"Fir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the velocity of lightning he struck the coachman full in the mouth, and the last blow was the severest of all, for it cut the coachman's lips nearly through; blows so quickly and sharply dealt I had never seen. The coachman reeled like a fir-tree in a gale, and seemed nearly unsensed. 'Ho! what's this? a fight! a fight!' sounded from a dozen voices, and people came running from all directions to see what was going on. The coachman, coming somewhat to himself, disencumbered ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... settled on a fir tree and sung of the joy of Heaven, quite convinced that the man in the hole, who could see neither sky, nor sea, nor meadow, ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... and lighted by two little windows, which opened into the courtyard. The entire apartment was made of wood. The floor was of unpainted fir boards. The walls were of the same material, painted blue from the floor upwards to about three feet, where the blue was unceremoniously stopped short by a stripe of bright red, above which the somewhat fanciful ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... rocks, and over a foaming cataract; there, a light column of bluish, curling smoke told of the shepherd's shieling, situated, bosomed in trees, amid some solitary pass of the mountains; here, the dark, melancholy pine reared its mournful head, companioned by the sable fir, the larch, the service-tree, and the wild cherry; there, the silvery willow laved its drooping branches in the stormy flood; whilst, with the white foam of the joyous exulting waters, all trees of beauty, majesty, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... from utmost fairyland Across the wintry snows; He makes the fir-tree and the spruce To blossom like ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... little more than a strip of rugged seacoast reaching northward to well within the Arctic Circle. Were it not for the influence of the "Gulf Stream drift," much of Norway would be a frozen waste for the greater part of the year. Vast forests of fir, pine, and birch still cover the greater part of the country, and the land which can be used for farming and grazing does not exceed eleven per cent of the entire area. But Norway, like Greece, [2] has an extent of shore-line out of all proportion to its superficial area. So numerous are ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Which for six thousand years had sear'd the heart Of nature, was repeal'd. And where the thorn Perplex'd the glens, and prickly briers the hills, Now, for the Word so spake and it was done, The fir-tree rear'd its stately obelisk, The cedar waved its arms of peaceful shade, The vine embraced the elm, and myrtles flower'd Among the fragrant orange-groves. No storms Vex'd the serene of heaven: but genial mists, Such as in Eden drench'd the willing soil, ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... officer was furious and went away threatening me with the law. But I had other ideas regarding the whereabouts of the murderers. An old gentleman living on Mill Creek, east of Prineville and about thirty miles from the scene of the murders, had told me of the finding of a cabin concealed in a fir thicket and that it contained both provisions and horsefeed and had the appearance of having been much used, but that there was no trail leading to it. As soon as I learned of the murders I made up my mind that the murderers would go to that cabin. I did not, for reasons ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... proposed fortress was to be placed on the tongue of land that lies between this basin and the sea. The place, well chosen from the point of view of the soldier or the fisherman, was unfit for an agricultural colony, its surroundings being barren hills studded with spruce and fir, and broad marshes buried ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... Irenius of Judea, and undertook that if he would let the Tyrians have a harbour on the sea towards AEthiopia, he would assist him in the building of a palace, in which he was then engaged; and bind himself to supply him with materials of cedar and fir, and squared stones. Irenius assenting, made over to Joramus the city and harbour of Ilotha. There were a great many date trees there, but as their timber was not suitable for constructing vessels, Joramus despatched eight thousand camels to Ilotha, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... happy inhabitants. The people were marked by a pastoral simplicity of manners, such as is still to be found in some of the remote and secluded hamlets of Ireland. The vale was green and shelving, having its cornfields, its pasturage, and its patches of fir, poplar, and mountain-ash intermingled, and creeping up on each side in wild but quiet beauty to the very mountain tops that enclosed it. At the head of the glen reposed a small clear sheet of water, as calm and unruffled as the village itself. ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... turn back her eyes afraid, Accelerates her hasty pace, But cannot anyhow evade Her shaggy myrmidon in chase. The bear rolls on with many a grunt: A forest now she sees in front With fir-trees standing motionless In melancholy loveliness, Their branches by the snow bowed down. Through aspens, limes and birches bare, The shining orbs of night appear; There is no path; the storm hath strewn Both bush and brake, ravine and steep, And all in ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the music when he joined the fashionable throng in the Temple Church. But there was no music to speak of at Windyhill. There was more sound of the bees outside, and the birds and the sighing bass of the fir-trees than of anything more carefully concerted. The organ was played with a curious drone in it, almost like that of the primitive bagpipe. But there was that one phrase, a strong strain of human appeal, enough to lift the world, nay, to let itself ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... to call me vulgar,' said Eugene, in a very plaintive voice, 'and I'll tell you what, Jass, I'm getting so fir—wursty, I mean, that I just can't go all the way back ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... began. For the next month, until Milly, having exhausted the social possibilities of Mackinac, had to move on to another "resort" in Wisconsin, she saw a great deal of Edgar Duncan. They walked through the fir woods by moonlight, boated on the lake under the stars, and read Milly's literary efforts on the piazza of the Thornton cottage. Duncan told her much about his ranch on the slope of the Ventura hills above the Pacific, of the indolent California life ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... had our lunch in the wood. We lighted a little fire of sticks and fir-cones, so as to be as gipsyish as we could, and we sat round the fire. We made a charming picture in our bright clothes, among what would have been our native surroundings if we had been real gipsies, ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... but they are among the vague recollections that bewilder our memory; they are among the things which come up in the strange, confused remembrance of the dying man in the last days of life. There is an old fir-tree, a twisted, strange-looking fir-tree, which will be among my last recollections, I know, as it was among my first. It was always before my eyes when I was three, four, five years old: I see the pyramidal top, rising over a mass of shrubbery; I see it always against a sunset-sky; always ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... and discoveries; he wrote to a friend in Philadelphia that he had secured for him a fine piece of Assyrian sculpture from one of the recently opened temples or palaces, representing a life size figure of a king, clad in royal robes, bearing in one hand a basket and in the other a fir cone. One portion of the stone was covered with hieroglyphics, and was as sharply cut as though it had been carved by a modern hand instead of by an artist who was sleeping in his grave when Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... end of the avenue. Mariana turned quickly down a narrow path leading into a dense fir grove; Nejdanov followed her. He was under the influence of a twofold astonishment; first, it puzzled him that this shy girl should suddenly become so open and frank with him, and secondly, that he was not in the least surprised at this frankness, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... His eyes were shining wickedly, but his voice was ominously suave and honeyed. "This boat, son, is a threemasted schooner, name of Nancy Hanks, Master Joshua Green, bound for the Solomon Islands with a cargo of Oregon fir." ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... incompatible with the federal laws. The affair was regarded in a different light by Obwalden, and, under the name, it is true, of an embassy to mediate between the parties in the valley, a delegation was sent thither, accompanied, however, by twenty-eight young men adorned with fir-twigs, the defiant badge of the old party. Instead of reconciliation they brought fiercer quarrels. The friends of the Reformation were roused, when they ventured to call them heretics. Deputies from both sides now hastened to Bern, with prayers for succor from one and a declaration ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... were hurting her. She looked automatically again at the high, uncurtained windows. In the last dusk she could just perceive outside a huge fir-tree swaying its boughs: it was as if she thought it rather than saw it. The rain came flying on the window panes. Ah, why had she no peace? These two men, why did they tear at her? Why did they not come—why was ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... Vikings. Though she was sixteen, her graceful body had retained most of the lines and slender curves of childhood; and she was long of limb and broad of shoulder. Her head was poised alertly above her strong young throat, and she was as straight as a fir-tree and as supple as a birch. A life out-of-doors had given to her skin a tone of warm brown, which, in a land that expected women to be lily-fair, was like a mask added to her disguise. The blackness ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... picture so engaging as Gerardmer when the sun shines, its gold-green slopes sprinkled with white chalets, its red-roofed village clustered about a rustic church tower, and at its feet the loveliest little lake in the world, from which rise gently the fir-clad heights. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... had man'd the wals, the towne surpriz'd Great grew the slaughter, bloudy waxt the fight, Like Troy, where all was fir'd, and all despis'd, But what stood gracious in the victors sight. Such was the wo of this great citty right: Here lay a Saint throwne downe, & here a Nun, Rude Sarazens which no high God agnis'd, Made all alike our wofull course ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... should always be accompanied with gestures,—simple, free, unstudied motions, descriptive, perhaps, of the sweep of the mother bird's wings as she soars away from the nest, or the waving of the fir-tree's branches as he sings to himself in the sunshine. This universal language is understood at once by the children, and not only serves as an interpreter of words and ideas, but gives life and attraction to ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... things: and the second, that among the tints which you can imitate, those which you thought the darkest will continually turn out to be in reality the lightest. Darkness of objects is estimated by us, under ordinary circumstances, much more by knowledge than by sight; thus, a cedar or Scotch fir, at 200 yards off, will be thought of darker green than an elm or oak near us; because we know by experience that the peculiar colour they exhibit, at that distance, is the sign of darkness of foliage. But when we try them through the cardboard, the near ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Haunerwiem on the other. Now stand still for a moment, I can show you the whole lie of the country from this point. Where we are standing belongs to your brother-in-law, his land reaches from my wheat-field up there to the right, as far as that small clump of fir-trees to the left. You see, Rexow is quite a small farm, there are only a few more acres belonging to it on the other side of the village. To the right up there is Warnitz; and in front of us, where the fallow ground begins, is Puempelhagen; and down there ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... too soft. He went through the long grass to a clump of young fir-trees, that were no higher than a man. The soft sharp boughs beat upon him, as he moved in keen pangs against them, threw little cold showers of drops on his belly, and beat his loins with their clusters of soft-sharp needles. There was a thistle ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... cenobitic and eremitical life. After seeing in a vision his monks mounting up a ladder to heaven all in white, he changed their habit from black to white. The hermitage is two short miles distant from the monastery. It is a mountain quite overshaded by a dark wood of fir-trees. In it are seven clear springs of water. The very sight of this solitude in the midst of the forest helps to fill the mind with compunction, and a love of heavenly contemplation. On entering it, we meet with a chapel of St. Antony for travellers to ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... bridged! A brigade known to be occupying the town? Well, a hundred and forty guns admirably planted on Stafford Heights will drive out the rebel brigade! The line of hills, bleak and desolate with fir woods?—hares and snow birds are all the life over there! General Lee and Stonewall Jackson? Down the Rappahannock below Moss Neck. At least, undoubtedly, Stonewall Jackson's down there. The balloon people say so. General Lee's got ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... present the corner of the parade; the principal street will be carried on at right angles with the front of this building. Instead of thatch, they now use shingles made from a tree in appearance like a fir, but producing a wood not unlike the English oak. This, though more secure than thatching, is not enough so for storehouses. For these, if slate-stone should not be found, tiles must be made of the clay which has ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... in my heart about the school garden that the poet who wrote "The Little Fir Trees" must have had about them. Each ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... not very lively up here, Aunt," said the younger, as she let her eyes wander around. "Nothing but rocks and fir woods, and then another mountain and more fir trees on it. If we are to stay here six weeks, I should like occasionally to see something ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al
... woods when Spring comes gaily in. Spring is the very Saviour, as it were, of all the numberless folk, great and small, which grow green and blossom there, wherefore the forest holds festival for his birthday and cradle feast as is but fitting! The fir-tree lights up brighter tips to its boughs, as children do with tapers at Christmastide. Then comes the largesse. It lasts much more than one evening, and the gifts bestowed on all are without number, and bright and various indeed to behold. As a father's tinkling bell brings the children ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... breath and wipe his mouth with his coat sleeve, and after a moment's abstracted gaze at the vista of tall fir trees before ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... Herjulfsson because of his lack of enterprise. The same shall not be said of us. Rolf Erlingsson and Ottar the Red and three others shall follow me; and we will walk inland until the light has entirely faded from the highest mountain peak yonder, and the next point below is yellow as a golden fir-cone. The others of you shall follow Valbrand for the same length of time, but walk southward along the shore, since it may be that something of interest ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... for our profit in the state where such communication is made. This improvement of the moral and religious state of man was the evident design of the revelation of God, and to this agree all the prophets. "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar shall come up ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... dusk of a spring evening, Helen Caniper walked on the long road from the town. Making nothing of the laden basket she carried, she went quickly until she drew level with the high fir-wood which stood like a barrier against any encroachment on the moor, then she looked back and saw lights darting out to mark the streets she had left behind, as though a fairy hand illuminated a ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Mr. Asher may say to the contrary. I want to ask you a question, on the bare chance of your being able to answer it, but if you cannot, please do not take the trouble to write. The lateral branches of the silver fir often grow out into knobs through the action of a fungus, Aecidium; and from these knobs shoots grow vertically (753/2. The well-known "Witches-Brooms," or "Hexen-Besen," produced by the fungus Aecidium elatinum.) ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... in unknown realms, beyond the eastern boundary of Russia, where the gloomy waves of the Irtish, the Tobol, the Oural and the Volga flow through vast deserts, washing the base of fir-clad mountains, and murmuring through wildernesses, the native domain of wolves and bears, there were wandering innumerable tribes, fierce, cruel and barbarous, who held the frontiers of Russia in continual terror. They ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... them freely; for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard him, and observed him. I am like a green fir-tree; from me is ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... little hammer. I climbed on the top of a hedge-bank, and, after a little while, found that the noise came from over our heads. On the trunk of a tree were two wood-peckers pecking with their long beaks at the bark of a fir-tree, in which they find a number of little insects, which serve them for their food. I lifted Harry up to see them at their work, but he did not frighten them, and at some long way off we could still ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... of all classes, many thousands of whom were there deposited. By degrees the ground came to be looked upon as only fit for the poorest of the poor, until, after being divided by the railway, this "God's Acre" was cared fir by none, and was well called the "black spot" of the town. Since the passing of the Closed Burial Grounds Bill (March 18, 1878) the Corporations have taken possession, and at considerable expense have re-walled the enclosure and laid it out as a place of health resort ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... back to pleasant days spent in Devonshire dales. From the lawns sweet-smelling violets perfumed the air. Matchless orchids clung to the trees, and the delicate maiden-hair fern held its own with the hardier varieties. Dusky fir-trees, groups of Australian araucarias, and Japanese oak trees and chestnuts set off the brightness of the flower beds. In the park there is a beautiful pond, from the centre of which a fountain throws a crystal spray to catch the ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... along the muddy path under the firs,—it was late October, and the ditches and heaps of fir needles were gorgeous with clumps of fungi,—he recapitulated the melancholy history of his marriage. It was brief and commonplace enough. He now perceived with sufficient clearness that his wife had married him out of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... out with a hunting party, and one day while they were away gunning, I went to sketch a bit of fir wood clinging to the side of a rocky gorge. The day was hot, and I sat down to rest in the shadow of a stone ledge, that jutted over the cove where a spring bubbled from the crag, and made a ribbon of water. Here is the place, on ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... entered a fir wood, and I began to feel more my real self. I saw the dark pines, from whose prickly foliage the snow crystals were falling; I realized a stern beauty in the scene; but I had not time to think about it. I felt I was near the end of my journey, and I began to wonder at my condition. ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... north by Alberta and British Columbia, and on the west by West Fork of the Flathead River. Horizontally, it contains 1,400 square miles; but as the goat climbs, its area is at least double that. Its valleys are filled and its lakes are encircled by grand forests of Douglas fir, hemlock, spruce, white pine, cedar and larch; and if ever they are destroyed by fire, it will be a national ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... of the southern side of the mountain over which the cavalcade now proceeded, masses of forest-trees sprang out of the more plentiful soil, and overshadowed the rocky path that rang under the horses' feet; the dusky foliage of the fir-tree, the brighter green of the oak, and the broad angular leaves of the sycamore, mingling in rich variety. Now the path lay through some dried-up water-course, half filled with loose stones, whose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... same path through the woods along which Bassett Oliver had gone, according to Ewbank's account. It wound through groves of fir and pine until it came out on a plateau, in the midst of which, surrounded by a high irregular wall, towered at the angles and buttressed all along its length, stood Scarhaven Keep. And there, at the head of a path which evidently led up from the big house, ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... rose of a June sunset was slanting through the fir-woods of Burchester Park, making the red trunks glow. At the end of a long grass ride the new moon dipped to the west, a silver boat uptilted in a green transparent sea. A very great stillness lay upon all things—the eventide ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... think so, when you hear the whole. The wretched nobleman, you now have punish'd, Is not less guilty than if I had yielded. Yet, think not that I mean t' acquit myself; My conduct led him to the vile attempt: And, oh! with rage and thirst of vengeance fir'd, I was too busy in th' infernal plot, Contain'd in that false letter to your friend, The honest, gen'rous, and most faithful Wilson. I also had your old and trusty steward Accus'd of crimes to which he was a stranger; And Jefferson ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... heterogeneous, and yet related by certain peculiarities, are held swimming in the atmosphere, now like clouds thinly spread by whirlwinds or electricity over a broad space, and now condensed, and, like the dust of the fir-blossoms, falling in showers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... be healed, and the dew of the Spirit refresh him, and make him grow in grace. Louis felt a wish to prolong those gracious words, "Ephraim shall say, What have I any more to do with idols? I have heard and observed him; I am like a green fir-tree, from me is ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... these narrow streets a great multitude of people were passing us; some were laden with vines, others with young forest trees, and still others with rude garlands of flowers. The peasant women's faces, as the bent figures staggered beneath a young fir-tree, were purple, but their smiles were as gay as the wild flowers with which the stones were thickly strewn. Their words also ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... in a convenient tree, with strict orders to cry 'nit' should anybody come in sight from the black clump of fir-trees surrounding the squatter's house. Then he led his party over the fence and along thick lines of currant bushes, creeping under their cover to where the beautiful white-heart cherries hung ripening in the sun. Dick was very busy indeed in the finest of the ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... smoke drowsily on the stones. The neighbours know my habit, and not infrequently some one wanders up to ask what news there is in the last paper I have received, or to make inquiries about the American war. If no one comes I prop my book open with stones touched by the Fir-bolgs, and sleep for hours in the delicious warmth of the sun. The last few days I have almost lived on the round walls, for, by some miscalculation, our turf has come to an end, and the fires are kept up with dried cow-dung—a common ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... later with little mountain girls from the fir-dark valleys away up at their highest part, and with sunburned plains-women and agile foresters, all over the country, as well as those in the towns, and everywhere there was the same high level of intelligence. Some knew far more ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... vegetation in valleys and upon mountains. In the valley you find the oak and elm tossing their branches defiantly to the storm, and as you advance up the mountain side the hemlock, the pine, the birch, the spruce, the fir, and finally you come to little dwarfed trees, that look like other trees seen through a telescope reversed—every limb twisted as though in pain—getting a scanty subsistence from the miserly crevices ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... belt is so immense that the wooded plains of the Amazon shrink into comparative insignificance. For the most part these great forests are composed of evergreen trees, the fir, pine, larch, and pitch-pine predominating. In many localities there are hundreds of square miles of perfectly straight pine trees of great height, where neither man nor beast could find the way out. Even experienced trappers dare not enter these forests without blazing trees along their pathway, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... stretched over a framework of steel, "when John Ward ties the can to a man, that man knows what 'tis for. When he give Jim Billings his time last week, he says to him, says he, 'Jim, I'm sorry for y'. Not because I'm fir'in' y',' says he, 'but because y're such a loafer that y're no good to yerself nor to anybody else—y're a disgrace to the Mill,' says he, 'and to every honest working man in it.' An' Jim, he never give a word back—just hung his head an' got out of sight ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... such immense use in fixing drifting sands in France, may perhaps be better adapted to this purpose than any of the pines of the New World, and it is of great importance for its turpentine, resin, and tar. The epicea, or common fir, Abies picea, Abies excelsa, Picea excelsa, abundant in the mountains of France and the contiguous country, is known for its product, Burgundy pitch, and, as it flourishes in a greater variety of soil and climate than almost any other spike-leaved tree, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... for a law requiring that fir-trees, imported from Russia, should not be admitted without their branches, bark, and roots; that Mexican gold should be imported in the state of ore, and Buenos Ayres leathers only allowed an entrance into our ports, while still hanging to the dead bones and putrefying ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... their merry life out of them by a single movement. The birds in the dusky branches overhead whistled their wild wood-notes, as gayly as if no one were near their haunts. Now and then there came a pause, when the silence deepened until I could hear the cones, in the fir-trees close at hand, snapping open their polished scales, and setting free the winged seeds, which fluttered softly down to the ground. The rustle of a swiftly—gliding snake through the fallen leaves caught my ear, and I saw the blunted head and glittering ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... spoke. Her look and her voice carried him back to the Valley of Trient; he heard the foaming torrent; saw the dark fir-woods, felt a cool breath from the glacier. Thus had Rosamund been wont to talk; then, as now, touching his elementary emotions, but moving his reflective ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... warn you perfectly frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular brand of brain and ink can conjure up on a single keyboard! And very large-sized dogs shall ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... stories about it. She did not write anything in these days, however, but stored up impressions which were afterwards of inestimable value to her. The smooth grey boles of the beeches, the green down on the larches, the dark, blue-green crown which the Scotch fir held up, as if to accentuate the light blue of the sky, and the wonderful ruddy-gold tones that shone on its trunk as the day declined; these things she felt and absorbed rather than saw and noted, but because she felt them they fired ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... only thus, Untamed wild creature, wilder than the rest, Deniest love the harbourage of thy breast. List to yon nightingale Singing within the vale 'I love, love, love.' With what renewed embracement vine clasps vine, Fir blends its boughs with fir, and pine with pine. Beneath the rugged bark May'st thou mute inward sighings mark, And wilt thou graceless be Less than a vine or tree— To keep thyself unloving, loverless? Bend, bend thy stubborn ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... their bodies are not stone, Nor iron, to defy your trenchant swords; And great Achilles, fair-hair'd Thetis' son, Fights not, but o'er his anger broods apart." So from the city call'd the heav'nly voice; The Greeks, meanwhile, all-glorious Pallas fir'd, Mov'd 'mid the tumult, and the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... into the street, with its green-shuttered windows all still closed in the pale grey of early morning, and walked along with the three guides by the high road which leads through rocks and fir-trees up to the beginning of the steep path to the Piz Margatsch. Passing the clear emerald-green waterfall that rushes from under the lower melting end of the Morteratsch glacier, they took at once to the narrow track by the moraine along the edge of the ice, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... THE SCOTCH FIR.—A very useful tree in plantations for protecting other more tender sorts when young. It is also now very valuable as timber:—necessity, the common parent of invention, has taught our countrymen its value. ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... yet, though there has been hard fighting on our immediate right and left. We are fairly safe here behind barbed wire entanglements, and this would be an easy job if one could get used to the row and the watching through the night, which is rather nerve-racking. This trench is in a bonnie fir wood, just like bonnie Scotland, but the shell fire has damaged nearly all the trees. Today, being windy, they are falling in all directions. We have not had a hot meal since we came here. We are not allowed to build fires, and it is impossible to get anything hot. We have ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... before Innstetten's return from Berlin that Effi said this. Roswitha paid little attention to the remarks, as she was absorbed in hanging up garlands over the doors. Even the shark was decorated with a fir bough and looked more remarkable than usual. Effi said: "That is right, Roswitha. He will be pleased with all the green when he comes back tomorrow. I wonder whether I should go out again today? Dr. Hannemann ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... that she stirred far from the gloomy fir-wood at the back of the house, for her life had not been that of most young people of her age. Her father's disappointed and impoverished life, consequent upon his political opinions, and her mother's illness and depression, had made the Hoze always a mournful home, and naturally this ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... feet. He evidently felt that he had as good a right to the road as I had; he had traveled it many times before me. When I charged upon him with a stick in my hand, he slowly climbed a small balsam fir. ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... us with bogey-stories, and then calmed our excited nerves by rapid sallies of wild nonsense. There was the plank from behind which, erected as a barrier across the doorway, he would defend the castle against our united assault, pelting us with fir-cones and sods of earth. This and many a bygone scene thronged on me as I stood there, and the room filled again with the memories of childish mirth. And following close came those of childish terrors. Horrors which had oppressed me then, wholly imagined or dimly ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... remember The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 't is little joy To know I 'm farther off from heav'n Than when I ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... 18th of April, and there were not four amongst them who were not attacked by the malady. But at this time a savage chief informed Jacques Cartier that a decoction of the leaves and sap of a certain tree, probably either the Canadian fir-tree or the barberry, was very salutary. As soon as two or three had experienced its beneficial effects "there was a crowding as if they would have killed each other to be the first to get the medicine; and one of the tallest and largest trees I ever saw was used in less than eight ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... with her to darn. "I must try and mend these again," she said. "We don't seem to be going to have any new ones," and while Penelope with some trouble made her way through a chapter of the Invasion of the Crimea, and the younger ones collected fir-cones to take home for the kitchen fire, Esther sorted out and darned a motley collection of stockings of various sizes and every variety of shade of washed-out black and brown. She darned them quickly and thoroughly; but the great excrescences of blue, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... aloud in the happiness of its life and freedom. Above was the sky, pure and radiantly blue. Its exquisite coloring was intensified by the wild riot of color beneath it. We still ascended. Each breath of air we drew was rich with the odor of pine and fir, mint and balsam. The line of survey on the opposite side of the canyon from us, marking the course of the tunnel now being constructed by the San Joaquin Light & Power Company, which terminates at a point on the mountain side at the junction of a side canyon sixteen hundred ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... service to ye, Master Harry, will be in it for ye by half after two with a bed and blanket for Moriarty, he bid me say on account he forgot to put it in the note. In the Sally Cove the boat will be there abow in the big lough, forenent the spot where the fir dale was cut last seraph ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... his own door, while Walton trudged to the Lee and other streams near London, when he was not fishing the Itchen, or Shawford Brook. The Angler's Vade Mecum recommends eighteen-feet rods: preferring a fir butt, fashioned by the arrow-maker, a hazel top, and a tip of whalebone. This authority, even more than Walton, deals in mysterious 'Oyntments' of gum ivy, horse-leek, asafoetida, man's fat, cat's fat, powdered skulls, and grave earth. A ghoulish ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... spruce fir, especially the lateral ones, when attacked by a particular species of aphis, are very apt to be ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... ugly people among all the nations in Louisiana; which is chiefly owing to the fat with which {333} they rub their skin and their hair, and to their manner of defending themselves against the moskitos, which they keep off by lighting fires of fir-wood, and ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... on trees and on stones, in foolish delight. We sought them like scattered treasure, on the strange cheeks of the old willows, near the tendrils of the fall, on the birches that stand like candles in front of the violet thicket, and on the old fir which so often sheltered us with its dark wings. Many inscriptions have disappeared. Some are worn away because things do; some are covered by a host of other inscriptions or they are distorted and ugly. Nearly all have passed on as if ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... "If you will but step outside and pick up one of these fir-cones in the grass, you can almost toss it on to her deck. She is called the Gauntlet, and her skipper is Captain Jo Pomery. I might have racked my brain for a month to find such a skipper or a ship so well found and happily named as this which Providence has brought ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... and then saunter, leaning over bridges to watch the trout in the pools, admiring from a dry-stone dyke the unsteady gambols of new-born lambs, kicking up dust from strips of moor-burn on the heather. Once by a fir-wood he was privileged to surprise three lunatic hares waltzing. His cheeks glowed with the sun; he moved in an atmosphere of pastoral, serene and contented. When the shadows began to lengthen he arrived at the village of Cloncae, where he proposed to lie. The inn looked dirty, but ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... lady looked straight past her, at the distant pond, which lay shining between the long banks of fir-trees. Then she said in a very soft voice, "This is the key of the dining-room closet. I think you had better have it, if any ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... words the young man looked so sorrowful that the courtiers said to the king: 'He is very young to die. Let him play a tune if it will make him happy.' So, very unwillingly, the king gave him leave; but first he had himself bound to a big fir tree, for fear that he should be made ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... blue sky, the arbutus glowed with their scarlet berries, and the pine-trees became more tall, straight, and numerous. No wonder that the Assyrian king, when he boasted of being able to cut down the cedars of Lebanon, included also "the choice fir-trees thereof," (2 ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... a crevice choked with ling And fir, this man, not now the king, This Sigismund, hath made a fire, And by his wife in the dark night He leans at watch, her guard and squire. His wide eyes stare out for the light Weary. He needs must chide on fate, And she is asleep. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... deciduous kind; enormous oaks, and chestnuts, and beeches, filling up the vacant space left by the granitic walls on either side: but in the higher regions of the mountainous district, in the more hidden recesses of the hills, they are all of the silver-fir species, and they attain a luxuriance of growth not to be imagined but by those who have studied this, the noblest of the whole tribe of pines. Here forests occur, leagues upon leagues in extent, filling up wide and winding valleys; running out upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... ser i thaut i Wod rite yo u a few lineS to inform you that i was the fir St agent for you pills in thiS Setlement but th as iS Several agent round her and tha ar interfer With mee eSpeSly William a StavSon he liveS her at enfield he Wanted mee to giv him one of you Sur klerS So he Wod ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... field faded on the sight to those dim and remote hues of distance only visible upon days of exceeding aerial brilliancy. Immediately beneath the eminence subtended ragged expanses of rainbow-colored heath and fern and furze spotted with small fir trees which showed blue against the tones of the moor. The heather's pink clearly contrasted with the paler shades of the ling, and an additional silvery twinkle of light inhabited the latter plant, its cause last year's dead white branches and twigs still scattered through the living foliage ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... the northeast corner of France. Together they are about as large as the Yellowstone National Park, or the size of about six Iowa counties. The soil is the most fertile to be found in Central Europe. The hills are richly wooded with fir, oak and beech, as well as other varieties. Corn, flax, tobacco, grapes and various fruits are grown. The great wealth, however, is in the minerals. Iron, lead, copper, coal, rock salt and even silver are there. Manufacturers of cotton and linen ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... once been pointed out to him, and he remembered yet how pale his father was, when he found that he had strayed by chance into so dangerous a neighborhood. Lars's heart, too, beat rather uneasily as he saw the two heaps of stones, called "The Parson" and "The Deacon," and the two huge fir-trees which marked the dreaded spot. It had been customary from immemorial time for each person who passed along the road to throw a large stone on the Parson's heap, and a small one on the Deacon's; but since the Gausdale Bruin had gone into winter quarters there, the stone heaps had ceased ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... bare enough of beauty, but from the window there stretched a scene glorious in its majestic sweep and in its varied loveliness. Down over the tops of second-growth jack pine and Douglas fir one looked straight into the roaring gorge of the Goat River filled with misty light and overhung with an arching rainbow. Up the other side climbed the hills in soft folds of pine tops and, beyond the pines, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... rest, I philosophized whilst I blew upon my stiffened hands. "Am I the first who, in the hot hour of fancy, has sought for a warmth which the stern world of reality has denied him? Six dollars for a measure of fir-wood. Yes, prosit, thou art not likely to get it before ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... Imhof, Straeub, the two Spenglers, and Loeffelholz,[50] and to each a good pair of gloves. To Pirkheimer I sent a large cap, a costly inkstand of buffalo horn, a silver Emperor, one pound of pistachios, and three sugar canes. To Caspar Nuetzel I sent a great elk's foot, ten large fir cones, and cones of the stone-pine. To Jacob Muffel I sent a scarlet breastcloth of one ell; to Hans Imhof's child an embroidered scarlet cap and stone-pine nuts; to Kramer's wife four ells of silk worth four fl.; to Lochinger's wife one ell of silk ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... when old Phoebus drops Behind yon hedgehog-haunted copse And high and bright the Northern Crown Is standing over White Horse Down I could be sitting by the fire In that my Land of Heart's Desire— A fire of fir-cones and a log And at my feet a fubsy dog In Robinwood! In Robinwood! I think the angels, if they could, Would trade their harps for railway tickets Or hang their crowns upon the thickets And walk the highways of the world ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... fences she had to climb or creep through; who went fishing, and threw a fly with so light and sure a hand, and filled his basket, whilst she wound her line about her skirts, and caught her hook, and whipped the stream in vain. He had climbed a tall fir-tree once, and brought down in safety a weeping, shame-stricken little girl with a red pigtail, whose daring had suddenly failed her; and he had gone up the tree himself like a squirrel afterwards, and fetched her the nest she coveted. Nor did he ever ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... Alexander III., and he was a delegate to make peace between Henry and Louis, when he died in 1174. Hugh found his quotations, compiled any catena he wished to make, retrieved saintly instances, washed his feet, walked with him, and sat with him on a seat between two large fir trees, which seat "miraculously grew no higher, as the trees grew." In this manner Hugh knew and was known of the outside world, for Archbishop Peter was a man of large following ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... sun was shining on the remote heights of snow, that closed it in, like eternal clouds. The bases of the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, were richly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests of dark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually blending with the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... little Britains none is more lovely than Cannes. The place is a pure creation of the health-seekers whose gay villas are thrown fancifully about among its sombre fir-woods, though the "Old Town," as it is called nowadays, remains clinging to its original height, street above street leading up to a big bare church of the Renascence period, to fragments of mediaeval walls and a great tower ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... autumn month. The doctor came up to the hut every morning, and thence made excursions over the mountain. Alm-Uncle accompanied him on some of his higher ascents, when they climbed up to the ancient storm-beaten fir trees and often disturbed the great bird which rose startled from its nest, with the whirl of wings and croakings, very near their heads. The doctor found great pleasure in his companion's conversation, and was astonished at his knowledge of ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... and kindly communicated by her to me, in continuation of those for which I have already acknowledged my obligations to her, enables me to throw some further light on Milton's friend and correspondent Andrew Sandelands, and on that scheme of his for utilising the fir-woods of Scotland in which he sought Milton's assistance. The paper, which is in the handwriting of Sandelands, is dated "30 June, 1653," i.e. two months and ten days after Cromwell had dissolved the Rump and begun his Interim Dictatorship; it ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... scenery becomes wild and bold; hill rises to mountain; soft springing green corn gives place to sterner crag, smooth plain to precipitous heights;"[130] and if in the more elevated region the majesty of the cedar is wanting, yet forests of fir and pine abound, and creep up the mountain-side, in places almost to the summit, while here and there bare masses of rock protrude themselves, and crag and cliff rise into the clouds that hang about the highest summits. ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... already understood what I mean by a fine country; never can a flat one, though ever so beautiful, appear such in my eyes: I must have torrents, fir trees, black woods, mountains to climb or descend, and rugged roads with precipices on either side to alarm me. I experienced this pleasure in its utmost extent as I approached Chambery, not far from a mountain ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... fence were the shade trees, their trunks nearly two feet in diameter. Then stretched the wide deep lawn, now turning dull with the approach of winter and strewn with dead leaves. It supported the fir which Bobby always called the "Christmas Tree," and under whose wide low branches he could crawl as into a dusty, cobwebby house; and the little birch tree with its silver bark; and the big round lilac bush, now bare, but in summer the fragrant haunt of birds and butterflies innumerable; and the ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... them To see me girt with Friends; and how the sight Of me as of a common Enemy, So dreaded once, may now exasperate them I know not. Lords are Lordliest in thir wine, And the well-feasted Priest then soonest fir'd With zeal, if aught Religion seem concern'd: 1420 No less the people on thir Holy-days Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable; Happ'n what may, of me expect to hear Nothing dishonourable, impure, unworthy ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... walking up here upon Hartford Bridge Flat this sad November day? Well, I do not deny that the moor looks somewhat dreary, though dull it need never be. Though the fog is clinging to the fir-trees, and creeping among the heather, till you cannot see as far as Minley Corner, hardly as far as Bramshill woods—and all the Berkshire hills are as invisible as if it was a dark midnight—yet there is plenty ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... various plants matted together with the trunks of fallen trees, sometimes of very large diameter; and the botanical examination of the lowest layer of these trees and plants in the various bowls revealed a most important fact: for this layer, the first in point of time, was always of the Scotch fir—which now grows nowhere in the Danish islands, and can not be made to grow anywhere in them—and of plants which are now extinct in these regions, but have retreated within the arctic circle. Coming up from the bottom of these ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... said, "that would so improve your place as a row of the Spitzenberg Sweet-scented Balsam fir along this fence. I'll sell you ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton |
