest times, when no business was going on. Then some skald would take his harp and walk to a large stone ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall
... barbarism of the tribes on its banks; but by this time travellers had reached the region of tropical rains; and Agatharcides said that the overflow in Egypt arose from the rains in Upper Ethiopia. But the Abyssinian rains begin to fall at midsummer, too late to cause the inundation in Egypt; and therefore the truth seemed after all to lie with the priests of Memphis, who said the Nile rises on the other side of the equator, and the rain falling in what was winter ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... in the early twilight together, up the brow of the hill which the early settlers seem to have found a blackberry pasture, to the tree where they had gone with Uncle Benjamin on the showery, shining midsummer Sunday. ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... the fifty-two slow Sundays of the year by plum-pudding, roast turkey, and a few bottles of home-made beer, has been once more; New Year, ushered in with sweet-scented midsummer wattle and bloom of gum- and box-tree has gone; February has followed, March is doing likewise, and my life is still ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... it's this humdrum life. Here we live, with no books and no fun, day after day, month after month, year after year. Why, I shall be twenty at midsummer, and I have only been to Bristol twice, and to Wells once by the coach. Oh, Bet, I might as well be a ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... his line of vision, wearing white from head to foot, for it was early June and the weather had grown suddenly to be like that of midsummer. Behind her followed not the black figure King's memory had persistently pictured, but one also clad in white—the very simple white of a plain linen suit, with a close little white hat drawn over the bronze-red ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... "This is midsummer madness, Raoul," answered Henri, with good temper. "Had I been unsuccessful, painful, fatal as the disappointment would have been, I should have resigned the lady to ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... villa at Bayswater was looking its brightest on a resplendent midsummer afternoon, one year after Diana Paget's hurried hegira from Foretdechene. If the poor dentist's house in dingy Bloomsbury had been fresh and brilliant of aspect, how much more brilliant was the western home of the rich stockbroker, whose gate was within five minutes' ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... are figured. Many races have symbolised the sun as a circle or wheel, and an old Roman god, Summanus, probably a sun-god, later assimilated to Juppiter, had as his emblem a wheel. The Celts had the same symbolism, and used the wheel symbol as an amulet,[78] while at the midsummer festivals blazing wheels, symbolising the sun, were rolled down a slope. Possibly the god carries a thunderbolt because the Celts, like other races, believed that lightning was a ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... from the fact that the average annual temperature is colder than that prevailing at the northern axis of the earth. They are so formed because, even at sea-level, no appreciable amount of thawing takes place in midsummer. The inland ice pushes out to sea in enormous masses, and remains floating long before it "calves" to form bergs. Even though its surface has been thrown into ridges as it was creeping over the uneven land, all are reduced to a dead level or slightly undulating plain, in the free-floating ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... went on to the north-west, and in lat. 63 deg. fell in with a barrier of ice, which he coasted for thirteen days without finding an opening. The very sight of an iceberg was new to all his crew; and the ropes and shrouds, though it was midsummer, becoming compassed with ice,— ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... form, and even there got a fair place for him. It was discovered that, although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was uncommonly quick. To the contentment of all he passed third in Algebra, and got a French prize-book at the public Midsummer examination. You should have seen his mother's face when Telemaque (that delicious romance) was presented to him by the Doctor in the face of the whole school and the parents and company, with an inscription to Guielmo Dobbin. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... points that naturally suggest a comparison between The Tempest and A Midsummer-Night's Dream. In both the Poet has with equal or nearly equal success carried Nature, as it were, beyond herself, and peopled a purely ideal region with the attributes of life and reality; so that the characters touch us like substantive, personal beings, as if he had but described, not created ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Kingstree, S.C., July 11th, 1867, in midsummer (laboring almost without any pecuniary reward), gave an account of a fearful catastrophe which had just occurred there in the burning of the jail with a number of colored prisoners in it. "It was a very sad affair. There was only one white prisoner ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... before had been one of those warm, midsummer days, beginning with a clear sky and a strong south wind. By noon heavy white clouds that looked like heaps of down floated ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... porter's wife, too, at the lodge, who had been born and brought up in the family, and was a great gossip among the maid-servants, affirmed, that in her young days she had often heard say, that on Midsummer eve, when it is well known all kinds of ghosts, goblins, and fairies become visible and walk abroad, the crusader used to mount his horse, come down from his picture, ride about the house, down the avenue, and so to the church to visit the tomb; on which occasion the church-door most ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... in my midsummer holidays that the thing happened, and it was through the Honourable Beatrice Normandy. She had "come into my life," as they say, before ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... to be," said he, "midsummer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... this mornin', as I've towld ye. Six years I've hung me hat up in those same apartments in Bloomsbury; and, till last year, aisy enough I found me landlord over a quarter's rent or two overjue. But last midsummer year the house changed hands; and bedad it began to be 'pay or quit.' This day it was 'quit.' The new landlord came up the stairs at the head av the ejectin' army: I got up from breakfast to open the door ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... whales appear in great numbers in the open ports of Santa Barbara, San Pedro, etc., and hover off the coast, while a few find their way into the close harbors of San Diego and Monterey. They are all off again before midsummer, and make their appearance on the "off-shore ground." We saw some fine "schools" of sperm whales, which are easily distinguished by their spout, blowing away, a few miles to windward, on our ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... spirits than when I wrote last. I have had a very eligible offer to lodge with a friend in town. He will have rooms to let at midsummer, by which time I hope my sister will be well enough to join me. It is a great object to me to live in town, where we shall be much more private, and to quit a house and neighborhood where poor Mary's disorder, so frequently recurring, has made us a sort of marked people. We can be nowhere private ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... an ardent, expectant woman—almost a bride—was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples; drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud; lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the peculiar beauty of the Campagna on those mild days of winter when the mere quality and temper of the sunshine suffice to move the landscape to joy, and you pause on the brown grass in the sunny stillness and, by listening long enough, almost fancy you hear the shrill of the midsummer cricket. It is detail and ornament that vary from month to month, from week to week even, and make your returns to the same places a constant feast of unexpectedness; but the great essential features of the prospect preserve throughout ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... MAY-FLOWER had not been delayed by the SPEEDWELL'S condition, and both had sailed for "Hudson's River" in midsummer, it is by no means certain that they would have reached there, as Arber so confidently asserts. The treachery of Captain Jones, in league with Gorges, would as readily have landed them, by some pretext, on Cape Cod in October, as in December. But even ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... walk in Midsummer, the emersion of our hands into the cool and closing grass is surely not the least among our animal delights. I was just seated, and the first sensation of rest vibrated in me gently, as though it were ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... Hrut, "I agree to these terms, and now let us take witness". After that they stood up and shook hands, and Mord betrothed his daughter Unna to Hrut, and the bridal feast was to be at Mord's house, half a month after Midsummer. ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... truth of what I say," he continued, earnestly, turning his handsome eyes to hers. Then throwing his head back a little proudly, he added, "Miss Hargrove, you must know that we are farmers, and midsummer brings ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... away to Summer. Still no glass Sighted the brigantine. Then Grootver came Demanding Jufvrouw Kurler. His trespass Was justified, for he had won the game. Christine begged time, more time! Midsummer went, And Grootver waxed impatient. Still the ship Tarried. Christine, betrayed and weary, sank To dreadful terrors. One day, crazed, she sent For Max. "Come quickly," said her note, "I skip The worst distress until we meet. ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... manners, and treated her cousin, Stephen's queen, with such harshness as to drive her to take up arms again. London had always been favorable to Stephen, and two months of negotiation were necessary before David and Robert could prevail on the citizens to receive her. At midsummer, however, they consented to admit her, and she came to Westminster; but as soon as a deputation of citizens were in her presence, she showed her pride and hostile spirit. They asked for charters; ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... comes to no man—or boy—with both hands full. Immediately after Speech Day, John's bubble of pride and happiness was pricked by Scaife. Midsummer madness seized the Demon. One may conceive that the innate recklessness of his nature, suppressed by an iron will, and smouldering throughout many months, burst at last into flame. Desmond told John that the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... these black veterans like flies around a western water hole in midsummer, and their shrill laughter makes the air fairly vibrate as they bandy jests with the cheeky herds. The girls are rather pleasing in appearance, though far from being pretty. As a rule, they wear clean print dresses and white aprons; they never wear hats of any kind, but coil a showy ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... the "Wisdom" of the Venetian Royal Palace, or in the "Shepherd and Nymph" of Vienna. The difference between the old Titian, author of these works, and the young Titian, painter of the "Assumption," and of the "Bacchus and Ariadne," is the difference between the Shakspeare of the "Midsummer-Night's Dream" and the Shakspeare of the "Tempest." Titian and Shakspeare begin and end so much in the same way by no mere accident. They were both products of the Renaissance, they underwent similar changes, and each ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... had neither sold nor bought stock, but had moused around, with the skill of an old habitue, for information concerning the eligibility of the two men who were seeking his daughter's hand. In the midsummer dullness and holiday stagnation the impending operation in the Catskills was the only one that promised anything whatever. He became more fully satisfied that Arnault's firm was prospering. They had been persistent ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... it," he answered; "at least it is safer than sitting still. Does the wind often come as chilly as this at midsummer?" ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... owner of about fifteen new books, which we ordered from Louisville. Among them are "Henry Esmond," "Bacon's Essays" and extracts from "English Literature." Perhaps next week I shall have some more books, "The Tempest," "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and possibly some selections from Green's history of England. Am I ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... amongst the hungry animals below; Never was such a sudden scholar made, (King Henry V., Act 1, Sc. 1), in allusion to the installation of the Duke of Wellington as Chancellor of Oxford University; A Midsummer Night's Dream, a fat sleeper suffering under the agonies of nightmare, under the influence of whose delusion he fancies himself roasting before a vast fire, with a huge hook stuck through his stomach; and, I beg the ancient privilege of Athens: as she is mine, I may dispose ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare says there was a law in Athens, that if a daughter refused to marry the husband selected for her by her father, she might be put to death. Eg[e]us (3 syl.), an Athenian, promised to give his daughter, Hermia, in marriage to Dem[e]trius; ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... lamented the concessions made by the Crown to the people; Bismarck had the courage to say so. When reaction came there were naturally many, and among them King Frederick William, who were interested in the man who in the heyday of constitutional enthusiasm had treated the whole movement as so much midsummer madness, and had remained faithful to monarchical authority as the one thing needful for the Prussian State. Bismarck continued to take a prominent part in the Parliaments of Berlin and Erfurt; it was not, however, till 1851 that ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... as soon as the crops came off, the fields became common for all the village to turn their stock upon, the arable fields being usually common from Lammas (August 1) to Candlemas (February 2) and the meadows from July 6, old Midsummer Day, to Candlemas[11]; but as in this climate the season both of hay and corn harvest varies considerably, these dates ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... that his watch was to come immediately after mine, I had not the heart to do it. "No!" said I (and I said it aloud for the purpose of preventing drowsiness)—"no; I will fight this battle alone! I will repeat some stanzas from my favourite authors. Yes, I will try to remember a portion of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream.' It will be somewhat appropriate to my ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... midsummer morning, at the lull Just about daybreak, as he looks across A sparkling foreign country, wonderful To the sea's edge for gloom and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... not myth-makers, but witnesses, and had nothing to say as to an act that no man had seen. No doubt, the Resurrection took place in the earliest hours of the first day of the week. The Sun of Righteousness rose before the Easter Day sun. It was midsummer day for Him, while it was but spring for earth's calendar. That early rising has no setting ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... another the finest poem about the sea from at sea, and the other the finest poem about the earth from the heart of the woods. Even in Swinburne's work the series of nine ballades in long lines which bears the name of A Midsummer Holiday stands out as a masterpiece of its kind, and of a unique kind. A form of French verse, which up to then had been used, since the time when Villon used it as no man has used it before or since, and almost exclusively ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... expectant audience, to whom they gave a full report of the morning's proceedings. The Hutchinsons of worldwide fame were present in their happiest vein, interspersing the speeches with appropriate songs and felicitous remarks. For five long hours on that hot midsummer day a crowded audience, many standing, listened with profound interest and reluctantly dispersed at last, all agreeing that it was one of the most impressive and enthusiastic meetings they had ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... all over South Africa, but in progressive degrees of virulence with the advance to warmer latitudes, and with the descent from the high table-lands to the coast levels. On the Transvaal high veldt, for example, a mild form is developed which, in midsummer, to a small extent, affects and kills sheep. It is called blaauwtong, and does not affect horses. Descending further, this danger to sheep increases and begins earlier. Below 5,000 feet altitude in the Transvaal the summer season is dangerous to sheep, and horses and ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... Syria and Asia Minor by the mysterious Mitanni rulers, if it was not an archaic Babylonian custom[200] associated with fire-and-water magical ceremonies, represented in the British Isles by May-Day and Midsummer fire-and-water festivals. Sandan, the mythical founder of Tarsus, was honoured each year at that city by burning a great bonfire, and he was identified with Hercules. Probably he was a form of Moloch and Melkarth.[201] ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Midsummer passed, and a July of unusual heat drew on. Dr. Jim and his wife and boys had departed to Switzerland. Nick and Olga had elected to remain at Redlands. They were out all day long in the motor or dogcart, ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... the cool midsummer maples Shade the porches of the long white street; Trailing wide, Olympian elms lean over Tiny churches where the highroads meet. Fields of fireflies Wheel all night ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... in fact, comes in midsummer, when New York is more inert than an analytic novel. This dinner, then, is one of those gifts of love which are all the more unstinted ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... moment of the interruption. That evening I cooked myself a welsh-rabbit and at eight o'clock, arrayed in my pajamas, I returned to the library with a book, a bottle of champagne and a box of Vencedoras, prepared for a quiet evening of absolute luxury. I read in the waning light of the dying midsummer day for a little while, and then, as darkness came on, I turned to the switch-board to light ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported, with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future evil-doers, in the Red Dog Clarion, by its editor, who was present, and to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader. But the beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and, above all, the infinite serenity that thrilled through each, was not reported, ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... slums of South Chicago among the iron-workers. The church cared nothing about creeds or methods—applied no gauge but results; the best result was a diffusion of human kindness. The salary was twenty-five hundred a year, with one week vacation at Christmas and one month at midsummer. He, John Hopkins, as President of the Board of Deacons, was empowered to select a man, and now made formal offer of the post to the Rev. James Hartigan. Mr. Hartigan might have a week to decide; but Mr. Hopkins would greatly prefer it if Mr. Hartigan could decide ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... middle of midsummer they received a circular announcing the marriage of Dumouchel with Madame Olympe-Zulma Poulet, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... feeble rivulets running in widely separated channels—hiding under osiers or lurking within shady stretches of a friendly bank—remain to show where in April the noisy Goose engulfs everything within reach of its foaming wings. The creek bed becomes in midsummer a mere sandy ford that may be crossed by a child—a dry map that prints the running feet of snipe and plover, the creeping tread of the mink and the muskrat, and the slouching trail of the coyote and ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... the heat of midsummer to the cold of midwinter, and all within something near twenty-four hours, was hard indeed to bear. The professor calculated that the drop in temperature from high noon was, two hours after sunset, exactly seventy ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... augury was the morning of this eventful day in Vazon Forest. There were the same trees, the same glades and streams, as on the well-remembered Midsummer day of the preceding year; but nature and man alike were in a different mood. The trees were leafless and churlish, the glades ragged and colourless; the turbid, dusky streams bore but small resemblance ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... along the vlei where we've just come?" I doubted it very much as it was black and raining; I had no coat, having been sent after the patrol immediately I came in from firing the King's huts, and although it was December, or midsummer south of the line, the rain chilled my fingers. Wilson said, "Come, I must have those men back." I told him I should need some one to lead my horse so as to feel the tracks made in the ground by our horses. He replied, "I will go with you. I ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... lord, it was the day before our feast, and I was to spend sixpence there, and that falls a month before Midsummer Day. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... very well, but she was all the better for the severest kind of a bit. So Miss Bell wrote about colonial exhibitions and popular spectacles, and country outings for babies of the slums, and longed for a fairer field. As midsummer came on there arrived a dearth in these objects of orthodox interest, and Rattray told her she might submit "anything on the nail" that occurred to her, in addition to such work as the office could give her to do. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... rebuked by the powers of Europe for butchering Bulgars, so he turned on us Armenians in order to prove to himself that he could do as he pleased in his own house. I tell you, murder and rape in those days were as common as flies at midsummer! I escaped, and worked my passage in the stoke-hole of a little merchant steamer —they were little ships in those days. And when I reached America without money or friends they let me land because I had been told by the other sailors to say ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... wondered if that midnight interview with her at the gate had ever really taken place—or had it been midsummer madness, too sweet to exist even in memory? Certainly, in the Esther he saw now there was nothing of the Esther of the stars. She wore her mask well. School had closed for the holidays and the summer ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... no conviction whatever. "Whose birthday is it? It isn't Christmas Day—it isn't Midsummer Day. No! I don't see any ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... I feel that I could outfiddle the cat, outjump the cow, outlaugh the dog, and start an elopement that would knock the performance of the tableware as silly as—well, as I am talking now. I'm living in a dream—a Midsummer Night's Dream, such as you were ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... being a little past midsummer—the man came back to his cabin, bringing supplies. It was a long journey between the cabin and the settlements, and he had to make it several times during the brief summer, in order to accumulate stores enough to last through the long, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... mist, by the midsummer moon misguided, Scarce seen in the twilight garden if gloom insist, Seems vainly to seek for a star whose gleam has derided Light love in ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the more extraordinary for the reason that the customers who usually frequented it, en route from one end of the earth to the other, are not affected by seasons. Midwinter was to them the same as midsummer, provided they did their business, or got their ships, and by those ships, or that business, received their wages. That those hard-earned wages should eventually find themselves in the pocket of the landlord of the Three Desires, was only ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... the shattered and dismembered Highland Brigade lying in patches upon the veld, with their leader dead before their eyes; themselves unable to advance or retreat, conspicuous, hungry, thirsty, and soon to be scorched by the midsummer sun at the zenith; and there they lay for eight hours. Only the shells of the artillery, which from daylight onwards played upon the trenches and partially mastered the fire from them, saved ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... It was midsummer holidays, that time when she was only eleven, and raspberry time too, and Christina and her brother Sandy were picking berries in the "Slash," a wild bit of semi-woodland away up on the hills that divided her home farm from the land of the Grant Sisters. The Grant Girls—they ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... country is without woods and green fields; and to him who views the vale of the Arno "from the top of Fiesole," or any of the neighboring heights, grand as he will allow the circle of the mountains to be, and magnificent the edifices with which the region is adorned, it appears, at any time after midsummer, a huge valley of dust, planted with low rows of the pallid and thin-leaved olive, or the more dwarfish maple on which the vines are trained. The simplicity of nature, so far as can be done, is destroyed; there is no ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... black velvet, and we were in midsummer. The material, however, was skillfully draped with a veil, and a profusion of pink flowers gave it a seasonable air. A crimson bow was also tied at her neck; she complacently remarked that "pink and crimson harmonize beautifully;" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... That, having always prosper'd in the world, Folding his hands deals comfortable words To hearts wounded for ever; yet, in truth, Fair speech was his and delicate of phrase, Falling in whispers on the sense, address'd More to the inward than the outward ear, As rain of the midsummer midnight soft Scarce-heard, recalling fragrance and the green Of the dead spring—such as in other minds Had film'd the margents of the recent wound. And why was I to darken their pure love, If, as I knew, they two did love each other, Because my own was darken'd? Why was I To ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... was a boy on the old farm, the bright, warm, midsummer days were canopied with the mellow hum of insects. You did not see them or distinguish any one species, but the whole upper air resounded like a great harp. It was a very marked feature of midday. But not ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... the peasants used not to hunt on St Mark's or St Catherine's Day, for fear they should be unlucky all the rest of the year. In Yorkshire it was once customary to watch for the dead on St Mark's (April 24) and Midsummer Eve. On both those nights (so says Mr Timbs in his Mysteries of Life and Futurity) persons would sit and watch in the church porch from eleven o'clock at night till one in the morning. In the third year ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... not flatter themselves that their mere glimpse of country life—their mere snatch at its midsummer beauty, the one free-drawn breath of their wearied spirit—is acquaintance with it. As well might one who had seen Rosalind, the most versatile of Shakspeare's heroines, only in her court-dress at her uncle the duke's ball, guess at her infinite variety of charm ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to dark they stood, That long midsummer's day! While fierce and fast The battle-blast Swept rank on ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... of ice, Cartier determined to return to France. Before the ships weighed anchor, however, Donnacona and four of his companions were enticed on board, and with these sorry trophies the French captain turned his prows homeward. At midsummer-time the storm-battered ships glided once more into the rock-bound harbour of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... It was midsummer of the year 41 B.C. when Antony arrived at Tarsus, on the river Cydnus. Up this stream to visit him came, in more than Oriental pomp, the beautiful Egyptian queen. The galley that bore her was gorgeous beyond comparison. Its sails were of Tyrian purple; silver oars fretted ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... bright days of midsummer the ascent of Shasta is only a long, safe saunter, without fright or nerve strain, or even serious fatigue, to those in sound health. Setting out from Sisson's on horseback, accompanied by a guide leading a pack animal with provision, blankets, and other necessaries, you follow ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... tired you must be—and how cold! In these fine spring days we have been living as if it were midsummer, but I'm sure you oughtn't to have had that long drive in the open trap so late. Harvey thinks everybody as robust ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... And month by month the roads smelt more strongly of petrol, and were more difficult to cross, and human beings heard each other speak with greater difficulty, breathed less of the air, and saw less of the sky. Nature withdrew: the leaves were falling by midsummer; the sun shone through dirt with ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... long midsummer days, when our house was very quiet and rather dreary, I got into the habit of creeping over to John's home, and sitting for hours under the apple-trees in his garden. It was now different from the wilderness he found it; the ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... dandified silk frock for the new year that the dressmaker is waiting to try on can be put aside until midsummer." ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... crowning a hill-top above the Serpentaro stream. It has often been described, often painted. It is a corner of Latium in perfect preservation; a glamorous place; in the warm dusk of southern twilight—when all those tiresome children are at last asleep—it calls up suggestions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here is a specimen of the landscape as it used to be. You may encounter during your wanderings similar fragments of woodland, saved by their inaccessibility from the invading axe. "Hands off the Oak!" cries an old ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... with the haze of fall shrouding the distance, a hint of brown tingeing the prairie grass, the sun a bit milder with its rays and paler in its face than in midsummer. And the old sun seemed a trifle lazy, as if lying back awaiting the frost that would nip the rolling mesa, to be followed by the gales that would sweep across it, then by the whirling blizzards that would hold the plains in their frigid grasp. Yes, it was a beautiful ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... 'sports' which the Saint Vincent boys have every year at midsummer, before the breaking-up for their holidays, when swimming races, boat races, egg-and-spoon races, and all sorts of jollities are all ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... has known Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. John Morley, as a sublime and daring joke by Disraeli which belongs to, and could only happen in an epoch when sober England was ready to allow her Oriental juggler and master to play any kind of Midsummer's Night's Dream pranks even with the sternest realities of human life. Yet sometimes the thought occurs to me that if he were a little more articulate, or, perchance, if the time came when a democracy had to be met, not with bursts of Parliamentary eloquence, but with shot and shell, and the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... force was small. But when Sir Philip Mowbray, the governor of Stirling, came to London, to tell the King, that Stirling, the last Scottish town of importance which remained in possession of the English, was to be surrendered if it were not relieved by force of arms before midsummer, then all the English nobles called out, it would be a sin and shame to permit the fair conquest which Edward I had made, to be forfeited to the Scots ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... is that we won't even go indoors to be amused. Hence the outdoor theatre. Why go to a play when it's so lovely outside? But to go to a play out-of-doors in an enchanting Greek theatre with a real moon rising above it—that's another matter. I shall never forget "Midsummer Night's Dream" as given by the Theosophical Society at Point Loma. Strolling through the grounds with the mauve and amber domes of their temples dimly lighted I found myself murmuring: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree." ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... servants, uneatable food and ubiquitous children. How could he ask Susy to share such a life with him? If he did, she would probably have the sense to refuse. Their alliance had been based on a moment's midsummer madness; now the ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... through the two parts of 'Henry IV,' where the realistic comedy action of Falstaff and his group makes history familiarly vivid; and end with the epic glorification of a typical English hero-king in 'Henry V.' The comedies include the charmingly fantastic 'Midsummer Night's Dream'; 'The Merchant of Venice,' where a story of tragic sternness is strikingly contrasted with the most poetical idealizing romance and yet is harmoniously blended into it; 'Much Ado About Nothing,' a magnificent example of high comedy of character ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... give the reader an account of the origin and history of Hallowe'en, how it absorbed some customs belonging to other days in the year,—such as May Day, Midsummer, and Christmas. The context is illustrated by selections from ancient and modern poetry and prose, related ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... the scattered castles, and put their defenders to the sword. Gustav bore the rising on his shoulders from first to last. He was everywhere, ordering and leading. His fiery eloquence won over the timorous; his irresistible advance swept every obstacle aside. In May he took Upsala; by midsummer he was besieging Stockholm itself. Most of the other cities were in his hands. The Hanse towns had found out what this Gustav could do at home. They sang his praise, but as for backing him with their purse, that was another matter. They refused to ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... It was midsummer, the quivering July heat brought out the pungent scent of the freshly clipped box-hedges, and set the mad flood stirring as in the brief action of the play. During the day the white glare drove the guests of the garden festivals into the shadiest recesses of the cypress labyrinths. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... which occurred about the same time that Chopin made his debut. On March 18 Mendelssohn played Beethoven's G major Concerto with great success at one of the Conservatoire concerts, [FOOTNOTE: It was the first performance of this work in Paris.] the younger master's overture to the "Midsummer Night's Dream" had been heard and well received at the same institution in the preceding month, and somewhat later his "Reformation Symphony" was rehearsed, but laid aside. In the middle of March Paganini, who had lately arrived, gave the first of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... I forget to mention the fte patronale—a kind of annual fair, which is held at midsummer, in honor of the patron saint of Auteuil. Then the principal street of the village is filled with booths of every description; strolling players, and rope-dancers, and jugglers, and giants, and dwarfs, and wild beasts, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Assistant, laughing, and pinching, and kissing her still tempting cheek; "what crazy fancies be these? Consider my years, and profession, and dignity, and, most of all, my love for thee. Why, this is very midsummer madness." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... suffering and hopelessness began to let up and they had moments of hope. And then the reactionaries came into power with their systematic oppression of the Jews. Back to Siberia with them! This in midsummer heat. I saw them as they passed through Kiev for the third time, a few weeks ago. Never shall I forget them as I saw them last. The mark of the beast was on them. You couldn't call them living or suffering or martyrs ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... the hay was down, Said I mournful—Though my life be in its prime, Bare lie my meadows all shorn before their time, O'er my sere woodlands the leaves are turning brown; It is the hot Midsummer, when the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... port tack, heading south-east by east, a point off the wind, under topsails and foresails, a cable's length apart. There is little room to doubt that an adversary who thus holds his ground means to make a stand-up fight, but Parker, although the sun of a midsummer day had scarcely risen, thought advisable to order a general chase. Of course, no ship spared her canvas to this, while the worse sailers had to set their studdingsails to keep up; and the handling of the sails took the men off from ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... midsummer. Tompkins and a Republican Senate had been re-elected, but the Federalists, whose policy was to obtain peace on any terms, still held the Assembly. Just at this time, therefore, success in the field would have ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander |
