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More "Sprig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is comparatively indifferent to the nature of the foundation whereon she erects her cells. She builds on walls, on isolated stones, on the wood of the inner surface of half-closed shutters; or else she adopts an aerial base, the slender twig of a shrub, the withered sprig of a plant of some sort. Any form of support serves her purpose. Nor does she trouble about shelter. Less chilly than her African cousin, she does not shun the unprotected spaces exposed ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... was re-elected to Congress we had a glorious reception at our house in the country, and among others that came to it was a Mr. Sterling, the son of my father's college chum, and a promising young sprig of the law, father said. He came to stay a day or two in the house as a visitor before the reception, and was to leave the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... thanks thinly to repay Th' immortal grove of thy fair-order'd bay Thou planted'st round my humble fane, that I Stick on thy hearse this sprig of Elegie: Nor that your soul so fast was link'd in me, That now I've both, since't has forsaken thee: That thus I stand a Swisse before thy gate, And dare, for such another, time and fate. Alas! our faiths made different essays, Our Minds and Merits ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kissed the rod. Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence, And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense. Commas and points they set exactly right, And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite; Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds, From slashing Bentley down to piddling Tibbalds. Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells, Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables, Even such small critics some regard may claim, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... bit of a herald, and shall give you, secundum artem, my arms. On a field, azure, a holly bush, seeded, proper, in base; a shepherd's pipe and crook, saltier-wise, also proper, in chief. On a wreath of the colours, a wood-lark perching on a sprig of bay-tree, proper, for crest. Two mottoes; round the top of the crest, Wood notes wild; at the bottom of the shield, in the usual place, Better a wee bush than nae bield. By the shepherd's pipe and crook I do not ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... illuminated by torches, was hung round with curtains of deep and dusky purple, and adorned with branches of cypress and wreaths of artificial flowers, imitative of such as used to be strewn over the dead. A sprig of parsley was laid by every plate. The main reservoir of wine, was a sepulchral urn of silver, whence the liquor was distributed around the table in small vases, accurately copied from those that held the tears of ancient mourners. ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... added another sprig of laurel to his brow, by the production of a new pantomimical ballet, called Daphnis et Pandrose, ou la vengeance de l'amour. He has borrowed the subject from a story of Madame DE GENLIS, who took it from fable. Every resource of his inexhaustible ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... when every sprig and leaf was glistening in the brilliant sunshine with its frosty dew, Preuss led Van away up the ravine to picket him on a little patch of grass he had discovered the day before and as he passed the colonel's fire ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... before it and strike the tambourine with her hand; and they would smile upon her, and then the elder sister, who should be so mild and gentle, would come and throw up the sash, and speak with her; and, perhaps, even she would throw down to her a sprig of the geranium which stood near by on the flower-stand. Then she was lured further on, to think of a great fortune which was to be obtained, that she might go back to the laughing skies of Italy, and spend her days in the lovely garden where ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... supper-room we encountered two young men. "What, Hal," said one, "you at Mrs. Potiphar's?" It seems that Hal was a sprig of one of the old "families." "Well, Joe," said Hal, a little confused, "it is a little strange. The fact is I didn't mean to be here, but I concluded to compromise by coming, and not being introduced to the host." ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... parish—the wool all goes to Manchester now, and the factory-hands are on half-pay and times are scarce. You will come again some time, come when the heather is in bloom, won't you? That's right. Oh, stay! the boxwood there in the garden was planted by Charlotte's own hands—perhaps you would like a sprig of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting opposite to me, is no exception to the rule. She brought down some mignonette one morning, which she had grown in her chamber. She gave a sprig to her little neighbor, and one to the landlady, and sent another by the hand of Bridget to this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... somewheres about him. Aunt Maria Dean used to say there was dried pennyroy'l in every pocket of his coat, and he used to put a big bunch of it on his piller at night. Sundays it looked like Uncle Harvey couldn't enjoy the preachin' and the singin' unless he had a sprig of it in his hand, and I ricollect once seein' him git up durin' the first prayer and tiptoe out o' church and come back with a handful o' pennyroy'l that he'd gethered across the road, and he'd set and smell it and look as pleased as a child with a ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... vary just in the same way as do those of Trochalopterum nigrimentum; some show only a sprig or two of moss about them, while others have a complete coating of green moss. They are cup-shaped, some deeper, some shallower; the chief material of the nest seems to be usually dry leaves. One before me is composed entirely ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... blossom even here with care," said Jackeymo, turning back to draw down an awning where the orange trees faced the north. "See!" he added, as he returned with a sprig in full bud. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to see the driver of elephants standing like a bronze statue outside the doorway; but speak she could not in that dim place fragrant with the loves of the past, neither could she support the divine pain alone, and picking up a rose and a sprig of bay from the marble, tucked them into the V of her bodice ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... fried eggs, they were brought on a snow-white napkin, which was artistically folded upon a piece of ornamented tissue-paper that covered a china plate; if I asked for cold ham, it came in flakes, arrayed like great rose-leaves, with a green sprig or two of parsley dropped upon it, and surrounded by a border of calfs'-foot jelly, like a setting of crystals. The bread revealed new qualities in the wheat, it was so sweet and nutty; and the fried potatoes, with which your beefsteak comes snowed under, are the very flower of the culinary ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Taking hold of a sprig, he gently moved it across a portion of the opening and on finding it attracted no attention from within he next pushed his head up with the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... perches, and also a pendent hoop. The tray that was its floor had just been cleaned and sanded. In the embrasure to the right was a fresh supply of hemp-seed; in the embrasure to the left the bath-tub had just been refilled with clear water. Stuck between the bars was a large sprig of groundsel. Yet, though all was thus in order, the bird did not eat nor drink, nor did he bathe. With his back to Battersea, and his head sunk deep between his little sloping shoulders, he watched the fire. The windows had for a while been opened, ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... night-table, on which she spread a table napkin, and placed four wax candles on it, which she lighted; then she took a sprig of box, which was hanging over the chimney glass, and put it between the candles, into the plate, which she filled with clean water, as she had no holy water. But, after a moment's rapid reflection, she threw a pinch of salt into the water, no doubt, thinking she was performing some sort of act ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... his sprig of grass; but he did not draw the longest; the longest blade fell to Mr. Hanlon, and the next to Freddie. Mr. Toby was third, the Churchwarden fourth, the Sly Old Codger fifth, Aunt Amanda sixth, and the Old Codger with ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... another sigh of relief, proceeded to make the tea. The water was boiling and the fire good. Emma was apt to set a chilly kettle on a glimmering spark, but Lydia treated him better. The bit of cold meat on the table looked bigger than he expected, the butter wore a cheerful sprig of green. Percival saw his advantages, but he thought them dearly bought, especially as he had to take a turn up and down Bellevue street ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... a spicy scene, a little out of the regular performance, last evening; no less than the caning of a New York sprig of fashion, who made himself rather more agreeable to a certain married lady who dashes about here in a queenly way than was agreeable to her husband. The affair was hushed up. This morning I missed the lady from ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... vestige of religion in his house is the kamidana, or god- shelf, on which stands a wooden shrine like a Shinto temple, which contains the memorial tablets to deceased relations. Each morning a sprig of evergreen and a little rice and sake are placed before it, and every evening ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Munsters that charged first, with a sprig of shamrock on their caps; then the Dublins, the Worcesters, the Hampshires. Lying on the beach, on the rocks, on the lighters, they cried on the Mother of God. There, now, was Midshipman Drury swimming to a lighter which had broken loose, with a line in his mouth ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... "I put a sprig of mint in a quantity of air in which a candle had ceased to burn, and I found that, ten days later, another candle was able to burn therein perfectly well." It is to him, therefore, that is due the honor of having ascertained that plants exert an action upon the atmosphere ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... playing-field—even that harmless little person seems somehow unnatural, or denaturalised to my primitive taste. A result, I will have it, of improper treatment. He has been under the tap, too thoroughly scrubbed, boiled, strained and served up with melted butter and a sprig of parsley for ornament in a gilt-edged dish. I prefer him raw, and would rather have the street-Arab, if in town, and the unkempt, rough and tough cottage boy in the country. But take them civilised or natural, those who love ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... usually occupied by Colomba. Above a kind of oaken prie-dieu, and beside a sprig of blessed palm, a little miniature of Orso, in his sub-lieutenant's uniform, hung on the wall. Miss Nevil took the portrait down, looked at it for a long time, and laid it at last on the table by her ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... might better be felled. As she walked she became uneasy, feeling that she had really imposed an unpleasant, possibly perilous, task upon the girl she scolded so freely yet already loved so dearly. Gathering a sprig of wintergreen she chewed it thoughtfully, and scarcely knew when she turned back to retrace her own steps to the cottage and learn what had befallen Katharine, who surely should have been ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... the forehead of her husband, and the other upon his left arm. She threw perfumes into the brazier, and as the form of her husband was becoming indistinct from the smoke which filled the room, she muttered a few sentences, waved over him a small sprig of some shrub which she held in her white hand, and then closing the curtains, and removing the brazier she sat down by ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... this ejaculation of good-natured indignation, evidently at the memory of sundry and various poultry prods, Mrs. Silas betook herself to the house with a beautiful and serene dignity. As she went she stopped to break a sprig from a huge old lilac that was beginning to burst its brown buds and to put up half a yard of rambler that trailed across the ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... bloom, and where the foot of man or beast seems never to have trod, I linger long, contemplating the wonderful display of lichens and mosses that overrun both the smaller and the larger growths. Every bush and branch and sprig is dressed up in the most rich and fantastic of liveries; and, crowning all, the long bearded moss festoons the branches or sways gracefully from the limbs. Every twig looks a century old, though green leaves tip the end of it. A young yellow birch has a venerable, patriarchal ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the Little Elves hopped and skipped and brought Little Girl a sprig of holly; and all the Little Fairies bowed and smiled and brought her a bit of mistletoe; and all the Good Reindeer jingled their bells loudly, which meant, "Oh, yes! let's take her! She's a good Little Girl! Let her ride!" And before Little ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... ached as he thought pityingly of the first-born of all white rabbits, but there was too much of excitement to dwell long upon that humble tragedy. There was the manner in which the Israelites identified themselves, by marking their doors with a sprig of hyssop dipped in the blood of a male lamb without blemish. Vividly did he see the good God gliding cautiously from door to door, looking for the mark of blood, and passing the lucky doors where it was seen to be truly of a male lamb without blemish. He thought it must have taken ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... cigars, and tobacco in various forms, leaving them to choose their favorite mode of using it. Sambo is never more contented than when he burns the weed in a cob pipe, and draws the delicious smoke through an elder sprig or mullen stem. But the maid is happiest of all when with her lover she sits face to face, and they 'dip' together ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... out at the identical scenery. Identical for more than two hundred miles. For twice that distance, they had seen no other life. No animal, no bird, not a sprig of cactus. This was ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... to Pausanias, both the sprig and the remains of the tree were exhibited in his time. The tragedians, Lucretius and others, adopted a different fable to account for the stoppage at Aulis, and seem to have found the sacrifice of Iphigena better suited ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... when a Stalwart young farmer stepped out, and with a face aflamed with anger, said in harsh emphasis: "I was sorry and ashamed to have this affair end as it promised to, and was going to come down handsomely myself, and try to get some others to, but since that sprig of the law has tried to bully and whip us into doing something, I won't give one cent I want you to understand, Tom Harcourt, that whatever may be true of the people back in the country, you, nor no other man, can drive us with ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... written by Dr. Samuel Johnson, at the request of a gentleman to whom a lady had given a sprig of myrtle. ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... small bronze clock, a quaint Chinese teapot and a pair of delicately-flowered Sevres vases. On the table the engraved tooth of a sperm whale did duty as a paper-weight, a miniature gondola held an inkstand and pens, and a sprig of red coral with a sabre-shaped ivory blade formed the most beautiful paper-knife I ever saw. A single oil-painting hung on the wall—a finely-executed marine representing two stately ships becalmed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... brought on deck. The result of his effort of genius was the creation of a huge white calico flag, on which were painted roughly the figure of a sailor and an Eskimo sitting on an iceberg, with a kettle of soup between them. On one side were a pair of hands clasped together; on the other a sprig of heath, the only shrub that could be seen ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... out evil spirits by the smoke of sulphur, is well known. "Otherwise the perfume made of the gall of a black dog, and his bloode besmeared on the posts and walls of a house, driveth out of the doores, both devils and witches." A sprig of witch-elm sewn in the collar of the doublet, was celebrated amongst our great grandmothers as a specific against the malignant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... Mint. Did some more sober critic come abroad; If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kissed the rod. Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence, And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense. Commas and points they set exactly right, And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite. Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds, From slashing Bentley down to pidling Tibalds: Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells, Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables, Even such small critic some regard may claim, Preserved ...
— English Satires • Various
... least embroidery. No sooner is the fence built than she adopts and adorns it as a part of her original plan, treating the hard, uncomely construction as if it had all along been a favorite idea of her own. A little sprig of ivy may be seen creeping up the side of the low wall and clinging fast with its many feet to the rough surface; a tuft of grass roots itself between two of the stones, where a pinch or two of way-side dust has been moistened into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Polly back to the garden, and the pot was put in its place, again. And a week or two after, as grandmother was just going to make room in the earth for a new plant, she saw growing there a little green sprig, which was not a weed. She listened a moment, and heard the child's ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... "Thou'rt a fair sprig of de old tree, Muster Dickie, so 'e be," in the thick speech of the peasant people round about Talbot house where Dickie had once been a ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... border mould, allow it to set, and arrange a decoration of boiled carrot and white savoury custard cut crescent shape, dipping each piece in melted aspic. Pour in a very little more jelly, and when it is set place the chicken and ham round alternately, with a sprig of chervil, or small salad, here and there. Put in a very small quantity of aspic to keep this in place, then, when nearly set, sufficient to cover it. Arrange another layer, this time first of ham then of chicken, fix them in the same way, and fill up the mould with aspic jelly. When ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... a knuckle of veal, weighing about a pound and one-half, into a soup kettle, with a quart of water, one small onion, a sprig of parsley, a bay leaf, and the liquor drained from the clams, and simmer gradually for an hour and a half, skimming from time to time; strain the soup and again place it in the kettle; rub a couple of tablespoonfuls of butter with an equal amount of flour together and add ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... same breath, she said, "O, see that beautiful yellow,"—directing my attention to a sprig of acacia in a bunch of flowers; all showing that her religious feelings were not raptures, but flowed along upon a level with her natural delight at beautiful objects. To illustrate this, I have mentioned several of ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... and honourable house of Ellangowan, had caused this monument to be erected for himself and his descendants. A reasonable number of scythes and hour-glasses, and death's heads, and cross-bones, garnished the following sprig of sepulchral poetry, to the memory of the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... out of a little pool—a marvellously artistic effect. The china was very artistic, too, Japanese, with curious-looking dragons in soft old-blue. And, after the orange, she had a finger-bowl with a little sprig of rose-geranium she could crunch between her fingers till it sent out a heavenly odour. It was just like Aunt Isabel to ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... himself; but they concluded, on the whole, to send them forward to his mother. Jonas told them the mountain before them was Benalgon, and rode on to carry the blueberry-bush to the other chaise. Presently he came back, bringing it with him, except a small sprig which Rollo's mother had taken off. The rest she had sent back to ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... and coloured as that sprig of red geranium from Glanyravon was placed in his coat by his little niece, and in spite of his better resolutions, when he went home, it was transferred to a glass, and treasured as long as imagination could ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... hands clasped behind him, and his stick under his arm; his soft felt hat was pulled down over his eyes, so that his keeping the path was more by chance than sight. He stopped once to pluck a sprig from the hawthorn hedge, to put between his lips. This gave Mr. Denner breath, ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... slices of onion, a slice of carrot, a bay-leaf, and a sprig of parsley. Add a heaping teaspoonful of flour and, when brown, a cupful of stock. Cook until thick, stirring constantly. Take from the fire, strain, add the juice of half a lemon, and salt ...
— How to Cook Fish • Olive Green
... doll, the finishing touches to whose toilette are being put in the solitary street; a last maternal glance is given the enormous bows of the sash, the folds at the waist. Her dress is of pearl-gray silk, her obi (sash) of mauve satin; a sprig of silver flowers trembles in her black hair; a parting ray of sunlight touches the little figure; five or six persons accompany her. Yes! it is undoubtedly Mademoiselle Jasmin; they ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... Jerusalem, the hills and vales were dotted with booths of green. Inside the gates the city seemed to have burst into springtime bloom, and the populace looked like a walking garden, for every Jew carried an armful of green boughs, and in his hand a sprig of willow to be placed on the great altar. Many pious ones had witnessed the early morning service when a priest, entering from the water gate, brought a gold pitcher full of water from the Pool of Siloam. At the sacred altar ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... only they're soft, and if you shut your eyes they're fine, and while you're wondering whether or not you'll swallow them, they slip down and you begin to look for another; and then there was little dabs of fried fish laid on a lettuce leaf, with a sprig of parsley beside it, and a round of lemon. They took the lemon in their fingers and squeezed it over their fish. It looked a little mussy to me, but I guess it's manners all right; and then there was olives on a little glass dish, ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... all the needles that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom;—I can feel With all around me;—I can hail the flowers That sprig earth's mantle,—and yon quiet bird, That rides the stream, is to me as a brother. The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets, Where Nature stows away her loveliness. But this unnatural posture of the legs ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... a copy of the New Quarterly—now here is popular praise, a sprig of it! Instead of the attack I supposed it to be, from my foolish friend's account, the notice is outrageously eulogistical, a stupidly extravagant laudation from first to last—and in three other articles, as my sister finds ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... retreating; they left the body at the corner of the hedge. We were pursuing them so closely that we arrived just after them. I found the body of my brother still warm. In one of his wounds a sprig was stuck with these words: 'Shot as a brigand by me, Claude Flageolet, corporal of the Third Battalion of Paris.' I took my brother's body, and had the skin removed from his breast. I vowed that this skin, pierced with three holes, should eternally ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... that's work," observed Miss Hitty, piously, "you just keep tied to one person for almost nineteen years, day and night, never lettin' 'em out of your sight, and layin' the foundation of their manners and morals and education, and see how you'll feel when a blackmailing sprig of a play-doctor threatens to collect a hundred dollars from you if you dast to ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... Philomel, perched on an aspen sprig, Weeps all the night her lost virginity, And sings her sad tale to the merry twig, That dances at such joyful mysery. Never lets sweet rest invade her eye; But leaning on a thorn her dainty chest, For fear soft sleep ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... sprig of Mistletoe shot through the air, pierced the heart of Balder, and in a moment the beautiful god lay dead upon the field. A shadow rose out of the deep beyond the worlds and spread itself over heaven and earth, for the light of the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... mind—perhaps in a more literal absence of mind than is usually understood by the phrase—had smelt so hard at a sprig in his hand as to be on the verge of the offence in question. He smiled, said, 'I ask your pardon, my dear,' and threw it out ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... first conversation on the doormat as to her requirements for supper enumerated after this fashion, "in tones expressive of faintness," to the housemaid: "I think, young woman, as I could peck a little bit of pickled salmon, with a little sprig of fennel and a sprinkling o' white pepper. I takes new bread, my dear, with jest a little pat o' fredge butter and a mossel o' cheese. With respect to ale, if they draws the Brighton Tipper at any 'ouse nigh here, I takes that ale at night, my love; not as I cares for it myself, but on accounts ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... beaten fine, and as much Cloves, a Scruple of Ginger, two or three little Bits of dry'd Orange-Peel, half an Ounce of Mustard-Seed bruised, half a dozen Shallots bruised a little, five or six Bay-Leaves, a little Sprig of Sweet Basil, or Sweet Marjoram, a Sprig of Thyme, and a little Cinnamon; then stop your Jar close, and let the Mixture infuse for twenty-four Hours upon hot Embers: when this is done, strain your Composition through a Linnen Cloth, till you have express'd as much ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... kind of dissipation or expansion, especially a quick one, particularly if there be an r, as if it were from spargo or separo: for example, spread, spring, sprig, sprout, sprinkle, split, splinter, spill, spit, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... the morning that Eppie was married, for her dress was a very light one. She had often thought, though with a feeling of renunciation, that the perfection of a wedding-dress would be a white cotton, with the tiniest pink sprig at wide intervals; so that when Mrs. Godfrey Cass begged to provide one, and asked Eppie to choose what it should be, previous meditation had enabled her to give a decided answer ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... in Gylingden; but, in the main, it was a loyal town, and true to its princess. Mr. Wylder's settlements were not satisfactory, it was presumed, or the young lady could not bring herself to like him, or however it came to pass, one way or another, that sprig of willow inevitably to be mounted by hero or heroine upon such equivocal occasions was placed by the honest town by no means in her breast, but altogether in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... on the grass before my eyes. It was a sprig of sweetbrier. I turned lazily and saw Thora standing by my side. Without speaking a word she sat down, and together we looked out upon ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... ye? Set them on to us, you blasted young sprig! Look 'ee here—I've a knife to your ribs, and you can't use your gun. Stand still while my boy slips across, or I'll cut your white ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Green the parish beadle, with a great white placard in his hat—you might well mistake him for Alderman ——'s monument in red brick with the marble tablet on the top of it. Ah! my pretty rustic—why your straw hat and brown stuff frock, with white bib, and that gay flowered apron, with the sprig of jessamine stuck at your side—you look so homely and comely beneath the shade of that tall oak, that I could fancy you were only the shepherd's cottage at the corner of the grange. Bless me—here's a modern antique, masquerading in the country!—why a village ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... of mine Take this sprig of Eglantine, Which, though sweet unto your smell, Yet the fretful Briar will tell, He who plucks the sweets shall prove Many ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... of dislike, one pound of resolution, two grains of common sense, two ounces of experience, a large sprig of time, and three quarts of cooling water of consideration. Set them over a gentle fire of love, sweeten it with sugar of forgetfulness, skim it with the spoon of melancholy, put it in the bottom of your heart, cork it with the cork of clean conscience. Let it remain and you will quickly find ease ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... place. A place where we can use our cavalry when they attempt to escape," said the young sprig of an officer, when some men with a spark of humanity ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... from Clarenham, or from Ashton himself; and, dolt as he is, I trow he has sense enough to keep his own counsel. He has not forgotten the day when he saw this dainty young sprig rise up in his golden spurs before his eyes. I know how it is! It is with him as it was with the Lord ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Marie, "talented and original, but of repulsive and arbitrary manners, which have made the whole school, except Emily and myself, her bitter enemies." No less arbitrary and repulsive seemed poor Emily herself, a sprig of purple heath at discord with those bright, smooth geraniums and lobelias; Emily, of whom every surviving friend extols the never-failing, quiet unselfishness, the genial spirit ready to help, the timid but faithful ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Grafton, one of the last of the old school of polished gentlemen, being seated with a party of ladies in the stage-box of Drury-lane theatre, a sprig of modern fashion came in booted and spurred. At the end of the act, the duke rose, and made the young man ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... in a pasture looking for fertile fronds of the cinnamon fern which I fail to find. I see cows and am afraid.—This based on reality of a few days before.—At length by a stone I find a fern coiled as in spring. This becomes a squirrel, the male comes, and then they are lions. The male has a sprig of leaves which he lays at the feet of the female and which she eats. I want to know what the leaves are but fear to look closely because of the lion. I found it difficult to deliberately influence dreams by suggestion. The dream-self is not to be coerced and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... did not stop here. Henry proceeded in attention; he soon selected her from her sister to tell her the news of the day, answered her observations the first; once gave her a sprig of myrtle from his bosom in preference to another who had praised its beauty; and once—never-to-be-forgotten kindness—sheltered her from a hasty shower with his parapluie, while he lamented to her ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... Hamadah. It consists of sandstone rocks, and valleys covered with pebbles and loose blocks. Some of the rocks are perfectly black, and would be considered by an European geologist, on a distant view, as basalt. Until half-past four in the afternoon we did not see a blade of grass, a sprig of vegetation, or living thing of any description; but at the camping-ground was a thin scattering of herbage, near the foot of the ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... always pull to pieces again to offer them in another form to the next comer who chances to know how to amuse them better." Are such garlands worth the sacrifice of artistic honor? If it were possible for the critic to withhold them and offer instead a modest sprig of enduring bay, would not the ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Bull was his old friend Victor Nevill, little altered in five years, except for a heavier mustache that improved his dark and handsome face. To judge from appearances, he had not run through with all his money. He was daintily booted and gloved, and wore morning tweeds of perfect cut; a sprig of violets was thrust in his button-hole. The two had not met since they parted in Paris on that memorable night, nor had they known of each ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... comparable to this mixture. Being penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals—cats—when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something more in these sympathies than ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... and I hope to get what I have not had for several nights—a good night's rest. A more bleak and comfortless prospect, in the way of landscape, could scarcely present itself to the eye. Nothing but land and rock—not a sprig of vegetation of any kind to be seen. In fact it never rains here, and this is consequently a guano region. We passed a bank of guano in Halifax island, a shanty, a few labourers, and a large army of penguins spread out with much solemnity on ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... quoth the good Old Man, looking round him with a Smile, very hard, that any Part of my Land should be settled upon one who has used me so ill as the perverse Widow [1] did; and yet I am sure I could not see a Sprig of any Bough of this whole Walk of Trees, but I should reflect upon her and her Severity. She has certainly the finest Hand of any Woman in the World. You are to know this was the Place wherein I used to muse upon her; and by that Custom I can never come ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... distinguished divine, advocated the claims of the Pretender. Scotland was ripe for revolt. Alarming riots took place in England. William III. was burned in effigy at Smithfield. The Oxford students pulled down a Presbyterian meeting-house, and the sprig of oak was publicly displayed on the 29th of May. The Earl of Mar hurried into Scotland to fan the spirit of insurrection; while the gifted, brilliant, and banished Bolingbroke joined the standard of the chevalier. The venerable and popular Duke of Ormond ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... from the shores of the South Sea crowns his well-oiled locks, and thus you have the "bar-keeper of the boat." His nether man need not be described. That is the unseen portion of his person, which is below the level of the bar. No cringing, smirking, obsequious counter-jumper he, but a dashing sprig, who, perhaps, owns his bar and all its contents, and who holds his head as high as either the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... story of his dangers and his escape was made known throughout the kingdom, thousands of visitors came to look upon the faithful tree which had thus afforded his majesty its unconscious but effectual protection. Every one took away a leaf or a sprig for a souvenir, and when, at last, the proprietor found that there was danger that the whole tree would be carried away unless he interposed, he fenced it in and tilled the ground around it, to defend it from further mutilation. It has borne the name of ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... finest two-decked ships in the world: where he shewed that matchless intrepidity, and able conduct, as a seaman and officer, which I have often had the happiness to experience, in many trying situations. I thank God, I was not present; for it would finish me, could I have taken a sprig of these brave men's laurels. They are, and I glory in them, my darling children; served in my school; and all of us caught our professional zeal and fire, from the great and good Earl of ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... the following account of this little composition from Dr. Johnson's own relation to her, on her inquiring whether it was rightly attributed to him:—'I think it is now just forty years ago, that a young fellow had a sprig of myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me to write him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but forgot; and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on—Sit still a moment, (says I) dear Mund' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... with a little toss of her head, and he turned, too, breaking a sprig of southernwood. Dorcas was glad to treasure the last sight of him putting to his lips the fragrant herb she had bruised for his sake. It seemed to carry over into daylight the joy of the richer night; it was like seeing the silken thread ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... repose that day. Sitting down here on a mound in the graveyard, he looked off across Charles River towards the battle-ground, whose incipient monument, at that period, was hard to see, as a struggling sprig of corn in a chilly spring. Upon those heights, fifty years before, his now feeble hands had wielded both ends of the musket. There too he had received that slit upon the chest, which afterwards, in the affair with the Serapis, being traversed ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... boatman. This determination was hastened when she saw that instead of the three-decker steamer of her native land, the ferry at Wittisham was just like an ordinary row-boat; that one rang a bell hanging from a picturesque tower; that a nice young man with a sprig of wallflower in his cap rowed one across, and that each passenger handed out a penny to him ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Netherlands, where he was deserted by his king and crushed by the superior genius of the Prince of Orange. Although he vindicated his martial skill at Gemblours, the victory was fruitless. It was but the solitary sprig of the tiger from his jungle, and after that striking conflict his life was ended in darkness and obscurity. Possessing military genius of a high order, with extraordinary personal bravery, he was the last of the paladins and the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the patients, was about all. He carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door air ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... Browne's tale of the distant dwellings, in the Weir Water Valley; but I liked hearing that all the hills have names of their own, and that you can be sure you are not going to fall into a treacherous bog, if only you see a sprig of purple heather—a good, honest plant, which hates anything secret. Our ponies didn't need the heather signal, though; they shied away from bogs as if by instinct, they knew the moor so well. If we had stumbled into a pitfall, our only hope would have been to lie quite flat, and crawl along ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... tortures of separation, may break not his faith. No one that has loved will dream even death too terrible a price to pay for the revelation of love. For that revelation once made can never be recalled. As a little sprig of lavender will perfume a queen's wardrobe, so will a short year of love keep sweet a long life. And love's best gifts death can never take away. Nay, indeed, death does not so much rob as enrich the ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... am sister ... cousin. Here ... take ... a flower. A nice flower. It smells." She took out of her girdle a sprig of white lilac, sniffed it, bit off a petal and gave him the whole sprig. "Will you have jam? Nice jam ... from Constantinople ... sorbet?" Colibri took from the small chest of drawers a gilt jar wrapped in a piece of crimson silk with steel spangles ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the gravy. Cook has put the dish for the meat and the plates where they will get hot, for little girls cannot see after everything. In this small saucepan is a little stock made by stewing two or three bones and scraps (with no fat whatever), a sprig of parsley, a few rings of onion, which have been fried till brown, an inch of celery, and five or six peppercorns in water. I do not know whether you noticed that this stock has been stewing by the side of ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... animal, he apologizes and lays the blame on his arrows or his spear, or on some one else. For the same reason the woodman, when he cuts down a tree, asks permission to do so and offers sacrifices, and he provides a green sprig to stick into the stump as soon as the tree falls, that it may be a new home for the spirit thus dislodged. For since the spirit is neither slain, nor deprived of power, by destruction of the body, or by severance from the body, it may find another to dwell in. Spirits of dead men, like ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... my wedding it was very cold. Like most women, I always remember what I was wearing on the important occasions of my life. On that day I wore a brown silk gown which had been designed by Holman Hunt, and a quilted white bonnet with a sprig of orange-blossom, and I was wrapped in a beautiful Indian shawl. I "went away" in a sealskin jacket with coral buttons, and a little sealskin cap. I cried a great deal, and Mr. Watts said, "Don't cry. It makes your nose swell." The day I left home to be married, I "tubbed" all my ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... them there," replied her little maid, Susan, half-frightened by the strange agitation of her mistress. "I plucked the sprig in our landlady's garden; for I remembered that you loved hawthorn-blossoms, and used often to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... quiet old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting opposite to me, is no exception to the rule. She brought down some mignonette one morning, which she had grown in her chamber. She gave a sprig to her little neighbor, and one to the landlady, and sent another by the hand of Bridget ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... at times prompted it to attack the eagle), was observed to direct its flight towards the senate-house, consecrated by Pompey, whilst a crowd of other birds were seen to hang upon its flight in close pursuit. What might be the object of the chase, whether the little king himself, or a sprig of laurel which he bore in his mouth, could not be determined. The whole train, pursuers and pursued, continued their flight towards Pompey's hall. Flight and pursuit were there alike arrested; the little king was overtaken by his enemies, who fell upon him as so many ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... said Cuchulainn. 'If a flock of birds graze upon Mag Murthemne, you shall have a duck with half of another; if fish come to the estuaries, you shall have a salmon with half of another. You shall have the three sprigs, the sprig of watercress, and the sprig of marshwort, and the sprig of seaweed. You shall have a man in the ford in your place.' [Note: This and the following speech are apparently forms of greeting. Cuchulainn offers Lugaid such hospitality as lies ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... with the king, and is treated with all possible deference and respect. He has a palatial stable; and being a king, he lives like one. His servants and attendants are all priests. But he is not a pleasant sprig of royalty, and the visitors were warned not to go ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... the art of crushing the mint leaves with a bit of sugar, in each glass. Into this, at the proper moment was added the crushed ice to the brim and, as a jigger or two of liquor flowed over the ingredients, the glasses frosted and were topped with a sprig of mint. The pleasantness of the drink was not deemed its single virtue, for there was a very sincere belief in the efficacy of this refreshment in the promotion of good health and, particularly, in warding off the current fevers that plagued ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... 'Charlie's come hame'. And Tam Crichtoun o' the Bourhopehead got a sough o' it one simmers' morning, and the last we heard o' Tam he was fechting like a deil among the Frenchmen. Once I heard a tinkler play a sprig of it on the pipes, and a' the lads were wud to follow him. Gang your ways for I am near ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... throne, and the story of his dangers and his escape was made known throughout the kingdom, thousands of visitors came to look upon the faithful tree which had thus afforded his majesty its unconscious but effectual protection. Every one took away a leaf or a sprig for a souvenir, and when, at last, the proprietor found that there was danger that the whole tree would be carried away unless he interposed, he fenced it in and tilled the ground around it, to defend it from further mutilation. ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... opening in the wall. In this box I found my dinner which I proceeded to enjoy in solitude. The food was more varied than in the hospital. Some was liquid and some gelatinous, and some firm like bread or biscuit. But of natural food products there was nothing save a dish of mushrooms and a single sprig of green no longer than my finger, and which, like a feather in a boy's cap, was inserted conspicuously in the top of a synthetic pudding. There was one food that puzzled me, for it was sausage-like in form and sausage-like in flavour, and I was sure contained some real substance of animal ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... a moment, plucked a small sprig from a lilac-bush, smelled it and threw it away. "I am not very sure ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom; I can feel With all around me;—I can hail the flowers That sprig earth's mantle,—and yon quiet bird, That rides the stream, is to me as a brother. The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets, Where Nature stows away her loveliness. But this unnatural posture of my legs Cramps my extended ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... dwell in that bright orb, where, as has been fondly imagined, "the wretched may have rest."—"And here," replied Philemon, "we do nothing but fret and fume if our fancied merits are not instantly rewarded, or if another wear a sprig of laurel more verdant than ourselves; I could mention, within my own recollection, a hundred instances of this degrading prostitution of talent—aye, a thousand."—"Gently reprimand your fellow creatures," resumed Lysander, "lest you commit an error as great as any of those which ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... up to Captain Frere's house with a return from Troke, and coming back through the garden had plucked a flower. Dawes had asked him for this flower, offering two days' rations for it. Hankey, who is not a bad-hearted man, gave him the sprig. "There were tears in his eyes as he took ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the name, and then noticed for the first time that both father and son wore in their velvet caps a short dry sprig of the broom-plant. He sprang to the ground and came forward on foot, bareheaded, and stood ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... both the sprig and the remains of the tree were exhibited in his time. The tragedians, Lucretius and others, adopted a different fable to account for the stoppage at Aulis, and seem to have found the sacrifice of Iphigena better suited to form the subject of a tragedy. Compare Dryden's ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... find it very difficult by themselves to drag the heavy mass that comes after. Their assistant, the anal finger, is remarkably strong. With no support, the larva turns over, head downwards, and remains suspended when shifting from one sprig to another. This Jack-in-the-bowl is a rope-dancer, a consummate acrobat, performing its evolutions amid the slender sprigs without ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... sunny hours Ardita's idea of the episode as incidental, madcap, a sprig of romance in a desert of reality, gradually left her. She dreaded the time when he would strike off southward; she dreaded all the eventualities that presented themselves to her; thoughts were suddenly troublesome ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... crowded city was so new and strange and dismal. How the mother longed amid its dust and smoke for the sweet air of Hawthorn, for a sprig of lilac, or a June rose from the garden. Once in a rare while she succeeded in getting to church. It was a difficult thing to bring about, though; when nothing happened to prevent, the carriage was driven there, but apparently in that family there were more hindrances ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... the news that night, but it was not necessary; she had seen Ralph and Cicely coming through the garden gate without a leaf of lettuce or a single sprig of parsley. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... walked off, with a sprig of mint in his mouth. He was not a bad man, as men go. He was simply a man who wanted to please himself, and to be comfortable and easy. In his eyes the whole fabric of the universe revolved round Matthew ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... not, and on this point there can be little real doubt. The German theory that Baldr could only be killed by his own sword, which was therefore disguised by enchantment and used against him, and that the Icelandic writers misunderstood this to mean a mistletoe sprig, is far-fetched and romantic, and crumbles at a touch. For if, as it is claimed, the Icelanders had no mistletoe, why should they introduce it into a story to which it did not belong? They might preserve it by tradition, but they would ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... a little out of the regular performance, last evening; no less than the caning of a New York sprig of fashion, who made himself rather more agreeable to a certain married lady who dashes about here in a queenly way than was agreeable to her husband. The affair was hushed up. This morning I missed the lady from her usual place at the breakfast-table. Later in the day I learned that her husband ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... person, which was such certainly as to deserve his care. On this occasion he was more than usually particular. He did not scruple to discard the white cravat. For this he substituted a handkerchief which had the prettiest sprig of lilac, on a ground of the most delicato lemon color. He consulted complexions, and his mirror determined him in favor of this pattern. Brother Stevens would not have worn it had he been summoned, in his new vocation, to preach or pray ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... that sermon," said a young sprig of divinity, "in half an hour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it." "In that," said an older minister, "your hearers are at one with you, for they also ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... continued until all the flowers were gone. One had been taken by a carter, another by a donkey-driver, another by a muleteer, another by a man on a camel, and finally the last little sprig was eaten by a chicken. The servant was soundly berated each time and cautioned to be more careful, which she always promised but never performed, and was finally dismissed in disgrace without either a recommendation, or the wages she had ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... in time to hear the whole story before he breathed his last. He put his arms round my neck and kissed me farewell. Then he died—bravely and without complaining, like a little hero. When his crushed wings had given their last quiver, I laid an oak leaf over his body and went to look for a sprig of forget-me-nots to put upon his grave. 'Sleep well, my little brother,' I cried, and flew off in the quiet of the evening. I flew toward the two red suns, the one in the sky and the one in the lake. No one has ever felt as sad and solemn ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... that sprig of red geranium from Glanyravon was placed in his coat by his little niece, and in spite of his better resolutions, when he went home, it was transferred to a glass, and treasured as long as imagination could fancy ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Marlborough, and his grandfather's triumphal car are to close the procession. What would his grandame, if she were alive, say to this pageant? If the war lasts, I think well enough of him to believe he will earn a sprig; but I have no passion for trying on a crown of laurel, before I had acquired it. The French are said to be embarked at Dunkirk—lest I should seem to know more than any minister, I will not pretend ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... surface is placid the depths are turbulent. If Dublin is simmering, Belfast is boiling. The breed is different. The Northerner is not demonstrative, is slow to anger, but being moved is not easily appeased. The typical Irishman, with his cutaway coat, his pipe stuck in his conical caubeen, his "sprig of shillelagh," or bludgeon the Donnybrook Fair hero who "shpinds half a-crown, Mates wid a frind An' (for love) knocks him down" is totally unknown in these regions. The men who by their ability and industry have lifted Ireland out of the slough, given her prosperity and comparative affluence, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Herbert and the Young Lady Staying With Us. Jeremiah used to come in to that fireside very much as the Parson does to ours. The Parson, to be sure, never prophesies, but he grumbles, and is the chorus in the play that sings the everlasting ai ai of "I told you so!" Yet we like the Parson. He is the sprig of bitter herb that makes the pottage wholesome. I should rather, ten times over, dispense with the flatterers and the smooth-sayers than the grumblers. But the grumblers are of two sorts,—the healthful-toned and the whiners. There are ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... close the explanation of the emblems upon the solemn thought of death, which, without revelation, is dark and gloomy; but we are suddenly revived by the ever-green and ever-living Sprig of Faith which strengthens us, with confidence and composure, to look forward to a blessed immortality; and we doubt not that, on the glorious morn of the Resurrection, our bodies will rise and become as incorruptible ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... dreams of home, of warmth and comfort. Something sharp, cold, and fragrant was scratching her eyes. She opened them. Glenn stood over her, pushing a sprig of cedar into ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... suspecting his approach, but soon apparently satisfied, she resumed her light chatter with her companion. Atma heard his own name, and gathered that they sought him. He made himself known, and the elder, who was Nama, the Maharanee's trusted servant, related how her mistress greatly desiring a sprig of White Ak, a tree of great virtue in incantations, had commissioned her to obtain it in the forest near by. She had also been charged, she said, to meet Atma Singh, and bring her illustrious ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... shoulder, and I see a back view of a little doll, the finishing touches to whose toilette are being put in the solitary street; a last maternal glance is given the enormous bows of the sash, the folds at the waist. Her dress is of pearl-gray silk, her obi (sash) of mauve satin; a sprig of silver flowers trembles in her black hair; a parting ray of sunlight touches the little figure; five or six persons accompany her. Yes! it is undoubtedly Mademoiselle Jasmin; they are ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... self-luminous, crystalline body placed in my hand by a hand which did not belong to any person in the room. In the light, I have seen a luminous cloud hover over a heliotrope on a side-table, break a sprig off, and carry it to a lady; and on some occasions I have seen a similar luminous cloud condense to the form of a hand and carry small objects about. During a seance in full light, a beautifully formed small hand rose up from ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... I picked a sprig of honeysuckle as I spoke and gave it to her, which she received kindly. This emboldened me. Perhaps after all I was not so hateful ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... "every thing that is a plant. Every different kind of sprig, or little weed, that you can find—mosses, ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... abroad— If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kiss'd the rod. Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence, And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense. 160 Commas and points they set exactly right, And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite. Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds, From slashing Bentley down to piddling Tibbalds: Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells, Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables, Even such small critics some regard may claim, Preserved ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... her repentant eyes in early days; he was affected with them—he felt that the latter part of his speech had hurt her—that she was not the fashionable belle, but still the good girl he must love and admire.—"Then," cried he, eagerly, "you will not marry that sprig of a ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... upon the plain of Murthemne, thou shalt have a wild goose with half the other. Should fish come to the falls or to the bays, thou shalt have a salmon with as much again. Thou shalt have the three sprigs, even a sprig of cresses, a sprig of laver, and a sprig of sea-grass; there will be a man to take thy place at the ford." "This welcome is truly meant," replied Lugaid; "the choice of people for the youth whom I desire!" "Splendid are your hosts," said Cuchulain. "It will be no misfortune," said Lugaid, ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... of veal, weighing about a pound and one-half, into a soup kettle, with a quart of water, one small onion, a sprig of parsley, a bay leaf, and the liquor drained from the clams, and simmer gradually for an hour and a half, skimming from time to time; strain the soup and again place it in the kettle; rub a couple of tablespoonfuls of butter with an equal amount of flour ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... another form to the next comer who chances to know how to amuse them better." Are such garlands worth the sacrifice of artistic honor? If it were possible for the critic to withhold them and offer instead a modest sprig of enduring bay, would not the ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... point is this. I have been informed from undoubted authority, people who were about him at the time, and knew, that the reason he quarrelled with that nephew of his, who died two years ago, was the young man's having accepted a baronetage: and at that time old Palmer swore, that no sprig of quality—those were the very words—should ever inherit a shilling of his money. Such a ridiculous whim! But these London merchants, who make great fortunes from nothing, are apt to have their little eccentricities; and then, they have so much pride in their own way, and so ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Catharine were some degrees less fair, that she might not catch that dangerous sort of admiration, or somewhat less holy, that she might sit down like an honest woman, contented with stout Henry Smith, who could protect his wife against every sprig of chivalry ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... them, and despises you. I cannot see you lowered thus, Jack. It has not been in my power to make a great man of you, but I have educated you to be an honest man. I have taken care of the tree, while young, and now it is grown up, one branch decays after the other. And if it must be so, that no green sprig shall henceforth flourish, then I will turn my eyes from it, visit it no more, nor live on the spot where the withered stem, that I am so fond of, ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... Scotty bent and plucked a sprig of mint from the patch next to the house and chewed it absently. "But we'll be able to show motive and method once they're in jail and Tyler can talk. And with Captain Killian's evidence, that will clear Tyler anyway. Why should we worry whether the Kelsos ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... very characteristic of its mistress. At Tallyn Henry Marsham had worked his will; here, in this house taken since his death, it was the will and taste of his widow which had prevailed. A gray paper with a small gold sprig upon it, sofas and chairs not too luxurious, a Brussels carpet, dark and unobtrusive, and chintz curtains; on the walls, drawings by David Cox, Copley Fielding, and De Wint; a few books with Mudie labels; costly photographs of friends and relations, especially of the relations' babies; on one ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Japanese garden is not a flower garden; neither is it made for the purpose of cultivating plants. In nine cases out of ten there is nothing in it resembling a flower-bed. Some gardens may contain scarcely a sprig of green; some have nothing green at all, and consist entirely of rocks and pebbles and sand, although these are exceptional. [1] As a rule, a Japanese garden is a landscape garden, yet its existence does not depend upon any fixed allowances of space. It may cover one acre or many acres. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... sulphur, is well known. "Otherwise the perfume made of the gall of a black dog, and his bloode besmeared on the posts and walls of a house, driveth out of the doores, both devils and witches." A sprig of witch-elm sewn in the collar of the doublet, was celebrated amongst our great grandmothers as a specific against the malignant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... of the snowy shroud were gathered about the throat, and upon it were crossed the slender hands, in which rested a fading sprig of white violets, placed there by some friend, as a fit emblem of the sleeper. Her sunny curls were smoothly bound back beneath the cap, and its border of transparent lace, threw a slight shadow upon the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... from that of the broom plant (Latin planta genesta), a sprig of which Henry's father used to wear in his hat. The family is also called Angevin, because Henry on his father's side descended from the counts ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... with the hand that had ruined her son's career. Much more important, it seemed clear enough to West that the boy had only been weak, and had been tempted into misbehavior by his older and more wilful comrade. West had never liked young Jones. He was a rawboned, unkempt sprig of the masses, who had not been included in any of the student suppers at the president's house. Jones's refusal to speak out fully on all the details of the affair pointed strongly, so West argued, to consciousness of damning guilt. The path of administrative duty appeared ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the Netherlands, where he was deserted by his king and crushed by the superior genius of the Prince of Orange. Although he vindicated his martial skill at Gemblours, the victory was fruitless. It was but the solitary sprig of the tiger from his jungle, and after that striking conflict his life was ended in darkness and obscurity. Possessing military genius of a high order, with extraordinary personal bravery, he was the last of the paladins and the crusaders. His accomplishments ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to the garden, and the pot was put in its place, again. And a week or two after, as grandmother was just going to make room in the earth for a new plant, she saw growing there a little green sprig, which was not a weed. She listened a moment, and heard the child's ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... I have sewn a sprig of witch's elm in the neck of un's doublet, ever since that foul thief has begun his practices on man and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... bouquet, or fagot, of sweet herbs, so often called for in foreign cooking, is made as follows: wash three or four sprigs of parsley, lay in their midst one sprig of thyme, and two bay leaves; fold the parsley over the thyme and bay leaves, tie it in a cork-shaped roll, about three inches long and one inch thick. The bouquet is used for seasoning soups, sauces, stews, and ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... it light on a sprig too slight The feathery freight to bear, Yet, conscious of wings, tosses fearless, and sings, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... the first landing, a bright and cheerful room papered with a rather cheap flower and sprig patterned paper, spring-like for all its cheapness, and just the background for children's heads when they wake ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... brigandine of chain-mail and his dinted steel cap showed that he was no holiday soldier, but one who was even now fresh from the wars. A white surcoat with the lion of St. George in red upon the centre covered his broad breast, while a sprig of new-plucked broom at the side of his head-gear gave a touch of gayety and grace to his grim, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... such a boatman. This determination was hastened when she saw that instead of the three-decker steamer of her native land, the ferry at Wittisham was just like an ordinary row-boat; that one rang a bell hanging from a picturesque tower; that a nice young man with a sprig of wallflower in his cap rowed one across, and that each passenger handed out a penny to him on ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... really my poor are improving so wonderfully. If you could see my cottages, Miss Fermor!" (she did not say, "their cottages.") "I give a prize for the cleanest floors and windows, an illuminated ticket for the neatest garden-beds. I don't suppose you could get a sprig of groundsel for love or money in Arden village. I have actually to cultivate it in a corner of the kitchen-garden for my canaries. I give another prize at Christmas for the most economical household management, accorded to the family which has dined oftenest without meat in ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... matter as if it was the first thing to be done; her little orderly methods. She kept her mother's room neat, she put the books back in their places; there was a cluster of autumn leaves in a vase, or a sprig of spruce or cedar that for a long while would put forth new leaves. She was very glad now that she had taken so much pains. Was she rather unpolished when they had first come from Laconia. But her circle there was ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... country birth. There was an indefinable atmosphere of goodness about her; I felt as if I were breathing sincerity and frank innocence. It was refreshing to my lungs. Poor innocent child, she had faith in something; there was a crucifix and a sprig or two of green box above her poor little painted wooden bedstead; I felt touched, or somewhat inclined that way. I felt ready to offer to charge no more than twelve per cent, and so give something towards establishing her in a ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... soft temperature. It was not dark, for two little stars, a pale sun and a red moon, alternately illumined all parts. King Loc descended into the well and found Nur in his laboratory. Nur looked like a kind little old man, and he wore a sprig of wild thyme in his hood. In spite of his learning he had the innocence and candour characteristic of ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... your eye before it does your palate. When I ordered fried eggs, they were brought on a snow-white napkin, which was artistically folded upon a piece of ornamented tissue-paper that covered a china plate; if I asked for cold ham, it came in flakes, arrayed like great rose-leaves, with a green sprig or two of parsley dropped upon it, and surrounded by a border of calfs'-foot jelly, like a setting of crystals. The bread revealed new qualities in the wheat, it was so sweet and nutty; and the fried potatoes, with which your beefsteak comes snowed ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... his followers, who were just quitting the lists, which they also were in the habit of visiting nearly every day. As the two parties passed one another, the Earl spoke to a gentleman walking beside him and in a voice loud enough to be clearly overheard by the others: "Yonder is the young sprig of Falworth," said he. "His father, my Lords, is not content with forfeiting his own life for his treason, but must, forsooth, throw away his son's also. I have faced and overthrown many a ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... of mind—perhaps in a more literal absence of mind than is usually understood by the phrase—had smelt so hard at a sprig in his hand as to be on the verge of the offence in question. He smiled, said, 'I ask your pardon, my dear,' and threw it ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... handful of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a small bay leaf, and six green onions, tied securely ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... his daughter Katrina and what would come with her in the shape of fat farm-lands and well-stocked barns, aroused Ichabod's affections to the boiling point. He had a rival, however, "Brom Bones," a young black-headed sprig, who watched Ichabod's advances uneasily. After the party Ichabod mounted his old horse, Gunpowder, as bony as he, but no sooner was he well under way than he heard hoof beats on the road behind him and saw, glimmering ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... under the pines, beside Lewis Mavor; and the miners threw sprigs of evergreen into the open grave. When Slavin, sobbing bitterly, brought his sprig, no one stopped him, though all ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... the pew, winkless as a demon hearing a new candidate suspected of shakiness on a "a card'nal p'int," and mortified almost to death poor old Mrs. Pringle, who, compassionating his years, had handed him a sprig of her "meetin'-seed" over the back of the seat, by saying, in a loud and stern voice: "I don't eat things ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... lbs. lean beef. 1 small onion. A sprig of parsley. 1 qt. cold water. 1 stalk celery, or 1/2 tsp. celery seed. ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... 24 C S.—18 c s, unite on twelfth. D c round this loop twenty-two times. S c up remaining c s for stalk. Fasten off, leaving an end to sew the sprig on the mat. Turn wrong side up. Commence on fifth stitch from stalk on the right-hand side of the flower, * 10 c s, unite in same stitch. Turn again. Into this circle work 18 d c stitches *. Turn wrong side up. S c up to top of ring formed by 18 c s; ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown
... partiality; 'for indeed the fruits of a puffed-up heart is to deal in this manner with Christians' (1 Cor 4:6, 7). Now this branch of pride floweth from ignorance of the vanity of the creature, and of the worth of a gracious heart; wherefore get more of the knowledge of these two, and this sprig will be nipped in the head, and you will learn to condescend to men of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Set them on to us, you blasted young sprig! Look 'ee here—I've a knife to your ribs, and you can't use your gun. Stand still while my boy slips across, or I'll cut your white ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shrub of juniper close by, and she felt under its sharp branches. "Do you like honeysuckle?" She held up a fresh sprig fragrant with its pale horns, which she had tracked to covert by its scent. Lawrence was not given to wearing buttonholes, but he understood the friendly and apologetic intention and inclined his broad shoulder for Miss Stafford to pass the stem through the lapel of his coat. ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... with salt, pepper, some grated green ginger and curry-powder. Place in a baking-pan with 1 sliced onion, 2 chopped green peppers and 1 sprig of parsley. Pour over some water and hot melted butter; sprinkle with flour and bake until done. Garnish with ...
— 365 Foreign Dishes • Unknown
... mouse. Mrs. Louderer cut up her big plum pudding and put it into a dozen small bags. These Gavotte carefully covered with green paper. Then we tore up the holly wreath that Aunt Mary sent me, and put a sprig in the top of each green bag of pudding. I never had so much fun in my life as I had preparing ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Guelemer, the second was a nail; Guelemer, that is to say, crime; a nail, that is to say, liberty. Brujon, of whom it is high time that the reader should have a complete idea, was, with an appearance of delicate health and a profoundly premeditated languor, a polished, intelligent sprig, and a thief, who had a caressing glance, and an atrocious smile. His glance resulted from his will, and his smile from his nature. His first studies in his art had been directed to roofs. He had made great progress in the industry of the men who tear off lead, who plunder ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... it seem'd to rest, And now to court the Violet's breast, From Flow'r to Flow'r incessant flying, Inviting still, and still denying. Beneath his Hand, beneath his Hat, He often thought he had it pat; The Violet-bed, the Myrtle-sprig, Had made his little Heart grow big. At last, with Joy he saw it venture Within a Tulip's Bell to enter, And snatch'd it with ecstatic rapture. But what, alas! was all his Capture? A lifeless Insect, like a Worm, Without one Grace in ...
— The Sugar-Plumb - or, Golden Fairing • Margery Two-Shoes
... untiring observation I had but two glimpses to record. On one occasion a chat alighted on the top sprig of the fateful shrub, as if going to the nest, but almost on the instant vanished. The same day, a little later, one of these birds flitted into my view, without a sound. So perfectly silent were his movements that I should not have seen him if he had not come ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... here to pick up a nut, or there to examine a tree which she would tell Eunice might better be felled. As she walked she became uneasy, feeling that she had really imposed an unpleasant, possibly perilous, task upon the girl she scolded so freely yet already loved so dearly. Gathering a sprig of wintergreen she chewed it thoughtfully, and scarcely knew when she turned back to retrace her own steps to the cottage and learn what had befallen Katharine, who surely should have been ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... per aliquam propaginem, 'by a sprig of right,' derived from the primitive power of our English kings, under whose jurisdiction most of the French provinces were ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... mallards. And here, these are blue-bill. They come to a decoy almost too easy. This is a teal—fly like thunder and are about as big as a grasshopper. We'll make our flock mostly of these. Those widgeon, there, wouldn't do us much good. Might put in a few sprig. They're a handsome duck, Bobby; but the most beautiful thing in feathers is the wood-duck. Probably won't get any of them ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... late Boreas had seen the destruction of numerous forests, and had even assisted in laying waste the country. But one night an avalanche had buried a hamlet from which only one living soul had escaped, and that was a young child—a mere sprig of a girl, with hair like the flax and eyes like its flowers, a little, timid, crying child—whom B.B. had actually taken in his arms and carried all the way out of the woods, over the mountains, and finally into Frozen Nose's own ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... service making fun of the communion service: "Double-bass was a big fellow, with a black mustache, to whom life was all a joke, which he expressed by a comical smile, and Viola was a young Hercules, so full of beer that he dreamed himself in heaven, and Oboe was a young sprig, just out from Munich, with a complexion of milk and roses, like a girl's, and miraculously bright spectacles on his pale blue eyes, and there they sat — Oboe and Viola and Double-bass — and ogled each other, and raised their brows, and snickered ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... and my vanity thus disburthened, I left the divine man, and hastened to Bruton-street, to defend subscription with ten fold vigor. My young laurels were ripening apace: they were already in bud, and were suddenly to bloom. Every new sprig of success burst forth in new arguments, new tropes, and new denunciations. My margin was loaded with the names of High Church heroes, and my manuscript began to ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... languor of complexion, inherited from his father's house, was corrected in him by the vivacity of the Donnaz blood. This now sparkled in his grey eye, and gave a glow to his cheek, as he stepped across the threshold, treading on a sprig of cherry-blossom that had dropped unnoticed ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... a word with you, young sprig of a Bostonnais," said de Mezy, his florid face now ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... tobacco in various forms, leaving them to choose their favorite mode of using it. Sambo is never more contented than when he burns the weed in a cob pipe, and draws the delicious smoke through an elder sprig or mullen stem. But the maid is happiest of all when with her lover she sits face to face, and they 'dip' together from the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... suet fine, cut salt pork into dice, potatoes and onions small, rub a sprig of dried sage up fine; mix with some pepper, and place in the corner of a square piece of paste; turn over the other corner, pinch up the sides, and bake in a quick oven. If any bones, &c., remain from the meat, season with pepper and sage, place them with ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Hebrew grammar in the other. A propos! Mr. Hammond told me to say that he would not expect you to-day, but would meet you to-night at Mrs. Inge's. You need not trouble yourself to decline, for I shall arrange matters with Mrs. Murray. In honor of my birthday will you not give me a sprig of something sweet from ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... more closely to such imagination as the majority of the spectators possessed. They had regarded the other marvels they had seen merely as bewilderingly clever examples of legerdemain: but for a man to make a single sprig of rose grow into a tree bearing both red and white roses without even touching it meant something quite unbelievable—until they had seen it. Instinctively the circle narrowed, and ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... heartily," said she, in her low, musical voice, which caused the youthful sprig of Uncle Sam's department to leave incomplete the angle of forty-five degrees, which he had been in the habit of considering as of no little importance in the perfecting of his duties, as ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle;—and from this bush in the door-yard, With delicate-colored blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... child with a flute. The costume of the four vintagers consists of colored or check shirts, breeches, long hose, low shoes, knee and shoe buckles, single-breasted vest of bright colors, left open, handkerchief tied carelessly about the neck, and low felt hat with a sprig of grape leaves in front, the face colored slightly with red. The lady's costume consists of a red dress, blue waist, open in front, and laced across with pink ribbon, and a small straw hat trimmed with green ribbon on the head. The boy's costume consists of a velvet jacket, ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... a huge white calico flag, on which were painted roughly the figure of a sailor and an Eskimo sitting on an iceberg, with a kettle of soup between them. On one side were a pair of hands clasped together; on the other a sprig of heath, the only shrub that could be ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... apes the Egyptian Mason, knows nothing in reality of Hiram, his master; who knows nothing of the starry Solomon or his mystic temple in the heavens, which Hiram built; and who misconceives the import of the three villains, or assassins; and who, further, knows nothing of that wonderful sprig of myrtle:—in short, a Free Mason, speaking generally, is a man who delights in ideals, social equality, secret fraternity, and plays at mysticism; who parades on the Masonic stage and enacts a role ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... view. A friend of ours, whom the author never saw or heard of, was at once recognized by his own family as the original of Mr. Bennet, and we do not know if he has yet got rid of the nickname. A Mr. Collins, too, a formal, conceited, yet servile young sprig of divinity, is drawn with the same force and precision. The story of the piece consists chiefly in the fates of the second sister, to whom a man of high birth, large fortune, but haughty and reserved manners, becomes ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Spotless senmakula. Spouse edzo—ino. Spout sxpruci. Sprain elartikigi. Sprawl sterni. Spray (sprinkle) surversxi, sxprucigi sur. Spread (news) disvastigi. Spread (extend) etendi. Sprig vergeto, brancxeto. Sprightly sprita, viva. Sprightliness viveco. Spring salti. Spring (season) printempo. Spring (of watch, etc.) risorto. Springy elasta. Sprinkle sxprucigi sur. Sprinkler sxprucigilo. Sprite feino, koboldo. Sprout (bud) elkreski. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... had sprung. The knowledge of her disadvantages in life, the contrast between their respective positions, all tended to emphasise the irony of fate; and she often found herself wondering how this sprig of true aristocracy would conduct himself if he discovered that, after all, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Anthems and Gregorian Chants, now soaring up to the Clouds, as 'twere, and then dying off as though some wide echoing Space lay betweene us. I usuallie find Time to tie on my Hoode and slip away to the Herb-market for a Bunch of fresh Radishes or Cresses, a Sprig of Parsley, or at the leaste a Posy, to lay on his Plate. A good wheaten Loaf, fresh Butter and Eggs, and a large Jug of Milk, compose our simple Breakfast; for he likes not, as my Father, to see Boys hacking a huge Piece of Beef, nor cares for heavie feeding, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... town through a great arch that has been opened in the castle wall. The tubular bridge across the Conway has been built in a style that accords with the old architecture, and I observed that one little sprig of ivy had rooted itself in the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... relations and chief mourners are in a chamber apart, with their more intimate friends; and the rest of the guests are dispersed in several rooms about the house. When they are ready to set out, they nail up the coffin, and a servant presents the company with sprigs of rosemary: Every one takes a sprig and carries it in his hand till the body is put into the grave, at which time they all throw their sprigs in after it. Before they set out, and after they return, it is usual to present the guests with something to ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... as usual at the last of August; and as the expected guests were late in making their appearance, Mr. Wyllys had undertaken in the mean time to beat his daughter at a game of chess. Elinor, mounted on a footstool, was intent on arranging a sprig of clematis to the best advantage, in the beautiful dark hair of her cousin Jane Graham, who was standing for that purpose before a mirror. A good-looking youth, whom we introduce without farther ceremony as Harry Hazlehurst, was watching ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... in the grate, the walls and ceiling are hung with living green, and all around are heaped up the choice provisions collected to make Christmas glad. The giant leads SCROOGE forth. They pass through streets and lanes, with every house bearing token of rejoicing by its roaring fire or its sprig of holly, till they come to the dwelling of poor BOB CRATCHIT, old SCROOGE'S clerk. And here ensues a picture worthy of ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... break that came when he had surprised Love in her eyes; and it wasn't the warmth of the Sun's fan-shaped shafts at all; it was the warmth of her lips in the face of the picture she had promised—the face above "the Warrior." When he awakened, a sprig of everlasting that he had stuck in the band of his Alpine hat had blown ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Philadelphia, was an intimate and life-long friend of Dolly Madison. Major Nourse built the old stone house out on the road to Rockville and called it "The Highlands." Tradition says that a large box bush at "The Highlands" has grown from a tiny sprig of box which Mrs. Madison plucked from her bouquet at the inauguration of her husband and ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... was enchanted with the gorgeousness of her party of young people, and when Patty gave her a sprig of seaweed to tuck in her bodice, she felt as if she belonged to the ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... during the fight, that our wanderer found his best repose that day. Sitting down here on a mound in the graveyard, he looked off across Charles River towards the battle-ground, whose incipient monument, at that period, was hard to see, as a struggling sprig of corn in a chilly spring. Upon those heights, fifty years before, his now feeble hands had wielded both ends of the musket. There too he had received that slit upon the chest, which afterwards, in the affair with the Serapis, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... The semi-transparent sprig of mistletoe, which Seraphine Dasher had mischievously suspended over the doorway, looked like a chaplet of pearls; the pointed stems of yew became frosted in silver; the variegated holly was transformed into branches ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... for their glory since they had last beheld it. At some unnatural hour of the morning the dairyman had caused the yawning chimney-corner to be whitened, and the brick hearth reddened, and a blazing yellow damask blower to be hung across the arch in place of the old grimy blue cotton one with a black sprig pattern which had formerly done duty there. This renovated aspect of what was the focus indeed of the room on a full winter morning threw a smiling demeanour over the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... or sharp instrument. Achilleus dies by an arrow-wound in the heel; the thigh of Adonis is pierced by the boar's tusk, while Odysseus escapes with an ugly scar, which afterwards secures his recognition by his old servant, the dawn-nymph Eurykleia; Sigurd is slain by a thorn, and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe; and in the myth of the Sleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into her long winter sleep when pricked by the point of the spindle. In her cosmic palace, all is locked in icy repose, naught thriving save the ivy which defies ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Dele broke off a sprig for herself, and one for Hanny. The spaces were larger, the houses farther apart. On the west side was a tree-nursery and garden, and two quaint old frame-houses that hardly looked large enough for any one to live in; but ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... but masters of driving; driving was in fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen and imitate the slang and behaviour of coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach claimed as his unquestionable right; and then these sprigs would smoke cigars and drink sherry with the coachmen in bar-rooms, and on the road; and, when bidding them farewell, would give them ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... up to her, the ragged man laid upon the shelf of the wicket his precious bill—it was now wadded into a greenish-yellow wisp like a sprig of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... holly. But if anybody had seen Fleda's face! while she seemed to be busied in cutting as large a quantity as possible of the rich shining leaves and bright berries. Her grandfather's kindness, and her effort to meet it had wrung her heart; she hardly knew what she was doing, as she cut off sprig after sprig, and threw them down at her feet; she was crying sadly, with even audible sobs. She made a long job of her bunch of holly. But when at last it must come to an end, she choked back her tears, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... re-elected to Congress we had a glorious reception at our house in the country, and among others that came to it was a Mr. Sterling, the son of my father's college chum, and a promising young sprig of the law, father said. He came to stay a day or two in the house as a visitor before the reception, and was to leave the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... virtue dwells, From courts inclusive down to cells: What preachers talk, or sages write; These will I gather and unite, And represent them to mankind Collected in that infant's mind. This said, she plucks in Heaven's high bowers A sprig of amaranthine flowers. In nectar thrice infuses bays, Three times refined in Titan's rays; Then calls the Graces to her aid, And sprinkles thrice the newborn maid: From whence the tender skin assumes A sweetness above all perfumes: From whence a cleanliness remains, Incapable of outward stains: ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... overseer was 'straddle his big horse at three o'clock in the mornin', roustin' the hands off to the field. He got them all lined up and then come back to the house for breakfas'. The rows was a mile long and no matter how much grass was in them, if you leaves one sprig on your row they beats you nearly to death. Lots of times they weighed cotton by candlelight. All the hands took dinner to the field in buckets and the overseer give them fifteen minutes to git dinner. He'd ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... laboratory of the leaf, the place where certain inorganic, lifeless substances such as water, lime, sulphur, potash, and phosphorus are transformed and converted into living and organic vegetable matter, and from which this is sent forth to build up every part of the tree from deepest root to topmost sprig. It is in the leaves also that all the food of man and all other animals is prepared, for if any do not feed upon vegetable substances directly but upon flesh, that flesh nevertheless has been made only as vegetable food has been eaten to form it. It is, as the Bible says, "The ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... But what is that green plant up there? It looks as if the oak tree were all dead except that one sprig of green. Strange that it should keep only ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Bloody dissectors, worse than ten Monroes, He hacks to teach, they mangle to expose: By blockhead's daring into madness stung, His heart by wanton, causeless malice wrung, His well-won ways—than life itself more dear— By miscreants torn who ne'er one sprig must wear; Foil'd, bleeding, tortur'd in th' unequal strife, The hapless Poet flounces on through life, Till, fled each hope that once his bosom fired, And fled each Muse that glorious once inspir'd, Low-sunk in squalid, unprotected age, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and his head was a mall; For his colour, my pains and your trouble I'll spare, For the creature was wholly denuded of hair, And, except for two things, as bare as my nail,— A tuft of a mane and a sprig of a tail. Now such as the beast was, even such was the rider, With head like a nutmeg, and legs like a spider; A voice like a cricket, a look like a rat, The brains of a goose, and the heart of a cat: But now with our horses, what sound and what rotten, Down ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... mixture. Being penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals—cats—when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something more in these sympathies than philosophy ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... of the guests were younger than myself. But it was one of those cases where a refusal might be misconstrued, and so I went. We sat around the white tablecloth en masse, for dinner; and in the course of the passing of viands, Miss Sprig was asked to help herself to olives that happened ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... portly, perhaps, but curving into magnificent outlines, which were half accentuated by the strange costume which she wore. Her hair, black but plentifully shot with grey, was brushed plainly back from her high forehead, and was gathered under a small round felt hat, like that of a man, with one sprig of feather in the band as a concession to her sex. A double-breasted jacket of some dark frieze-like material fitted closely to her figure, while her straight blue skirt, untrimmed and ungathered, was cut so short ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... riding-coat, calling itself a pet-en-l'air, made of a dark green (green I think it had been) brocade, with coloured and silver flowers, and lined with furs; boddice laced, a foul dimity petticoat sprig'd, velvet muffeteens on her arms, grey stockings and slippers. Her face less changed in twenty years than I could have imagined; I told her so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed to have taken it for flattery, but she did, and literally gave me a box on ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... new-made grave, on which the snow is lying. I know, I know! Drape thyself not in white like the others, but in mourning stole of crape; and instead of dance music, let there haunt around thee the service for the dead! I know that sprig of mistletoe, O Spirit in the midst! Under it I swung the girl I loved—girl no more now than I am a boy—and kissed her spite of blush and pretty shriek. And thee, too, with fragrant trencher in hand, over which blue tongues of flame ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... and went off the ride in the opposite direction—to tread the moss that had been crushed by Norah's footsteps, to push against the branches that had touched her shoulders, to see the dead flowers that had dropped from her hands. He found a shriveled sprig or two of her woodland posy, and carried them to the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... and boy seeks an even-leaved sprig of ash; first of either sex that finds one calls out cyniver, and is answered by first of opposite sex that succeeds; and these two, if omen fails not, will ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... our bully opponent, "do you go into the crowd and take a few bets on my account, as I am in want of money, and after I've killed this young sprig of insolence, I intend to go on a spree. Take ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... several parts of the North of England, when a funeral takes place, a basin full of Sprigs of Box-wood is placed at the door of the house from which the Coffin is taken up, and each person who attends the funeral ordinarily takes a Sprig of this Box-wood, and throws it into the grave of the deceased.—W. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... those of Seville. A straight sword by his side and a painted long-bow at his shoulder proclaimed him a bowman. A white surcoat with the red lion of St. George upon it covered his broad chest, while a sprig of new-plucked furze at the side of his steel cap gave a touch of gaiety to ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... sweet-looking old lady in her white cap and embroidered kerchief, and Miss Sherwin said her presence gave just the grandmotherly touch their party needed. Miss Moore decorated her with a sprig of holly, and every one tried to make her have a good time. The guests were all brought to her corner and introduced, and then, while the rest were busy trying to guess the menu, Mr. Clark came and sat beside her and talked of ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... lace—it would tear very soon; one would be afraid to run; and do you see I know how it is made—all that lace. I know how blind the eyes get over it, and how the hearts ache; I know how the old women starve, and the little children cry; I know that there is not a sprig of it that is not stitched with pain; the great ladies do not think, I dare say, because they have never worked at it or watched the others: but I have. And so, you see, I think if I wore it I should feel sad, and if a nail caught on it I should feel as ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... moralizing; spoke not to any man of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying [Footnote: Buoying: enlivening, cheering.] word, or trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and while clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... distance and wait for the morning to attack. The Royalist word for the night was, 'We are with you,' and their sign, that each man had a handkerchief tied round his right arm. The word for the other army was, 'Emmanuel, God with us,' and their signal, a sprig of furze in ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... to be offered to the memory of a chief of fairest fame. Humbly will I lay them on the grave of Iver." On a grave in the church-yard at Hay, or the Hay, as it is commonly spoken, flowers had evidently been planted, but only one solitary sprig of sweet-briar had taken root.] Indelibly impress'd, that tends, In more than language comprehends, To teach us, in our solemn hours, That we ourselves are ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... woodland rubbish. There are two kinds of creeping green very common in all moist wooded lands at the North—the kind with leaves rising in whorls, and that with a stem covered with bristle-like spikes. This last variety has leaves, not very abundant,—which resemble a sprig of young fir, and is sometimes called "ground-fir." It is of a deep rich green color, but not so graceful for trimming as the other kind. Besides the creeping green, there are many varieties of what children call "tree-green," independent little plants rooted deep in ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... these mountains, where to this day the people burn incense to their memory. Another legend states that the people of this district were first taught the use of tea as a beverage by a venerable man who suddenly appeared among them, holding a sprig in his hand, from which he proposed that they should make a decoction and drink it. On their doing so and approving the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... one of the last of the old school of polished gentlemen, being seated with a party of ladies in the stage-box of Drury-lane theatre, a sprig of modern fashion came in booted and spurred. At the end of the act, the duke rose, and made the young man a ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... at a corner of Old Market and sold little bundles of dried sage and sweet marjoram, and sassafras and cinnamon, and soup-bunches made of bits of vegetables tied together—a bit of parsley and a bit of celery and a bit of carrot and a sprig of summer savory, all for one cent. Then at Christmas-time he displayed wreaths, which he and his little mother made at home, and as the spring came on he brought wild flowers that ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... divination practised at the period of the harvest moon is thus described in an old chap-book. When you go to bed, place under your pillow a prayer-book open at the part of the matrimonial service 'with this ring I thee wed'; place on it a key, a ring, a flower, and a sprig of willow, a small heart-cake, a crust of bread, and the following cards:—the ten of clubs, nine of hearts, ace of spades, and the ace of diamonds. Wrap all these in a thin handkerchief of gauze or muslin, and on getting into bed, cross your hands, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... loved each other too well for that defect in my character to make any difference. The wedding-day was at last fixed. I had presented her with funds to buy her trousseau, as they were not at all well off, when a young sprig of English nobility visited the Colonies, and became acquainted with them. The mother played her cards well, for that cursed snob married my girl under my very nose, and used the trousseau I had provided. She sent me a letter, in which she stated she had never loved me as I deserved ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... North of England, when a funeral takes place, a basin full of sprigs of boxwood is placed at the door of the house from which the coffin is taken up, and each person who attends the funeral ordinarily takes a sprig of this boxwood, and throws it into ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... gained and my vanity thus disburthened, I left the divine man, and hastened to Bruton-street, to defend subscription with ten fold vigor. My young laurels were ripening apace: they were already in bud, and were suddenly to bloom. Every new sprig of success burst forth in new arguments, new tropes, and new denunciations. My margin was loaded with the names of High Church heroes, and my manuscript began to swell to a ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the flesh, and therefore she had not the pangs and travel of woman upon her, she brought him forth without the curse of the flesh. These be the Fathers' comparisons. As bees draw honey from the flower without offending it, as Eve was taken out of Adam's side without any grief to him, as a sprig issues out of the bark of a tree, as the sparkling light from the brightness of the star, such ease was it to Mary to bring forth her first born son; and therefore having no weakness in her body, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... presence and disappearance of the light of an individual, which did not seem to be the result of will, but produced by situation. During the time the insect crawled along the ground, or upon the fine grass, the glow was hidden; but on its mounting any little blade, or sprig of moss, it turned round and presented the luminous caudal spot, which, on its falling or regaining its level, was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... the innermost slice first, & the other two upon it, being very well seasoned every where and bind it up hard with tape, then put it into a stone pot a little bigger than the collar, and pour upon it a pint of claret wine, and half a pint of wine vinegar, a sprig of rosemary, and a few bay-leaves; bake it very well, and before it be quite cold, take it out of the pot, and you may keep it dry as ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... and which, with its long lances, had the advantage of its adversaries, who were armed only with their claymores. It was then the turn of the Cordons to draw back, seeing which, the northern clans rallied and returned to the fight, each soldier having a sprig of heather in his cap that his comrades might recognise him. This unexpected movement determined the day: the Highlanders ran down the hillside like a torrent, dragging along with them everyone who could have wished to oppose their passage. Then Murray seeing that the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Ester urged. "This monogram in the corner is lovely, and that is the dearest little sprig ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... upon a scrap of white heather which marked the Service for the Burial of the Dead. Her tears fell upon the faded sprig, and she brushed her hand swiftly across her eyes, looking more closely as certain words underlined caught her attention. Other words had been written by her father's hand ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Nora?" and she stooped quickly like a child to pick some of the dandelions as if she had found gold. She had a sprig of wild-cherry blossom in her dress, which she must have found a good way out ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... shyness at all. For Fred was a cheery spirit difficult to abash, and by the coming of spring knew all of the best-looking girl students in the place—knew them well enough, it appeared, to speak of them not merely by their first names but by abbreviations of these. He had become fashion's sprig, a "fusser" and butterfly, and he reproached his roommate for shunning ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... been in my power to make a great man of you, but I have educated you to be an honest man. I have taken care of the tree, while young, and now it is grown up, one branch decays after the other. And if it must be so, that no green sprig shall henceforth flourish, then I will turn my eyes from it, visit it no more, nor live on the spot where the withered stem, that I am ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... slow tortures of separation, may break not his faith. No one that has loved will dream even death too terrible a price to pay for the revelation of love. For that revelation once made can never be recalled. As a little sprig of lavender will perfume a queen's wardrobe, so will a short year of love keep sweet a long life. And love's best gifts death can never take away. Nay, indeed, death does not so much rob as enrich the gifts of love. The dead face that was ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... his own possessions in Normandy, and the Count of Anjou, when he became King, still held the lands he had held as Count, so that the Kings of England held a great part of France as well as England. The Counts of Anjou used to wear a sprig of broom, or planta genista, in their helmets, and from this they were called the ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... church unperceived at the beginning of service. Believing that the little gallery door alluded to was quite disused, he ascended the external flight of steps at the top of which it stood, and examined it. The pale lustre yet hanging in the north-western heaven was sufficient to show that a sprig of ivy had grown from the wall across the door to a length of more than a foot, delicately tying the panel to the stone jamb. It was a decisive proof that the door had not been opened at least since Troy ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... a dollar for your daughter's bridal bouquet," said the old maid; "you shall have a beautiful little bunch for a nosegay, full of blossoms. Do you see how splendidly the tree has grown? It has been raised from only a little sprig of myrtle that you gave me on the day after my betrothal, and from which I was to make my own bridal bouquet when a year had passed: but that day never came; the eyes were closed which were to have been my light and joy through life. In the depths of the sea my beloved sleeps ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... King Edward I. granted a Public Seal, with arms (as for England), to the islands of Jersey and Guernsey. The arms for Guernsey now differ only from those of Jersey in being surmounted by a sprig of laurel, or another plant. It is not, however, stated why or when this sprig was conferred. The ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... Grounds, and he walked to church by way of River Street. Above the stone wall on the west side of River Street was an abundant growth of tansy. It was Judge Nelson's invariable habit to pick a sprig of tansy on his way to Sunday morning service, and he entered the church absently holding the pungent herb to his nostrils, as he made his way to the pew now marked by a ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... behind your jewels, beside packets of yellow letters, the handwriting of which we will not guess at, there is a little museum of sacred relics—the last shoes in which he played about on the gravel the day he complained of being cold, the remains of some broken toys, a dried sprig of box, a little cap, his last, in a triple wrapper, and a thousand trifles that are a world to you, poor woman, that are the fragments of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... appreciation of their beauty is as phenomenal as is that beauty itself. Those who can afford the luxury possess the shrubs in private; those who cannot, feast their eyes on the public specimens. From a sprig in a vase to a park planted on purpose, there is no part of them too small or too great to be excluded from Far Oriental affection. And of the two "drawing-rooms" of the Mikado held every year, in April and November, both are garden-parties: the one given at the time and with ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... complain, This infant shall restore my reign. I'll search where every virtue dwells, From courts inclusive down to cells: What preachers talk, or sages write; These will I gather and unite, And represent them to mankind Collected in that infant's mind. This said, she plucks in Heaven's high bowers A sprig of amaranthine flowers. In nectar thrice infuses bays, Three times refined in Titan's rays; Then calls the Graces to her aid, And sprinkles thrice the newborn maid: From whence the tender skin assumes A sweetness above all perfumes: From whence a cleanliness ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... on DOROTHEA'S hand. There it was, the little neat, pretty handwriting, the dear old up-and-down strokes that I had not looked at for many a long year,—the Mediterranean heath, which grew on the sunniest banks of Fitz-Boodle's existence, and here found, dear, dear little sprig! in rude Galwagian bog-lands. ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... expence of the settlement to the Company; but from the locality of its situation, it is convenient for their other islands. They had the monopoly of the sandlewood trade, which is used in all temples, mosques, and places of worship in the East, every Chinese having a sprig of it burning day and night ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... hasty glance around, she perceived him, not rushing towards her, but dancing with Sara, who was looking more beautiful and brilliant than ever. The rose which Petrea had given him—faithless knight!—together with the myrtle-sprig on which she had speculated, were both of them placed in Sara's bosom. The eyes of "le plus vaillaut" were incessantly riveted upon "la plus belle," as Sara was then unanimously declared to be. The glory ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Congress we had a glorious reception at our house in the country, and among others that came to it was a Mr. Sterling, the son of my father's college chum, and a promising young sprig of the law, father said. He came to stay a day or two in the house as a visitor before the reception, and was to leave the morning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... last week, with the hand that had ruined her son's career. Much more important, it seemed clear enough to West that the boy had only been weak, and had been tempted into misbehavior by his older and more wilful comrade. West had never liked young Jones. He was a rawboned, unkempt sprig of the masses, who had not been included in any of the student suppers at the president's house. Jones's refusal to speak out fully on all the details of the affair pointed strongly, so West argued, to consciousness of damning guilt. The path of administrative duty appeared plain. West, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... The little sprig of Mistletoe shot through the air, pierced the heart of Balder, and in a moment the beautiful god lay dead upon the field. A shadow rose out of the deep beyond the worlds and spread itself over heaven and earth, for the light of the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... through Matilda, daughter of Henry I and the Saxon princess. She married Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This Geoffrey, called "the handsome," always wore in his helmet a sprig of the broom-plant of Anjou (Planta genista), hence their son, Henry II. of England, was known as ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... man, and he had a little gun, And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead; He shot Johnny Sprig through the middle of his wig, And knocked it right off his head, ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... stand upright in a round, shallow bowl, just as if they were growing up out of a little pool—a marvellously artistic effect. The china was very artistic, too, Japanese, with curious-looking dragons in soft old-blue. And, after the orange, she had a finger-bowl with a little sprig of rose-geranium she could crunch between her fingers till it sent out a heavenly odour. It was just like Aunt Isabel to have rose-geranium in ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... of Jews—petty merchants of the Trastevere—were leaving as Vergilius entered. The emperor, now alone save for his young caller, rose and gave him a sprig of laurel. ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... Singleside, descended of the very ancient and honourable house of Ellangowan, had caused this monument to be erected for himself and his descendants. A reasonable number of scythes and hour-glasses, and death's heads, and cross-bones, garnished the following sprig of sepulchral poetry, to the memory of the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... best during this Journey; here unfortunately very few). [—OEuvres de Frederic,—xxvii. iii. 248-273 (September, 1754, and onwards).] Winter done, Wilhelmina went still South, to Italy, to Naples, back by Venice:—at Naples, undergoing the Grotto del Cane and neighborhood, Wilhelmina plucked a Sprig of Laurel from Virgil's Grave, and sent it to her Brother in the prettiest manner;—is home at Baireuth, new ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... enough for aught," said Ebbo, "but I thought he knew where to begin. Does he not know who is head of the house of Adlerstein, since he must tamper with a mechanical craftsman, cap in hand to any sprig of nobility! I would ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the pretty women and spirited men of the South. As fragrant in sentiment as a sprig of magnolia, and as full of mystery and racial troubles as any romance of "after ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and scraped a hole in the earth; and laid moss in it, and put the mavis softly on its green and fragrant bier, and covered it with handfuls of fallen rose leaves, and with a sprig or ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... of privation. Tartarin meant to act like they did, and from that day forward he lived upon water broth alone. The water broth of Tarascon is a few slices of bread drowned in hot water, with a clove of garlic, a pinch of thyme, and a sprig of laurel. Strict diet, at which you may believe poor Sancho made ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... this. Charles picked a sprig of white heather on the hill one afternoon, after a picnic lunch, I regret to say, when he had taken perhaps a glass more champagne than was strictly good for him. He was not exactly the worse for it, but he was excited, good-humoured, ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... curious, yet a comprehensible circumstance, that the tastes which thus show themselves in the development, by natural selection, of lovely flowers, should also show themselves in the marked preference for beautiful mates? Poised on yonder sprig of harebell stands a little purple-winged butterfly, one of the most exquisite among our British kinds. That little butterfly owes its own rich and delicately shaded tints to the long selective action of a million generations among its ancestors. So we find throughout that the most beautifully ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen and imitate the slang and behaviour of coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach claimed as his unquestionable right; and then these sprigs would smoke cigars and drink sherry with the coachmen in bar-rooms, and on the road; and, when bidding them farewell, would give them a guinea or a half-guinea, and shake them by the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... England, Henry I., after the death of his son by shipwreck, declared his daughter Matilda his heir. She was the widow of Henry V., the emperor of Germany. In 1127 she married Geoffrey, count of Anjou, surnamed Plantagenet on account of his habit of wearing a sprig of broom (genet) in his bonnet. Henry left Matilda, whom he called the "Empress," under the charge of his nephew, Stephen of Blois, who got himself elected king by the barons or great landowners,—as there was no law regulating the succession of the crown,—and was crowned ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Queen is pleased to order that in future on St. Patrick's Day all ranks in Her Majesty's Irish regiments shall wear as a distinction a sprig of shamrock in their head-dress to commemorate the gallantry of Her Irish soldiers during the recent battles ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... where you are some day to live. Come, and I will row you on the lake. You remember what you said in your letter that you dreamt?—that we were floating over the shadow of the Abbey to the nuns at work by torchlight felling the cypress, and they handed us each a sprig. Why, darling, it was the best omen in the world, their felling the old trees. And you write such lovely letters. So pure and sweet they are. I love the nuns for having ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a sprig of wild flowers a-dance in his new-gotten, gleaming bascinet, his long-bow upon his mailed shoulder, and, strapped to his wide back, a misshapen bundle that clinked melodiously with every swinging stride; and, while he sang, the ragged rogues about him ceased their noise and ribaldry to hearken ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... applied. One of them she gently bound upon the forehead of her husband, and the other upon his left arm. She threw perfumes into the brazier, and as the form of her husband was becoming indistinct from the smoke which filled the room, she muttered a few sentences, waved over him a small sprig of some shrub which she held in her white hand, and then closing the curtains, and removing the brazier she sat down by the side ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... inherited from his father's house, was corrected in him by the vivacity of the Donnaz blood. This now sparkled in his grey eye, and gave a glow to his cheek, as he stepped across the threshold, treading on a sprig of cherry-blossom that had ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... afforded. Among the plants thus blessed the juniper has been peculiarly invested with the power and privilege of putting to flight the spirits of evil and destroying the charms of the magician. Thus, even to this day, the stables in Italy are preserved from demons and thunderbolts by means of a sprig ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... blossom'd sloe my dear Chloe requested A sprig her fair breast to adorn, From the white blossom'd sloe my dear Chloe requested, A sprig her fair breast to adorn. No! By heav'n! I exclaimed, may I perish, If ever I plant in that ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... their olive, swore foe to a quarrel, Protects from the thunder and lightning of rows; Their sprig of shillelagh is nothing but laurel, Which flourishes ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... son of Geoffrey Plan-tag'e-net, Count of Anjou in France, and Matilda, daughter of King Henry I and granddaughter of William the Conqueror. Count Geoffrey used to wear in his hat a sprig of the broom plant, which is called in Latin planta genista. From this he adopted the name Plantagenet, and the kings who descended from him and ruled England for more than three hundred years are ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... which she spread a towel and placed four wax candles on it, which she lighted; then she took a sprig of box, which was hanging over the chimney glass, and put it between the four candles, in a plate, which she filled with clean water, as she had no holy water. But, after a moment's rapid reflection, she threw a pinch of salt into the water, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... inhabited, since the Scriptures, in the first place, the fulfilled prophecies of which attest the truth thereof for the past, can not be suspected of telling tales; and, in the second place, it is really too absurd to say that men could ever cross such an immense ocean to implant in those parts a sprig of the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... case with those who had an eye to the fortune rather than the heiress, taking the latter as the only means of obtaining the former; and first among this number was Louis Durant, a man of corrupt principles, and deeply depraved feelings. A sprig of a noble family of small pretensions, whose pride far exceeded their means, he was desirous of obtaining wealth; and being too indolent to enter a profession, too poor to become a merchant, and too proud ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... walking stick. He selected a blackthorn, twirled it, saluted, and posed before the mirror. Not so bally rotten. He would pass. Next, he remembered that there were some flowers in the dining room—window boxes with scarlet geraniums. He broke off a sprig and drew it through ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... got no portion small of buffeting and tussling, At last he reached the banquet-hall, where sat the mayor a-guzzling, And by his side his lady tall dressed out in white sprig muslin. ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the afternoon lolling on the grass under the lilacs, listlessly watching the woodpeckers on the dead pines. Chewing a sprig of mint, he lay there sprawling, hands clasping the back of his well-shaped head, soothed by the cadence of the chirring locusts. When at length he had drifted pleasantly close to the verge of slumber a voice from the road below ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... his shoulder proclaimed his profession, while his scarred brigandine of chain-mail and his dinted steel cap showed that he was no holiday soldier, but one who was even now fresh from the wars. A white surcoat with the lion of St. George in red upon the centre covered his broad breast, while a sprig of new-plucked broom at the side of his head-gear gave a touch of gayety and grace to his grim, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wanderer found his best repose that day. Sitting down here on a mound in the graveyard, he looked off across Charles River towards the battle-ground, whose incipient monument, at that period, was hard to see, as a struggling sprig of corn in a chilly spring. Upon those heights, fifty years before, his now feeble hands had wielded both ends of the musket. There too he had received that slit upon the chest, which afterwards, in the affair with the Serapis, being traversed by a cutlass wound, made him now the bescarred bearer ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... had some considerable vogue. The Romeo of the mutton-chop whiskers was expected to keep this delicate symbolism in view, and even to display his wit by some dainty conceits in it. An ignorance of the code was fraught with innumerable dangers. A sprig of lilac was a suggestion, a moss-rosebud pushed the matter, was indeed evidence to go to court upon; and unless Charlotte parried with white poplar—a by no means accessible flower—or apricot blossom, or failing ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... shortly before Christmas, undeniably glad to be back and very gentle with them all. She set to work almost immediately on the gifts, wrapping them and tying them with methodical exactness, sticking a tiny sprig of holly through the ribbon bow, and writing cards with neatness and care. She hung up wreaths and decorated the house, and when she was through with her work she went to her room and sat with her hands folded, not thinking. She ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and throw a quart of potatoes in boiling water, with a sprig of thyme, two onions, a bay-leaf, two sprigs of sweet basil, two cloves, salt, and pepper; when cooked, take the potatoes out carefully, peel and cut them in two, place them on a warm dish, pour on them a white ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... confusion which ended about six o'clock in a general flight, when the sportsmen came home, and the guests went to their rooms. An hour afterward all these people met in the large drawing-room; the ladies in low-bodied evening dresses; the gentlemen in dress-coats and white satin waistcoats, with a sprig of mignonette and a white rose in their buttonholes. After dinner, they danced in the drawing-rooms, where a mad waltz would even restore energy to the gentlemen tired out by six hours ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... vine-thatched portico and lights his pipe, passing to his guests pipes, cigars, and tobacco in various forms, leaving them to choose their favorite mode of using it. Sambo is never more contented than when he burns the weed in a cob pipe, and draws the delicious smoke through an elder sprig or mullen stem. But the maid is happiest of all when with her lover she sits face to face, and they 'dip' together from ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Sidney. As soon as she had read the note, she gave it to me, and placed the ring upon her finger. Then severing a small branch from a myrtle plant, which we kept in our room as a relic of home, she placed it, with a sprig of box, in an envelope, and, after directing it to Philip Sidney, gave it to Fan, who enclosed it in a letter to her brother. The note which Clara gave ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... use; the cenotaph or mock coffin with the sign of the cross upon its lid, referred to the sun's crossing of the celestial equator at the Autumnal Equinox, and to the figurative death of the genius of that luminary in the lower hemisphere; whose resurrection at the Vernal Equinox is typified by the sprig of acacia sprouting near the head of the coffin. The serpent, issuing from the small vessel to the left, represented the symbol of the Lord of Evil under whose dominion was placed the seasons of Autumn and Winter; and ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... tell Eunice might better be felled. As she walked she became uneasy, feeling that she had really imposed an unpleasant, possibly perilous, task upon the girl she scolded so freely yet already loved so dearly. Gathering a sprig of wintergreen she chewed it thoughtfully, and scarcely knew when she turned back to retrace her own steps to the cottage and learn what had befallen Katharine, who surely should have been in ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... lbs. of shin of beef, 3 carrots, 2 turnips, a large sprig of thyme, 2 onions, 1 head of celery, salt and pepper to ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... of dissipation or expansion, especially a quick one, particularly if there be an r, as if it were from spargo or separo: for example, spread, spring, sprig, sprout, sprinkle, split, splinter, spill, spit, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... well-oiled locks, and thus you have the "bar-keeper of the boat." His nether man need not be described. That is the unseen portion of his person, which is below the level of the bar. No cringing, smirking, obsequious counter-jumper he, but a dashing sprig, who, perhaps, owns his bar and all its contents, and who holds his head as high as either the clerk ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... "Double-bass was a big fellow, with a black mustache, to whom life was all a joke, which he expressed by a comical smile, and Viola was a young Hercules, so full of beer that he dreamed himself in heaven, and Oboe was a young sprig, just out from Munich, with a complexion of milk and roses, like a girl's, and miraculously bright spectacles on his pale blue eyes, and there they sat — Oboe and Viola and Double-bass — and ogled each other, and raised their brows, and snickered ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... beast; finally, I believe my good tutor, now a bishop, got tired of me. I was stupefied by surds; and I entered the university. Now, after thirty-seven years, I find that every ode of Horace, every chapter of Caesar, every line of Virgil I learned at school lies as a sprig of lavender in the folds of my memory—but I cannot even set and work out a common equation, or add up a ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... a bird, if it light on a sprig too slight The feathery freight to bear, Yet, conscious of wings, tosses fearless, and sings, Then drops—on ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... to her, the ragged man laid upon the shelf of the wicket his precious bill—it was now wadded into a greenish-yellow wisp like a sprig of celery ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... small part; morsel, particle &c (smallness) 32; installment, dividend; share &c (allotment) 786. debris, odds and ends, oddments, detritus; excerpta^; member, limb, lobe, lobule, arm, wing, scion, branch, bough, joint, link, offshoot, ramification, twig, bush, spray, sprig; runner; leaf, leaflet; stump; component part &c 56; sarmentum^. compartment; department &c (class) 75; county &c (region) 181. V. part, divide, break &c (disjoin) 44; partition &c (apportion) 786. Adj. fractional, fragmentary; sectional, aliquot; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... philosophy, the independence of mankind, and civil and political rights. With regard to men of science it was wholly different; those he held in real estimation; but men of letters, properly so called, were considered by him merely as a sprig ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... its flight towards the senate-house, consecrated by Pompey, whilst a crowd of other birds were seen to hang upon its flight in close pursuit. What might be the object of the chase, whether the little king himself, or a sprig of laurel which he bore in his mouth, could not be determined. The whole train, pursuers and pursued, continued their flight towards Pompey's hall. Flight and pursuit were there alike arrested; the little king was overtaken by his enemies, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... I looked lower down, there was a sweeter message still, for the mezereon was awake, with its tiny porcelain crimson flowers and its minute leaves of bright green, budding as I think Aaron's rod must have budded, the very crust of the sprig bursting into little flames of green ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and in it put slices of lean veal, ham, bacon, cuttings of beef, fowl, or game trimmings, three peppercorns, mushroom trimmings, a tomato, a carrot and a turnip cut up, an onion stuck with two cloves, a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme, parsley and marjoram. Put the lid on the stewpan and braize well for fifteen minutes, then stir in a tablespoonful of flour, and pour in a quarter pint of good boiling stock and boil very gently for fifteen minutes, then ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... finishing touches to whose toilette are being put in the solitary street; a last maternal glance is given the enormous bows of the sash, the folds at the waist. Her dress is of pearl-gray silk, her obi (sash) of mauve satin; a sprig of silver flowers trembles in her black hair; a parting ray of sunlight touches the little figure; five or six persons accompany her. Yes! it is undoubtedly Mademoiselle Jasmin; they are bringing me ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his stick, and playing the man. Huh! A little while after came Barbro walking up; she called to him once or twice. Very well; he stopped, so he did, but was a wounded lion. She sat down in the heather looking penitent; she fidgeted with a sprig, and a little after he too softened, and asked for a kiss, the last time, just to say good-bye, he said. No, she would not. "Be nice and be a dear, like you were last time," he begged, and moved round ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... rail fence. Markham's attention was called by some one to a shoat pig that had all day escaped the "slaughter of the innocents," and was at that moment making the best of his way toward the maternal nest. The temptation on Markham's part to capture this sprig of porkdom was too mighty to be overcome by any lingering fear of Alexandria's dungeon, so instantly clapping his musket to his shoulder he blazed away, with the result of piggy's dropping in his tracks, without so much as an audible ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... of this bullying Will Brant of mine," said the captain, with one of his pleasant smiles. "You clipped his comb right handsomely. And who may ye be, my brave young sprig?" ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... suit and so to seem careless and to lack to be dainty in mine eyes; for, indeed, she did be alway to wash herself and to make tidiness; and she to have a way now that she did set the armour-suit upon her, that had it to seem different, and she to have set a little sprig from the trees upon her breast, and in her girdle, and so to seem the more of a maid; and surely a man doth know and love these things; but not alway to have full knowing how that they be done. And, indeed, you to be likewise with me in this thing. And we all to ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... And now suppose I tell you all about these wonderful herbs?" Picking up a sprig of each, the Motherkin related its qualities, while Laura, with a pencil and paper, wrote down her words; then she fastened each sprig in a slip of paper with its name attached. After this she assisted the Motherkin in dressing Grim's ankle, carrying warm water, ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... on the cork in my hand. To keep it more firmly wedged in its place somebody had wrapped it round with a rag of calico print; and, discoloured though the rag was, I seemed to recall the pattern (a lilac sprig). Then, as our eyes met, it occurred to me that only two mornings before Mrs. Carkeek had worn a print gown of that same ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the most pathetic things about this Land of Exile is the useless effort to make English flowers grow. In Rika they must feel at home, for the whole air is scented with roses and mignonette. When Mrs. Royle took us to see her flowers, Boggley pulled a sprig of mignonette, sniffed it appreciatively, and handing it to ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Hall about seven in the evening. The Bishop stayed only to bless the meal, for the boat was waiting that was to carry him to a Convocation of the Church then sitting in Edinburgh. But he wore his sprig of rosemary on his vest, and he stood at Ragnor's right hand and watched him mix the Bride Cup, watched him mingle in one large silver bowl of pre-Christian age the pale, delicious sherry and fine sugar and spices and ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... cherished book, little sprays of dead bloom that shall be, in the dim and mysterious future, mementoes of the walks, the frolics, the joys that have belonged to this staid New England home. From the very parsonage door she has brought away a sprig of a rampant sweet-brier that has grown there this many a year, and its delicate leaflets ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... obtain its worth from my hand," said Sophie, smiling. "I understand you very well—a sprig of heather? I shall steal!" said she to the young wife, as she took a little sprig of heath and stuck it into his buttonhole. "Greet the grandmother ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... continual stroll, which relieved the numbness of her limbs after long hours spent, with bent knees, on a low chair, making bouquets. She fastened her violets together with marvellous deftness as she walked along. She counted out six or eight flowers, according to the season, doubled a sprig of cane in half, added a leaf, twisted some damp thread round the whole, and broke off the thread with her strong young teeth. The little bunches seemed to spring spontaneously from the layer of moss, so rapidly did she ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... the kind offer of his host, and when he approached the daughter to take leave of her, she graciously stuck a sprig of ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... endearment: it is usually applied by parents to a favourite daughter, or by a lover to his mistress; it is also used to distinguish the bride and the bridegroom, as 'hanna-yomie,' 'hanna-moko.' Floral love-tokens (although they only consist of a single sprig) are as much prized among the Japanese as among ourselves; and are, ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... the depths are turbulent. If Dublin is simmering, Belfast is boiling. The breed is different. The Northerner is not demonstrative, is slow to anger, but being moved is not easily appeased. The typical Irishman, with his cutaway coat, his pipe stuck in his conical caubeen, his "sprig of shillelagh," or bludgeon the Donnybrook Fair hero who "shpinds half a-crown, Mates wid a frind An' (for love) knocks him down" is totally unknown in these regions. The men who by their ability and industry have lifted Ireland out of the slough, given ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... rules on p. 356, but you may put a lump of sugar between the bars now and then, or a sprig of groundsel or water-cress. Do not give them cake; it is ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... say yes, but her blush and sparkling eyes answered him. The old gardener understood her, and was as good as his word. He began with cutting a beautiful sprig of a large purple geranium, then a slip of lemon myrtle. Ellen watched him as the bunch grew in his hand, and could hardly believe her eyes as one beauty after another was added to what became a most elegant bouquet. And most sweet too; to her ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Rose hastily, adding, with charming incoherence, while she twisted a sprig of honeysuckle in her restless fingers, 'Some cousins of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... work—this swigging away upon sheets and halliards just upon night-fall; and there he is upon the poop looking as black as thunder, because, I suppose, we're not more lively over the job. And what's it all for? Why, simply because that young sprig, Ned, happens to sight a sail ahead of us; and because we happen to be a smart ship the skipper won't be satisfied until we've overhauled her. This is just the beginning of it; it'll be like this every time we happen to see anything ahead; you mark ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... here were his precious relics, and here he offered up his devotions, half Christian, half pagan, with never-failing ardor. From the long narrow box which the fort soldiers had noticed came an old sabre, a worn and faded uniform of the French grenadiers, a little dried sprig, its two withered leaves tied in their places with thread, and a coarse woodcut of the great Napoleon; for Jacques was a soldier of the Empire. The uniform hung on the wall, carefully arranged on pegs as a man would wear it, and the ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... replied her little maid, Susan, half-frightened by the strange agitation of her mistress. "I plucked the sprig in our landlady's garden; for I remembered that you loved hawthorn-blossoms, and used often to buy them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... case dat's all I wuz big enough ter do, an' lemmie tell yo' dat when de war wuz ober I ain't had nary a sprig of hair on my haid, case de wooden buckets what I toted on ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... eye before it does your palate. When I ordered fried eggs, they were brought on a snow-white napkin, which was artistically folded upon a piece of ornamented tissue-paper that covered a china plate; if I asked for cold ham, it came in flakes, arrayed like great rose-leaves, with a green sprig or two of parsley dropped upon it, and surrounded by a border of calfs'-foot jelly, like a setting of crystals. The bread revealed new qualities in the wheat, it was so sweet and nutty; and the fried potatoes, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Black-Pepper, a Drachm of Nutmeg beaten fine, and as much Cloves, a Scruple of Ginger, two or three little Bits of dry'd Orange-Peel, half an Ounce of Mustard-Seed bruised, half a dozen Shallots bruised a little, five or six Bay-Leaves, a little Sprig of Sweet Basil, or Sweet Marjoram, a Sprig of Thyme, and a little Cinnamon; then stop your Jar close, and let the Mixture infuse for twenty-four Hours upon hot Embers: when this is done, strain your Composition through a Linnen ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... week, Hankey had gone up to Captain Frere's house with a return from Troke, and coming back through the garden had plucked a flower. Dawes had asked him for this flower, offering two days' rations for it. Hankey, who is not a bad-hearted man, gave him the sprig. "There were tears in his eyes as ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... all. He carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... have turned their brains. But I know a cooling draught that will heal them of their sickness. Jeremy, do you step into the garden and bring me a handful of fresh violet leaves, one blossom from the heartsease and a sprig of rosemary. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... the first blossoms. But New England does nothing in gay companies. It has been taught to distrust ceremonies and expression of any sort. It rejoices with reticence, it appreciates with a reservation. And yet I have seen a sprig of arbutus in rough and clumsy buttonholes on weather-faded lapels which, the rest of the twelve-month through, know no other flower. And when, in unfamiliar country, I have interrupted the ploughing ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... fall Must sink the whole island once for all, Or watch the silenter, stealthier seas Feeling their way to you more and more; If they once should clutch you high as the knees, They would whirl you down like a sprig of kelp, Beyond all reach of hope or help;— And such in a storm ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... appeared, the Author had received, he never learned from whom, a sprig of laurel enclosed with this quotation ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... she was married about a year after Fanny Clayton's wedding, to a sprig of gentility with about as much force of character as herself. This took place on the same night that Lieut. Harwood, son of Mrs. Harwood before alluded to, led to the altar Mary Clayton, the sister of Fanny, who was conceded by all, to be the loveliest girl they had ever seen—lovely, not only ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... In several parts of the North of England, when a funeral takes place, a bason full of Sprigs of Box-wood is placed at the door of the house from which the Coffin is taken up, and each person who attends the funeral ordinarily takes a Sprig of this Box-wood, and throws it into the ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... decoy almost too easy. This is a teal—fly like thunder and are about as big as a grasshopper. We'll make our flock mostly of these. Those widgeon, there, wouldn't do us much good. Might put in a few sprig. They're a handsome duck, Bobby; but the most beautiful thing in feathers is the wood-duck. Probably won't get ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... your eyes they're fine, and while you're wondering whether or not you'll swallow them, they slip down and you begin to look for another; and then there was little dabs of fried fish laid on a lettuce leaf, with a sprig of parsley beside it, and a round of lemon. They took the lemon in their fingers and squeezed it over their fish. It looked a little mussy to me, but I guess it's manners all right; and then there ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... all white rabbits, but there was too much of excitement to dwell long upon that humble tragedy. There was the manner in which the Israelites identified themselves, by marking their doors with a sprig of hyssop dipped in the blood of a male lamb without blemish. Vividly did he see the good God gliding cautiously from door to door, looking for the mark of blood, and passing the lucky doors where it was seen ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... these various methods of exorcism I cannot make any positive statement. I have neither sufficient evidence to affirm their efficacy nor to deny it. Rye and mistletoe are considered safeguards against werwolves, as is also a sprig from a mountain ash. This latter tree, by the way, attracts evil spirits in some countries—Ireland, India, Spain, for instance—and repels them in others. It was held in high esteem, as a preservative against phantasms and witches, by the Druids, and it may to this day be ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Pompey. There was in the interior of the building, among other decorations, a statue of Pompey. The day before the Ides of March, some birds of prey from a neighboring grove came flying into this hall, pursuing a little wren with a sprig of laurel in its mouth. The birds tore the wren to pieces, the laurel dropping from its bill to the marble pavement of the floor below. Now, as Caesar had been always accustomed to wear a crown of laurel on great occasions, and had always evinced a particular fondness for that decoration, that ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... until tender, with a seasoning of salt, pepper and a bouquet of herbs. (1 or 2 cloves, 1 or 2 small onions, 1 bay leaf, sprig of parsley, some whole black pepper tied in a little white bag and removed after an hour.) When done add to the stock some browned flour and butter, tomato juice to taste, and a little lime juice. Garnish with triangles of toast ...
— The Cookery Blue Book • Society for Christian Work of the First Unitarian Church, San
... was one of the hopeful company of whom the poet complains, as was indicated by his "splent on spauld," (iron-plates on his shoulder,) his rusted spurs, and his long lance. An iron skull-cap, none of the brightest, bore for distinction a sprig of the holly, which was Avenel's badge. A long two-edged straight sword, having a handle made of polished oak, hung down by his side. The meagre condition of his horse, and the wild and emaciated look of the rider, showed their occupation could not be accounted an easy ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... a pansy, wot's called an 'Appy Thought; I'm gone on yaller "Glories" of the proper smelly sort; An' once I 'eld gerani-ums was gayer than the rest, But now I likes the lavender, a little sprig o' lavender, I likes a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... oasis. The Governor encourages his sons to industry, by giving each a plot of ground to cultivate for himself. I saw a fine field belonging to one of his sons, which has been under culture only three years. It is sown with barley and wheat, and planted with rows of sprig-palms, in the very childhood of growth; but, by the time the sons of the Marabout are married, and have young families, these green-shooting palm-sprigs will be branching trees high up, bearing mature and delicious fruit. Nature furnishes pretty and striking lessons ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... left the body at the corner of the hedge. We were pursuing them so closely that we arrived just after them. I found the body of my brother still warm. In one of his wounds a sprig was stuck with these words: 'Shot as a brigand by me, Claude Flageolet, corporal of the Third Battalion of Paris.' I took my brother's body, and had the skin removed from his breast. I vowed that this skin, pierced with three ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... delicious summer soup. Have a clear stock made with fresh green vegetables, such as lettuce, green onions, spinach, bunch parsley, sprig mint, &c., the shells wiped clean and about half of the peas—about 2 lbs. will be needed—reserving the finest. Rub through a sieve, return to saucepan and bring to boil. Add remainder of peas, boil 15 minutes, and pour into tureen over an ounce or so of butter. Some may prefer cream in place ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... woman to dream of wearing a sprig of myrtle, foretells to her an early marriage with a well-to do and ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... again, meerschaum in hand, the moonlight glinting on his slender figure, so trim and jaunty in the battery dress. Kinsey looked him over with a smile of soldierly approval and a whimsical comment on the contrast between the appearance of this young artillery sprig and that of his own stout personality, clad as he was in a bulging blue flannel sack-coat, only distinguishable in cut and style from civilian garb by its having brass buttons and a pair of tarnished old shoulder-straps. Ferry was a swell. His shell jacket fitted ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
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