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Soil   Listen
noun
Soil  n.  
1.
The upper stratum of the earth; the mold, or that compound substance which furnishes nutriment to plants, or which is particularly adapted to support and nourish them.
2.
Land; country. "Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave Thee, native soil?"
3.
Dung; faeces; compost; manure; as, night soil. "Improve land by dung and other sort of soils."
Soil pipe, a pipe or drain for carrying off night soil.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Soil" Quotes from Famous Books



... called a hill except one mound, forty feet long and ten feet high, and that is artificial. The roads are sandy, the fields are broad and flat and full of weeds, the water stands about in great pools, not running off, but absorbing into the sandy soil. ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... Our ardent love of this classic soil tempts us to insert the following noble instance from Cicero (pro Milone XXXI) "Vos enim jam Albani tumuli atque luci vos, inquam, imploro alque tester vosque Albanorum obrutae arae, sacrorum populi Romani sociae et aequales, quas ille praeceps amentia caesis prostratisque ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs

... that what is called [1] "the intricate variety in husbandry" [2] presents no difficulty. I use a phrase of those who, whatever the nicety with which they treat the art in theory, [3] have but the faintest practical experience of tillage. What they assert is, that "he who would rightly till the soil must first be made acquainted with ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... circumstances, the removal of families from the land of their birth is attended by many painful incidents. About to embark upon a long and perilous voyage, to seek the untried hospitalities of a stranger soil, the old landmarks and associations which the heartstrings grasp with a cruel tenacity are viewed through the ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... fulfilling it, show that you are the worthy descendants of the Ottoman Armies that in the past made the world tremble, and make it impossible for any foe of our faith and country to tread on our ground, and disturb the peace of the sacred soil of Yemen, where the inspiring tomb of our prophet lies. Prove beyond doubt to the enemies of the country that there exist an Ottoman Army and Navy which know how to defend their faith, their country and their military honor, and how to defy ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... sketched there. She saw herself cold to her husband, lacking in passionate motherliness to his child, eager for the society of another man not out of love but intellectual vanity, and cavilling also at all religion because faith had no good soil to rest in. She sat long on the window-sill of the empty room, looking at an uncultivated patch of ground that even in May had no beauty save for here and there the stirring of a weed in the damp scented earth. She was stunned to see her life limned in such lines, and the truth in ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... a peculiar kind of glass, shed a mild, subdued lustre around, producing the beautiful effect of a moonlit eve! On every side rare exotics and choice plants exhaled a delicious perfume; tropic fruits grew from the carefully nurtured soil;—orange, pomegranate, citron, &c. Gravelled walks led through rich shrubbery, darkened by overhanging foliage. Mossy paths, of charming intricacy, invited the wanderer to explore their mysterious windings. At ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... understand. The trickling music of the growing streams sang it to him; he heard it in the warm winds that were no longer filled with the blast of winter; he caught it in the new odours that were rising out of the earth; he smelled it in the dank, sweet perfume of the black woods-soil. The thing thrilled him. It ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... glance. Left her with nothing to spoil the haunting cadence of his voice, nothing to lift the spell of tender prophecy his words had laid upon her soul. When he was quite gone, when she heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs upon the arid soil that surrounded the Whipple shack, Mary Hope still stared out through the open doorway, seeing nothing of the March barrenness, seeing only the tender, inscrutable, tantalizing face of Lance Lorrigan,—tantalizing because she could not plumb the depths of his eyes, could not say how much ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... or erected over mill-races cut in the banks. There they revolved, the buckets filling and emptying automatically, the water running off in troughs above the level of the river back to the fertile soil. Some of these wheels had ingenious floating arrangements whereby they accommodated themselves to the different stages of a rising or falling river. We took a few pictures of Wilson's place before leaving. He informed us that ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... Jesus, and the cities of Galilee seemed emptied out to hear Him. No illusions as to the depth or worth of this excitement beset Him. Sadly He looked on the eager multitudes, because He looked through them, and saw how few of them were bringing 'an honest and good heart' for the soil of His word. Just because He saw the shallowness of the momentary enthusiasm, He spoke this pregnant parable from a heavy heart, and as He tells us in His explanation of it to the disciples (ver. 10), uses the parabolic garb as a means of hiding the truth from the unsusceptible, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... poor Barrett had found? Intolerable anguish weakened his limbs. He flung himself on a wayside bank, grovelling, to rise again calm and quite ready for society, upon the proper application of the clothes-brush. Indeed; he patted his shoulder and elbow to remove the soil of his short contact with earth, and tried a cigar: but the first taste of the smoke sickened his lips. Then he stood for a moment as a man in a new world. This strange sensation of disgust with familiar comforting habits, fixed him in perplexity, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... reconcentrados, for, in my opinion, they would be distributed to the Spanish army. Until some point be occupied in Cuba by our forces, from which such distribution can be made to those for whom the supplies are intended, I am unwilling that they should be landed on Cuban soil. ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... I leaned upon the taffrail watching the distant coast line of my beloved France, whose soil meseemed I was not like to tread again for years, Yvonne came softly up ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini

... skeletons was then collected and I found that the witnesses concurred in agreeing that the attitude seems to have been in all cases with knees bent up. No objects seem to have been noticed in any of the excavations then made, though some may have been overlooked by the workmen, particularly as the soil of the locality is full of pieces of limestone and small boulders, closely resembling arrow heads, hammers and celts. Several bones which are not human have however been since found with these three skeletons, one possibly of a dog, another of a squirrel. They may be those of the funeral ...
— A New Hochelagan Burying-ground Discovered at Westmount on the - Western Spur of Mount Royal, Montreal, July-September, 1898 • W. D. Lighthall

... a bit, sir; but if they do, we must mend it; and every night we work, we can get it stronger and more earthy. Nothing like soil to swallow balls. Of course it's no use as a defence, because the enemy could come round either end; but it'll do what's wanted, sir—stop the shot from hitting the bridge-chains and smashing through the ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... the gospel of labor—ring it, Ye bells of the kirk— The Lord of Love came down from above To live with the men who work. This is the rose he planted, here In the thorn-cursed soil; Heaven is blest with perfect rest, but The blessing ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... all long since passed away, even the very spot itself has changed; new soil has been formed, and there are miles of solid ground between Mount Ceta and the gulf, so that the Hot Gates no longer exist. But more enduring than stone or brass—nay, than the very battlefield itself—has been the name of Leonidas. Two thousand three hundred ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Mr. Moody's questions, he described the stations, little buildings of three rooms, and the missionaries' life, at home, and teaching the Indians to cultivate the soil, as well as preaching to them; his wife also teaching the women. The audience had become quite enthusiastic by the time he finished his eloquent appeal, and at this moment Mr. Sankey offered $700 to start one station, and shortly after Mr. Moody pledged ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various

... of how I have lived,and with what atmosphere and influences. Specimens of the soil wherein Wych Hazel grew to be ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... counties, Napa County, Lake County, and Sonoma County, march across its cliffy shoulders. Its naked peak stands nearly four thousand five hundred feet above the sea; its sides are fringed with forest; and the soil, where it is bare, glows ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... villas dotted over it rises gently to the Alps. As a strictly winter resort Cannes is far too exposed for the more delicate class of invalids; as a spring resort it is without a rival. Nowhere is the air so bright and elastic, the light so wonderfully brilliant and diffused. The very soil, full of micaceous fragments, sparkles at our feet. Colour takes a depth as well as a refinement strange even to the Riviera; nowhere is the sea so darkly purple, nowhere are the tones of the distant hills so delicate and evanescent, nowhere are the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... skill as archers and horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. They lived in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. "The whole plateau of Iran," says Johnson, "was suggestive of the war of elements,—a country of great contrasts of fertility and desolation,—snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... luggage, which was vehemently grasped by native porters, brought to earth, and carried in with eager violence. The animation of the city was intense, and had in it something barbaric and almost savage, something that seemed undisciplined, bred of the orange and red soil, of the orange and red rocks, of the snow and sun-smitten mountains, of the terrific gorges and precipices which made the landscape vital and ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... less flourishing than agriculture; Italy at this period was rich in industries—silk, wool, hemp, fur, alum, sulphur, bitumen; those products which the Italian soil could not bring forth were imported, from the Black Sea, from Egypt, from Spain, from France, and often returned whence they came, their worth doubled by labour and fine workmanship. The rich man brought his merchandise, the poor his industry: ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... what can I compare your fidelity and devotion to me? Ah! it is indeed delightful that you still continue to love me so well. I know how to prize you, and to distinguish you from all others; you are not like my Vienna friends. No! you are one of those whom the soil of my fatherland is wont to bring forth; how often I wish that you were with me, for your Beethoven is very unhappy. You must know that one of my most precious faculties, that of hearing, is become very defective; even while you were still with me I felt indications of this, though ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace

... studying elocution under a graduate of the Old Bowery, and has acquired a most tragic croak, which, with a little rouge and burnt cork, and haggard hair, gives him a truly awful aspect, remarked that the soil of the South was clotted with blood by fiends in human shape, (sensation in the diplomatic gallery.) The metaphor might be meaningless; but it struck him it was strong. These fiends were doubly protected by midnight ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various

... died from ill treatment, or disease, the life of a slave was not of such importance to his proprietor as it is now. Moreover, the slaves imported were adults who had been once free; and torn as they were from their natural soil and homes, where they slept in idleness throughout the day, they were naturally morose and obstinate, sulky and unwilling to work. This occasioned severe punishment; and the hearts of their masters being indurated by habit, it often ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... success in the past was due to hard work and discipline, and that the same work and discipline are equally important in the future. To such as go home, he will only say that our favored country is so grand, so extensive, so diversified in climate, soil, and productions, that every man may find a home and occupation suited to his taste; none should yield to the natural impatience sure to result from our past life of excitement and adventure. You will be invited to seek new adventures abroad; do not yield ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... literature, an instance of a bad thing so well done. The painting of the narrative is beyond description vivid and graceful. The abundance of interesting sentiments and splendid imagery in the speeches is almost miraculous. His mind is a soil which is never over-teemed, a fountain which never seems to trickle. It pours forth profusely; yet it gives no sign of exhaustion. It was probably to this exuberance of thought and language, always fresh, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... surrounding country, which is a desert uninhabited and uninhabitable, terraced with long series of cliffs or mesa-fronts, verdureless, voiceless and unbeautiful. It is a land of soft, crumbling soil and parched rock, dyed with strange colors and broken into fantastic shapes. Nature is titanic and mad: the sane and alleviating beauty of fertility is displaced by an arid and inanimate desolateness, which glows with alien splendor in evanescent conditions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... Arabian art and learning with him, but he had brought also the Mohammedan religion, and that was intolerable not only to the Spaniards but to all Europeans. No Christian country could brook the thought of this Asiatic creed flourishing on her soil, so Spain soon set to work to get ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... hath encompassed his mouth, And sweet is the peace in his eyes. Called hence by the Power who knows When the work of a hero is done, He turned at the message, and rose With the harness of diligence on. In the midst of magnificent toil, He bowed at the holy decree; And green is the grass on the soil Of the grave by ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... marriage, he must have been a constant anxiety to his friends; his gloom, his inertia, his drifting mooning ways, his hypochondria, his incapacity for any settled plan of life, all seemed to portend an ultimate failure. But this troubled inertness was the soil of his inspiration; his conceptions took slow and stately shape. He never suffered from the haste, which as Dante says "mars all decency of act." After that time he enjoyed a great domestic happiness, and practised considerable sociability. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Clint. They listened. All was silent again. A damp and musty odour pervaded the place. Under their feet the floor boards had rotted and as they made a cautious circuit of the interior they trod as often on soil as on wood. The hut was apparently empty of everything save a section of rusted stovepipe, dangling from a hole in the roof, some damp rags and paper in a corner and a broken box. Clint discovered the box by falling over it ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... the throat, shaking him and snarling between his clenched teeth, while his own throat swelled and reddened: "Now, damn you! You dog! So on, so on, so on! Zowie!" Suddenly his figure straightened. "Then change. See?" He became serene, almost august. "'No! I will not soil these hands with you. So on, so on, so on. I give you your worthless life. Go!'" He completed his generosity by giving Canby and Tinker the smile, after which he concluded much more cheerfully: "Something like that, Mr. Canby, and we'll have some ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington

... be found on a lower level at half an hour's distance. The fact that potatoes and wheat of excellent quality are grown in abundance at from 3,000 to 3,500 feet elevation, shows what the climate and soil are capable of if properly cultivated. From one to two thousand feet high, coffee would thrive; and there are hundreds of square miles of country over which all the varied products which require climates between those of coffee and wheat would flourish; but no attempt ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... she would go. The doctor could not understand why it was that in Maddy's home he did not think as well of her going to Aikenside as he had done the evening previous. She looked so bright, so pure, so artless, sitting by her grandfather's knee, that it seemed a pity to transplant her to another soil, while, hidden in his heart where even he did not know it was hidden, was a fear of what might be the effect of daily intercourse with Guy. Still he said it was the best thing for her to do, and laughingly remarked ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... glorious country; where no tyrant, let his power be ever so absolute over his poor trembling victims at home, dare come and lay violent hands upon us or upon our dear little boys (who had the good fortune to be born upon British soil), and reduce us to the legal level of the beast that perisheth. Oh! may God bless the thousands of unflinching, disinterested abolitionists of America, who are labouring through evil as well as through good report, to cleanse their country's escutcheon from the ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft

... Andros to make himself the most hated of the governors sent to represent the king in New England. A spirit of independence, born of a free soil, was already moving in the people's hearts, and the harsh edicts of this officer, as well as the oppressive measures of his master, brought him into continual conflict with the people. He it was who went to Hartford to demand the surrender of the liberties of ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... with touch of fire Dilated and infuriate, shall send forth From far, with thundering noise, among our foes Such implements of mischief as shall dash To pieces and o'erwhelm whatever stands Adverse. Th' invention all admired; up they turn'd Wide the celestial soil; sulphurous and nitrous foam They found, they mingled; and, with subtle art Concocted and adjusted, they reduced To ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... peace has not been materially impaired; our commerce has extended, under the protection of our infant Navy, to every part of the globe; wealth has flowed without intermission into our seaports, and the labors of the husbandman have been rewarded by a ready market for the productions of the soil. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson

... which they are to convey first to Olympus to receive a fatherly kiss and then to Lycia for burial. No sooner is Sarpedon slain than a grim fight ensues over his spoil and remains, but while the Greeks secure his armor, his corpse is borne away by Apollo, who, after purifying it from all battle soil, entrusts it ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... But, oh dear, big people are so happy, for they can do what they like, but chindrel must do everything they are told." And quite forgetting her pretty white frock and dainty sash, and the many orders she had received not on any account to soil them, she lay back ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland

... coming for the man who kept on the open veldt the twentieth anniversary of his joining Her Majesty's army with gladness in his heart. After he had found the column and had got into the Lilliputian forest with its stunted, bushy trees and its sandy soil, he was brought face to face with the greatest enemy that can harass, fret, and wear down nerves of steel—absence of water. A commander whose mind is racked by the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of finding water for his troops is like the man haunted day and night, ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... are all, or within a very few, so famed and ancient authors, that they seem, methinks, themselves sufficiently to tell who they are, without giving me the trouble. In reasons, comparisons, and arguments, if I transplant any into my own soil, and confound them amongst my own, I purposely conceal the author, to awe the temerity of those precipitate censors who fall upon all sorts of writings, particularly the late ones, of men yet living; and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... time may grow again, Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower; The sorest wight may find release of pain, The driest soil suck in some moist'ning shower; Times go by turns and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... replied that he had ordered all private quarrels in France to be laid aside during the progress of the war, and that so long as an English foot remained upon French soil he would give no countenance to his knights throwing away the lives which they owed to France, ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... as the creek crossing, and this would assure them the direction we had chosen. Beyond the ford tracing our movements might prove more troublesome, as the short, wiry grass under foot, retained but slight imprint of unshod hoofs, the soil beneath being of a hard clay. Yet to strike directly out across the prairie ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... only their branches, but many of their roots in wild and fantastic forms. Masses of earth had recently fallen from the upper to the lower parts of the precipice, carrying trees and plants down the steep descent. The character of the soil and the unceasing influence of the stream at the bottom, seemed to threaten further slips of the land from the summit. From hence the gentle murmur of the cascade at the head of the chine stole upon the ear without ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... only to the daughter, but to the father, who valued the advice and skill of the master of Orvilliere in all things pertaining to the management of the farm. Now, in the springtime, the countryside was stirring into new life, and masters and men alike were full of enthusiasm over the tilling of the soil and the expectation of good crops to come. Monsieur Le Mierre had sent round word to his neighbours that on a certain day in March he would hold the working festival of La Grand' Querrue, or The Grand Plough. That meant the combination of these neighbours into a ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin

... outlived its day," says Mihail Fyodorovitch emphatically. "Its song is sung. Yes, indeed. Mankind begins to feel impelled to replace it by something different. It has grown on the soil of superstition, been nourished by superstition, and is now just as much the quintessence of superstition as its defunct granddames, alchemy, metaphysics, and philosophy. And, after all, what has it given to mankind? Why, the ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... that blood is hot, and that the first principle of the art is to apply warm remedies to cold diseases? Pocrat,[61] who is the father of all doctors, has thus ordained, and surely you cannot say that he eats his own soil. If you take blood from that body, it dies; and go tell the world that I ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... the diseases of the cereals into two classes, internal and external. The internal diseases are those depending upon conditions of soil, climate, cultivation, etc., and may be neglected in our discussion, as they produce no special disease of the body, only impairing the nutritive value of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... Scandinavian to the earlier Persian religion may be sufficiently accounted for by the common process of gradual degeneration. That degeneration was not confined to the great emigrant race. Centuries before Odin had left the East, the Persian religion had degenerated upon its native soil. Its Magi retained a pure doctrine, which led them later to the Bethlehem crib; but its vulgar had in part yielded to the seduction of Greek poets, and worshipped in temples like theirs. It is remarkable that that 'one of the nations' with which the hopes of the future are so singularly connected ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... journey as a thing of course, than hear of it as a proposition for deliberation. He will now have his heart's desire granted, in again seeing his loved and respectable uncle,-and many relations, and more friends, and his own native town, as well as soil ; and he will have the delight of presenting to that uncle, and those friends, his little pet Alex. With all this gratification to one whose endurance of such a length of suspense, and repetition of disappointment, I have observed with gratitude, and felt ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... for news of the fight, we applied for shore leave, and, after lunch, went down the gangway, and trod the soil of Africa ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... fish is in the sea, and a marine animal may have a station higher or deeper. So again with land animals: the differences in their stations are those of different soils and neighbourhoods; some being best adapted to a calcareous, and others to an arenaceous soil. The third condition of existence is FOOD, by which I mean food in the broadest sense, the supply of the materials necessary to the existence of an organic being; in the case of a plant the inorganic matters, such as carbonic ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley

... wound, took great joy in the picturesque scenery and "points" of military life. But it is incredible how little we ate or got to eat, and how hard we worked. It is awful to be set to digging ditches in a soil nine-tenths ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... voice as the Colonel galloped back to them. "Steady, there; steady!" he shouted as he rode right along the little line and reined up his horse, to sit gazing after the flying enemy, frowning the while as he saw how many white cotton robes dotted the soil before the uninjured disappeared again in the cedar grove, from which they had delivered ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... anonymous letters. Every anonymous communication is deserving of contempt, just because it's not signed. If you think differently I'm sorry for you. In any case, if I were in your place, I would not pry into such dirty corners, I would not soil my hands with it. But you have soiled yours. However, since you have begun on the subject yourself, I must tell you that six days ago I too received a clownish anonymous letter. In it some rascal informs me that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... low water-mark the shore is all rocky, so that then there is no landing with a boat; but at high water a boat may come in over those rocks to the sandy bay, which runs all along on this coast. The land by the sea for about five or six hundred yards is a dry sandy soil, bearing only shrubs and bushes of divers sorts. Some of these had them at this time of the year, yellow flowers or blossoms, some blue, and some white; most of them of a very fragrant smell. Some had fruit like peascods, in each of which there were just ten small peas; I opened ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... lumber filled the air, and suggested all kinds of remote and pleasant things. The industry itself is one of the first that comes with the invasion of new territory, and makes one think of man's first work in the world: to fell the tree and till the soil. It is impossible to describe that fierce, jubilant song of the saw, which even when we were near was never shrill or shrieking: never drowning our voices, but vibrant and delightful. To Mrs. Falchion it was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... mind that," went on the Bishop—"God don't say things out loud—He jes' brings two an' two together an' expects you to add 'em an' make fo'. He gives you the soil an' the grain an' expects you to plant, assurin' you of rain an' sunshine to make the crop, if you'll only wuck. He comes into yo' life with the laws of life an' death an' takes yo' beloved, an' it's His way of sayin' to you that this life ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... grass that had been so powerful in the preceding centuries still existed, the common arable fields needed rest from continual cropping and poor manuring, while good crops of corn could be grown from the virgin soil of the newly enclosed waste. The preamble of the Durham decrees clearly states this: 'the land is wasted and worn with continual ploweing, and thereby made bare, barren, and very unfruitful.'[272] We may, therefore, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... What mothers endured cannot be put into words, when they saw their darling boys (whom they had seen dressed that morning in their Sunday clothes, and sent away in perfect array, with directions that they were not to break their collars nor soil their jackets, nor disarrange their hair the whole day, or they need not come home in the evening) turn up in a class-room before the respectables of Muirtown as if their heads had not known a brush for six months, with Speug's autograph upon their white collar, a button gone from ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... been recognised as being that of the average Indian, it simplifies your relations with him. You take him as he is, and enjoy the many attractive qualities which flourish, up to a certain point, in the shallow soil. It also makes it easier to govern him, supposing you have responsibilities of that nature, if you understand that you must not depend too much on certain qualities which he only possesses in a limited degree. And this is equally true whether your responsibility extends only to ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... state, Missouri, was the thing directly in hand. That was in early August of 1861. Price put himself and his command subject to McCulloch's orders.[16] The result was the successful engagement, August 10 at Wilson's Creek, on Missouri soil. On the fourteenth of the same month, Price reassumed control of the Missouri State Guard[17] and, from that time on, he and McCulloch drifted farther and farther apart; but, as their aims were so entirely different, it was not to ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... mountains, and away to the east. The scenery among the mountains is very lovely: they are covered with a close mantle of green, with here and there red and light-coloured patches, showing where grass has been burned off recently and the red clay soil is exposed; the lighter portions are unburned grass or rocks. Large trees are here more numerous, and give an agreeable change of contour to the valleys and ridges of the hills; the boughs of many still retain a tinge of red from young leaves. We came to the Bua again before reaching Kanyenje, as ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... times were not ripe for it, because a continuation of adverse events, which we should call persistent ill-luck if we did not believe in an overruling Providence, blighted and blasted his infant state before it had time to root itself firmly in the soil. None the less, however, does Theodoric deserve credit for having seen what was the need of Europe, and pre-eminently of Italy, and for having done his best to supply that need. The great work in which he failed was accomplished three ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... the pains of the men of Thule be blotted in oblivion; for though they lack all that can foster luxury (so naturally barren is the soil), yet they make up for their neediness by their wit, by keeping continually every observance of soberness, and devoting every instant of their lives to perfecting our knowledge of the deeds of foreigners. Indeed, they account it a delight ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... this so good a soil? The sight of this doth make God's heart recoil From giving thee his blessing; barren tree, Bear fruit, or else thine end will cursed be! Art thou not planted by the water-side? Know'st not thy Lord by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... we are nearing her home now, see how clear the air is up here, and the flora is getting more bountiful and beautiful, isn't it! There is her place! What a lovely garden she has! And it is growing out of such rocky soil! There she is, the dear old mother in Israel! When we get to her, note the marks of care that line her saintly face; but notice also the sweet smile that graces her kind countenance. Oh, that we could bear up under life's cares ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry

... capture of Lucknow, the Governor-General had prepared a proclamation for promulgation in Oudh, announcing that, except in the case of certain loyal Rajahs, proprietary rights in the soil of the province would be confiscated. One copy of the draft was sent home, and another shown to Sir James Outram, Chief Commissioner of Oudh, and, in consequence of the latter's protest against its severity, as making confiscation the rule and ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... peaceable religion, flying from causeless oppression. It was conscience, attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts. It was Robinson and Brewster, leading off their little band from their native soil, at first to find shelter on the shore of the neighboring continent, but ultimately to come hither; and having surmounted all difficulties and braved a thousand dangers, to find here a place of refuge and of rest. Thanks be to God, that this ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... all pioneers: they explored the older communities as solicitously as they did the new, but they most of them came earliest in some field or other and found—or thought—it necessary to clear the top of the soil before they sank shaft or spade into it. Moreover, they accepted almost without challenge the current inhibitions of gentility, reticence, cheerfulness. They confined themselves to the emotions and the ideas and the language, for the most part, ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... to be. Then, conceding that ages of warfare have contributed to awaken some such feeling as this you hint at, is there not a question of right and wrong that lies behind all? Reflect how often England has invaded the French soil, and what serious injuries she has committed on the territory of the latter, while France has so little wronged us, in the same way; how, even her throne has been occupied by our princes, and her ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... cleverly done; it was top notch. After that, you dropped clues pretty freely, afraid o' my missin' 'em, I reckon. You didn't just blaze the trees; but you broke down twigs, you tore up ferns an' things, you kicked up the soil with your toe, an' you scored marks with your stick. At one place you tied a knot in a clump of rush grass, leavin' a pointer. I was follerin' you quick when at last I come t' the creek, an' thar you had me. You waded into th' water—that's how you got ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... being impregnated, during certain seasons, with volumes of dust raised from the red soil of that part of Mount Libanus near which it flows, gave rise to the fable of the periodical effusion of the blood of Adonis. There is a rock near the Island of Corfu, which bears the resemblance of a ship under sail: ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... pulled the Segestria out and at once lets her drop to the ground. Bewildered by her fall and even more demoralized by being wrested from her ambush, the Spider is no longer the bold adversary that she was. She draws her legs together and cowers into a depression in the soil. The huntress is there on the instant to operate on the evicted animal. I have barely time to draw near to watch the tragedy when the victim is paralysed by a thrust of the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... been in progress, nevertheless, and promise great results. The man who sowed his seeds yesterday does not expect to reap a harvest to-morrow. Cultivation is to follow planting. The warm spring rains, the hot rays of a summer sun are to come and moisten and warm the soil around the roots, cause the blade to shoot forth and then harden the stalk and the grain. These are to be followed by the cool winds and frosts of autumn before harvest comes. The planting of moral principles in the present ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... the Cordilleras of the Andes consists of a succession of lengthened declivities, which slope down almost insensibly to the plain. The soil is carpeted with rich herbage, and adorned with magnificent trees, among which, in great numbers, were apple-trees, planted at the time of the conquest, and golden with fruit. There were literally, perfect forests of these. This district ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... a few of whom, dating from early times, had taken the natural allegory of the pilgrimage of human life as the basis of their works. But as a novelist he had no one to show him the way. Bunyan was the first to break ground in a field which has since then been so overabundantly worked that the soil has almost lost its productiveness; while few novels written purely with the object of entertainment have ever proved so universally entertaining. Intensely religious as it is in purpose, "The Pilgrim's Progress" may be safely styled the first English novel. "The claim to be the father of ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... the best method of serving the anti-slavery cause in this exasperating campaign, and these differences may still survive as an inheritance; but abolitionism, as a working force in our politics, had to have a beginning, and no man who cherishes the memory of the old Free Soil party, and of the larger one to which it gave birth, will withhold the meed of his praise from the heroic little band of sappers and miners who blazed the way for the armies which were to follow, and whose voices, though but faintly heard in the whirlwind of 1840, were made significantly ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... for the partner of your future joys. As I told you then, I can talk freely. Why not? We know it,—both of us. How your conscience may be I cannot tell; but mine is clear from that soil with which you think ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... unwholesome- looking as though they were the spontaneous growth of the country), had the whole scene to themselves. Here and there we passed a log hut: but the wretched cabins were wide apart and thinly scattered, for though the soil is very rich in this place, few people can exist in such a deadly atmosphere. On either side of the track, if it deserve the name, was the thick 'bush;' and everywhere was stagnant, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... from any majority. They are not disposable by any majority. They are superior to all majorities. The weakest minority, the most despised sect, exist by their own right. The most friendless and lonely human being on American soil holds his right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and all that goes to make them up by title indefeasible against the world, and it is the glory of American self-government that by the limitations of the constitution ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root

... perhaps not worth more than English grass would be, thanks to that small-farm system much be-praised by some who know not wheat from turnips. Then along a road, which might be a Devon one, cut in the hill-side, through authentic "Devonian" slate, where the deep chocolate soil is lodged on the top of the upright strata, and a thick coat of moss and wood sedge clusters about the oak-scrub roots, round which the delicate and rare oak-fern mingles its fronds with great blue campanulas; while the "white admirals" and silver-washed "fritillaries" flit round every bramble ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... land. 'Far from it,' Dr. Buchanan said. 'Such a scheme would be a miserable climax of folly and injustice, fit only to render the great principle equally odious and ridiculous.' The doctor insisted that he proposed to 'maintain in legislation the broad principle that the nation owns the soil, and that this ownership is paramount to all individual claims,' and from this fundamental proposition as a corner-stone the superstructure was to be built up. The present proprietors of the soil were not to be disturbed in their possession, and the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... the heading of Answers to Correspondents by "Smart Set," of an excellent home for Anglo-Indian children (gravel soil), of a new way to clean Brussels lace, of the number of gowns required in these days for a week-end visit, of a scale of tips for gamekeepers. It directed her to a manicure, and instructed her how ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... these sentences is that no one ever knows the reason why or wherefore, and that the lot may fall on the innocent as well as the guilty. M. M. was delighted with the event, and I was more pleased than she, for I should have been sorry to have been obliged to soil my hands with the blood of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... trudged on. He trudged on patiently, with the ease of a man accustomed all his life to plodding through the soil, though now and then he paused. He paused for breath or for a minute's repose, and sometimes to listen. He listened most frequently to sounds behind him as if expecting pursuit; he listened to the barking of dogs, the gallop ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... organized his army into several parts and thought out a system by means of which soldiers might always be on guard duty to withstand an invasion, while the rest of the people were peacefully tilling the soil. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... expect any trouble of that kind. Practically all the fighting that has been going on has been on Mexican soil on the other side of the Rio Grande. As I understand it, the nearest point that the Mentor Construction Company reaches to Mexico is some miles ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer

... gouge in the flatness of the country. After that we began to see oak-trees, scattered at rare intervals. So interested were we in them that we did not notice rocks beginning to outcrop through the soil until they had become numerous enough to be a feature of the landscape. The hills, gently, quietly, without abrupt transition, almost as though they feared to awaken our alarm by too abrupt movement of growth, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... the branches. Silently all droops, all withers, all is poured back into the earth that it may recreate; all sleeps while the busy architects of day and night ply their silent work elsewhere. The same serenity reigns when all at once the soil yields up a newly wrought creation. Softly the ocean of grass, moss, and flowers rolls surge upon surge across the earth. Curtains of foliage drape the bare branches. Great trees make ready in their sturdy hearts to receive ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... rather you did either than soil your mind with the politics of this country. I say nothing about there being no statesmen;—there is not an honest man in politics the length and breadth of the Union. The country is a sink of corruption, as far as politics are concerned. Every Congressman ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... at the Middle or South Island, they will notice a long seaboard on the eastern side of the island, stretching SS.W. for many hundred leagues. It extends beyond the Province of Canterbury to that of Otago, and embraces some of the most magnificent pastoral land in the settlement. Not only is the soil rich and productive, but the climate is rather less windy than with us in the northern portion of the island; and the capital of Otago (Dunedin) had risen into comparative position and importance before Christchurch,—was in short an elder sister of that ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... the faint marks in the soil which indicated the passage of a body of horsemen, the troopers, with Bud and his friends, had halted some distance away from the lone scout. The latter had remained a little way off the trail, so his own horse's feet would not mingle ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker

... or hill fort, was not unlike other hill forts and brochs, of which there are hundreds in Scotland. But many of the relics alleged to have been found in the soil of Dunbuie were unfamiliar in character in these islands. There was not a shard of pottery, there was not a trace of metal, but absence of such things is no proof that they were unknown to the inhabitants of the fort. I may go further, and say that if any person were capable of interpolating ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang

... tempest, favoring winds of heaven, That knew the hour to check my shifting flight, And beat me down upon my native soil,..." ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... Here is the long-coated Persian with his air of breeding and dignity, jostled by the naked coolie with rings in his nose. The lady beauty of Japan dashes by in her jinrikisha drawn by a Chinese coolie, and the exclusive Brahman finds himself shoulder to shoulder with the laughing daughter of the soil who has never ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... attention, and partly from the richness of the virgin soil, a splendid growth was the result; and the stalks stood full twelve feet high, with ears nearly a foot long. They had almost ripened; and the field-cornet intended in about a week or ten days to gather ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid



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