"Midwinter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... midwinter, and the river was frozen over. The boats had not been running for many days, and the happiest time of all the happy days for the young people of the river towns had come. The ponds and creeks were forgotten in the great event of skating on the river, and for miles the smooth ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... the other two were attributed. Now, though I know that this opinion is supported by an assertion of Justus Lipsius, "Thomam illum Thumbum non alium quam Herculem fuisse satis constat," yet shall I venture to oppose one line of Mr Midwinter ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... New Asters, Carnations, Geraniums, Coleus, Petunias, Verbenas, Pansies, Primulas, Pink and Yellow Callas, Burbank's Giant Amaryllis, Caladiums, Begonias, Gladiolus. Dahlias, Cannas, Lilies, Azaleas, Midwinter Chrysanthemums, New Shrubs, Vines and Rare New Fruits. Address ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... sees it,—a mere wraith of the clamorous existence that inflicts itself on our ears when the ground is bare." After the storm is fairly launched the winds not infrequently awake, and, seeing their opportunity, pipe the flakes a lively dance. I am speaking now of the typical, full-born midwinter storm that comes to us from the North or N. N. E., and that piles the landscape knee-deep with snow. Such a storm once came to us the last day of January,—the master-storm of the winter. Previous to that date, we had had but light snow. The spruces had been able to catch it all upon their ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... Spain, in midwinter, the fleet encountered such tremendous gales, that part of it was ship-wrecked, and Margaret's vessel had wellnigh foundered. She retained, however, sufficient composure amidst the perils of her situation, to indite her ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... Mountain Indian Reservation, passes through this strip by way of Show Low. The old trails through Sunset Pass to Camp Verde and across "The Rim" into Tonto Basin traverse the northern part of the reserve, and are used by stockmen and others at short intervals, except in midwinter. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... shall try to answer it in a simple manner. The sailor takes an observation of the sun in two directions, namely, north and south, and east and west. You know, of course, that the sun moves north in the summer and south in the winter, and that the extreme southern point is in midwinter, Dec. 20: that in the spring, or March 20, it is directly above the equator, and in midsummer, or, on June 20, it is as far north as it ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... which claimed some hours of my attention on five days of the week. On holidays my father used to take me on the most delightful fishing excursions to the then unpolluted waters of Coney Island Creek and Sheepshead Bay; and on Monday afternoons in midwinter it was a regular thing that I should go with him to New York to ramble among the old book-shops in Nassau Street and eat oysters at Dorlon's stall, with wooden tables and sawdust-sprinkled floor, in Fulton Market. Say what you please about the friendship of books: it was worth a thousand times ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Midwinter is past. The "January thaw" has come and gone, leaving a smooth, hard crust, just right for coasting. The heavy storms of February have piled the drifts mountain high over road and fence and wall; and the roaring winds of early March have driven the snow in blinding ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... Roger, steal thou in among the crowd, And get the swine to shout Elizabeth. Yon gray old Gospeller, sour as midwinter, Begin ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... wild life came to me at dusk one day in the wilderness. It was midwinter, and the snow lay deep. I was sitting alone on a fallen tree, waiting for the moon to rise so that I could follow the faint snowshoe track across a barren, three miles, then through a mile of forest to another trail ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Geographical friend) had gone with him, as Excellency's Chaplain, in this Russian Journey; which is a memorable one to Busching; and still presents vividly, through his Book, those haggard Baltic Coasts in midwinter, to readers who have business there. Such a journey for grimness of outlook, upon pine-tufts and frozen sand; for cold (the Count's very tobacco-pipe freezing in his mouth), for hardship, for bad lodging, and extremity of dirt in the unfreezable ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... softened and lightened recollections even of Shylock and Don John when we think of the Merchant of Venice and Much Ado about Nothing; we hardly feel in As You Like It the presence or the existence of Oliver and Duke Frederick; and in Twelfth Night, for all its name of the midwinter, we find nothing to remember that might jar with the loveliness of love and the summer ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... etc. There is here an abundance of moisture, and the temperature conditions are more equable the year around. The conditions of environment then are very favorable for the rapid growth of these plants. They develop in midwinter as well ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... sixty,—chiefly because he was "quick on the draw" and because he never missed anything that he shot at. But at sixty, when he was still hated by many, loved by a very few and feared by every one, he died,—crushed under his horse when it fell on the Devil's Tooth trail one sleety day in midwinter. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... fire-proof houses by reminding her that pecuniary loss is not the sole objection to being burned out of house and home whenever the fire fiend happens to crave a flaming sacrifice, in the daytime or in the night, in summer or in midwinter, in sickness or in health; that not only heir-looms, but hearthstones and door posts, endeared by long associations, have a value beyond the power of insurance companies to restore, and that protection against fire means also security against many other ills to which the dwellers in houses ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... Peter the Great passed from this life, in 1725, when Bering's forces were travelling in midwinter from St. Petersburg to cross Siberia to the Pacific, on what is known as the First Expedition.[6] {11} Three years it took him to go from the west coast of Europe to the east coast of Asia, crossing from Okhotsk to Kamchatka, whence he sailed on the 9th of July, 1728, with forty-four ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... a bounty stimulated Captain John Lovewell, of Dunstable, who started with eight men. It was midwinter, but the snow, cold, and hardship did not deter the intrepid men, who made their way up the valley of the Merrimac, and eastward to the country of the Pigwackets. The sun was going down, on the 20th of February, when Captain Lovewell discovered a ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... has nearly vanished—the weather bright and pleasant, for midwinter; but the basin is ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... musical comedy, and the fireworks of one-act plays; a Chinese restaurant, and a Louis Quinze restaurant and a Syrian desert-caravan restaurant; a ballroom and an ice-skating rink; a summer garden that, in midwinter, luxuriated in real trees and real grass, and a real brook crossed by Japanese bridges. Mr. Schwirtz was tireless and extravagant and hearty at the Champs du Pom-Pom. He made Una dance and skate; ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... avalanches; midwinter windstorms; drought; forest fires in south near the Mediterranean overseas departments: hurricanes (cyclones), flooding, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... and children as captives. Vsevelod was, at the time, absent in the extreme northern portion of his territory, but he turned upon his enemies with the heart and with the strength of a lion. It was midwinter. Regardless of storms, and snow and cold, he pursued the foe like the north wind, and crushed them as with an iron hand. With a large number of prisoners he returned ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... metal, of a red colour, and indeed identical with the richly prepared paint vermilion. A thousand workmen are employed in the Spanish mines, above or under ground. It freezes at an exceedingly low temperature, and was found solid during midwinter by the traveller Pallas. Of the other metals, some used as medicines, or pigments, or to form alloys, we have not ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... contracts for labor could be more safely made if they began and ended at times corresponding with contracts made with their customers. The workmen opposed this change in the duration of the contract on the ground that in midwinter they would be less able to resist any disposition on the part of the company to cut down their wages, and that in the event of a strike, it would be more difficult to maintain their situation than it would be in summer. ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... One day in the midwinter of 1856 or 1857—I think it was 1856—I was coming along the main street of Keokuk in the middle of the forenoon. It was bitter weather—so bitter that that street was deserted, almost. A light dry snow was blowing here and there on the ground and on the pavement, swirling this way and that ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... briefer, are observed on the occasion of the great midwinter tribal hunts, the times for which are fixed by the Keeper of the Deer Medicine, the master and warrior priests of the Sa-ni-a-k'ia-kwe; and the religious observances accompanying and following which would form one of the most interesting chapters connected ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... archives, the provision-stores, and palaces, were all devoured by the flames. The bells fell from the tower of Ivan the Great, and the heaviest, which weighed over a hundred tons, was broken in the fall. But in midwinter Sheremetief contrived to surprise Schlippenbach with a superior force, and defeated him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... being reversed in Australia, Christmas occurs in the middle of summer. The English word Midsummer has thus dropped out of use, and "Christmas," or Christmas-time, is its Australian substitute, whilst Midwinter is the word used to denote the Australian winter-time of late June and early ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... himself to Philip: "Look here, I've got a suggestion to make to you. It's getting on towards the end of the term now. Another term won't kill you, and if you want to go to Germany you'd better go after Easter than after Christmas. It'll be much pleasanter in the spring than in midwinter. If at the end of the next term you still want to go I'll make no objection. What d'you say ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... night and midwinter. A frightful wind was bringing sleet from the East. The long sere grasses were wailing. Two specks of light appeared on the desolate plain; a man in a hansom cab was driving ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... the almanac, it was the last day but one of the old year, midwinter, a time of frost and snow, and surely these brilliant oleanders, these great scarlet geraniums, these bright hedges of the many-colored Lantana were but a fairy scene which might vanish any moment and leave the trees bare and the flowers withered. But when we entered the charming grounds about ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... does not dine at a tavern, but on some crackers and cheese: he says baker's bread tastes like wasps' nests, and city fare in general is light and dry. He saves more picking up horseshoes when the snow melts than many persons do in all their lives. He works all the year round: he thrashes in midwinter with the thermometer below zero. The hard times affect him no more than a fly would a rhinoceros. This is perfectly exasperating to the poor spendthrift, good-for-nothing, lazy part of the community. The tramp hired man is particularly mad about it; he declares the old farmer wants him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... that we have a slight effect of this kind on the earth. Between midsummer (of the northern hemisphere) and midwinter our planet draws 3,000,000 miles nearer the sun, but the change occupies six months, and, at the earth's great average distance, the effect of this change is too slight to be ordinarily observable, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... felt as the real centre of national life: and Eadward the Confessor, by founding Westminster Abbey, made it practically the home of the kings. The Conqueror "wore his crown on Eastertide at Winchester; on Pentecost at Westminster; and on Midwinter at Gloucester:" which probably marks the relative position of the three towns as the chief places in the old West Saxon realm at least. Under AEthelstan, London had eight moneyers or mint-masters, while Winchester had ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... One midwinter I cleared away the snow under an apple-tree near the house, and scattered some corn there. I had not seen a bluejay for weeks, yet that very day they found my corn, and after that they came daily and partook of it, holding the kernels under their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... autumn we shall have harvest festivals; in late autumn and early winter among pastoral peoples we shall have festivals, like that of Martinmas, for the blessing and purification of flocks and herds when they come in from their summer pasture. In midwinter there will be a Christmas festival to promote and protect the sun's heat at the winter solstice. But in Southern Europe, to which we mainly owe our drama and our art, the festival most widely celebrated, and that of which we know most, is the Spring Festival, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... midwinter, when the sky was like a crystallized sapphire dome, and the earth spotless in snow, a single sleigh came bowling along the smooth road towards the 'Corner.' 'A heavy fall of snow is equivalent to the simultaneous construction of macadamized roads all through Canada,' saith that ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Pretender planted her siege-guns before the walls of the temple of the priestess, and prepared for business. The first manoeuver made by the beleaguered one was to give a luncheon in the mosque, at which, though it was midwinter, fresh tomatoes and fresh strawberries were served, and a real authoress from Boston talked upon John Fiske's philosophy and, in the presence of the admiring guests, made a new kind of salad dressing for the fresh lettuce and tomatoes. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... it excels even sweet peas and roses. Mixed with the brilliant red berries of barberry and multiflora rose, and the dark-green branches of the hardy thyme, which continues fresh and sweet through the year, a handsome and lasting bouquet may be made for a midwinter table decoration, a fragrant reminder of Shakespeare's lines ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... stranger, with no appearance of resentment, "that is a matter which must one day lie between Kha-hia, this person, and one long since Passed Beyond, and to this end have I uncomplainingly striven for the greater part of a lifetime. For the rest, men do not cross the King-langs in midwinter, wearing away their lives upon those stormy heights, to make a jest of empty words. Already sinking into the Under World, even as I am now powerless to raise myself above the ground, I, Nau-Kaou, swear and attest ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... set of skulls being thin and firm, while the other was thick and porous. We rode on, and soon came to San Angel, where were many pleasant places for suburban residences, and an immense convent garden celebrated for its fruits. But now all was parched and dry, for it was midwinter, which is here the middle of the dry season, and it was not yet the time for the new foliage to appear upon the trees, for that does ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... it would appear easy enough. With apparent indifference he crosses your path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks and remote barns. Carry the carcass of a pig, or a fowl, or a dog, to a distant field in midwinter, and in a few nights his tracks cover the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... whalers and seal-hunting craft were reported to be in the habit of frequenting during the short summer season of that dreary region. This period, however, would not come round for the next three or four months, as it was now only the first week in August, the midwinter of antarctic climes. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... short silence; the blue eyes of the Swedish girl had become frosty as two midwinter stars. Suddenly they glimmered warm again as ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... long before Redruff and Graytail fully recovered, but food and rest in plenty are sure cure-alls, and a bright clear day in midwinter had the usual effect of setting the vigorous Redruff to drumming on the log. Was it the drumming, or the tell-tale tracks of their snow-shoes on the omnipresent snow, that betrayed them to Cuddy? He came prowling ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... here, for it would have gone hard with me to treat him in the manner that Jane decided it was best for all the women in Glendale to treat all the men in this crisis. It sounded sweet and cold as molasses dispenses itself to you in midwinter, and I could see it was a strain on Mamie and Caroline and Mrs. Kirkland, Nell's mother, and young Mrs. Dodd, the carpenter's wife,—the Boston girl that married him before she realized him,—to keep it ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... his red hair grew threaded with white, and his foolish, idle heart happier and happier as the years went on. Then, one midwinter day, Father Delancey climbed the hill to say that Timothy's sister's husband was dead, and that Timothy was sent for to take his place, hold the Nebraska claim, work the land, and be a father to his sister's children. Timothy was stunned with horror, but the unbending will ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... One midwinter day, Father Champreau, a Jesuit missionary, pulled into Twenty Mile. Bonner fell upon him and dragged him into the post, and clung to him and wept, until the priest wept with him from sheer compassion. Then Bonner became madly ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... midwinter, and a cold drizzle was falling when she waited for him at the prison gates. Three years had passed since they had parted. She took him in her arms and kissed him silently. Her heart was too full for words. A carriage was waiting for them, and she drove to the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... guards, and ordered the assault for the morrow. "The great chances of our destiny," said he to his troops, "have brought us hither to the place where we desired to be, after traversing so many bad roads, in midwinter, with snows and frosts so great, with rain, and mud, and encounters of the enemy, in hunger and thirst, and without a halfpenny. Now is the time to show courage, manliness, and the strength of your bodies. If this bout you are victorious, you will ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... spring, but now in midwinter we have opened our crimson cups, smiling in delight on this thy birthday morning, that brings thee so nigh the bridal bed: better for us to be wreathed on the brows of so fair a woman than wait for the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... a prospector had come up to Fort Smith, on the Slave River, with a pickle bottle filled with gold dust and nuggets. He had made the find on the McFarlane. The first mails had taken the news to the outside world, and by midwinter the earliest members of a treasure-hunting horde were rushing into the country by snow-shoe and dog-sledge. Other finds came thick and fast. The McFarlane was rich in free gold, and miners by the score staked out their claims along it and began work. Latecomers swung to new fields farther ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... open upon its outlook of brick walls and drab, barren back yards. Except for the mildness of the air that entered it might have been midwinter yet in the city that turns such a frowning face to besieging spring. But spring doesn't come with the thunder of cannon. She is a sapper and a miner, and you ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... for winter. The enormous prizes for extending the line through the Rockies to meet the rival railroad heading east from California, spurred the builders to every effort to lengthen their mileage, and something unheard of was attempted, namely, mountain railroad-building in midwinter. ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... Starting at the close of 1577 with five small vessels, the squadron was reduced by shipwreck and desertion until only the flagship remained when Drake at last, on September 6 of the next year, achieved his midwinter passage of the Straits of Magellan and bore down, "like a visitation of God" as a Spaniard said, upon the weakly defended ports of the west coast. After ballasting his ship with silver from the rich Potosi mines, and rifling even the churches, he hastened onward ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Cleeve lingered on at his post, until the more sanguine birds of the plantation, already recovering from their midwinter anxieties, piped a short evening hymn ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... midwinter, Jumbo called without his master, and walked into the back parlor without being announced; there was no living creature there except himself and Fluff, and when the family entered the room there was ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... we moved up the river again, we hoped to fall in with game, though unfortunately found but little in our course. When we had advanced some twenty miles we halted. Our position looked threatening. It was midwinter, and everything around us bore a gloomy aspect. We were without any provisions, and we saw no means of obtaining any. At this crisis, six or seven Indians of the Pawnee Loup band came into our camp. Knowing them to be friendly, we were overjoyed ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... frost-bound regions of Canada and Labrador,) blows for any length of time, the sky becomes clear, and the aurora disappears. No sooner, however, does the east wind blow, which, being charged with the vapours of the Atlantic, induces mild weather even in midwinter, than they again dart forth their coruscations—more brightly at first, afterwards more faintly, till, if the wind ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... less extensive. On the morning of the 15th my thermometer was at 16 deg., and the trees on the shore were white with frost. The deck passengers shivered around the engines and endeavored to extract heat from them. The cabin passengers, excepting myself, were wrapped in their fur coats as if it were midwinter. I walked about in my ordinary clothing, finding the air bracing but not uncomfortable. I could not understand how the Russians felt the cold when it did not affect me, and was a little proud of my insensibility to frost. Conceit generally comes of ignorance, and as I learned, wisdom ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... freed off Cape Walsingham, June 5, 1851, after drifting in eight and a half months a distance of ten hundred and fifty miles. It is impossible to adequately describe their physical discomforts and dangers, the mental depression of the sunless midwinter of eight weeks, and the even harder experiences of the Arctic spring-tide, when excessive cold and increasing lassitude made steady inroads on their impaired constitutions. Kane tells us they were continually harassed by uncertainties ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the name of all that's unholy did you lead me a race away off to this forsaken little hole in midwinter, Hazel?" ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... my privilege to meet him. In midwinter, he of course was not in condition. Descriptions of his weird physique, and jests over his grotesquely large and ill-shaped head, made by half a dozen voluble huntsmen over post-prandial bottles, I thought had prepared me against surprise. Certainly ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... each plant is grown in a small pot and transplanted by dumping out the earth as a ball with the plant and putting directly in the ground. From potted plants, set out in the fall, one may count on a fine crop of berries the following spring. Strawberry plants are never dormant till midwinter, and there is no plant more difficult to transplant when roots are disturbed in the hot season, which usually prevails in the interior valleys of California. To have a long-lived strawberry field and to get best results, planting must be done in the spring, as soon as the soil ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... dear," he said. "I can quite see why you feel that you are needed. You had better take your midwinter examinations, and prepare to return home about Christmas. In all likelihood your Aunt Daphne and I will ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... of a great gun told them that the city was once more besieged. In truth, Humayon hearing, while still on his bed of sickness, the fatal news of Shurruf Khan's treachery, had strained every nerve, ill as he was, to come to the rescue of his little son. It was midwinter, the passes were blocked with snow, he and his troops had to meet endless hardships; but at last they were before Kabul once more. Camped on the Arkaban hill, opposite the Iron Gate, the artillery were brought into position, ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... harbor and the value of the soil and timber. They were, however, in no condition to settle, or even to tarry. Their health and strength were impaired, ammunition was practically exhausted, and there were no supplies. They would come back, but now they must reach civilization. It was midwinter and raining almost constantly. They had little idea of distance, but knew there were settlers to the south, and that they must reach them or starve. So they turned from the bay they had ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... and his blood coursed with fevered haste through his veins since the efforts, night-watches, and excitement of the last few days. He drew his little coat close around him with a shiver and muttered, "I feel like a sheep that has been shorn in midwinter, and my head burns as if I were a baker and had to draw the bread out of the oven; a child might knock me down, and my eyes are heavy. I have not even the energy to collect my thoughts for a prayer, of which I am in such sore need. My goal is undoubtedly the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of those ten years he had represented law north of fifty-three. Now he had come to the end of his last hunt, close up to the Arctic Circle. For one hundred and eighty-seven days he had been following a man. The hunt had begun in midsummer, and it was now midwinter. Billy Loring, who was wanted for murder, had been a hard man to find. But he was caught at last, and Brokaw was keenly exultant. It was his greatest achievement. It would mean a great deal ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... winter aspect of these wastes can be imagined. The Northern forests are silent enough in winter time, but the silence of the Barren Grounds is far more profound. Even in the depths of midwinter the North-Western bush has voices and is full of animal life. The barking cry of the crows (these birds are the greatest imaginable nuisance to the trapper, whose baits they steal even before his back is turned) is still heard; the snow-birds ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... find the chief beauty of the hill in the bronze and yellow of the changing leaves of October; there are no hills where the beech glows with a deeper fire than over Albury and the Tillingbourne. Others even might ask for the vague, wet airs of midwinter, with the shouldering hilltops east and south and west faint and mysterious in the clinging mist, and never a house-roof to be seen. That is an effect of strange loneliness; but the abiding charm of St. Martha's is the peace of clear air, in the enchantment of low spring ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... of the Teutonic year were held at Midsummer and Midwinter. May-Day, the very beginning of spring, was celebrated by May-ridings, when winter and spring, personified by two warriors, engaged in a combat in which Winter, the fur-clad king of ice and snow, was defeated. It was then that the sacred fire had been kindled, and the sacrificial feast ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... the emblems of pure pleasures flown, I scarce can think of pleasure without these. Even to dream of them is to disown The cold forlorn midwinter reveries, Lulled with the perfume of old hopes new-blown, No longer dreams, but ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... wished that it had been January, midsummer in the Antarctic, so there would have been at least a little dim sunshine. Mike the Angel did not particularly relish having to visit the South Pole in midwinter. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... from Philip Hardin arrives, in the gayest midwinter of a rejuvenated Paris. The time for decisive action has arrived. Natalie revolves every clause of Hardin's ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... if I wouldn't," said Dan. "I'm getting more and more discontented. But there's not much use crying for the moon, and France might as well be the moon, for all of me." He relapsed then into a brooding silence. It was hard for an inn-keeper to be cheerful in midwinter with an empty house. Tom too was silent, dreaming vividly, if vaguely, of the France he ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... cannot speak of the buildings alone without thinking of the gardens. The Japanese sense of detail and love of the picturesque are disclosed at every turn. We still have with us in San Francisco, as a memento of the Midwinter Fair of 1894, the Japanese Garden in Golden Gate Park, and while this new creation at the Exposition is not so extensive, it is ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... another season. The promised co-operation of the Anadyr River party had failed us, and without more men, the Major did not think it expedient to undertake the exploration of a region which presented so many and so great obstacles to midwinter travel. The distance which remained to be traversed, therefore, was only about fourteen hundred versts from Okhotsk to the Russian outpost of Anadyrsk, just south of the Arctic Circle. After some deliberation the Major ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... conscienceless Jew who bought up the old buildings as fast as they came into the market, and filled them with a class of tenants before whom charity recoils, helpless and hopeless. When the houses were filled, the crowds overflowed into the yard. In one, I found, in midwinter, tenants living in sheds built of odd boards and roof tin, and paying a dollar a week for herding with the rats. One of them, a red-faced German, was a philosopher after his kind. He did not trouble himself to get up, when I looked in, but stretched himself in his bed,—it was high noon,—responding ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... one of them in the midst of a modern author, we seem to have come suddenly upon a greener ground, a greater depth and strength of soil. It is as if a green bough were laid across the page, and we are refreshed as by the sight of fresh grass in midwinter or early spring. You have constantly the warrant of life and experience in what you read. The little that is said is eked out by implication of the much that was done. The sentences are verdurous and blooming as evergreen and flowers, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... expired, and previous to that date the Company announced a reduction of wages, declaring that the new scale would terminate in January instead of June. The employees rejected the proposed terms, principally on the ground that they could not afford to strike in midwinter and in that case they would not be able to resist a further reduction in wages. Upon receiving this statement the company locked out its ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... had observed decided evidences of spring; but here it was like midwinter—not a bud nor blade of grass to be seen. Milroy was now out of reach, so we retraced our steps. On getting out of the mountains we bore to the left of Staunton in the direction of Harrisonburg, twenty-five miles northeast ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... midwinter. On the bank of the river stood the purveyor of the convent, accompanied by the lady abbess herself and a great number of the nuns. They waited to watch the first haul made by the fishermen on the New Year's morning, according to the custom which ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... would do for a scarehead. I put in the legal notices, whatever news items I had handy or had time to set up, and stuck in boilerplate as a filler. I could not count the times I used the same plate over—but the settlers didn't mind reading it again; they had little else to do in midwinter. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... door and spread a prodigiously big umbrella—an umbrella striped in dingy colors and of the size of the canopies seen over the drivers of delivery wagons. The employment of such a shield from the sun in midwinter indicated that the Prophet was rather more than eccentric; his garb conveyed the same suggestion. He wore a frayed purple robe that hung on his heels when he came striding across the street. On a broad band of cloth that once had been white, reaching from shoulder to waist, diagonally ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... upon; but the facts may as well be brought out now as later. People of otherwise irreproachable conduct will lose all sense of truthfulness when they speak of physical culture and fresh air. They will exaggerate the number of inches they keep their bedroom windows raised in midwinter; they will quote ridiculous estimates of the doctors' bills they have saved; they will represent themselves as being in the most incredibly perfect health. I know one sober, intelligent business-man who not only habitually ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... half dreaming. "Bosh! fireflies in midwinter on the top of a mountain!" I rubbed my eyes. "Sparks from my fire?" Several peculiar low snarling growls made me start up, wide awake with a vengeance. "Wolves!" I said to myself; "there is no doubt about it." The brutes had ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... weaving. She had no loom, and shuttle she had none. All with her hands she wove a wondrous cloth. Stooping and bending, rising and swaying with motions beautiful as those the Northern Lights make in a midwinter sky, she wove a cloth. The warp was blue and mystical to see, the woof was white, and shone with its whiteness, so that of all the webs the stepmother had ever seen, she had seen none ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... were the rule. He was a strong man and had taken pride in being able to do things which few other men could do without harm coming to them; for instance, to chop a hole in the ice and go swimming in midwinter. But exposure to the chill, damp air of that North Sea country and the heavy fogs that drifted in from the ocean at night, when he rode alone, often many miles over the moor on his tours of inspection, had undermined his splendid ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... 38. Midwinter, and provisions low. Seven already buried in the ocean. Sickness setting in with more severity, women and children to be somehow cared for, two tiny babies to be shielded from all harm, their only home the inhospitable shore. No time to lose! The 16th they began to build the first house, ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... heiress of Whichello had a lodging in all our hearts, and when I, one midwinter morning, saw her distraught with a troubled look in her soft brown eyes, I was grieved, and begged her ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... It was midwinter; a heavy fall of snow covered the ground; he rushed out without his garment, and gathering up great heaps of snow began to make a row of images. "See," he said, "here is thy wife, and behind her are two sons and ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... sometime in the winter—Philip's first winter with the Faringfields—that the next outbreak came, between him and Master Edward. If ever the broad mansion of the Faringfields looked warm and welcoming, it was in midwinter. The great front doorway, with its fanlight above, and its panel windows at each side, through which the light shone during the long evenings, and with its broad stone steps and out-curving iron railings, had then its most ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the general structure of the higher mosses may be had from a study of almost any common species. One of the most convenient, as well as common, forms (Funaria) is to be had almost the year round, and fruits at almost all seasons, except midwinter. It grows in close patches on the ground in fields, at the bases of walls, sometimes in the crevices between the bricks of sidewalks, etc. If fruiting, it may be recognized by the nodding capsule on ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... times the great festivals were held at the same time as in northern and modern Europe. The brumalia took place in midwinter, when the days were shortest, and the rosalia, according to early custom in May or June, and at a later time about Easter. After the establishment of Christianity the Church made constant efforts to suppress ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... day of the grand volunteer review (the beginning of the festivities in Jubilee week) dawned bitterly cold, as indeed one must expect in midwinter. I got leave from the Doctor, with great difficulty, for Tom to go to it in a closed carriage; for he was still suffering much from his eyes. Lady Loch drove with me to the ground in an open carriage, and of course we had an excellent place close to the ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... Washington, and really hadn't meant any harm. He was, therefore, fined five dollars and ordered to depart forthwith for Port Agnew, Washington, which he did, arriving there absolutely penniless and as hungry as a cougar in midwinter. He fled over to the mill kitchen, tossed about five dollars worth of ham and eggs and hot biscuit into his empty being, and began to take stock of life. Naturally, the first thing he recalled in mind was ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... he had subjected himself. It is delicately implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which, elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... find him seem to want something, as if suffering from some neglect of Nature. And then he is such a splendid success, so hardy and vigorous. I think he enjoys the cold and the snow. His wings seem to rustle with more fervency in midwinter. If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm he will complacently sit down allow himself to be snowed under. Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... remained at Monterey, but, with the few soldiers, we had next to nothing to do. In midwinter we heard of the approach of a battalion of the Second Dragoons, under Major Lawrence Pike Graham, with Captains Rucker, Coutts, Campbell, and others, along. So exhausted were they by their long march ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... become of the child? And while they were wondering and staring about, up started Squash-blossom out of a snow-bank, with the reddest face you ever saw, and looking as if a large scarlet flower had suddenly sprouted up in midwinter. Then there ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... engaged himself to this party as assistant chain-bearer, little thinking that the day was to come when he should clank the king's chains in a dungeon, even as now he trailed them a free ranger of the woods. It was midwinter; the land was surveyed upon snow-shoes. At the close of the day, fires were kindled with dry hemlock, a hut thrown up, and ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... said the city editor, dryly, "that Gallegher's reasoning has impressed you; and I also see that before the week is out all of my young men will be under bonds for assaulting innocent pedestrians whose only offense is that they wear gloves in midwinter." ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... After midwinter the allied armies began to recover their health and strength, through careful nursing, better sanitary measures, and constant reinforcements, especially from France. At last a railway was made between Balaklava and the camps, and a land-transport corps was organized. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... alder copse and juniper jungle—hard indeed, and terribly vexatious—and he saw with delight the great open slope, covered with an unbroken surface of glittering snow. The sun (which at midwinter is but a few hours above the horizon) had set; and the stars were flashing forth with dazzling brilliancy. Ralph stopped, as he reached the clearing, to give Biceps an opportunity to overtake him; for Biceps, like all marine animals, moved with less ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Then briefly, as was the Indian way, yet with the pictured phrasing which caused each scene to spring into vivid life before the young girl's eyes, he told her of the day, already more than eighteen years gone by, when, in the wake of a long midwinter storm, the first sailing vessel ever beheld by his people had fled for refuge to their bay; and of the little girl carefully brought to shore by her old nurse in the first boat to touch the beach. A mere baby she was, too young ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... River, navigable for a thousand miles, flowed through the entire breadth of the Confederacy with its approaches and its mouth in the hands of the North. Both the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers had their mouths open to Northern frontiers and were navigable in midwinter for transports and gunboats which could pierce the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Konditorei, more to rest her tired body than because she needed food. The afternoon was as the morning. At six o'clock, long after the midwinter darkness had fallen, she stumbled back to the Wollbadgasse and up the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... goodwives and maidens were dressed in a meagre and scanty fashion that when now considered seems fairly appalling. As soon as the colonies grew in wealth and fashion, thin silk or cotton hose were frequently worn in midwinter by the wives and daughters of well-to-do colonists; and correspondingly thin cloth or kid or silk slippers, high-channelled pumps, or low shoes with paper soles and "cross-cut" or wooden heels were the holiday and Sabbath-day covering for the feet. In wet ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... unnumbered hordes from East and West and South and North; in whose grapes were the bloods of Roman, Teuton, Slav, Mongol, and Frank; that had been the source and shelter of a race's song, science, and story—lay in silent slumber, muffled in midwinter's snows. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... exceedingly smooth and level, Each being crossed by others at intervals; On either side perambulate men and females, In the centre, career along the carriages and horses; The mingled sound of voices is heard in the shops at evening. During midwinter the accumulated snows adhere to the pathway, Lamps are displayed at night along the street sides, Their radiance twinkling like ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... of his dead and buried crop. He walks across it; his shoes sink almost to the instep in the soft soil. He sees birds hopping about in it without overcoats. Surely, he says to himself, this is a favored land. Here it lies on the latitudes of Labrador, and yet its midwinter fields are as green as ours in the last month of Spring. At this rate the farmers here must harvest their wheat before the ears of mine are formed. But he counts without Nature. The American sun overtakes and distances the English by a full month. Here is the compensation for six ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... them food in abundance. The families of the northern camps are not as well provided for by bountiful nature as those south of the Caloosahatchie River. Yet, though at my visit to the Cat Fish Lake Indians in midwinter the sweet potatoes were all gone, a good hunting ground and fertile fields of Koonti were near at hand for Tcup-ko's people to visit and use ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... achievement of it will surely look lovelier than the naked house left out on its naked white lawn like an unclaimed trunk on a way-station platform. I would not, for anything, offend the reader's dignity, but I must think that this midwinter garden may be made at least as much lovelier than no garden as Alice's Cheshire cat was lovelier—with or without its grin—than the ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... tended shop. Cupido paid them with music-lessons and meals—better or worse these latter, according to the day's receipts, which were divided fraternally among the three. And if the "boss" sometimes astonished the city by going out for a walk in midwinter in a suit of white duck, they, not to be outdone, would shave off their hair and eyebrows and show heads as smooth as billiard-balls behind the shop windows, to the great commotion of the city, which would flock en masse to ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez |
