"Tuft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stir with the uneasy movement of one who is struggling against the effect of a fixed gaze bent upon him. Then, with a shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders, he sat up in his chair. He tossed his hat back from his forehead, and a tuft of wavy brown hair tumbled over it. His head was held down, and his eyes were on the fire. Hugh Ritson took a step toward him and put one hand ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... his chair again, and, with a crafty old eye cocked on the windows next door, fingered a scanty tuft of white hair on his chin and smiled weakly. Captain Trimblett controlled himself by an effort, and, selecting a piece of paper from a bundle of letters in his pocket, made signs for a pencil. Captain Sellers shook his head; ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... these is a miniature, an islet covered with trees, on which stands a small ruin that looks like the remains of a religious house; it is overgrown with ivy, and were it not that the arch of a window or gateway may be distinctly seen, it would be difficult to believe that it was not a tuft of trees growing in the shape of a ruin, rather than a ruin overshadowed by trees. When we had walked a little further we saw below us, on the nearest large island, where some of the wood had been cut down, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... was not a moment to lose. The man had already gone down twice; he was coming up for the second time. Frank took his coat in one hand, and, leaning over the edge of the quarry at the risk of falling in himself, he caught hold of a tuft of grass with the other hand, and awaited the drowning ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... broidered with drops of water. In front, under the fatal space where the eternal passage of projectiles is as undistinguishable as light in daytime, the field resembles a field, the road resembles a road. Ultimately one makes out some corpses, but what a strangely little thing is a corpse in a field—a tuft of colorless flowers which the shortest blades of grass disguise! At one moment there was a ray of sunshine, and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... There I saw the latest fashion in "oversea" hair cuts. The victims sat on a ration box while the barber mowed great swaths through tangled thatch with a pair of close-cutting clippers. But instead of making a complete job of it, a thick fringe of hair which resembled a misplaced scalping tuft was left for decorative purposes, just above the forehead. The effect was so grotesque that I had to invent an excuse for laughing. It was a lame one, I fear, for Shorty looked at me warningly. When we had gone on a little ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... knew the reason. "When Mary was alive," he would say, "she stood between me and the little troubles. I could brace myself for the big ones. My girls are as good as girls can be, but who can know a man as his wife knows him?" Then his memory would conjure up a tuft of brown hair and a single white, thin hand over a coverlet, and he would feel, as we have all felt, that if we do not live and know each other after death, then indeed we are tricked and betrayed by all the highest hopes and subtlest intuitions ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... afraid, air, you receive nothing but damage at our house," said Mrs. Talbot politely. "Hast drawn blood? Oh fie! thou ill-mannered Tib! Will you have a tuft from a beaver to stop ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... extraordinarily polished hair, which told of responsibility, looked as if it were kept up to the same high standard as the plate; in his small clear anxious eyes, even in the permitted, though not exactly encouraged, tuft on his chin. "He thinks me rather mad, but I've broken him in, and now he likes the place, he likes the company," said the old man. I embraced this fully after I had become aware that Brooksmith's main characteristic was a deep and shy refinement, though I remember I was rather puzzled when, ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... nearer in the bush, but mighty careful. The image had burned out; there were only a few coals left here and there, and the wood was main dark, but had a kind of a low glow in it like a fire on its last legs. It was by this that I made out Case’s head looking at me over a big tuft of ferns, and at the same time the brute saw me and shouldered his Winchester. I lay quite still, and as good as looked into the barrel: it was my last chance, but I thought my heart would have come right out of its bearings. Then he fired. Lucky for me it was no shot-gun, for the bullet ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were considering what they should do next, the Fox espied a small piece of meat, when it was agreed that he should tear this into little bits and throw them into the stream above where they then were; that the Cat should wait, crouched behind a tuft of grass, to dash into the river and seize the Trout, if he should come to take any piece of meat floating near the bank; and that the Fox should, on the first movement of the Cat, return and give his help. This scheme was put into practice, but with no better success than the other. The Trout came ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... passage, spoken of in other chronicles, which opened into the inner towers of the ancient castle of the Herons. He found himself among rugged, heathy ground, the hollow palm of the island, now suffused with milky opalescence, for the sun was setting. Hardly could Stair see from one tuft to another, but out of the tinted mist swooped first two and then three birds like angels appearing out of a white heaven. Magnified by the mist Stair hardly recognized the green and black summer uniform of the golden plover, but he heard their ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... and went cheerfully ahead of us, as I was very glad to see. Dennis saw it too, but only to relapse into mischief. He held me back, as Alister strode in front, and putting out his thumb and finger, so close to a tuft of hay-coloured hair that stood cocked defiantly up on the Scotchman's crown that I was in all the agony he meant me to be for fear of detection, he chattered in my ear, "Jack, did ye ever study physiognomy, or any of the science of externals? Look at this independent ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... thicket. Many a werst, Panting as if his heart would burst. The weary brute still stagger'd on: And still we were—or seem'd—alone. At length, while reeling on our way. Methought I heard a courser neigh, From out yon tuft of blackening firs. Is it the wind those branches stirs? No, no! from out the forest prance A trampling troop; I see them come! In one vast squadron they advance! I strove to cry—my lips were dumb. The ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... TUFT HUNTER. A it anniversary parasite, one who courts the acquaintance of nobility, whose caps are adorned with a ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... successful and victorious knight, Prince Baldwin. First, she dazzles him in blue and silver, with a rich turban; then appears in purple satin, fringed and looped with gold, with white feathers in her hair; next, in green silk and emeralds; anon, in pale straw-color, with a tuft of flowers; next, in pink and silver, with varied plumes, white, carnation, and blue; then, in brown, with a splendid crescent. As the fortunate Prince beholds each transformation, he is bewildered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... Microscope, foot-rule. Materials: Tuft of cotton fibers, cotton ball, seeds. Reference: ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... power. He went Forth, and digg'd up the earth; with whispering voice There he imparted of his master's ears What he had seen; and murmur'd to the sod: But bury'd close the confidential words Beneath the turf again: then, all fill'd up, Silently he departed. From the spot Began a thick-grown tuft of trembling reeds To spring, which ripening with the year's full round, Betray'd their planter. By the light south wind When agitated, they the bury'd words Disclos'd, betraying what the monarch's ears. Latona's son, aveng'd, high Tmolus leaves, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... knock the second time before there was any answer. They heard voices—Massey's and another. Then the druggist came to the entrance, unbolted it and stuck his head out—his gray hair all ruffled up in a tuft which made him, with his big beak and red-rimmed eyes, look ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... thrown over their shoulders. They are all dressed in a similar manner, having no distinctions except in their head-dresses, according to rank or the different districts of the country; some wearing a tuft of wool, others a single cord, and others several cords of different colours. All the Indians of the plain are distributed into three orders; the first named Yungas, the second Tallanes, and the third Mochicas. Every province ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... spading, Mary Jane got the bright colored seed packages and spread them out on the sidewalk. Then as she spelled out the letters, her father told her what each package contained. Lettuce and radishes and nasturtiums and carrots and candy-tuft and— ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... square foot of ground which lay beneath my eyes. The number of blades of grass was prodigious. A few, already awned, stood above their fellows, waving like palms-meadowgrass, fescue, foxtail, brome-grass—each slender stalk crowned with a tuft. Others were budding, only half unfolded, amid the darker mass of spongy moss which gave them sustenance. Amid the numberless shafts thus raised toward heaven a thousand paths crisscrossed, each full of obstacles-chips of bark, juniper-berries, beech-nuts, tangled ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... in the slanting light of a redly setting August sun; the little tuft of green shrubbery that crests its summit was black against the crimson of sea and sky, and its colossal base of grey stone ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... though coarse, answered their purpose. They were often eighty fathoms in length. Harpoons, made of cane, were used to catch fish, and fish-hooks of mother-of-pearl. One used for trawling had a white tuft of dog's or hog's hair attached to it, to look like the tail of a fish. The fishermen watched for the birds which always follow a shoal of bonetas, and seldom returned without a prize. Both sexes were expert swimmers, and would dash out through the ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... pine-apple at Esmeralda, or in the island of Cuba. The pine-apple forms the ornament of the fields near the Havannah, where it is planted in parallel rows; on the sides of the Duida it embellishes the turf of the savannahs, lifting its yellow fruit, crowned with a tuft of silvery leaves, above the setaria, the paspalum, and a few cyperaceae. This plant, which the Indians of the Orinoco call ana-curua, has been propagated since the sixteenth century in the interior of China,* and ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the Jaintia Hills, the head of the corpse is shaved, but a tuft of hair in the middle of the head is left; this is called (u'niuh Iawbei), the great grandmother's lock. At Nartiang betel-nut, which has been chewed by one of the mourners is put into the mouth of the corpse, also cooked rice. There is a similar custom prevalent ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... substance to be of firm though somewhat sticky consistency, its surface, moreover, beautifully ridged from base to summit in parallel rounded flutings, which meet and interfold like a braid along the summit. If with a sharp knife we now cut downward through and across the mass, we find our tuft to be a mere frothy shell containing two hollow compartments, with a thin central partition extending through the whole length of the cavity. But there is no sign of an egg or other life to be disclosed anywhere, either in its substance or its concealment. What, then, is the ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... listeners, and every tree, rock and log sprouted Skroelings. They were quite unlike the natives of Greenland, though of copper-colored complexion.[5] These men—there were no women among them,—were tall and sinewy, and wore their coarse black hair knotted up on the head with a tuft of feathers. They were naked to the waist, and wore fringed breeches of deerskin, and soft shoes embroidered in bright colors. Some had necklaces of bears' claws, beads or shells, but the only weapons ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... The tuft of hair, owing to the continual hops, covered again not only Nell's eyes but her whole face, her feet bounding as if they were made of ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... conveniently in his left hand, held slack so as not to jerk the horse's mouth, whether he means to mount by hoisting himself up, catching hold of the mane behind the ears, or to vault on to horseback by help of his spear. With the right hand he should grip the reins along with a tuft of hair beside the shoulder-joint, (3) so that he may not in any way wrench the horse's mouth with the bit while mounting. In the act of taking the spring off the ground for mounting, (4) he should ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... more delay on the part of our freakish visitor, they set forth together, old Moodie keeping a step or two behind Hollingsworth, so that the latter could not very conveniently look him in the face. I remained under the tuft of maples, doing my utmost to draw an inference from the scene that had just passed. In spite of Hollingsworth's off-hand explanation, it did not strike me that our strange guest was really beside himself, but only that his mind needed screwing up, like an ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... recollect is that Robert Grant was still by my side, holding fast by a tuft of lichen, less than two minutes before the shock ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... younger. Now he has started, I am afraid he will repeat the experiment, he has had such a good time to-day. It just makes me want to whip him!" And Mrs. Adams glared out at the unconscious Job who was quietly cropping a tuft of green grass. ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... water. Then, from a buckskin pouch at her belt, she drew a neat birch-bark case, decorated with porcupine quills, and from the case a rudely fashioned comb, from which dangled by a buckskin thong a tuft of porcupine tail. The lake was her mirror, as she smoothed and rebraided her hair. This done, she ran the comb several times through the tuft of porcupine tail before returning it ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... careful breeding of the local farmers of a century or so ago. Gilbert White refers to two distinct breeds—"To the west of the Adur ... all had horns, smooth white faces and white legs, but east of that river all flocks were poll sheep (hornless) ... black faces with a white tuft of wool." Since that day, however, east has been west and west east and the twain ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... there. It was dreadful. The nightcap came over his forehead, down to his eyebrows, and he said to me, pressing my hand; "At last, Valentine; you are mine; do you love me? oh! tell me, do you love me?" And as his head moved as he uttered these words, the horrible tuft at the end of his nightcap ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... the meantime closed his eyes and lost Canton and all else in delicate thoughts of Mian, to look up. That which met his attention on doing so filled him with an intelligent wonder, for the person before him held in his hand what had the appearance of a tuft of bright yellow hair, which shone in the light of the sun with a most engaging splendour, but which he nevertheless regarded with a most undignified expression ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... sufficient to tell an educated ear that he was not an Englishman. If Captain Ducie's features were aquiline, those of the stranger might be termed vulturine—long, lean, narrow, with a thin, high-ridged nose, and a chin that was pointed with a tuft of thick, black hair. Except for this tuft he was clean shaven. His black hair, cropped close at back and sides, was trained into an elaborate curl on the top of the forehead and there fixed with cosmetique. Both hair and chin-tuft were of that ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... advanced swiftly. Then, as he neared, Shibli Bagarag held the musk-ball in his fingers, and aimed at the fetlock of the Horse Garraveen, and flung it, and struck him so that he stumbled and fell. He snorted fiercely as he bent to the grass, but Shibli Bagarag ran to him, and grasped strongly the tuft of hair hanging forward between his ears, and traced between his fine eyes a figure of the crescent with his forenail, and the Horse ceased plunging, and was gentle as a colt by its mother's side, and suffered Shibli Bagarag to bestride him, and spurn him with his heel to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... indifferent to the reader to know that the Highland cattle are peculiarly liable to be TAKEN, or infected, by spells and witchcraft, which judicious people guard against by knitting knots of peculiar complexity on the tuft of hair which terminates the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... Commander-in-chief. This officer is in appearance the least prepossessing of the Confederate generals. He is very thin; he stoops, and has a sickly, cadaverous, haggard appearance, rather plain features, bushy black eyebrows which unite in a tuft on the top of his nose, and a stubby iron-grey beard; but his eyes are bright and piercing. He has the reputation of being a rigid disciplinarian, and of shooting freely for insubordination. I understand he is rather unpopular on this account, and also by ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... hat which makes the one who puts it on invisible. It looks just like a straw hat, but has a tuft of fine grass on the top, and a pink fringe like the lining of shells, around ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... hain't a finer young feller anywhere," chimed in Mr. Dodd, a portly person with a tuft of yellow beard on his chin. Mr. Dodd kept the hardware ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the canyon, now swollen to nearly fifty men, were slowly approaching from the direction of the chimney, and making use of every tuft, and bush, and rock, affording Bart a fine view from the gallery of the clever and cunning means an Indian will adopt to get within shot ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... cemetery in Leadville. Furnished with wings, it does not remain in the nest, but is forced to return thither by the strange incapacity to feed itself. Like the Claviger, it repays its kind nurses by the sweet liquid it exudes, and which is retained by a tuft of hair on either side of the abdomen beneath the wings, which the creature lifts in order that the ant may get at its honeyed recompense. Such mutual services between creatures in no way allied is a most curious fact in the animal ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... Navarre also was a true lover of the open. Born in a mountain town in the Pyrenees he would rather camp on a bed of pine needles in the forest than lie on a tuft of down. He preferred his beloved Bayonne ham, spiced with garlic, to a sumptuous dinner in Jarnet house, a famous Paris tavern of the day; and had rather quench his thirst with a quaff of the wine of Jurancon than the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... was hastily unloosed, and the young page of Mad. la Tour sprang lightly from its folds. A tartan kirtle, reaching below the knees, with trews of the same material, and a Highland bonnet, adorned with a tuft of eagle feathers, gave him the appearance of a Scottish youth;—but the sparkling black eyes, the clear brunette complexion, and the jetty locks which clustered around its brow and neck, proclaimed him the native of a warmer and brighter climate. Half laughing, yet ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... seaside, producing a large sort of samphire, which bears a white flower. Farther in the mould is reddish, a sort of sand, producing some grass, plants, and shrubs. The grass grows in great tufts as big as a bushel, here and there a tuft, being intermixed with much heath, much of the kind we have growing on our commons in England. Of trees or shrubs here are divers sorts, but none above ten feet high, their bodies about three feet about, and five or six feet high before you ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... ones, because associated with inaction and disorder. But Nature gives us in these mountains a more clear demonstration of her will. She is here driven to make fracture the law of being. She cannot tuft the rock-edges with moss, or round them by water, or hide them with leaves and roots. She is bound to produce a form, admirable to human beings, by continual breaking away of substance. And behold—so soon as she is compelled to do this—she ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... a dozen yards, parting the undergrowth as I went, walking cautiously now, for I had suddenly awakened to the fact that there might be danger in every bush or tuft of luxuriant, reedy grass; but there was, I knew, a beaten track a little farther on which led to the plantation, through ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... what it always means?—coming to Europe?' she asked herself with a laugh that was not gay, while her fingers pulled at a tuft of hart's-tongue that grew in ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wine needs no bush has reference to the practice which formerly prevailed of hanging a tuft of ivy at the door of a vintner, as we ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... said the man, tightening up his lips as he pulled out his jack knife, before picking out of the biggest giant reeds, one of a tuft which towered up some five-and-twenty feet. Through this he drove his blade, the thick, rich, succulent grass yielding easily, and after keeping the wound open by the help of a messmate's knife he cut a slip, and thrusting it through the reed, he drew out the two knives so that the wound closed ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... little stream is gurgling downward in a half choked frozen way. There is a huge sodden hemlock lying across it. One clip of the hatchet shows it will peel. There is plenty of smaller timber standing around; long, slim poles, with a tuft of foliage on top. Five minutes suffice to drop one of these, cut a twelve-foot pole from it, sharpen the pole at each end, jam one end into the ground and the other into the rough back of a scraggy hemlock and there is your ridge ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... grand on my walls, which previously had been papered with a still green (not bottled) on purpose to receive them. On my table is a long necked bottle with three flowers just now in it . . . a tuft of rhododendron, a tuft of scarlet geranium, and a tuft of white gilli-flower. Do you see these in your mind's eye? I wish you could come down here and refresh your sodden eyes with pure daylight, budding oak trees, and all the changes of sky and cloud. To live to make sonnets ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... tufts of grass lying far apart on the yellow earth; evidently there was sustenance enough in every two feet of ground to support only one tuft. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... or office; the pale, smiling gentleman, who lounged in a cushioned chair, a comb in one hand, and in the other a small pocket mirror, by the aid of which he was attending to a diminutive tuft of flaxen whisker; and a woman, in threadbare garments, who crouched upon a bench beside the opposite wall, her face bowed upon her hands, her whole frame shaken by great, heart-broken, gasping sobs,—a sound full of misery, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... voracity, analogous to that of monkeys, and Enjolras grew to a size and weight very uncommon among domestic cats. Then I bethought myself of having him shaved in the style of poodles, in order to bring out completely his leonine appearance. He retained his mane and a long tuft of hair at the end of the tail, and I would not swear that his thighs were not adorned with mutton-chop whiskers like those Munito used to wear. Thus trimmed, he resembled, I must confess, a Japanese monster much more than a lion of the Atlas Mountains or the Cape. Never was ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... hints foresay the berry, On spray of haw and tuft of brier, Then, wandering incendiary, You ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... which are carved and painted to represent the particular totem they seek to honor. These too are fantastically decorated with feathers, usually of the loon. The central feather is stripped, and crowned with a tuft of white down. Both men and women wear armlets and fillets of skin or feathers according to the animal character they represent. When in the full swing of the dance with fur and feathers streaming they present a pleasing spectacle, a picture full of ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... am much obliged for your extract; I never heard of such a case, though such a variation is perhaps the most likely of any to occur in a state of nature and be inherited, inasmuch as all domesticated birds present races with a tuft or with reversed feathers on their heads. I have sometimes thought that the progenitor of the whole class must ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... arriving at similar results and with success, for the plates I now submit to you have been simply rubbed or polished, as I may say, with a mixture of one part of Canada balsam to three parts of turpentine, using either a small tuft of French wadding or a small piece of soft rag for the purpose, continuing the rubbing until the plate is polished nearly dry. This method is particularly successful, rendering the clear parts of the sky like bare glass. I have here a plate which is heavily veiled—almost ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... particularly severe on the day of the young people's first visit. The former Fraeulein, now Frau, Frederike presented him, once more addressing him as 'lieber Herr Jacob,' to her husband, who was all splendour from top to toe; his eyes, his black hair brushed up into a tuft, his forehead and his teeth, and his coat buttons, and the chain on his waistcoat, everything, down to the boots on his rather large, turned-out feet, shone brilliantly. Pasinkov pressed Herr Kniftus's hand, and wished him (and the wish was ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... were carefully shaven; thick eyebrows, still black, overhung and shaded his light blue eyes; gold ear-rings reached down to his white-edged military stock; his topcoat, of coarse gray cloth, was confined at the waist by a leathern belt; and a blue foraging cap, with a red tuft falling on his left shoulder, covered ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Blithedale, which was itself characterized by a remoteness from the world. Unless renewed by a yet further withdrawal towards the inner circle of self-communion, I lost the better part of my individuality. My thoughts became of little worth, and my sensibilities grew as arid as a tuft of moss ... crumbling in the sunshine, after long expectance of a shower." A fellow-toiler came upon him suddenly, one day, lying in a green hollow some distance from the farm, with his hands under his head and his face shaded by his hat. "How ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... grow dark, and I experienced a fearful anguish in discovering on the crest of a little rock two enormous eyes, which looked fixedly at me. Then a little farther, near a tuft of seaweed, two more of these fixed eyes. I saw no body to these beings—nothing but the eyes. I thought for a minute that I was losing my senses, and I bit my tongue till the blood came; then I pulled violently at the rope, as I had agreed to do in order to give the signal for being ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... caress. A whiff of warm breath, a little soft tuft on its paw—: and immediately wert thou ready to ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... COP, head, top; tuft on head of birds; "a cop" may have reference to one or other meaning; Gifford and others interpret as "conical, terminating ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... in my fingers wound, And more than one tuft had I twitched away As he, with eyes bent down, howled like a hound; When one cried out, 'What ails thee, Bocca? say,— Canst thou not make enough clack with thy jaws, But thou must bark too! What fiend pricks thee now?' 'Aha!' said ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... twenty-five years of age, "an excellent French and American cook—excellent cuisinier Francais et Americain," was put up at 600 dollars, and, after the usual quantity of the Frenchman's eloquence, (accompanied, as in all other cases, by the constant rubbing of his tuft of chin-beard with the left hand, while in the right he flourished a fine massive gold pencil-case and a sheet of paper,) fetched 775 dollars, at which price he was knocked down to one ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... After which he awakened and found that the smoke was not part of a dream at all. It came from the pipe of a young man who had an alpenstock and who looked as if he had climbed to see the sun rise. He wore the clothes of a climber and a green hat with a tuft at the back. He looked down at ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shut out for numberless centuries from those stony-hearted streets, to which he had latterly grown accustomed; there is no trace of her, except for what blades of grass spring out of the pavements of the less trodden piazzas, or what weeds cluster and tuft themselves on the cornices of ruins. Therefore his joy was like that of a child that had gone astray from home, and finds him suddenly in his ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on a tuft of soft earth, sat Rusialka. All the little white fairies sat in a circle round her. And Ivy and Christmas Rose took one another by the hand and curtsied ...
— The Dumpy Books for Children; - No. 7. A Flower Book • Eden Coybee
... hunter. The paintings were drawn from nature, and the words few and simple, that spoke to the hearts of these sons of the forest. "The broad woods," he pursued, "would stretch beneath their eyes, when the mountain summits were gained, one extended tuft of blossoms. The cane was a tangle of luxuriance, affording the richest pastures. The only paths through it were those made by buffaloes and bears. In the sheltered glades, turkeys and large wild birds were so abundant, that a hunter could supply himself in an hour for the wants of a week. ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... fishing-rod in amongst the bracken and furze, and made a dash in the direction of a sharp rustling sound to his right, ran as hard as he could, full-pelt, for about five-and-twenty yards, and then, catching his toe in a tough stem of heather, went headlong down into a tuft of closely-cropped furze—the delicate finer kind—which had been nibbled off year after year till it had assumed the form of a great green-and-gold cushion, beautiful to look at, but too pointed in its attentions ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... consisted of the fingers (tentacula) of the shell-fish, "of which twelve project in an elegant curve, and are used by it for making prey of small fish." The very ancient error was to mistake the foot of the shell-fish for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for a tuft of feathers. As to the body, non est inventus. The Barnacle Goose is a well-known bird: and these shell-fish, bearing, as seen out of the water, resemblance to the goose's neck, were ignorantly, and without ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... in disorder, he sprang to the center of the room. His hand on his belt, he stared about the place for a second, then much as a cat springs at a tuft of grass where a mole is concealed, he sprang at ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... his hand, with the ordinary salutation of Nosa (my father). The interpreter introduced him by the name of Little Pine, or Shingwalkonee, and as a person of some consequence among the Indians, being a meta, a wabeno, a counselor, a war chief, and an orator or speaker. He had a tuft of beard on his chin, wore a hat, and had some other traits in his dress and gear which smacked of civilization. His residence is stated to be, for the most part, on the British side of the river, but he traces his lineage from the old Crane band here. I thought him to be a man of more ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... extreme edge of the lobes of the pinn, is altogether absent, and the whole habit of the plant is also thoroughly distinct. It is of equally robust growth, but its handsomely arching fronds, which are from 3 feet to 4 feet in length, are produced in great abundance from a central tuft or agglomeration of crowns. Its most distinct characteristic is the furcation of the pinn, which are all of the same dimensions, whether sterile or fertile; they are all opposite and closely set along the mid-rib, whereas those of N. davallioides are set much further apart. In ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... to the end of the hard wood: these arrows are five feet long; and I saw one of them penetrate several inches into the trunk of a tree, when shot by an Indian from his bow. I purchased one bow and two arrows. Most of these people had their hair closely clipped, excepting a tuft on the fore part of the head; and the men, who had slit their lips, had also pulled out their beards. The two handsome lads had cut their hair; but they had neither cut their lips nor pulled their beards. I tried to learn if this was a step towards civilisation, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... All our thoughts and hopes ran in one channel. We looked for the coming of a ship to rescue us from our dreary position; and every morning and evening, at least, and generally many times a day, some one of us climbed into the tuft of an inclining palm, to take a careful survey of that portion of the ocean, which could be seen from our side of the island. The thought of acting in any respect as though the lonely spot where we now ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... silent. it feeds on berries, and I beleive is a rare bird even in this country, or at least this is the second time only that I have seen it.- between the legs of this bird the feathers are white, and those which form the tuft underneath the tail are a mixture of ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... (butterflies and bees mostly) lay in masses dead on the snow; they had ventured too high, or the wind had borne them thither, but to breathe their last in these cold regions. A threatening cloud hung over the Wetterhorn, like a fine, black tuft of wool. It lowered itself slowly, heavily, with that which lay concealed within it, and this was the "Foehn,"[A] powerful in its strength when it broke loose. The impression of the entire journey, the night quarters ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... and fields. The manner in which they eat their roots of the plantain in my grass-walks is very curious: with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. In this respect they are serviceable, as they destroy a very troublesome weed; but they deface the waffles in some measure by digging little round holes. It appears, by the dung that they drop upon the turf, that beetles are no inconsiderable part of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... centre of the plain. The trunk was, indeed, exceedingly slender, and, as the guide informed them, the wood was of so very brittle a nature that if the tree had not been protected from the winds by the high hills which encircled it, it would have been snapped off ages ago. Under the broad tuft of leaves that formed its top, the boys saw hanging large clusters of the precious fruit; great nuts as ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... passed over the sandy plain, he had to climb a great steep, jagged rock. When he got to the top of the rock he saw spread out before him a stony waste without a tuft or blade of grass. At some distance in front of him he noticed a large dark object, which he took to be a rock, but on looking at it more closely he saw that it was a huge, misshapen, swollen mass, apparently alive. And it was growing bigger and bigger every moment. ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... of a slight perturbation his words had caused in her, Elfride's foot caught itself in a little tuft of grass growing in a joint of the stone-work, and she almost lost her balance. Knight sprang forward with a face of horror. By what seemed the special interposition of a considerate Providence she tottered to the inner edge of the parapet ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Linen Nurse could have sworn that she heard a sharply ejaculated, maliciously joyful "Ha!" piped out. But when both she and the Senior Surgeon turned sharply round to make sure, the Little Crippled Girl, in apparently complete absorption, sat amiably extracting tuft after tuft of fur from the thumb of one big sable glove, to the rumbling, sing-song monotone of "He loves me—Loves me not—Loves ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... that direction. At the lattice appeared a lovely being; for this potato had been pared, and on the white surface were painted pretty pink checks, red lips, black eyes, and oblique brows; through the tuft of dark silk on the head were stuck several glittering pins, and a pink jacket shrouded the plump figure of this capital little Chinese lady. After peeping coyly out, so that all could see and admire, she fell to counting the money from a purse, so large her small hands could hardly ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... land itself—the land first symbolized in the tuft of earth that St. Lusson lifted toward the sky that day in 1671 at Sault Ste. Marie, when he took possession of all the land between the seas of the north and west and south—in the first place, the loss each year from erosion is six hundred and ten million cubic ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... be pretty strong. It ought to be cut before its wood hardens; and to be green as its leaf, which ought, however, to have a bluish eye or cast. When cut it is conveyed into the rotting-tub, as we shall presently explain. According as the soil is better or worse, it shoots higher or lower; the tuft of the first cutting, which grows round, does not exceed eight inches in heighth and breadth: the second cutting rises sometimes to a foot. In cutting the Indigo you are to set your foot upon the root, in order to prevent the pulling it out of the earth; and to be upon your guard not ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... lying motionless, feigning sleep perhaps, thus to fool this wild, elusive creature, and bring all its cunning to naught! He is so much smaller and keener-sighted, able to fly, to perch far up above me, to shift his position every minute or two, masking his small figure with this or that tuft of leaves, while still keeping his eyes on me—in spite of it all to have him so close, and without moving or taking any trouble, to see him so much better than he can see me! But this is a legitimate trickery of science, so innocent that we can laugh at our dupe when we practise ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... upon the land perish, and do come to nothing." But, like many other popular fictions, this notion was founded on truth, and probably originated in mistaking the fleshy peduncle of the barnacle (Lepas analifera) for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for a tuft of feather. There were many versions of this eccentric myth, and according to one modification given by Boece, the oldest Scottish historian, these barnacle-geese are first produced in the form of worms in old trees, and ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... ladders. I tied Thomas' long red woollen scarf to the ventilator, and prayed that Stephen would see it. He did, for in less than an hour he drove down our lane and put his horse in our barn. He was all spruced up, and as nervous and excited as a schoolboy. He went right over to Prissy, and I began to tuft my new comfort with a clear conscience. I shall never know why it suddenly came into my head to go up to the garret and make sure that the moths hadn't got into my box of blankets; but I always believed that it was a special interposition of Providence. I went up and happened ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smile went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting up at the Trump of Doom's ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning
... straight back to the office and wrote in my newspaper that Mrs. Ben Wah was sick and needed a parrot, a green one with a red tuft, and that she must have it right away. I told of her lonely life, and of how, on a Christmas Eve, years ago, I had first met her at the door of the Charity Organization Society, laboring up the stairs with a big bundle done ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... young, and one old. The latter was treated by the other as if she were a slave. One day her rival, in a fit of anger, snatched from the old woman's head the one tuft of hair she had, and drove her from the door. The old woman went into the forest. Passing by a cotton-tree, she saw that the ground round about the tree needed sweeping, and she swept it. The tree, much ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... had hitherto been unable even to take root, against the unbroken sweep of the winds. M. Bremontier, after many experiments, conceived the idea of planting with the pine seeds the seeds of the common broom, whose hardy tuft should protect the tiny sapling until it could stand by itself. The result surpassed hope; pine forests, protecting in their turn, have sprung up and endured throughout the Landes; they have broken forever the power of the wind-storms; and their pitch and timber are even a source of some ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... they have transmitted to their male offspring alone. Yet, I would not wish to attribute all sexual differences to this agency: for we see in our domestic animals peculiarities arising and becoming attached to the male sex, which apparently have not been augmented through selection by man. The tuft of hair on the breast of the wild turkey-cock cannot be of any use, and it is doubtful whether it can be ornamental in the eyes of the female bird; indeed, had the tuft appeared under domestication it would have been called ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... large, and might waylay me from any bush or tuft of grass. The moonbeams were ghostly and the stillness of the wide solitude was eerie. Being but a child,—and a girl-child,—I thought of these things, and of the likelihood of meeting runaway negroes, and mad dogs, and stray sane curs whose duty it was to attack nocturnal trespassers, and of a ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... report, and Bosephus saw a little tuft of fur fly from one of his companion's ears. Horatio dodged frantically and dropped ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... exist, but the Ninevite sculptor copied them in soft alabaster with an infinite patience that does him honour. He has preserved for us every detail with the exception of colour. The lotus is not to be found in this embroidery; its place is taken by the palmette or tuft of leaves (Fig. 137), through which appear stems bending with the weight of the buds they bear. Animals, real and imaginary, are skilfully mingled with the fan-shaped palmettes; in one place we find two goats (Fig. 138), in another two winged bulls ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... and his five brothers. One of the daughters, eighteen years of age, was beautiful in form and countenance, and though destitute of clothing, was of modest demeanour. In the prow stood the standard-bearer, clad in a mantle of variegated feathers, with a tuft of gay plumes on his head, while he bore in his hand a fluttering white banner. Two Indians, with caps of feathers, their faces painted, beat upon drums, while two others, with caps of green feathers, blew their trumpets of black wood ingeniously carved. There were six others in caps of white ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... to be a first-rate one; he was in the prime of life, and had an exquisitely beautiful coat of hair. His mane was not very rank; his awful teeth were quite perfect, a thing which in lions of his age is rather unusual; and he had the finest tuft of hair on the end of his tail that I had ever seen ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... beautiful gardens, the plantations of the most precious spices, the elegant areca and feathered palms, with their slim stems shooting up to a height of a hundred feet, and spreading out into the thick feather-like tuft of fresh green, by which they are distinguished from every other kind of palms, and, lastly, the jungle in the back-ground, compose a most beautiful landscape, and which appears doubly lovely to a person like myself, just escaped from that prison ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... thousand evolutions with surprising celerity; whence comes the trivial name of 'kill-dog' bestowed upon it in some localities. Pursued to extremity, it casts itself into the water, swims with ease, and dives at the moment its enemy is about to seize it; or it conceals itself in a tuft of reeds or a bush, and by this means often escapes with impunity. It loves to breed among the reeds, and in long and thick grass, frequently in small companies of its own species, or of the Stellaris. The female lays her eggs on an inartificially ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... of brow; a straight, thin, slightly aquiline, well-cut nose—such features were at open variance with the broad, thick-lipped, sensual mouth, the heavy pendant jowl, the sparse beard on the glistening cheek, and the moleskin-like moustachio and chin tuft. Still, upon the whole, it was a face and figure which gave the world assurance of a man and a commander of men. Power and intelligence were stamped upon him from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and somewhat ungainly, but his unhesitating placidity gave him the appearance of a dignity that did not otherwise pertain to him. He had a drooping, silky, brown moustache, and a little curly tuft of imperial,—a fashion which was regarded as eccentric in Grafton, where men had clean-shaven chins or went full-bearded. His eyes were dreamy and pleasant, with a touch of melancholy in ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... where it has worn away the hair round his neck, in his constant struggles to escape. See how he has browsed the scanty grass of that dry pasture, in the little circle to which he is confined, and is now trying to reach an uncropped tuft, just beyond his tether. And the sun is beating down upon him, and there is not the shade of a leaf for him to creep into, this July day. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... lay down flat on the bottom of the dugout, his rifle resting upon the prow. The rifle covered the spot where the canoe must come round the bend. He was on his own land, and he would not allow the guards to regain possession without a fight. He saw the white prow of the canoe shoot out past a tuft of saw-grass on the bend, and laid his eye to the sights. Another stroke of the paddles and the canoe was in full view, and Roger found his front sight bearing upon a button on the silken shirt which stretched taut across Garman's ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... at that early hour with the open pyjama jacket showing his scraggy neck, with his fish mouth drooping dismally, his round, staring eyes and his hair rumpled up, one frantic tuft at the back standing ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... the travelers first across a rough and rocky pasture, and then it suddenly entered a wood where every thing wore an expression of wild and solemn grandeur. The trees were very lofty, and consisted of tall stems, rising to a vast height and surmounted above with a tuft of branches, which together formed a broad canopy over the heads of the travelers, and produced a sort of somber twilight below. Birds sang in plaintive notes on the tops of distant trees, and now and then a squirrel ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... Egyptian reed, grew in vast quantities in the stagnant pools formed by the inundations of the Nile. The plant consists of a single stem, rising sometimes to the height of ten cubits; this stem, gradually tapering from the root, supports a spreading tuft at its summit. The substance of the stem is fibrous, and the pith contains a sweet juice. Every part of this plant was put to some use by the Egyptians. The harder and lower part they formed into cups and other utensils; the upper part into staves, or the ribs of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... has happened, maidens, which when told Will fill your minds with awe and wonderment. The tuft of wool, fresh shorn and bright, wherewith I spread the ointment on that robe of state, By no one of my household train destroyed, But self-consumed, has vanished out of sight. And on the pavement melted quite away. That thou may'st know the whole, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith |
