"Forked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'fear is but the betraying of the succors which reason offereth,' and that which roused him to further exertion, would have sealed the fate of almost any other human being. A sudden short cracking peal of thunder burst in stunning loudness just over his head, and the forked and flashing lightning at brief intervals threw its vivid fires around him. This, too, in its turn passed away, and left the sea once more calm and unruffled: the moon (nearly full) again threw a more brilliant light upon the waters, which the storm had gone over without ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... sung for him, as also an obit within the church to be kept on Friday after the feast of St. Gregory. He lies under a tomb of stone, with his image also of stone over him, the hair of his head auburn, long to his shoulders, but curling up, and a small forked beard; on his head a chaplet like a coronet of roses; an habit of purple, damasked down to his feet, and a collar of gold about his neck. Under his feet the likeness of three books which he compiled; the first named Speculum Meditantis, written in French; the second Vox Clamantis, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... witness the case of Queen Anne Boleyn and the Yellow Dog of Norfolk who had worked to ruin her. And some said it was marvellous that there they could sit or stand and talk of such things—for a year or so ago all the Court was spies, so that the haymen mistrusted them that forked down the straw, and meat-servers them with the wine. But now each man could talk as he would, and it made greatly for fellowship when a man could sit against a wall, unbutton in the warm nights, ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... the floor was bare. The furniture was of the shabbiest, the simplest. The dressing-table, for instance, was a packing-case in a sprigged muslin petticoat, and the mirror above was very strange; it was as though a little piece of forked lightning was imprisoned in it. On the table there stood a jar of sea-pinks, pressed so tightly together they looked more like a velvet pincushion, and a special shell which Kezia had given her grandma for a pin-tray, and another even more special which she had thought would ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... surmised, our canyon forked below. We turned the point after making sure that Bevans couldn't see us unless he moved. But the uncertain beggar had moved, and moved to some purpose we quickly learned; for when we next laid eyes on him he was out on the ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... very heart of Omdurman. From the high ground the field-glass disclosed rows and rows of mud houses, making a dark patch on the brown of the plain. To the left the river, steel-grey in the morning light, forked into two channels, and on the tongue of land between them the gleam of a white building showed among the trees. Before us were the ruins of Khartoum and the confluence of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Demerara produce the same humming-birds. On entering the forests the blue and green, the smallest brown, no bigger than the humble bee, with two long feathers in the tail, and the little forked-tail purple-throated humming-birds glitter before you in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... leaned against the door, it moved slightly and opened inwards. The shelter of even a tomb was welcome in that pitiless tempest, and I was about to enter it when there came a flash of forked-lightning that lit up the whole expanse of the heavens. In the instant, as I am a living man, I saw, as my eyes were turned into the darkness of the tomb, a beautiful woman, with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier. As ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... blazed. You could easily have told the strong red flame to be that of the shell-bark hickory—the best firewood—though dry sticks of some lighter wood had been used to kindle it. On each side of the fire a forked stick was stuck into the ground, with the forks at the top; and on these rested a fresh cut sapling, placed horizontally to serve as a crane. A two-gallon camp-kettle of sheet-iron was suspended upon it and over the fire, and the water in the kettle was just ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... from the camp a few hundred yards and then found that the trail forked. One path went down a little hill, and as that seemed easy to descend, Nan followed it into a little hollow. It seemed only one sled had come this way and none of the men were here. The voices and axes sounded from higher ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... which moonlight and shadows and the points of the way all made part and were woven in together. Her ears were tingling for that sound; her eyes only measured unconsciously the distances and told off the waymarks. Down the little pitch of the road where that to Barley point forked off; then by a space of clear fences where hedgerows were not, and a barn or two rose up in the moonlight; through gates where the post shadows were black and deep, by the skirting bushes that now and then gathered about the rails. She walked as fast as she could and keep her strength. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... distant, there stood a willow tree closely resembling the late home of the caged nightingales. The boy had chosen this tree and had prepared a place for the nest on a forked branch. He went there late one evening, as the moon was shining brightly, and placed the nest securely on this tree; then he gave the parent birds ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... Simon Basset's, Squire Eben Merritt's wife came across lots to the Edwardses' house. A little red shawl over her shoulders stood out triangularly to the gusts of spring wind; a forked end of red ribbon on her bonnet fluttered sharply. Abigail Merritt moved with nervous impetus across the fields, like an erratic thread of separate purpose through an even web. All the red of the spring landscape was in the swift passing of her garments. All that was not ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of Acre (1291) we hear of balistae bipedales (with a forked rest?) and other vertiginales (traversing on a pivot) that shot 3 quarrels at once, and with such force as to stitch the Saracens to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... trees were immediately felled, and in a short time Fernando, looking out from the covered wagon, perceived a clear space of ground of but few rods in circumference. Stakes, forked at the top, were driven into the ground, on which the father placed logs, and the chinks between these were stopped with clay. An enclosure was thus hastily thrown up to protect the family from the weather, and the wife and ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... rather play with the forked lightning, or take in my hands living wires, with their fiery current, than speak a reckless word against any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christians are hurling on others, to the hurt of their ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... dales or straths. At the broom-besom. At the twigs. At St. Cosme, I come to adore At the quoits. thee. At I'm for that. At the lusty brown boy. At I take you napping. At greedy glutton. At fair and softly passeth Lent. At the morris dance. At the forked oak. At feeby. At truss. At the whole frisk and gambol. At the wolf's tail. At battabum, or riding of the At bum to buss, or nose in breech. wild mare. At Geordie, give me my lance. At Hind the ploughman. At swaggy, waggy or shoggyshou. At the good mawkin. At stook ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... forgive me) greener than Erin's Isle. The methods of cacao cultivation in vogue there might seem natural to the British farmer, but they are considered remarkable by cacao planters, for in Grenada the soil on which the trees grow is forked or tilled. Possibly from this follows the equally remarkable corollary that the cacao trees flourish without a single shade tree. The preparation of the bean receives as much care as the cultivation of the tree, and the cacao which ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... appearance. The cup or crescent atilt is a wet moon—i.e., the month will be rainy. A change of the moon forebodes a change of the weather, and no meteorological statistics can shake their confidence in the superstition. They, of course, believe in the water-wizard and his forked wand; and their faith is extended to the discovery of mineral veins. While writing this I see the statement in a public journal that Richard Flannery of Cumberland county (Kentucky) uses an oval ball, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... "Pronouns have no other use in language, than to represent nouns."—Jamieson cor. "The speculative relied no farther on their own judgement, than to choose a leader, whom they implicitly followed."—Kames cor. "Unaccommodated man is no more than such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art."—Shak. cor. "A Parenthesis is a suggestion which is introduced into the body of a sentence obliquely, and which may be omitted without injuring the grammatical construction."—Mur. et al. cor. "The ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... treadle. But the chief point of interest in this device lies in the combination with the lever of a brake, enabling the operator, by a simple reversal of the treadle's motion, to instantly suspend the rotation of the machine. The forked lever, in fact, acts simultaneously in throwing off the motion and applying the brake. The speed is always in direct proportion to the pressure exerted upon the treadle, and a single stitch can be made at will. Fig. 14 shows the friction ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... "that's easily set right." I marched out of the room and downstairs, with both Cullingworth and his wife behind me. Into the yard I went, and, picking up a big hammer, I started for the front door, with the pair still at my heels. I got the forked end of the hammer under my plate, and with a good wrench I brought the whole thing ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... to the eye are the graceful little terns, or "sea-swallows," fairylike creatures with red legs and bill, long pointed wings and deeply forked tail, which skim the surface of the sea or hawk over the shallows of trout streams in search of dragonflies or small fish. It is not a very rare experience for the trout-fisherman to hook a swallow which may happen to dash by at the moment of casting; but a much more ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... dispelled by the vivid flashes of lightning, which, darting from the low hanging clouds, circled about their heads, throwing a lurid glare on the countenances of all on deck. Once more all was dark; then again the forked lightning burst forth hissing and crackling through the air, leaping along the waves and playing round the quivering masts. Now the big ship plunged into the trough of the sea with a force which made it seem as ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... master machine and pressed a button. Instantly, the hundreds of dangling arms telescoped out, each to a button bank where a moment before a prolat had labored. And, with a weird simulation of life, the ten forked ends of each arm commenced a rattling pressing of the buttons. Rapidly, purposefully, the metallic fingers moved over the key-boards, and on the screens we could see that the machines all over the world were continuing on their even course. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... of Attick is forked. He lies when he says that the daughter of Weeum agreed to follow him. He knows that he carried her from the camp by force ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... that number, one deriving the habit from the fact that primitive man divided the universe into three regions, heaven, earth, and water. Pythagoras, it will be remembered, called three the perfect number; Jove is depicted with three-forked lightning; Neptune bears a trident; Pluto has his three-headed dog. Again, there are three Fates, three Furies, three Graces and three Muses. It is natural, then, to find the numeral so often employed in the signs of inns and taverns. Thus we have the Three Angels, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Ka-te-qua forked? Has she not said that no warrior need hunt the deer for the young pale-faces? With her they shall grow like hickory saplings, towering with strength. The deer shall not be more fleet than they, nor the songs of the birds more glad. The sun shall paint their white skins. The love ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... crept over the neck and speedily spread its myriad fingers of fire over the nerves that gird the ear, now drawing their burning threads and now vibrating the tense agony of these filaments of sensation. By a leap it next mastered the nerves that surround the eye, driving its forked lightning through each delicate avenue into the brain itself, and confusing and confounding every power of thought and of will. This is neuralgia—such neuralgia as sometimes drives sober men in the agony of their distress into drunkenness, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... things to make you remember the Witch-hazel; its forked twig was used—nay, still is used—as a magic rod to show where there is running water underground; that is, where it is possible to find water by sinking a well. Its nuts are explosive, and go off with a snap, shooting the seeds that are inside, ten or twenty feet away, when the cold ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... sweep of wind, and smoky smell. He ran round to the rear. Close up against the back door, quite out of the moonlight, something was piled. Forked tongues of flame were shooting out of it everywhere. He seized the chain attached to the factory-bell, and rang it rapidly. There was a window thrown up, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... already abandoned Bowling Green for Nashville, had now to abandon Nashville, with most of its great and very sorely needed stores, as well as the rest of Tennessee, and take up a new position along the rails that ran from Memphis to Chattanooga, whence they forked northeast to Richmond and Washington and southeast to Charleston and Savannah. Columbus was also abandoned, and the only points left to the Confederates anywhere near the old line were Island Number Ten in the Mississippi and ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... no, I don't know that I ever did," considered her Father. With his elbows on the arms of his chair, his slender fingers forked to a lovely Gothic arch above the bridge of his nose, he yielded himself instantly to the reflection. "Why ... no, ... I don't know that I ever did," he repeated with an increasing air of conviction.... "When you're young enough to enjoy the day as a 'holler' day there's ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... spear-like pine. Far above, shot up red splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked lightning; and far beyond and above all these, fainter than the morning cloud, but purer and changeless, slept in the blue sky the utmost ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... of the Leven, I saw a little neighborhood, embosomed in old trees. "There," said our captain, "Smollet was born." A column has been erected to his memory in the town of Renton, which we saw as we passed. The forked rock, on which stands Dumbarton Castle, was now in sight overlooking the Clyde; we were whirled into the town, and in a few minutes were on board a steamer which, as evening set in, landed us ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... light which flashed from the glittering sea was thrown up beneath the trees. Jack was so utterly fascinated for the time being that his eyes took in every detail, and he noted how the reptile's tightly-closed mouth resembled a smile of triumph, and thought that the tiny forked tongue which kept on flickering in and out of the orifice in the front part of the jaws mocked at him as the creature ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... this morning when hell yawned for him, he was ready and eager to meet all comers. They came, equipped with formulas, nooses, and forked iron bars. Five of them tossed nooses in through the bars upon the floor of his cage. He snarled and struck at the curling ropes, and for ten minutes was a grand and impossible wild creature, lacking in nothing ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... the next morning, in council, to move; and one of the guides having informed us of a newly-opened carry, by which we could cross from Little Tupper's Lake, ten miles above us, directly to Forked Lake, and thence following the usual route down the Raquette River and through Long Lake, we could reach Martin's on Saranac Lake without retracing our steps, except over the short distance from the Raquette through the Saranac Lakes,—after breakfast, we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... was as varied as it was picturesque. Some were finished off at each end with a great lotus flower curving inwards, the stem adorned with fluttering flags; others were forked at the poop which rose to a point; others again were crescent-shaped, with horns at either end; others bore a sort of a castle or platform on which stood the pilots; still others were composed of three strips ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Pan. "Fact is, I don't know much about him. We called him Old Paint. Haven't forked him yet. Dad got him from a lady last winter. She was trying to work him to a cart. But he balked. She said she poured ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... Rogers, and who said that he could guide them to Fort Edward. One of them had lost his snow-shoes in the fight; and, crouching over a miserable fire of broken sticks, they worked till morning to make a kind of substitute with forked branches, twigs, and a few leather strings. They had no hatchet to cut firewood, no blankets, no overcoats, and no food except part of a Bologna sausage and a little ginger which Pringle had brought with him. There was no game; not even a squirrel was astir; and their ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... for a week on end, and let the blast from the mouth of Glen Urtach pile up the white drift high against the outer row of stacks, the horses will be put in the mill-shed, and an inner stack will be forked into the threshing loft, and all day long the mill will go with dull, rumbling sound that can be heard from the road, while within the grain pours into the corn-room, and the clean yellow straw is piled in the barn. Hillocks was not a man given to sentiment, yet even he ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... for money who have none? It is like forcing blood out of a stone. He is not the man to do it. Silvestro lives at hand; he hears the rattle of the hail that burns the grapes up to a cinder—the terrible din of the thunder before the forked lightning strikes the cattle; he sees with his own eyes the griping want of bread in the savage winter-time; his own eyes behold the little lambs, dead of hunger, lying by the road-side. Worse still, he sees other lambs—human lambs with Christian souls—fade and pine and shrink into a little grave, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... could be permitted neither to Mr. Fortescue nor to any other man to take people's lives, merely because he suspected them of an intention to come in by the window instead of the door. By what right, he asked, did Mr. Fortescue place on his window an appliance as dangerous as forked lightning, and as deadly as dynamite? What was the difference between magnetized bars in a window and spring-guns on a game-preserve? In conclusion, the writer demanded a searching investigation into the circumstances attending ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... outside the Patent Office there are no monopolies in this country, and there never can be. Ah, but what is that I see on the far horizon's edge, with tongue of lambent flame and eye of forked fire, serpent-headed and griffin-clawed? ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the afternoon, some of the officers went on shore to amuse themselves among the natives, where they saw the head and bowels of a youth, who had lately been killed, lying on the beach; and the heart stuck on a forked stick, which was fixed to the head of one of the largest canoes. One of the gentlemen bought the head, and brought it on board, where a piece of the flesh was broiled and eaten by one of the natives, before ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... darkening room was lit up by a vivid forked flash and the crash of the thunder came instantly. The storm was immediately overhead. Peg closed her eyes, as she did when a child, while her lips moved ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... vessel shivered and flew before it. It swept past the cove that the sailors had hoped to enter, and bore down with terrible speed toward the rocky coast beyond. The sails had been furled, but the wind and the water needed no aid. The rain came, a blinding deluge; the forked bolts seemed to have set the air on fire; the crash of the thunder and the roar of the wind and the water ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... consisting of eight or ten 'gunyers.' This is the native term for small huts, which are supported by three forked sticks (about three feet long) brought together at the top in a triangular form: the two sides towards the wind are covered by long sheets of bark, the third is always left ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... to be loyal cheers, all at the proper word of command. He concluded by mounting its back and riding it several times round the enclosure, after which he lay between its forepaws, while it licked his face with its huge flickering forked tongue. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... them, the brand and the knife had been already used; for the log tenement, the stacks and the out-buildings of Reuben Ring, and of several others who dwelt in the skirts of the settlement, were sending forth clouds of murky smoke, in which forked and angry flames were already flashing fiercely. But danger most pressed still nearer. A long line of fierce warriors was even in the meadows; and in no direction could the eye be turned, that it did not meet with ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... and dazzling brightness of the flash of lightning? However that question may be answered, there remains the fact that the thunderbolt was a symbol of the power of Zeus, and its figure uniformly accompanied the effigy of the god. Ovid speaks of Zeus as of one whose hand is armed with three-forked fires,— ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... from the road. It was thatched from the ground upward with heather and bracken, leaving only a low aperture as door. Near the hut a small fire of hazel sticks crackled under the pot that swung from a forked triangle of oak limbs. Fagots were stacked at one end of the clearing; a pile of loose bark lay near. It was a charcoal pit, and behind a line of hurdles that were propped with poles and intertwined with dead grass and gorse, an old man was ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the provident Squirrel stored these up as he does the pinyons, in holes or underground, they would surely go to mush in a short time and be lost. He makes no such mistake. He stores them in the forked branches of trees, where they dry out and remain good until needed; and wisely puts them high enough up to be out of reach of the Deer and low enough to avoid being dislodged ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... anguish yet Wrings my heart, burst from his white lips, though his teeth were tightly set, And with sudden strength he started—sprang from my detaining arm, Shrieking wildly, 'Curse the demons; do they think to do me harm? Back! I say, ye forked-tongued serpents reeking with the filth of hell! Don't ye see I have her with ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... ostrich with an extra set of legs. Camels are not beautiful, and their long under lip gives them an exceedingly "gallus"—[Excuse the slang, no other word will describe it]—expression. They have immense, flat, forked cushions of feet, that make a track in the dust like a pie with a slice cut out of it. They are not particular about their diet. They would eat a tombstone if they could bite it. A thistle grows about here which has needles on it that would pierce through ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... King, In hideous forms and shapes, tofore unseen, That fear, death, terror and amazement bring, With ugly paws some trample on the green, Some gnaw the snakes that on their shoulders hing, And some their forked tails stretch forth on high, And tear the twinkling ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... upon his lofty throne, Harkens to his sister's prayer; From the blue heights thundering down, Hurls his forked lightning there, Crackling, it begins to blaze, From the altar whirling bounds,— And his swift-winged eagle plays High ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... could get a Moose." He went on in the small canoe with Billy; we were to follow, and if we passed his canoe leave a note. Seven miles above the log-jamb, the river forked south and west; here a note from the guide sent us up the South Fork; later we passed his canoe on the bank and knew that he had landed and was surely on his way "to market." What a comfortable feeling it was to remember that Bezkya was a moose-hunter! ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... sea as a long, oblong sort of box, the centre of which was Egypt. The sky stretched over it like an iron ceiling, the part toward the earth being sprinkled with lamps hung from strong cables lighted by night and extinguished by day. Four forked trunks of trees upheld the sky roof. But lest some storm should overthrow these tree trunks there were four lofty peaks connected by chains of mountains. The southern peak was known as the "Horn of the Earth," ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... looked beautiful in her golden mantle of sunshine and silver veil of mist; there was a white, light fog on the water meadows and the lakes, and under it the willows waved and the tall reeds rustled; whilst the dark towers, the forked battlements, the vast Lombard walls, seemed to float on it like sombre vessels on a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... you leave me the place to myself." So, knowing that she meant what she said, Thomas went out and set to work in the garden, for, of course, that must be made trim, too, for the little five-year-old grandchild. He forked over the earth in all the beds, tied up to a stick every daffodil that did not stand perfectly upright by itself, trimmed the sweetbriar ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... saw how the boss of the Black Knight's shield was the head of a dragon, its forked tongue writhing, its teeth gnashing, and its eyes so red and fiendish that no mortal, unless by God's aid, could look on it and live. From its mouth came a blinding flash as of lightning and beat at Perceval, but he held up his shield of the ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... next time?" observed Bluff. "You nailed an old fellow that you tell us is Aaron Dennison himself. I hope the next crack won't give us a picture of the Old Nick himself, horns, split hoofs, forked tail and all! Ugh!" ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... place were quite startling to Mark in their novelty. Over the clear sun-spangled stream drooped the loveliest of ferns, whose fronds were like the most delicate lace; while by way of contrast other ferns clung to the boles of trees, that were dark-green and forked like the horns of some huge stag; great masses and clusters, six or seven feet long, hung here and there pendent ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... Bethune hain't abuzzin' 'round up an' down this yere crick fer nawthin'. Law sakes, child, when I tuk a notion to take Watts, come a supper time I wusn't no more a mind to git married than yo' be, an', by cracky! come moonrise me an' Watts had forked one o' pa's mewels with nothin' on but a rope halter, an' wus headin' down the branch with pa an' my brother Lafe a-cuttin' through the lau'ls with their rifle-guns fer to head ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... some difficulty and got his crutch under one arm. With a forked stick he took the beaker from the ashes and placed it in the annealing oven. Giovanni watched him, and when the broad iron door was open, he saw the other pieces already standing inside ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... archer," he grunted, "who cannot hit me with two shots." Then pointing to a huge oak that forked half way ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... thread upon whilst working is shown in fig. 7. It is about 8 inches long. A soft padding of cotton thread is first placed round (between A and B, fig. 7), and the gold thread wound upon that. The end of the thread passes through the forked piece at the top on its way to being worked into the material. The use of this or some similar appliance enables the worker to avoid much touching of ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... by sensation, and with me minutes were drawn out into hours. "Surely, it is midnight. I have been here three hours at the least. The road must have forked, and I have gone the wrong way. The most sagacious of horses could not be expected to know which of two roads to take. There is nothing to be done. I am in for the night, and had better stay here than go farther ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Lake, which presents a formidable barrier to the passage of the smaller land birds, is a breeding station of the sea-swallow. The Arctic tern hatches on its shores, laying its eggs in the beach gravel. The bird, with its slender body, deeply-forked tail, and shrilly-querulous voice, is everywhere in evidence. Does the whole family of lake birds show any more exquisite colour-scheme than the pearly plumage, small coral feet, carmine bill, and black cap of this tern? ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... 'Will that forked tongue cease hissing!' he shouted, in the agony of a strong man convulsed both to render and conceal the terrible, shameful, unexampled ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Alice Boswell! are you safe, lamenting unseen the home of your fathers? Or are you within that turret whose foundation rock descends sheer into the sea—that turret close by which the demon began his work, where his forked tongue is now licking each loophole and outlet, where beams are bursting and the yawning jaws of hell are about to swallow up the rapid wreck—forgotten, forsaken—the queen of hearts, the wooed and worshipped ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... in the foetus of most Creatures. It had two small black eyes aa, and two small long joynted and brisled horns bb. The hinder part of its body seem'd to consist of nine scales, and the last ended in a forked tayl, much like that of a Cutio, or Wood louse, out of which grew two long hairs; they ran to and fro very swiftly, and were much of the bigness of a common Mite, but some of them less: The longest of them seem'd not ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... luncheon on Saturday he would start for the city, hugging the edge of the campus and afterward cutting across the adjoining estate to meet the car line where it forked into the main road. Many another boy had done the same and not been caught; why not he? It was, to be sure, against the rules to leave the school grounds without permission, but one must take a chance now and then. Did not half the spice ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... aromatic oil contained in the bark of the birch being highly inflammable, Hector had prudently retained the flint that they had used in the morning, and a fire was now lighted in front of the rocky stone, and a forked stick, stuck in the ground, and bent over the coals, served as a spit, on which, gipsy-fashion, the partridge was suspended,—a scanty meal, but thankfully partaken of, though they knew not how they should breakfast next morning, The children felt they were pensioners on God's providence ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... the fold in the long body of a bright blue Dragon, which moved like the body of a snake. And the room was full of these Dragons. In the face they were like the dragons one sees made of very old blue and white china; and they had forked tongues, like the tongues of serpents. They were most beautiful in color, being sky-blue. Lobsters who have just changed their coats are very handsome, but the violet and indigo of a lobster's coat is nothing to the brilliant sky-blue of ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... company of foot was composed two-thirds of "musketeers" and one-third of "pikemen," the pike of Connecticut being two feet shorter than the rod-pike of England. Some of the lighter muskets were fired with a simple match, but the greater number were supported by "rests," forked at the top and stuck into the ground. They were fired by "match-locks," the "cock" being that part which held the burning match aloft before it was applied to the powder in the pan. Hence "to go off half cocked" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... or hosiery. In all that time I was never disturbed by the number and diversity of spoons and forks beside my plate at the dinner-table. Many a noble meal I ate as I sat upon a log supported in forked stakes, and many a big thought did I glean from the talk of loggers about me in their picturesque costumes. In the evening I sat upon a great log in front of the cabin or a friendly stump, and forgot such things ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... of spring. Ancient lilacs stood about it and nodded purple-coroneted heads across its one chimney. Their scent bore down all other scents like a strong personality and there was no choice but to think the thoughts of the lilac. Two laburnums, forked and huge of trunk, fingered the roof with their lower branches and dripped gold on it. The upper branches sprang far into ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... perpendicular in the ground. Bend it down towards your fire. Hang your kettle on the end of it. If you have jabbed it far enough into the ground in the first place, it will balance nicely by its own spring and the elasticity of the turf. The other method is to plant two forked sticks on either side your fire over which a strong cross-piece is laid. The kettles are hung on hooks cut from forked branches. The forked branches are attached to the cross-piece by means ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... to examine the rocks, to see what flowers grew there, and perhaps to pick up an adventure in the zoological line; for he had on a pair of high, stout boots, and he carried a stick in his hand, which was forked at one extremity, so as to be very convenient to hold down a crotalus with, if he should happen to encounter one. He knew the aspect of the ledge from a distance; for its bald and leprous-looking declivities stood out in their nakedness from the wooded ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... exact reproduction in life of the giant plesiosaurs, dinosaurs, and elasmosaurs, whose remains are preserved in the museums on earth. The reptilian bodies of the elasmosaurs, seventy-five feet in length, with the forked tongues, distended jaws and fangs of a snake, were easily taken for the often described but probably mythical sea-serpent, as partially coiled they occasionally raised their heads twelve or ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... office, he saw a young lady seated at a desk, manipulating a typewriter. She had the ends of a forked rubber tube hung in her ears, and did not see Bradley. He observed that the tube connected with a sewing-machine-like table and a swiftly revolving little cylinder, which he recognized as a phonograph. At the window sat Radbourn, talking in a measured, monotonous voice ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... deepening, like some Nile feeding many civilizations. For all the reforms of to-day go back to some reform of yesterday. Man's art goes back to Athens and Thebes. Man's laws go back to Blackstone and Justinian. Man's reapers and plows go back to the savage scratching the ground with his forked stick, drawn by the wild bullock. The heroes of liberty march forward in a solid column. Lincoln grasps the hand of Washington. Washington received his weapons at the hands of Hampden and Cromwell. The great Puritans lock ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... I could see again what I saw last night. Do you see that balsam,—the one with the forked top? Monsieur, I saw an Indian's face in that ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... receive a guest, and there was nothing to amuse the boys. Time dragged so heavily that Phil begged Stuart to bring his little rubber-gun—gumbo-shooter he called it. It was a wide rubber band fastened at each end to the tips of a forked stick shaped like a big Y. They used buckshot to shoot with, nipping up a shot in the middle of the band with thumb and finger, and drawing it back as far as possible ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... statesmanship has invented universal suffrage. That is the finest feather in our cap. All that we require of a voter is that he shall be forked, wear pantaloons instead of petticoats, and bear a more or less humorous resemblance to the reported image of God. He need not know anything whatever; he may be wholly useless and a cumberer of the earth; he may even be known to be a consummate scoundrel. No matter. While he ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... heavens in darkness. On the starboard, the heaving waters, black as night, were covered with pure white ice-cakes, striking and battering together with heavy grindings. The lightnings played against the inky clouds, forked, zigzag, and dazzling to the eye. The thunder-echoes, unmuffled by vegetation, were reverberated from bare granitic mountains and naked ice-fields with a hollow rattle that deafened and appalled us; and, in ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... campaigner, set about building a fire, and the girl began her sylvan housekeeping. The scene rapidly brightened into light and color as the blaze sprang up, showing the little kettle slung gipsywise on forked sticks, and the supper prettily set forth in a leafy table-service on a smooth, flat stone. Soon four pairs of wet feet surrounded the fire; an agreeable oblivion of meum and tuum concerning plates, knives, and cups did away with etiquette, and ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... Horsemen flew as forked lightning, heroes fought in shining mail, Archers poured their feathered arrows like ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... first lesson cooked in the most correct style: a forked stick, with the fork uppermost, was driven into the ground near the glowing heap of wood ashes; then a long sapling was leant through the fork, with one end well over the coals; a doubled string, with ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... segments testaceous with cinereous tomentum; tibiae with a dingy whitish band; tarsi dingy whitish; wings limpid white, with several blackish marks towards the base and with two broad blackish bands, the first forked in front; discal transverse vein nearly straight, parted by less than its length from the border, and by more than twice its length from the praebrachial transverse; halteres white. Length of the body 2-1/2 lines; of the wings ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... Apollo on his forked hill, Sat full-blown Bufo,[103] puff'd by every quill; Fed with soft dedication all day long, Horace and he went hand in hand in song. His library (where busts of poets dead And a true Pindar stood without a head) ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... bread on a forked stick and held it out to the blaze. He did the same with the other half of the sandwich. Then they partook of a meagre ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... road you arrive at the seal and sea-lion. Of all the feet that I have looked at I know only one more utterly ridiculous than the twisted flipper on which the sea-lion props his great bulk in front, and that is the forked fly-flap which extends from the hinder parts of the same. How can it be worth any beast's while to carry such an absurd apparatus with it just for the sake of getting out into the air sometimes and pushing itself ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... panorama, broken and sombre, beneath heavy clouds; the fretted towers on the massive prison frown dimly through the mist to the right, from which a low marshy expanse dwindles into the dark horizon. And ever and anon the forked lightning courses its way through the heavens, now tinging the sombre scene with mellow light, then closing it in ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... wood, with wax and heavy mallets, with clubs of wood having iron spikes, with plough-poles and poisoned darts, with long syringes for pouring warm treacle and planks of cane, with battle-axes and forked lances with spiked gauntlets, with axes and pointed iron-spikes, with cars having their sides covered with skins of tigers and leopards, with sharp-edged circular planks of wood, with horns, with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... The captain forked out a quantity of crisp bacon upon a tin plate and filled a big granite cup with fragrant coffee, for Charlie West, and from his saddle-bags brought out a bag of hardtack. Helping himself also, both fell to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... night, the wind had increased to a hurricane, the thunder rolled frightfully, and the only light which we had to guide us on our way was the red forked lightning which burst at times from the bosom of the big black clouds which lowered over our heads. We were exerting ourselves to the utmost to weather the cape, which we could descry by the lightning on our lee, its brow being frequently brilliantly lighted up by the flashes which quivered ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... ones lie very quietly and seldom move far from their cover. Sometimes in the heat of the day they stir about or go to drink. The younger bucks are more audacious and seem to feel that their wisdom and strength can carry them anywhere. For this reason a two-year-old or forked horn is ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... she sat there, trembling and half dead with fright, she saw Something come up out of the eddy,—even out of the worst of it. It rose; it was an awful sight,—a kind of monstrous head, with great forked horns and terrible eyes. She was stiff as a stone with fear. The lost gun lay crosswise on the prongs of the horns. It moved slowly on through the eddy, glaring at her. It came nearer and nearer; the gun was within her reach, but she was too frightened to touch it. Then the monster ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... solemnity of the objects around him—the tall rock lifts its head in the erectness of his spirit; the cataract roars in the sound of his verse; and in its dim and mysterious meaning, the mists seem to gather in the hollows of Helvellyn, and the forked Skiddaw hovers in the distance. There is little mention of mountainous scenery in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but by internal evidence one might be almost sure that it was written in a mountainous country, from ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the Sheikh the money ourselves." One of them turned to me, "Why, Christian, what is a couple of dollars to Haj Ibrahim? That's the value?" (putting his hand to his nose.) The reader may easily guess how this stupid obstinacy of the merchant ended. The Haj forked out, with a bad grace, and the money was carried after The Giant, one of the Ghat merchants adding two more dollars. I was pleased with this trait of the Ghateen, who were determined we should not go off in this uncomfortable plight. The Giant I did not see again; I regretted to part with him in ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... and everything else of the sort; it's ah-h better than any painting I ever saw, but there's something about it that reminds me of snakes and things of that kind. Snakes! If you saw a forked tongue come out of that ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Charlie and Louise are engaged. I think they have quarrelled, for when Charlie offered his arm to Louise, she looked up with that way she has of throwing her head back, and I declare to you, Ruth, I saw, I positively saw, forked lightnings shoot from her eyes. They blazed so I was afraid they would set his tie on fire. As for Charlie, he turned first green, then magenta, then a rich and lively purple. I give you my word they did not speak to each other during that ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... delicate, parasitic species, very transparent. The very peculiar markings on the operculum at once distinguish it. The upper margin of the mouth is furnished with five elongated spines, the innermost of which is forked at ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... ago came the kindred of the Wolf to these Mountains of the World; and they were in a pass in the stony maze and the utter wilderness of the Mountains, and the foe was behind them in numbers not to be borne up against. And so it befell that the pass forked, and there were two ways before our Folk; and one part of them would take the way to the north and the other the way to the south; and they could not agree which way the whole Folk should take. So they sundered into two companies, and one took one ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... up and looked around. It was a spot at which the highway forked; the left arm, the more important, led on through Sherton Abbas and Melchester to London; the right to Idmouth and the coast. Nothing was visible on the white track to London; but on the other there appeared the back of a carriage, which rapidly ascended a distant hill and ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... hope very hard that there were no more hills. Presently the road forked and we switched to the right. Maps and Guide declared that this was ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... you on purpose," said Packard. "Back there where the roads forked I saw that you had turned to the left, so ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... of the tree to the wind, worked off the thorn, and falling down in the very centre of the circle, smashed into atoms, and the cobra di capella met their gaze, reared upon the very tip of his tail, his hood expanded to the utmost in his wrath, hissing horribly, and darting out his forked tongue,—wavering, among the many, upon whom first ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... white men slept beneath the canoe, which was turned half over, with its upper gunwale resting on a couple of short, but stout, forked sticks; and, acting upon Donald's insistent advice, they kept watch by turn, two hours at a time, during the night. Even "Tummas" was so thoroughly impressed with a sense of responsibility, that his two hours of watchfulness were passed in a nervous tremble and with hardly a blink of ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... early, and was marching along the trail at a rapid gait, at "route step," in any order suitable to the size of the road. Having marched several miles through a well-wooded country, they came to an opening near where the road forked. They turned into the left fork; at that moment, without the least warning, the Cubans leading the march having passed on unmolested, a volley from the Spanish behind a stone fort on top of the hill on both sides of the road was fired into their ranks. They were at first disconcerted, but rallied ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... time, be applied and forked under or raked in, using judgment as to method and quantity, which must be determined by the previous condition of the soil and the strength of the material used, remembering that it is not well to have any chemicals in too close proximity to the tender rootlets of the young plants; and while poor ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... understand how a woman of her temperament suffered, and was martyrized at heart by the scantiness of her pecuniary means. No matter what foolish declarations people make about money, they one and all, if they live in Paris, must grovel before accounts, do homage to figures, and kiss the forked hoof of the golden calf. What a problem was hers! twelve thousand francs a year to defray the costs of a household consisting of father, mother, two children, a chambermaid and cook, living on the second floor of a house in the rue Duphot, in an apartment costing two thousand francs a year. Deduct ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... and the maid would keep watch. Then the lady would lie down under the trees and begin to sing a particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from every part of the wood great serpents would come, hissing and gliding in and out among the trees, and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to the lady. And they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her body, and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with writhing serpents, and there was only her head to be seen. And she whispered to them, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... ornaments. The paper is, I believe, by Dr. F. M. Otis, who had just returned from Panama. A very curious piece owned by Mrs. Philip Phillips, of Washington, represents a creature having some analogies with the fish figure of Otis. Issuing from the mouth is the same forked tongue, each part terminating in a serpent's head. The body is about two inches long and the back has five triangular perforations. The tail is forked and the four leg-like members terminate in conventional serpents' heads. The metal is pure ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes |
