"Sapling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I stop short in the path to admire how the trees grow up without forethought, regardless of the time and circumstances. They do not wait as man does, but now is the golden age of the sapling. Earth, air, sun, and rain, are occasion enough; they were no better in primeval centuries. The "winter of their discontent" never comes. Witness the buds of the native poplar standing gayly out to the frost on the sides of its bare switches. They express ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... drove up, he observed that both the shafts of his gig were broken, and that they were held together by withes, formed from the bark of a hickory sapling. Our traveler observed further that he was plainly clad, that his knee buckles were loosened, and that something like negligence pervaded his dress. Conceiving him to be one of the honest yeomanry of our land, the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... oak, "in my sapling days My habit it was to bow, But the wildest storm that the winds could raise Would never disturb me now. I challenge the breeze to make me bend, And the blast to make me sway." The shrewd little bulrush answered, "Friend, ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... thy giant pride Yet spared the sapling green; And tall and stately by thy side 'Twill show ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... front and around one side, and a square of garden is fenced in, with dahlias and hollyhocks and marigolds, and perhaps a struggling rosebush, and usually a small patch of tobacco growing in one corner. Once in a long while you may see a balm-of-Gilead tree, or a clump of sapling poplars, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... a young hand in the woods, interrupted Natty, with another laugh, that didnt know how to dress a rod out of an ash sapling or find a fire-stone in the mountains. No, no, I never expected to live forever; but I see, times be altering in these mountains from what they was thirty years ago, or, for that matter, ten years. But ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... at Theseus and made him bend under the blows like a sapling. And thrice Theseus sprang upright after the blow, and he stabbed at the Club-bearer with his sword, but the loose folds of the bear-skin ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... forest. Here, about the base of a tree, the snow had been recently trampled and a fire smouldered. It was Spurling's first camp. Granger, having unharnessed and fed his huskies, taking his axe from his girdle, cut down a sapling fir and roused the dying embers to a blaze. The flames shot up, and, climbing the bark of the tree, crackled among the branches overhead. Unpacking his tallow he melted it in a cup. Before it was all drunk, the surface was frozen solid. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... a strong pocket jack-knife he cut a leaping pole from a sapling near, and went still farther up the stream to the rapids, where, by a skilful use of his pole and dexterous leaping from rock to rock, he was enabled to ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... passed large numbers of natives; marked small gum sapling MK roughly; made for heavy creek that joins another at Strzelecki's Creek, and camped at a water called Tacdurrie, a small water about two miles from Gooneborrow in the main creek. Distance travelled today about twenty-seven and ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... to be a cumbersome flat-boat of the type used by clam-fishers. In fact the smell that simply swirled up from its oozy bottom left no doubt that the boat had been used for that purpose. A pair of unbelievably heavy oars, cut from a sapling with a hand-axe, trailed in the water from "loose oarlocks." Dave gave a gasp of dismay as he ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... soon after put to death in the most shocking and cruel manner. Little Beard, in this, as in all other scenes of cruelty that happened at his town, was master of ceremonies, and principal actor. Poor Boyd was stripped of his clothing, and then tied to a sapling, where the Indians menaced his life by throwing their tomahawks at the tree, directly over his head, brandishing their scalping knives around him in the most frightful manner, and accompanying their ceremonies with terrific shouts of joy. Having punished him sufficiently ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... be sound, and the pole lying in it was a straight, peeled ash sapling, not too heavy for either of the ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... bar is bad, but a substitute that will work can be made if you have some strong string and a stout pocket knife. Cut two sections of a springy sapling, and bind them securely to the front fork, one on either side, and sufficiently long to reach just above the broken bar. Next tie securely a stout stick of proper length to the broken bar, and tie to this the end of the uprights. If properly done, this ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... drew near we decided to go home, having found nothing we cared to study. Just as we were taking leave of the spot I heard, nearly at my back, a gentle scolding cry, and glancing around, my eyes fell upon two small birds running down the trunk of a walnut sapling. A few inches above the ground one of the pair disappeared, and the other, still scolding, flew away. I hastened to the spot—and there I found ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... point, threw my father's urbane supremacy into marked relief; and so in another fashion did the Earl of Witlington, 'a youth in the season of guffaws,' as Jorian DeWitt described him, whom a jest would seize by the throat, shaking his sapling frame. Jorian strolled up to us goutily. No efforts of my father's would induce him to illustrate his fame for repartee, so it remained established. 'Very pretty waxwork,' he said to me of our English beauties swimming by. 'Now, those women, young Richmond, if they were ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... elevation above the water appeared at times tremendous, the abrupt steepness of the gorge was such that the birds almost brushed the hillside with their wings. A sledge, laden with the timber of barked sapling oaks, creaked and jingled over the rough road beside the stream; a man called to his horses and a dog barked beside him; then they disappeared and the spacious scene was again empty, save for its ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... say that he has found life difficult till he has known what it is to wait; till he has waited through the endless days that turn into weeks more slowly than an acorn turns into a sapling; through the unmoving weeks that turn into months more slowly than a sapling turns into a forest tree,—for a word which does ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... preparations of his new friends. It had no significance for him that all day long the forest rang with the clip of the felling axe. Neither did the unceasing work of the buck-saw, as it ploughed its way through an endless stream of sapling trunks, afford him anything beyond the joy of lending his assistance. Then, too, the morning survey of the elemental prospect, when his elders searched the skies, fearing and hoping, and grimly accepting that which the fates decreed, was only one amongst ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... How in the name of Cain, I seem to hear you ask, are men to dance, When all men are musicians. Tell me that, I hear you saying, and I'll tell you the name Of Samson's mother. But why shroud yourself Before the coffin comes? For all you know, The tree that is to fall for your last house Is now a sapling. You may have to wait So long as to be sorry; though I doubt it, For you are not at home in your new Eden Where chilly whispers of a likely frost Accumulate already in the air. I think a touch of ermine, Hamilton, Would be for you in your autumnal ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... right arm, a nervy hand, A wrist as strong as a sapling oak, Buried deep in the Malverri sand— To laugh at that, is a sorry joke. Never again your iron grip Shall I feel in my shrinking palm— Tom, Tom, I see your trembling lip; All within is not ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... through the deepening dawn, giving an occasional "gee up, Rhody!" to the mare, and following the track of the harrow with much the same concentration of purpose as that displayed by his four-footed friend. He was strong for his years, lithe as a sapling, and as fearless of elemental changes, and as he walked meditatively across the bare field he might have suggested to an onlooker the possible production of a vast fund ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Silvanumque senem, nymphasque sorores." I saw them, I saw them! I walked fast! my feet raced with my thoughts. My heart was beating, my blood was hot, my inclinations were pastoral, but enthusiastic. I was disposed to admire, and prepared to prove that I admired. I could have embraced a sapling and swooned as I called upon Dryas or Syrinx. Then, by-and-by, in the fulness of the time I saw a slim solitary girl ahead of me in a glade, walking bolt upright with a huge faggot of sticks upon her head. It was growing dusk. I could see little ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... the strength of a stout oak pole driven into the ground, across whose fork was lashed, like the cross-bar of a "T," a leaf-stripped sapling. To the tip of this rod the negro was tying the legs of a big, white goose, whose extended wings and pendant head ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... a sort of yoke, formed out of a tough sapling that had been sweated in the fire and then bent into a triangular shape. It was a rude isosceles triangle, tied tightly at the apex with rawhide thongs; and thereto was attached a piece of well-twisted rope, the object of which was to form a knot or loop over ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... the tiny ford, warily, she saw a saddled horse tied to a sapling and a man seated ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... beds of these excavations, that they claim an antiquity greater far than the occupation of their valleys by the French. Year after year, a silent, solemn record was made by the concentric circles, first in the shrub, next in the sapling, and then in the fully developed tree, that tells of the lapse of time since these mysterious works were ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... carry away with me, that the Democracy, in the language of your own glorious Webster, "still lives"; lives, not as his great spirit did, when it hung 'twixt life and death, like a star upon the horizon's verge, but lives like the germ that is shooting upward; like the sapling that is growing to a mighty tree, and I trust it may redeem Massachusetts to her glorious place in the Union, when she led the van of the defenders of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... to a place (marked by a sapling with a little flag attached to it) at some short distance from the cottage. She glided along by his side, with subtle undulations of movement which appeared to complete the exasperation of Perry. He waited until she was out of hearing—and ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... mind to rest, rolled himself up in his blanket, and stretched himself out, first tying his horse to a sapling. The place was retired, and he felt moderately confident that, even if he overslept himself, he ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... cause I had to pine, What pangs, what miseries, each day were mine; And when I wept there was no mother near To soothe my cries, and smile away my tear. Poor victim of a punishment unending, Torn like a sapling from its mother earth, So young, I could not tell what crime impending Had stained ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... the beer shop, during which direct allusion was made to a burglary in Baltimore in January, made a good foundation for procedure. Judge Wandell pondered, and then Mr. Hummell pushed his side energetically, using tons of cold sarcasm and barrels of withering scorn. It was the sapling shielding the blasted oak, one of the youngest, and certainly the smallest counselor thundering forth in behalf ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... setting his body and the horse's as a bulwark between Death and the two women. Now, though Lynette's rough straw hat had been whisked from her head by a force invisible, he saw her safe, caught in the Mother-Superior's embrace, sheltered by the tall, protecting figure as the sapling is ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... at log-rollings, corn-shuckings and quiltings. Dey'd have a big supper and a big dance at night. Us children would play ring plays, play with home-made rag dolls, or we'd take big leaves and pin 'em together wid thorns and make hats and dresses. We'd ride saplings, too. All of us would pull a sapling down and one would climb up in it near de top and git a good hold on it, and dey would turn it loose. It took a purty good holding to stay wid it, I can ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... the words "leave the world," was forthwith seized with great heart-trembling, even as the strong wild elephant shakes with his weight the boughs of some young sapling; going forward, seizing the prince's hands, with falling tears, he spake as follows: "Stop! nor speak such words, the time is not yet come for 'a religious life;' you are young and strong, your heart beats full, to lead a religious life frequently involves trouble; it is rarely possible to ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... northwest, whistling as it came. He saw the sky and the turbid Mississippi meet and strangely become one. There were waters over the heavens, and waters under the heavens. A wall like a moving dam swept across the world and filled it. The boy found himself sitting on the ground holding to a sapling, drenched and half drowned by the spray which dashed up the bluffs. The darkness and hissing went over him, and he thought he was dying without absolution, at the end of the world. He lay down and gasped and shuddered until the great Thing ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and bade him sit near her, but he shook his head and said that he preferred to stand where he was, and then, realizing that his remark was abrupt, sat down by her and was silent. At her feet the violets were blooming. There came a breeze, and the blossom of a poplar sapling brushed her face and shed its ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... an island in the slough, and a sapling stood on it close to the side of that log, which was now entirely under water. I know'd further, that the water was about eight or ten feet deep under the log, and I judged it to be three feet deep over it. After studying a little ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... Incas. The wife of the chief immediately tore off a branch of the feather palm growing beside her, and, certainly within a minute, made a basket, into which she placed a small gourd. Going to the other side of the clearing, she commenced, with the agility of a monkey, to ascend a long sapling which had been laid in a slanting position against a tall palm tree. The long, graceful leaves of this cabbage palm had been torn open, and the heart thus left to ferment. From the hollow cabbage the woman filled ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... Soothed by the breeze that wandered to and fro Through the glad foliage musically low. Still stands that tree, and rears its stately form In rugged strength, and mocks the winter storm; There, while of slender shade and sapling growth, We carved our schoolboy names, a mutual troth. All, all, revives a bliss too bright to last, And every leaflet ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... make me a spear from a tough ashen sapling that he had treasured for a long time, because that which I had used in the wolf hunt was sprung by the weight of one of the beasts, and while his hurts kept him away at his own house he wrought it, and at last brought it up to the hall to ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... mock me not—I know that Death Sits lightly on him as a dreamless sleep; So dear a bud can never lose its sweets; Oh! foolish heart! I thought to see him grow In strength and beauty, like a sapling oak, Spreading his stalwart shoots about the sky, Till, when old age set burdens on my back, In every bough my trembling hands should find A staff to prop me onward to the grave; And now—my heart is ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... that other boughs may flourish Where that perished sapling used to be; Thus, at least, its mouldering corpse will nourish That from which ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... room looked to each other with sick smiles. There was an excuse for acquiescence, for the figure of Jim Silent contrasted with Whistling Dan was like an oak compared with a sapling. Nevertheless such bland cowardice as Dan was showing made their flesh creep. He asked at the bar for the whisky, and Morgan spoke as Dan filled a glass nearly ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... in guileless glee; Young Frithiof was the sapling tree; In budding beauty by his side, Sweet Ingeborg, the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... later. The electric light—Billabong had its own plant for lighting—had been extended to the loft, and gleamed down on a perfect bower of green—bracken and coral ferns, the tender foliage of young sapling tops, Christmas bush, clematis and tall reeds from the lagoon—the latter gathered by Jim and Wally during their morning bathe. Rough steps had been improvised to lead from outside up to the main door ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... heavy sapling which had been fetched in for a sleeper or something of that sort. We picked it up, and, taking a run back, brought it with all its weight against the front door. In it went like a sheet of bark; we almost fell as we ran forward and found ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... hooping-cough of a superstitious character, practised extensively during the earlier years of this century, and some are still recommended. The following are a few of these. Pass the patient three times under the belly, and three times over the back of a donkey. Split a sapling or a branch of the ash tree, and hold the split open while the patient is passed three times through the opening. Find a man riding on a piebald horse, and ask him what should be given as a medicine, and whatever ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... Have fenced him for three hundred years, While fell around his green compeers - Yon lonely thorn, would he could tell The changes of his parent dell, Since he, so grey and stubborn now, Waved in each breeze a sapling bough: Would he could tell how deep the shade A thousand mingled branches made; How broad the shadows of the oak, How clung the rowan to the rock, And through the foliage showed his head, With narrow leaves and berries ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... toiled clearing those four acres, where the haystacks are now standing, till every tree and sapling that had grown there was down. We thought then the worst was over; but how little we knew of clearing land! Dad was never tired of calculating and telling us how much the crop would fetch if the ground could ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... through which Henry now passed were yet wet, and every time he touched a bough or a sapling showers of little drops fell upon him. The patch of forest was dense and the trees large. The trees also grew straight upward, and Henry concluded at once that he would find a little distance ahead a ridge that ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... saplings were taken down in order that the whole of the thatch might be renovated, when it was found that both had started to grow, several of the shoots being 8 and 10 inches long. While sugarcane was languishing for lack of moisture, 150 miles away down the coast, a roughly-cut sapling exposed on the roof of a building found the conditions for the beginning of a new existence so favourable and stimulative that it had budded as freely as Aaron's rod. "Through the scent of water it had budded and brought forth ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Isabel sought the spot in a few days to learn if Mandricardo had returned, found the scattered armor, and heard of Orlando's madness from a shepherd. Lamenting over their protector's misfortune, they gathered up the armor, hung it on a sapling, and wrote thereon Orlando's name. But while they were thus engaged, Mandricardo arrived, took the long coveted sword, and gave Zerbino, who attempted to prevent the theft, a mortal wound. The unhappy Isabel, intent on self-destruction, was comforted ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... down into this deserted place that they might not be observed! He made no effort now to overtake her, but kept the same distance between them, whistling carelessly and knowing that she would stop to wait for him. Ahead of them there loomed up out of the darkness a clump of sapling spruce, and into their shadow the ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... glistening with pearls. His brooch, by which the tartan mantle, or plaid, as it is now called, was secured on the shoulder, was also of gold, large and curiously carved. He bore no weapon in his hand, excepting a small sapling stick with a hooked head. His whole appearance and gait, which used formerly to denote a sullen feeling of conscious degradation, was now bold, forward, and haughty; and he stood before Catharine with smiling confidence, as if fully conscious of ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... on upward, catching a sapling here, a limb there, pulling herself over hard bits of going. Once she turned and fired a chance shot in the direction of the howling. Far away came the roar of one of the mountain lions; and the pack of red wolves became suddenly and magically silent. Kathlyn made good use of this interval. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Elated at the prize so suddenly within his reach, the fox turned with a dash and caught—at least, no, he didn't quite catch the bird; she flopped by chance just a foot out of reach. He followed with another jump and would have seized her this time surely, but somehow a sapling came just between, and the partridge dragged herself awkwardly away and under a log, but the great brute snapped his jaws and bounded over the log, while she, seeming a trifle less lame, made another clumsy forward spring ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... historian, coming round that way, proclaims it a most interesting circumstance, because it was one naturally to have been expected; for that, here was the spot where, two hundred years ago, a great battle had been fought: and it was no improbability at all that a carbine-bullet should have penetrated a sapling, nor that the tree should thereafter have grown old with the iron at its heart. How unreasonable then would appear the pundit's incredulity, if persisted in: how suddenly enlightened the rational faith of the rustic: how seasonable would be felt the useful learning of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and bungler, and mischief-maker means well. That's their charter. I'm not concerned with that. I'm speaking of what she did. She fixed it in your mind that you were like a sapling sprung from a seed blown outside the orchard. You think you can minimize that accident by bringing forth as good as any to be found within the pale. Consequently you've taken a poor, helpless, blind man off the hands of the people ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... chanced to meet With a water bag, billy, and dog complete; He came too close to a knocked up steer, Who up a sapling made ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... nearly an inch in thickness. From this he had cut a length of perhaps ten feet, which, with infinite labor and risk of jack-knife, he had whittled down to smoothness and to whiteness. Upon one end he left as large a head as the sapling would allow, and this, after shaving it into the fashion of a spear-blade, he had plunged into the fire until it had begun to char. He had scraped away the charring with a piece of broken glass, and, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... deer. A pouch and horn completed his personal accouterments, though a rifle of great length**, which the theory of the more ingenious whites had taught them was the most dangerous of all firearms, leaned against a neighboring sapling. The eye of the hunter, or scout, whichever he might be, was small, quick, keen, and restless, roving while he spoke, on every side of him, as if in quest of game, or distrusting the sudden approach of some lurking enemy. Notwithstanding the symptoms of habitual suspicion, his countenance ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... had wrought a fearful change in the blooming and healthful appearance of the poor girl. She looked like a young sapling tree, on whose verdant head had fallen an incurable blight; an utter disregard of the opinions of others, or what the world would say of her, was manifested in her squalid appearance and total neglect of personal neatness. The pride of the girl's heart had vanished with her self-respect, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... loosened mould The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives; Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... with him through the hammock, and we passed a bit of swamp. "There are some pretty flowers," he exclaimed; "I think I must get them." At the word he jumped out of the gig, bade me do the same, hitched his horse, a half-broken stallion, to a sapling, and plunged into the thicket. I strolled elsewhere; and by and by he came back, a bunch of common blue iris in one hand, and his shoes and stockings in the other. "They are very pretty," he explained (he spoke of the flowers), "and ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... with me, and ever to ride, From San Saba's shore to Lavaca's tide. She was as bold as the billows that beat, She was as wild as the breezes that blow; From her little head to her little feet She was swayed in her suppleness to and fro By each gust of passion; a sapling pine, That grows on the edge of a Kansas bluff, And wars with the wind when the weather is rough Is like this Lasca, this love of mine. She would hunger that I might eat, Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet; But once, when I made her jealous for fun, At something I'd whispered, or ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... opened far down in the tender gloom of the wood and faded slowly away in the distance. And every little spray of leaves that tossed airily in the pleasant breeze, every slender branch swaying gently in the wind, every young sapling pushing its childish head panting for light through the mass of greenery and quivering with golden sunbeams, every trunk of aged tree gray with moss and lichens, every tuft of flowers, seemed thrilled and vivified by some wonderful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... err'd; but Geraint's, A little in the late encounter strain'd, Struck thro' the bulky bandit's corselet home, And then brake short, and down his enemy roll'd, And there lay still; as he that tells the tale Saw once a great piece of a promontory, That had a sapling growing on it, slide From the long shore-cliff's windy walls to the beach, And there lie still, and yet the sapling grew: So lay the man transfixt. His craven pair Of comrades making slowlier at the Prince, When now they saw their bulwark fallen, stood; On whom the victor, to confound ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... and symmetrically, on all the planes of his being, the inference is irresistible that education will achieve nothing but failure until its foundations have been entirely relaid. For faith in the inherent soundness, in the natural goodness, of the seed or sapling, or whatever else he may undertake to rear, is the first condition of success on the part of the grower. And to ask education to bring to sane and healthy maturity the plant which we call human nature, and in the same breath to tell it that human nature is intrinsically ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... lights from the plane factory. In fact, there was no plane factory. In the half-light of the sky, he saw that the plant was gone. No men were left. There was only barren earth, with a tiny, limp sapling in the middle of ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... the canoe on a little grass bar in mid-channel, and proceeded to rig up. His sail was merely a light weight blanket with each of its narrow ends sewed to a trimmed sapling—just like a banner, in fact. He attached this to his improvised mast, fastened each end securely, and drove the latter into ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... useless; but, intent on seeing where it led, they walked along it as it led straight away toward the timber. Scarcely inside the cool shadows of the tamaracks they paused and looked at each other understandingly; for thrown carelessly into a clump of laurel was a long, freshly cut sapling, that had been used as a lever. They recovered it from its resting place and inspected it. There was no doubt whatever that it had been the instrument of motion. Its scarred end, its length, and all, told that the man ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... fast Against the fell Immitigate ravening of the gates of hell; And claim my right in you, most hardly won, Of chaste fidelity upon the chaste: Hold me and hold by me, lest both should fall (O in high escalade high companion!) Even in the breach of Heaven's assaulted wall. Like to a wind-sown sapling grow I from The clift, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul, - Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome By all its clouds incumbent: O be true To your soul, dearest, as my life to you! For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole Of me must shrivel, ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... digestion. Sometimes he was tortured for hours with pains that could be relieved only by hanging his body, like a garment hung to dry, face downward, over the back of a chair, or, if he were on the march, over a sapling stripped and ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... fellow on horseback. He threw himself off a tired horse, tied the animal to a sapling,—which, judging by the horse's condition, was an entirely unnecessary operation,—jumped over the rail fence, and approached through the woods. The young men saw, coming toward them, a tall lad in the uniform of ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... be forced over one's own line. It seemed as if we could not bear the agony. And then, while we counted out the last seconds of the half, came a snap like that of a whip's lash, and the bowl of Richter's pipe lay smouldering on the grass. The noble had cut the stem as clean as it were sapling twig, and there stood Richter with the piece still clenched in his teeth, his eyes ablaze, and his cheek running blood. He pushed the surgeon away when he came forward with his needles. The Count was smiling as he put up his sword, his friends crowding around ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... who had acted with commendable bravery throughout, did as she was directed. Trenton, with his released hand, worked himself slowly up the branch, hand over hand, and finally catching a sapling that grew close to the water's edge, with a firm hold, reached down and helped Miss Sommerton on the bank. Then he slowly drew himself up to a safe position and looked around for any signs of the boatmen. He shouted loudly, ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... to get into the craft yet," ordered Dick, as the canoe was slid out upon the water, Prescott holding the painter, which he tied around a sapling growing near the water's edge. "We want to make sure that this canoe is waterproof. If it stands twenty minutes without taking in water we'll ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... through the writing; and the solid block, Into the sky, in tiny fragments sped. Woe worth each sapling and that caverned rock Where Medore and Angelica were read! So scathed, that they to shepherd or to flock Thenceforth shall never furnish shade or bed. And that sweet fountain, late so clear and pure, From such tempestous wrath ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... stood on this spot, from the time that I was a tiny sapling until now, when my branches spread far and wide, covering the earth beneath with shadow. Summer sunshine has touched with its fiercely scorching breath, and winter snows have shrouded me in fleecy garments, but the old yew tree has weathered so far the storms of ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... urged Tattine; "Go on," urged Mabel, and Rudolph applied his sapling whip with might and main, but all to no effect. Meantime some geese from a neighboring farm had come sailing out into the ford, to have a look at their friends in the crate, and the geese in the ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... circumstance decides him. His grandfather sits on the judge's bench. He thinks the judge's bench a desirable place, so he takes to the law. He puts on his grandfather's coat without the slightest reference to whether it will fit or not. Perhaps he intends to grow to it, but a willow sapling cannot grow into an oak. It may grow into a very respectable willow, but if it aspires to the higher dignity, it will most likely get crushed or blown over. It may be that he has a grand vision of commercial ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... front lawn, more gray than green from the scourge of heat. Insect life hung midair like a curtain of buzzings. Directly opposite the dusty, unmade street, she could see her parents' home standing unprotected except for one sapling maple, the sun already pressing against the drawn shades. There was a slight breeze through this morning that turned the sapling leaves and even lifted the little twist of tendril at the nape ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... water, Like whistle shriek the blows they strike, as the torrent of the fell, So fierce they gush—the moor flames' rush their ardour symbols well. Clandonuil's[124] root when crown each shoot of sapling, branch, and stem, What forest fair shall e'er compare in stately pride with them? Their gathering might, what legion wight, in rivalry has dared; Or to ravish from their Lion's face a bristle of his beard? What limbs were wrench'd, what furrows drench'd, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Odds my Life—I am not sorry that He has run out of the course a little—for my Part, I hate to see dry Prudence clinging to the green juices of youth—'tis like ivy round a sapling and spoils the growth ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... courts of France and Spain, England saw, in the lineal heir of her monarchy, a pledge of the future restoration of her civil and ecclesiastical constitution, and a guarantee to individuals against sequestrators and informers. The same judicious measures which had preserved the Royal sapling when the parent-tree was felled, should be resorted to for the safety of an illustrious private family; and Dr. Lloyd agreed to hurry back to North Wales, and remove his precious charge to some more auspicious clime, before they ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... her death I made a pilgrimage to the place—the young sapling pines which shaded it had grown to lofty trees—human voice seemed never to have broken in tones of joy or woe the deep solitude around—the long grass waved rank and dark above the walls we had raised, and the red berries hung rich and ripe by the ruined hearthstone. Again, when another ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... usually sets his foot with two toes forward and two backward, as in the sketch. This, then, I felt sure was the work of an owl. But which owl? There were two, maybe three kinds in that valley. I wished to know exactly and, looking for further evidence, I found on a sapling near by a big soft, downy, owlish feather (m) with three brown bars across it; which told me plainly that a Barred Owl or Hoot Owl had been there recently, and that he was almost certainly the killer of ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... he'd send me out with one of his sons,—a grown-up man of twenty-two,—and if I didn't do exactly as much work as the son I went hungry until I got it done if it took half the night. He also had a willow sapling he relied upon when hunger didn't prove effective. He'd pray before he used that too,—pray with one hand gripping my neckband so I couldn't get away. I earned a dollar a day—one single solitary dollar—when I ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... while the Americans were encamped at Valley Forge, the owner of the house occupied by the General, a Quaker, strolled up the creek, and when not far from his mill, heard a solemn voice. He walked quietly in the direction of it and saw Washington's horse tied to a sapling. In a thicket near by was the chief, upon his knees in prayer, his cheeks ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... easily forget the picture he made. His handsome face was flushed with excitement, his beautiful eyes were ablaze with light; he sat his horse erect as a young sapling. A handsomer or finer man could ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... by an impulse—the impulse of Spring is in my feet; india-rubber seems to have come into the soles of my feet, and I would see London. It is delightful to walk across Temple Gardens, to stop—pigeons are sweeping down from the roofs—to call a hansom, and to notice, as one passes, the sapling behind St. Clement's Danes. The quality of the green is exquisite on the smoke-black wall. London can be seen better on Sundays than on week-days; lying back in a hansom, one is alone with London. London is beautiful in that narrow street, celebrated for licentious literature. The ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... he directed, when they had dismounted, "do you see that tall slender sapling over there? It's just the thing I want. Please take the axe and get it for me, and don't ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... The sons are older than the sires; Ere yet the tree to earth is cast, The sapling falls before the blast; Life's ashes keep their covered fires,— ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... necessary connections with the world, of which I have been speaking. And the question for each of us is, What do we do when we are left to do as we like? Where do we go? When the iron weight fastened by the bit of string is taken off the sapling, it starts back to its original uprightness. Is that what your Christianity does for you? When you are left to yourself, when you have done all the work that is required, and you are free, where ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to get to the mouth of the Adelaide River along the beach, but found it too boggy for the horses. Wishing to husband the forces at his command, Stuart wisely resolved to push no further; he had a space cleared where they were, and a tall sapling stripped of its boughs to serve as a flagstaff. On this he hoisted the Union Jack which he had carried with him. A record of their arrival, contained in an air-tight case, was then buried at the foot of the impromptu staff, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... you what," retorted the lad, drawing himself up with some dignity, and reddening to the eyes, "I may be but a boy; but have the goodness to remember, that every oak was a sapling, and every sapling an acorn. If men trample on the acorn, it will never grow to be the oak; for, little as it is, the spirit of the oak is in it.—D'ye read ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... one of the houses a girl stood—a tall, lean-flanked, but deep-bosomed creature, as graceful as a well-grown sapling. Her calico frock clung to the lines of her matured figure as though she had just stepped up out of the sea itself. Around her head she had banded a crimson bandanna, but it allowed the escape of glossy black hair ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... off his rider, but Nigel sank low on the heaving back with his face buried in the flying mane. The rough bough rasped him rudely, but never shook his spirit nor his grip. Rearing, plunging and struggling, Pommers broke through the sapling grove and was out on the broad ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mused the bewildered old man, "or what is this vision that comes to me of a cold, cloudy morning, long, long ago, and I heaving yon elbowed log against the beech, then a sapling? Nay, nay, I cannot ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... personality also, I determined to make another experiment in portraiture,—this time in the direction of sculpture. I think it was having come across a very damp country, abounding in plastic clay, that put this idea into my head. First of all, then, I cut down a stout young sapling, which, propped up in the ground, served as the mainstay of my statue; and from it I fastened projecting branches for the ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... certain intervals, are placed others of a light red tinge, so that the tower is beautifully variegated. With respect to size, standing beside the giant witch of Seville, the Tangerine Djmah would show like a ten-year sapling in the vicinity of the cedar of Lebanon, whose trunk the tempests of five hundred years have worn. And yet I will assert that the towers in other respects are one and the same, and that the same mind and the same design are manifested in both; the same shape do they exhibit, and the same ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... existence is as one year to the vegetable world: he has his spring, his summer, his autumn, and winter,—but only ONCE. But the giant oaks round him go through a revolving series of verdure and youth, and the green of the centenarian is as vivid in the beams of May as that of the sapling by its side. "Mine shall be your spring, but not your winter!" ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... much of it the oddest they had ever seen. Instead of the straight, strong masts they were accustomed to, here were those that shot up so tall and slender they seemed to bend over of their own weight, like a young sapling. To these rapier-like masts were fastened sails of quaint square shape and dingy hues, or of sharp triangular form, which they learned afterwards were the lateen sails they had read of, but never seen. The prows of these small vessels were all so oddly curved and shaped, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... her slipping garments by her long and trailing hair, And like sapling tempest-shaken, wept and shook ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... was, and a foot over that, yet when they got the reptile on the bank and drew its head close to a sapling, they tied a piece of the line around its knobby head without any trouble. From that moment the crocodile was tame, and soon Dick was handling him fearlessly, although Ned warned him that if he didn't keep out of ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... little skeary, as how could he help it, the young brute, being the first time he ever banged at an Injun, he hit the horse, which dropped down in a flurry; and away comes the red devil over his head, like a rocket, end on to a sapling. Up jumps Tom and picks up the Injun's gun; and bang goes the other Shawnee at him, and jumps to a tree. 'A bird in the hand,' said Tom, 'is worth two in a bush;' and with that he blows out the first feller's brains, just as ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... to cut a small sapling about a foot or two in length. Its diameter should allow it to fit snugly inside the guard in front of the trigger, without springing the hammer. Its other end should now be supported by a very slight crotch, as shown in our ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... writer who was as great in describing weakness as strength." However this may be, I am pretty sure that, after Falstaff, there is not a greater piece of work in the play than Master Abraham Slender, cousin to Robert Shallow, Esquire,—a dainty sprout, or rather sapling, of provincial gentry, who, once seen, is never to be forgotten. In his consequential verdancy, his aristocratic boobyism, and his lack-brain originality, this pithless hereditary squireling is quite inimitable ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the crossing of the trains. These troopers were rather particular about straggling negroes, and Josiah sharply questioned told the simple truth as he moved toward the bridge, answering the questions of a young officer. A horse tied to a sapling at the roadside for reasons unknown kicked the passing cavalry man's horse. The officer moved on swearing a very original mixture of the over-ripe English of armies. Swearing was a highly cultivated accomplishment in the cavalry; no infantry ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... above the knee, lay shoulders slightly back, with the head and shoulders slightly raised. Draw the leg out straight, and, after padding it with cotton or towels, cut a small sapling long enough to reach from the foot to the armpit, and fasten it at the ankle, knee, and waist. If it is necessary to move the boy, bind ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... fire-trap. The thin, scaly, pitchy bark and the live resiny needles on the tree, as well as those on the ground, are very inflammable, and fires probably sweep a lodge-pole forest more frequently than any other in America. When this forest is in a sapling stage, it is very likely to be burned to ashes. If, however, the trees are beyond the sapling stage, the fire probably will consume the needles, burn some of the bark away, and leave the tree, together with its numerous seed-filled cones, unconsumed. As a ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills |
