"Mullein" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... early orchis; they have their particular haunts, and their surroundings are nearly always the same. The yellow pond-lily is found in every sluggish stream and pond, but Nymphaea odorata requires a nicer adjustment of conditions, and consequently is more restricted in its range. If the mullein were fragrant, or toad-flax, or the daisy, or blueweed, or goldenrod, they would doubtless be far less troublesome to the agriculturist. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule I have here indicated, but it holds in most cases. Genius is ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... orange and olive and cactus we passed that of beech and oak, noble trees now shedding their rich-hued foliage on bracken crisped and brown; here I noticed the feathery bowers of wild clematis ("old man's beard"), and many a spike of the great mullein, strange to me because so familiar in English lanes. Through mists that floated far below I looked over miles of shore, and outward to the ever-rising limit of sea and sky. Very lovely were the effects of light, the gradations of colour; from the blue-black abysses, where no shape could be distinguished, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... one thing about this mullein leaf: the fairies use them for blankets," said Demi, who had not quite given up his faith in the existence of the little folk ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... concealed were the stalks by the ferns that the flowers appeared to grow on their fronds. On the mounds grew corn marigolds, so brilliantly yellow that they seemed to shine in the sunlight, and on a wall moth-mullein flowered high ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... one only five grains. Yet these few seeds were fertile; so that in this case the first cross was almost sterile, though the hybrid when at length produced was fertile. In like manner, dissimilarly coloured varieties of Verbascum or mullein have been found by two distinct observers to be comparatively infertile. The two pimpernels (Anagallis arvensis and A. coerulea), classed by most botanists as varieties of one species, have been found, after repeated trials, to ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... about the place, the lilacs nodded over the high wall as if they said, "We could tell fine secrets if we chose," and the mullein outside the gate made haste to reach the keyhole, that it might peep in and see what was going on. If it had suddenly grown up like a magic bean-stalk, and looked in on a certain June day, it would have seen a droll but pleasant ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... see de spirits, but I can't. My mammy larned me a lots of doctorin', what she larnt from old folkses from Africy, and some de Indians larnt her. If you has rheumatism, jes' take white sassafras root and bile it and drink de tea. You makes lin'ment by bilin' mullein flowers and poke roots and alum and salt. Put red pepper in you shoes and keep de chills off, or string briars round de neck. Make red or black snakeroot tea to cure fever and malaria, but git de roots in de spring when ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... briars still were there, or perhaps some of their descendants, straggling weakly among the nettles, and mullein, and other wild stuff, but making all together a pretty good screen, through which I could get a safe side-view of the bottom of the timber gangway. So I took off my hat, for some ruffian fellows like foreign ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... and labor have wrought upon the structure and face of this familiar flower. What was it at first? What is it now in the rural gardens of New England? A shallow, bell-mouthed cup, in most cases purely white, and hung to a tall, coarse stalk, like the yellow jets of a mullein. That is its natural and distinctive characteristic in all countries; at least where it is best known and most common. What is it here, bearing the fingerprints of man's mind and taste upon it? Its white and thin-sided ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... mist, chorded in with a grave bass to the rising anthem of welcome to the new life which God had freshly given to the world. From the sun himself, come forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, to the flickering raindrops on the road-side mullein, the world seemed to rejoice exultant in victory. Homely, cheerier sounds broke the outlined grandeur of the morning, on which Margaret looked wearily. Lois lost none of them; no morbid shadow of her own balked life kept their meaning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... The mullein attains especial dignity in this mountain region. Stately and proud it rises above the lesser though more beautiful flowers of the wild. It generally dies down in September, though an occasional flowering stalk may be seen as ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... busy with her nest-building, but never, so far as I have observed, assisting her. One spring I observed with much interest a phoebe-bird building her nest not far from my cabin in the woods. The male looked on approvingly, but did not help. He perched most of the time on a mullein stalk near the little spring run where Phoebe came for mud. In the early morning hours she made her trips at intervals of a minute or two. The male flirted his tail and called encouragingly, and when she started up the hill with her load he would accompany her part way, to help her ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... kept perfectly still until he was sure that Bowser was nowhere near. Then he gave a great sigh of relief and crawled under a big mullein leaf to rest, and ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... state of the old Continental currency. There is no honest relation between the promises we make and the specie basis of meaning they profess to represent. "The most extraordinary book of the age" is published every week; "genius" springs up like mullein, wherever the soil is thin enough; the yearly catch of "weird imagination," "thrilling pathos," "splendid description," and "sublime imagery" does not fall short of an ordinary mackerel-crop; and "profound originality" is so plenty that one not in the secret would be apt to take it for commonplace. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... you have, you wee things, to keep you busy?" asked the tall milkweed that grew near the fence-rails; and the mullein-stalk beside ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... from the shack was a clearing in the woods, a thriving wilderness of bramble-bushes, poke-berries, myrtle-berries, mandrakes, milkweed, mullein, daisies and what not—a paradise of every sauntering vine and splendid, saucy weed. In the centre stood a sycamore-tree, beneath which it was my custom to smoke a morning pipe and revolve my ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... off." There were no blinds or shutters of any sort, and nothing to break the bleak winds which swept down between the hills of Ardsley, and which nipped the life of any brave green thing that tried to make a hold there. A few mullein stalks were all that flourished, and the stunted fruit trees which Hallam had noticed seemed but a pitiful parody upon the rich verdure of the ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Everywhere, in road and pasture too, thronged milkweed, odorous haunt of the bee and those frailest butterflies of the year, born of one family with drifting blossoms; and straightly tall, the solitary mullein, dust-covered but crowned with a gold softer and more to be desired than the pride of kings. Perhaps the carriage folk from the outer world, who sometimes penetrate Tiverton's leafy quiet, may wonder at the queer little ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... afternoon the weather changed. The New Year had come in smiling, mild as April, dust in the roads, a blue sky overhead. The withered goldenrod and gaunt mullein stalks and dead asters by the wayside almost seemed to bloom again, while the winter wheat gave an actual vernal touch. The long column, winding somewhere—no one knew where, but anyhow on the Pugh Town Road and in a northwesterly direction (even Old Jack ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... a heap of bark from wild cherry and poplar and black haw and slippery ellum trees and we dried out mullein leaves. They was all mixed and brewed to make bitters. Whensomever a nigger got sick, them bitters was good for—well ma'am, they was good for what ailed 'em! We tuk 'em for rheumatiz, for fever, and for the misery in the stummick and for most all sorts of sickness. Red ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... from the road in its clump of pines. The coach stopped, and Rand and Jacqueline, descending, crossed a strip of short grass tufted with fennel and velvet mullein to the gate beneath the mimosa, entered the gay little yard, and moved up the path to the larger of the two porches. They were at home. On the porch to welcome them they found the white man who worked on shares and oversaw the farm, Joab and three other slaves of Rand's, Mammy Chloe, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the mullein, with its emollient leaves; boiled to make a poultice, it relieves colic, which this saint ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the wondrous moonwort (Botrychium lunaria), which was doubly valuable from its mystic virtue, for, as Culpepper[22] tells us, it was believed to open locks and possess other magic virtues. The mullein, popularly termed the hag-taper, was also in request, and the honesty (Lunaria biennis), "in sorceries excelling," was equally employed. By Scotch witches the woodbine was a favourite plant,[23] who, in effecting magical cures, passed their patients nine times through a ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... fast," said the good woman. "Stand still and listen! Go through the meadow, and count a hundred daffodils; then turn to your right, and walk until you find a mullein stalk that is bent. Notice the way it bends, and walk in that direction till you see a willow tree. Behind this willow runs a little stream. Cross the water by the way of the shining pebbles, and when you hear a strange bird singing you can see ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... the kinship with the objects that belong to the home. A cat was sitting high in a crevice in the logs where the daubing had fallen out; the moon glittered in its great yellow eyes. A frog was leaping along the open space about the rude step at Augusta's feet. A clump of mullein leaves, silvered by the light, spangled by the dew, hid him presently. What an elusive glistening gauze hung over the valley far below, where the sense of distance was limited by the sense of sight!—for it was ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... with the flippant loquacity of half knowledge. We must accept whatever good can be got out of it, and keep it under as we do sorrel and mullein and witchgrass, by enriching the soil, and sowing good seed in plenty; by good teaching and good books, rather than by wasting our time in talking against it. Half knowledge ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... themselves with boneset tea, and mullein tea, and bitter-root powders and wahoo bark, said Gray. Likewise, they'd turn to burying one another, after the ways of pioneers, who were as resourceful in deaths and funerals as in drugs and fomentations. Pioneers, such as would be left in that country ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... nothing at all. Nothing, that is, except dirt, grass, mullein-stalks, and beetles or crickets under the stones. Mr. Daddles hunted energetically, pulling up grass by the roots, digging in the soil with his fingers, and kicking at stones with the toes of his tennis-shoes, until he shouted "Ouch!" and jumped about holding his foot in his ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... period was not given to hangings and furniture, but to clothing. An embroidered apron became of much more importance than a bed valance or counterpane. The young girl began by embroidering her school aprons with borders of forget-me-nots and mullein pinks, in ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... could bring home a yellowhammer you felt that you had something to show for your long day's tramp through the woods and fields, and for the five cents' worth of powder and five cents' worth of shot that you had fired off at other game. Sometimes you just fired it off at mullein-stalks, or barns, or anything you came to. There were a good many things you could do with a gun; you could fire your ramrod out of it, and see it sail through the air; you could fill the muzzle up with water, on top of a charge, and send the water in a straight column at a fence. The boys ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... clung to the swaying top of a mullein-stalk near by, and poured out a strong, swelling, joyous song that well-nigh split ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... marguerite; To haunt old fences overgrown with brier, Muffled in vines, and hawthorns, and wild cherries, Rank poisonous ivies, red-bunched elderberries, And pied blossoms to the heart's desire, Gray mullein towering into yellow bloom, Pink-tasseled milkweed, breathing dense perfume, And swarthy vervain, tipped ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullein's velvet screen, Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swing in their cobweb hammocks high, And rocked about in the evening breeze; Some from the ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... the south, it is often only through the gate-gaps in the hedge that you can see out over the flank of the hill; on the northern side the hedge is lower—low enough, indeed, to be broken in summer by tall spikes of mullein, yellow against the grey-blue air over the heaths of Pirbright and Worplesdon. The highest point of the road lies a mile beyond Wanborough on the way to Guildford; here you are over five hundred feet up, and the road drops gradually, ending with a sudden ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... you laugh, ye children of the devil!" said the scout, seating himself on a projection of the rock, and suffering his gun to fall neglected at his feet, "for the three quickest and truest rifles in these woods are no better than so many stalks of mullein, or the last year's horns of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... road, climbed between a sloping buckwheat field on the one hand and a buttercupped meadow on the other. On either side of the lane, cutting it off from the fields, straggled a zigzag snake fence, with milk-weed, tansy, and mullein growing raggedly ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... O'erflares, and gates the farm-boy clicks, Through which the cattle came, The mullein-stalks seem ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... come and behold the prospect of skirting Ishmael; come and look nature boldly in the face, and not go sneaking any longer, among the prairie grass and mullein tops, like a ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... above Altopascio. A cart-track runs through it, deeply rutted and always miry, on either hand of which glades are revealed of great beauty. Here, if the trees are remote, the grass grows lush and green. Hereabouts are the flowers, tall and plenty—foxgloves and mullein, such as we have at home, and loosestrife (lysimachia), both the yellow and the purple. The sun shone brilliantly between the leaves, the air was sweetly tempered, the wood was empty. I felt exalted, as I always do when I am alone. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... in New Netherland up to the present time, by little search, as far as they have come to our knowledge, consist principally of Venus' hair, hart's tongue, lingwort, polypody, white mullein, priest's shoe, garden and sea-beach orach, water germander, tower-mustard, sweet flag, sassafras, crowfoot, platain, shepherd's purse, mallows, wild marjoram, crane's bill, marsh-mallows, false eglantine, laurel, violet, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... ignored and left out of the conversation, had apparently determined to amuse himself in his own way. He had meandered back and forth across the road, as was shown by the serpentine character of his tracks; now, catching sight of a tempting stalk of mullein by the fence, he had walked across the gutter and was just stretching his head forward to seize the coveted morsel, when Mrs. Adams interrupted him. Her first impulse was to draw him back, but kinder feelings prevailed, and she bent forward to give him the full ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray |
