"Soil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of our family in times past. Being too proud to mate elsewhere, we have kept to ourselves till idiots and lunatics began to appear. My father was the first who broke the law among us, and I followed his example: choosing the freshest, sturdiest flower I could find to transplant into our exhausted soil." ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... pastures and woods as full of interests and resources and as exhilarating as any place discovered later on the map of the world. This concentration and limitation give to children experiences and illusions which color the whole subsequent life. They are implicit in that soil where we find the roots of our being. They are what make us good citizens, steadfast friends, true lovers, observers of nature, disciples of the poets. They, whose early life is diffused over too many objects, with too many opportunities, have ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Vizcachera, is composed of a dozen or fifteen burrows or mouths; for one entrance often serves for two or more distinct holes. Often, where the ground is soft, there are twenty or thirty or more burrows in an old vizcachera; but on stony, or "tosca" soil even an old one may have no more than four or five burrows. They are deep wide-mouthed holes, placed very close together, the entire village covering an area of from one hundred to two ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... content with the abominable desolation of it all, he stood and gazed. No evidence of any plan, of any continuity in building, appeared upon the waste: mere sporadic eruptions of dwellings, mere heaps of brick and mortar dumped at random over the cheerless soil. Above swam the marvellous clarified atmosphere of the sky, like iridescent gauze, showering a thousand harmonies of metallic colors. Like a dome of vitrified glass, it shut down on the illimitable, tawdry sweep of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... stealthy, sound, aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole's thin hand in the soil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was only her foolish fancy after all. There it was again. Where did it ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... stepped off the miles. And the men stretched their ears to hear the mumbled distant thunder of artillery—that voice of battle which says so much and tells so little to those far off. The Sixth Corps felt that it was expected to decide a battle upon Northern soil for the North, and marching in that buoyant hope, left scarcely a man, broken with fatigue and disappointment, among the wild flowers by the ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... man of one idea, if that one be Country, as you would of the homo unius libri. If you cannot distinguish timothy from clover, and beets from carrots; if, agriculturally speaking, you don't 'know beans;' he will annihilate you with his rural wisdom. For his whole existence is in the soil. He worships things under the earth. Dust he is, and to dust he shall return; (the sooner the better!) He prattles of potatoes, talks of turnips, harangues about horse-radish, knows no composition except compost. Speak to him of manners, and he will answer of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the Canadians were, however, fully demonstrated. With the aid of a few regulars, the loyal militia had repulsed large armies of invaders, and not only maintained the inviolable integrity of their soil, but had also conquered a considerable portion of the enemy's territory. [Footnote: Condensed from Withrow's History of ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... her budding hopes had been crushed by the triumph of injustice," the beautiful Divorcee (for in order to be truly typical the Divorcee is necessarily beautiful) might have proceeded immediately to plant them afresh in the old soil. The various gentlemen who had sustained their reputation as men of honour by tampering on her behalf and on their own, with the strict letter of the truth, naturally felt that the boldness of their denials entitled them to her lasting regard, and showed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... The soil in the pots in which the seedlings were planted, or the seeds sown, was well mixed, so as to be uniform in composition. The plants on the two sides were always watered at the same time and as equally as possible; and even if this had not been done, the water would have spread ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... plunging forward, but every moment sinking deeper. At last he arrived where a small vein of rock showed itself: on this he placed his fore feet, and with one tremendous exertion freed himself, from the deceitful soil, springing over the rivulet and alighting on comparatively firm ground, where he stood panting, his heaving sides covered with a foamy sweat. Antonio, who had observed the whole scene, afraid to ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... of shells in that vicinity. Acting on the policeman's suggestion, we took a short cut across fields rich with shell holes. Old craters were grown over with the grass and mustard flowers with which this country abounds at this time of year. Newer punctures showed as wounds in the yellow soil and contained pools of evil-smelling water, green ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... these two races, and points out that while the herdsmen were fair, the tillers of the soil were dark and that their hair was curly. He was particularly struck, too, by the physical resemblance between the inhabitants of Iberia and the fair-haired race of the south and south-east of Britain, while he considered ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... explorers arrived in this country of cabins woven of rushes; and they did not linger here. Frenchmen had never gone farther. They were to enter new lands untrodden by the white race. They were in what is now called the state of Wisconsin, where "the soil was good," they noted, "producing much corn; and the Indians gathered also quantities of plums and grapes." In these warmer lands the season ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... by accident in the Osiris temenos. The soil was so wet that the bones were mostly dissolved; and only fragments of the skull, crushed under an inverted slate bowl, were preserved. The head had been laid upon a sandstone corn-grinder. Around the sides ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... desire to get upon its own soil the awful devastation it had bestowed upon Belgium and France, through President Wilson, of the United States of America, asked the Allies for ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... the absence of all nourishment from the bright world of Nature which he loved so passionately, his fancy could grow and keep itself leafy, like the cress-seed, which germinates and produces its anti-scorbutic foliage on a bit of flannel moistened with water, without any contact with soil or sunlight, in the long Arctic night of the ice-bound ship. With the ravings of madmen ringing in his ears, he composed some of the most beautiful of his writings, both in prose and verse. Among the manuscripts of the British Museum are preserved some ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... We found an immense crowd of men and boys there and in the adjoining streets—a perfect jam. There was a leak in one of our junction-boxes, and on account of the cellars extending under the street, the top soil had become insulated. Hence, by means of this leak powerful currents were passing through this thin layer of moist earth. When a horse went to pass over it he would get a very severe shock. When I arrived I saw coming along the street a ragman with a dilapidated old horse, and one ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... to an eternal solitude of heart? What, then, shall fill the crying and unappeasable void of our souls? What shall become of those mighty sources of tenderness which, refused all channel in the rocky soil of the world, must have an outlet ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tedding, haymaking machines are employed, tossing the grass into the air, so as to thoroughly aerate it, taking advantage of every brief interval of fine weather; and seed and manure are distributed by machine with unfailing accuracy. The soil is drained by the aid of properly constructed plows for preparing the trenches; roots are steamed and sliced as food for cattle; and the thrashing machine no longer merely beats out the grain, but it screens it, separates it, and elevates the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... with the outer wall, whilst towards the south there is a vacant space which the Barons and the soldiers are constantly traversing.[NOTE 7] The Palace itself] hath no upper story, but is all on the ground floor, only the basement is raised some ten palms above the surrounding soil [and this elevation is retained by a wall of marble raised to the level of the pavement, two paces in width and projecting beyond the base of the Palace so as to form a kind of terrace-walk, by which ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... be entirely reduced to desolation, left the island, destitute as it was of wine and oil, and returned to Italy, leaving behind them taskmasters, to scourge the shoulders of the natives, to reduce their necks to the yoke, and their soil to the vassalage of a Roman province; to chastise the crafty race, not with warlike weapons, but with rods, and if necessary to gird upon their sides the naked sword, so that it was no longer thought to be Britain, but a Roman island; and all their money, whether of copper, gold, ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... purpose had been forming itself in Thyrsis' mind. He would suppress the artist in himself for the present—he would do it, cost whatever agony it might. He would turn propagandist for a while; instead of scattering his precious seed in barren soil, he would set to work to make the soil ready. There was seething in his mind a work of revolutionary criticism, which would sweep into the rubbish-heap the idols of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... salt provisions lasted very well. Governor King, however, wrote that the crops then in the ground promised favourably, although he would not venture to speak decidedly, as they were very much annoyed by the grub. This was an enemy produced by the extreme richness of the soil; and it was remarked, that as the land was opened and cleared, it was found to be exposed to the blighting winds which ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Environment—current issues: soil degradation; deforestation; desertification; destruction of coral reefs threatens marine habitats; recent droughts ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... skies are lead and soil is sand, yet everlasting life with those I love; give me a lodge in some vast wilderness hallowed by children's laughter; give me a cave in the mountain crag to house those dearest to my heart; give me a tent on the far ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... requested that the fish be given to him. The king consented to his request: but as he was about to dip his hand into the basin, the princess boldly stopped him. She pretended to be angry on the ground that Don Luzano would soil with his hands the golden basin of the monarch. She told him to hold out his hands, and she would pour the fish into them. Don Luzano did as he was told: but, before the fish could reach his hands, the pretty creature jumped out. No fish now could be seen, but in its stead was a beautiful ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... said sadly. "They simply can't go straight. This brand of Turk used to be made of a tobacco grown on a slope above Salonica. A strip of sun-baked soil built up a reputation which is now being bartered for filthy lucre by the use of ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... the Indians they must have starved. That the Indians did not grow more than was sufficient for their own consumption is very probable, but that they did cultivate the land is most certain; indeed, when the country and soil were favourable, they appear to have cultivated to a great extent. When General Wayne destroyed the settlements of the Miamies and Wyandots, on the Miami river, in 1794, he says in his despatch, "never have I beheld such immense ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... farmer turns up the soil with a gang-plow and rakes the hay, but not in the primitive fashion of Maud Muller. She is frequently seen "comin' through the rye," the wheat, the barley or the oats, enthroned on a twine-binder. The writer has this day seen a woman seated on a four-horse plow as contentedly ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... she had loved him all her life—even during her brief period of "madness." It was a higher love, she felt, so much higher, indeed, that it had been too spiritual, too ethereal, to take root in the earthly soil from which her passion for George had sprung. But, if it were not love, why was it that every faint stirring of her emotions revived the memory so poignantly? Why was it that Miss Polly's sentimental interpretation of the doctor's interest evoked ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the formation of a colony, arrived at Balam-bangan, which was formally taken possession of in the name of his Britannic Majesty. But unexpected difficulties arose one after the other. The natives of Bangay, about three miles distant, were hostile, and made repeated attacks upon them. The soil was discovered not to be of that fertile nature which had been represented; and unfortunately two of the ships were thrown on shore in a gale, and every soul on board perished. These several disasters damped ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... stopped the onward career of the conqueror, and it was on Austrian soil that his eagles were to be struck down and his ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... about these sentences is that no one ever knows the reason why or wherefore, and that the lot may fall on the innocent as well as the guilty. M. M. was delighted with the event, and I was more pleased than she, for I should have been sorry to have been obliged to soil my hands with the blood of that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... ploughing up the field and he had men working over it for two seasons, but on the third, up they grew again as gay as you please. They acted as if he had just been stirring up the soil so they would grow better ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... Touch-the-Skies, Sioux scouts from the agency, to interpret the signs and point the way. The major commanding and all his officers and most of his men could read the indications as well as the half-breeds, natives to the soil. A big band of young warriors, with a few elders, had yielded to the eloquence of the messengers of Sitting Bull and were out for mischief. They had been missing from the agencies several weeks; ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... support of additional forces, the Kentucky volunteers, led by Lewis, Allen, and Madison, with Well's regiment, (17th U. S.) advanced to encounter the force of British and Indians which defended Detroit. On leaving Kentucky the volunteers had pledged themselves to drive the British invaders from our soil. These men and their leaders were held in such estimation at home, that the expectation formed of them exceeded their promises; and these volunteers, though disappointed in every succor which they had reason to anticipate—wanting ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... of Indians who ages ago it seems were fishermen. The convulsions of the earth threw to the surface hundreds of the dried bodies of the Indians, still wrapped in their coarse garments, the nature of the soil had prevented decay. When the people beheld this they believed the world had come to an end, and they threw themselves on ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... boasted an exquisite skill in the art, of provocation, sometimes driving her bonne and the servants almost wild. She would steal to their attics, open their drawers and boxes, wantonly tear their best caps and soil their best shawls; she would watch her opportunity to get at the buffet of the salle-a-manger, where she would smash articles of porcelain or glass—or to the cupboard of the storeroom, where she would plunder the preserves, drink the sweet wine, break jars and bottles, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... proceeded to the village of Margaux, in the true claret country—a general idea of which he gives by describing it as a debatable ground, stretching between the sterile Landes and the fat, black loam of the banks of the Garonne. The soil is sand, gravel, and shingle, scorched by the sun, and would be incapable of yielding as much nourishment to a patch of oats as is found on 'the bare hillside of some cold, bleak, Highland croft.' On this unpromising ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... in the proletariat its material weapons, so the proletariat finds in philosophy its intellectual weapons, and as soon as the lightning of thought has penetrated into the flaccid popular soil, the elevation of Germans into men will ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... tell us, one God made all the animals, one God made all the plants, one God made all the earths and stones. But if we watch more closely still, we should find that the plants could not live without the animals, nor the animals without the plants, nor either of them without the soil beneath our feet, and the air and rain above our heads. That everything in the world worked together on one plan, and each thing depended on everything else. Then common sense would tell us, one God must have ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... that hem me now, The ground we tread is sacred earth, Prove not the soil from which ye sprang ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... not like to adopt; and so she at last thought of a method which seemed likely to succeed. She was well aware of the inconvenience of having mice in her cupboard, as they not only commit great depredations, but soil every thing they touch; so, as she was forced to kill the mouse, she hoped to turn its death to a good use. Therefore, the next time Alfred entered the room, she asked him if he was still resolved to have the mouse ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... an exotic in Ireland. It has been imported from England, but it will not grow. It suits neither soil, nor climate. If the English wanted order in Ireland, they should have left none ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... letter every day of the week, will on Saturday perceive the sixth flowing from his pen much more readily than the first. I observed when I first entered into the ministry and began to preach the word, I felt perplexed and dry, my mind was like unto a parched soil, which produced nothing, not even weeds. By the blessing of heaven, and my perseverance in study, I grew richer in thoughts, phrases, and words; I felt copious, and now I can abundantly preach from any text that occurs to my mind. So will ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... to bring the world gradually to the Christian ideal. To abolish or to impose institutions or customs by force is useless. Revolutions made by violence never last. To fell the upas-tree maybe very heroic, but what is the use of doing it, if the soil is full of seeds of others, and the climate and conditions favourable to their growth? Change the elevation of the land, and the 'flora' will change itself. Institutions are the outcome of the whole mental and moral state of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... before. What made it harder to endure suggestion of this sort was that in his feeling of always breaking new ground there was an inner sense, or fear, or doubt, that perhaps it was not really virgin soil he was turning up, but merely the sod of fields which had lain fallow a year or two or had possibly been cropped the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... a physician, and he resided there until 1853. Here he was frequently visited by the Borrows. We have already quoted his prophecy concerning Lavengro that 'its roots will strike deep into the soil of English letters.' In 1853 Dr. Hake and his family left Bury for the United States, where they resided for some years. Returning to England they lived at Roehampton and met Borrow occasionally in London. During these years Hake was, according to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, 'the ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... with the horse-trough, as you go down "Maud's Rents," is that useful, and indeed indispensible, triumph of hydraulics, the pump. The taste and science displayed in its execution do credit to the engineer; and the soil in which it is imbedded, being argillaceous, partially encrusted with strontian, reflects equal honour on his geological attainments. This pump, which you approach by three steps, is perpendicular, and of an elegant appearance; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... about by harsh and gentle winds, since their verdure has departed. The needle-like leaves of the pine that are never noticed in falling—that fall, yet never leave the tree bare—are likewise on the path; and with these are pebbles, the remains of what was once a gravelled surface, but which the soil accumulating from the decay of leaves, and washing down from the bank, has now almost covered. The sunshine comes down on the pathway, with the bright glow of noon, at certain points; in other places, there is a shadow as deep as the glow; but along the greater portion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... magnet has its opposite poles, one positive, the other negative. Jesus had his Nero. Truth has its opposing falsities. At the lowest ebb of the world's morals appeared the Christ. The Christian religion springs from the soil of a Roman Emperor's blood-soaked gardens. And so it goes. Harmony opposed by discord. Errors hampering the solving of mathematical problems. Spirit opposed by matter. Which is real? That which stands the test of demonstration as to permanence, I ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in what way they fought the battle of life, how they feasted and how they mourned. If circumstances took her over and over again to different parts of China for long stretches of time, she would add to her traditions and her early atmosphere some experience of her race on their own soil and under their own sun. What she could tell us would be of such small importance that she would often hesitate to set it down; and again, she would hesitate lest what she had to say should be well known already to those ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... fields and in the air. At last the sun had come back to a sodden land, after weeks of cold and drenching showers which, welcomed in June, had by the middle of August made all England tremble for the final fate of the gorgeous crops then filling the largest area ever tilled on British soil with their fat promise. Wheat, oats, and barley stood once more erect, roots were saved, and the young vicar of Ipscombe was reflecting as he walked towards Great End Farm that his harvest festival sermon might now after all be rather easier to write than ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "this wouldn't be a bad place if it wasn't for the Indians. Quite a palace when it's put in repair. Land one's own; the soil beautifully rich. I believe anything would grow here. I ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... faculty of maintaining a temperature below that of the surrounding air, can only be accounted for by referring it to the mechanical process of imbibing a continuous supply of fresh moisture from the soil, the active transpiration of which imparts coolness to every portion of the tree and its fruit. It requires this combined operation to produce the desired result; and the extent to which evaporation can bring down the temperature of the moisture received by absorption, may be inferred from the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... same (vide Coleridge, etc.) Is this aesthetic? is this exegetical? How glad I shall be if you can assure me that it is. But, nonsense apart and begged-pardon-for, pray write me a line to say how you are, directing to this pretty place. 'The soil is in general a moist and retentive clay: with a subsoil or pan of an adhesive silicious brick formation: adapted to the growth of wheat, beans, and clover—requiring however a summer fallow (as is generally stipulated in the lease) ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... of Ireland the owners of their own hearths and fields. Where the Land Purchase Act operated it gave birth to a new race of peasant owners, who were frugal, industrious, thrifty, and assiduous in the cultivation and improvement of the soil. In a few years the face of the country was transformed. A new life and energy were springing into being. The old tumble-down farm-houses and out-offices began to be replaced by substantial, comfortable, and commodious buildings. Personal indebtedness became almost a thing ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... holiday saucers on the mantel-piece. Now consider the conceit, the worse than arrogance of this; the studied callous forgetfulness of the beginning of man. Did he not spring from the earth?—from clay—dirt—mould—mud—garden soil, or composition of some sort, for theological geology (you must look in the dictionary for these words) has not precisely defined what; and is it not the basest impudence of pride to seek to wash and scrub and rub away the original spot? Is he not the most natural ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... adoption of the Missouri Compromise was the hardest blow ever inflicted on the cause of free soil in America. It did more to encourage the supporters of slavery and to discourage its opponents than anything else that ever happened. Its restoration would undoubtedly have produced a similar effect. Although he is not to be credited with any philanthropic motive, Stephen ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... spurred on with lessening tenacity, they had stretched themselves, half-dead with fatigue, on the field, excavating the ground and forming a refuge for themselves. The French also flung themselves down, scraping the soil together so as not to lose what they had gained. . . . And in this way began the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... yoo got a pardon in yoor pockit, which dockyment is all that saves yoor neck from stretchin hemp? Why do yoo talk uv wat South karliny will and wont do? Good Lord! I recollect about a year since South karliny would never permit her soil 2 be pollutid by Yankee hirelins, yit Sherman marched all over it with a few uv em, and skarcly a gun was fired at em. So too I recollect that that sed State, wich wuz agoin to whip the entire North, and wich wood, ef overpowered, submit gracefully and with dignity to ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... have made a fool of myself, if the man had not been on the other side of the street, and I at a one-pane window. There was something illusory in this transplantation of the wealth and honours of a family, a thing by its nature so deeply rooted in the soil; something ghostly in this sense of ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... village to the trenches we found also many points of interest and contrast. In Artois, unlike Flanders, you can dig to your heart's content, or, to speak more accurately, you can get a surfeit of digging. The soil is either a light manageable clay, or more frequently chalk. Here, then, we met with none of the conspicuous breastworks of our old home, but fire trenches more than 6 feet deep, and communicators whose bottoms were 8 or 9 feet below ground level. Many of the dugouts, moreover, were ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... Tom" of Pepworth's into the little group of tents that now serve for all that are left here of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. This shot must have been fired at a range of over 11,000 yards. It came down like a bolt straight from the blue overhead, penetrated the stiff soil to a depth of five feet seven inches, and rebounded on impact with some more solid substance at the bottom so quickly that it left the mark of its penetration perfect, and only broke up on reaching the surface again. In this case there was no burst, but only a detonation ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... Raymond increased his staff. He also took over ten acres of the North Hill House estate, ploughed up permanent grass, cleaned the ground with a root crop, and then started to renew the vanishing industry of flax growing. He visited Belgium for the purpose of mastering the modern methods, found the soil of North Hill well suited to the crop, and was soon deeply interested in the enterprise. He first hoped to ret his flax in the Bride river, as he had seen it retted on the Lys, but was dissuaded from making this trial and, instead, built ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... uniform rule, and to keep them under constant supervision. Granted that such severity be necessary, it could at least do no harm for this single end; only the higher concept of the human race and of the nations widens this limited view. Even in the manifestations of external life freedom is the soil in which the higher culture germinates; a legislation which keeps this later aim in view will give the broadest possible scope to freedom, even at the risk that a less degree of uniform quiet and calm may result, and that government may become a ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... part of the country, which is intersected by mountains, the soil is almost every where mineral, while the mountains themselves contain rich mines of copper. I know of beds of galena extending for more than a hundred miles; and, in some tracts, magnesian earths cover an immense portion of the higher ridges. Most of the sandy streams of the Shoshone territory ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... that no man was more wretched than a Roman Pontiff: "for his throne was set with thorns, his mantle pierced with sharp points, and so heavy as to weigh the strongest shoulders to the ground." Much sooner would he prefer never to have left his native English soil, or to have remained for ever hidden in his cell at St. Rums, than to have entered such straits; but the divine dispensation had called him, and he dared not disobey. He further said, that it had always been the Lord's pleasure, that he should grow between the hammer ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... they particularly belong, but from the society in general. The door ought to be equally open to all; and I trust, for the credit of human nature, that we shall see examples of such vigorous plants flourishing in the soil of federal as well as of State legislation; but occasional instances of this sort will not render the reasoning founded upon the general course of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... arrive at regular seasons independent of the tobacco harvest. Then I set about equipping a store. On the high land north of James Town, by the road to Middle Plantation, I bought some acres of cleared soil, and had built for me a modest dwelling. Beside it stood a large brick building, one half fitted as a tobacco shed, where the leaf could lie for months, if need be, without taking harm, and the other arranged as a merchant's ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... furnished by three or four fragments of bones. It is no wonder, therefore, that subjects whose ideational stores are scanty, and whose associations are based upon accidental rather than logical connections, find the test one of peculiar difficulty. Invention thrives in a different soil. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... noisy body of men and women denounced the constitution as "a covenant with hell and a contract with the devil." A much large number of conservative voters formed themselves into a party called the Free Soil party, who, professing to be restrained within constitutional limits, yet favored the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. They invoked the moral influence and aid of the government for the gradual prohibition ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... started to her feet. "Giove!" she cried, "Baccho! that insipidity, that puritan. And I who have kept you from every soil. She speak of other ways. Oh, it is ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... with only the slightest labor to occupy her hands and mind, gave her idle time—fertile soil for the raising of a dark crop of morbid thoughts. She brooded much, and, brooding, became restless, unhappy, and she could not conceal it from Bonbright when he came home eagerly for his dinner, ready to take ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... land; I've told thee I'm a gentleman by birth, Designed for ease: not doomed to turn the earth. Howe'er I'll now the diff'rent parts allot, And thus divide the produce of the plot:— What shall above the heritage arise, I'll leave to thee; 'twill very well suffice; But what is in the soil shall be my share; To this attend, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... ye are alike (if each thing were a grain of wheat) would freight a ship; the things in which you are better than he could be put into your vest-pocket. Gold does not tarnish, and good names do not soil easily, though herein custom has something to do with the affair. "The soul's calm sunshine" however, should spread abroad. It often reflects hidden beauty in other faces. "Be just, and fear not." You may stand apparently without honor when you have it most. If you are the man of good name ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... peered up into the soldier's face as the latter blew on the brand; but the flame had died, the thistles were not dry, and the fire was a failure; so, growling again, the soldier threw down the smoking stick and went away. As soon as he was safely afar, Rolf gathered a handful of soil ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Sir, to a wise man, all the world's his soil: It is not Italy, nor France, nor Europe, That must bound me, if my fates call me forth. Yet, I protest, it is no salt desire Of seeing countries, shifting a religion, Nor any disaffection to the state Where I was bred, and unto which I owe My dearest ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... construct the temple on the Capitoline, being himself the first to carry away some of the soil; and, as a matter of course, he urged the other most prominent men to do this same thing in order that the rest of the populace might have no excuse for ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... it. For it don't use chain-shot words like 'pharmacopia' and 'Pierian,' and so on, that is neither Greek nor Latin, nor good English, nor vulgar tongue. And more than that, it shows you what to do. And the woods, and the springs, and the soil is full of its medicines and potions. Book doctrin' is like book farmin', a beautiful thing in theory, but ruination ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... events broken only by the occasional erection of a new grass house on the identical spot where its predecessors have stood for ages. The son lives in the house of his father, cultivates the same few square feet of soil planted in edible roots, climbs the same cocoanut trees, follows the same winding path down to the stream, pounds rice in the same mortar and with the same stick that his ancestors have used from time unremembered, and, in case of illness, curls up on a grass mat in a corner ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... describing the novelties of his journey, but none came. In time, it was reported that Mr. Sands would return late in the autumn, accompanied by a bride. Still no letters from William. I felt almost sure I should never see him again on southern soil; but had he no word of comfort to send to his friends at home? to the poor captive in her dungeon? My thoughts wandered through the dark past, and over the uncertain future. Alone in my cell, where no eye but God's could see me, I wept bitter tears. How earnestly I prayed to him to restore me to ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... far-distant years, The angels in their glory dawned upon Thy messengers and seers? Oh! who will give me wings That I may fly away, And there, at rest from all my wanderings, The ruins of my heart among thy ruins lay? I'll bend my face unto thy soil, and hold Thy stones as precious gold. And when in Hebron I have stood beside My fathers' tombs, then will I pass in turn Thy plains and forest wide, Until I stand on Gilead and discern Mount Hor and Mount ...
— Hebrew Literature
... of a people whose forefathers have for countless generations been men of blood, whose prized traditions are one long story of slaughter, and who, if they are now at peace are, as it were, only gathering strength for a surer spring. First, the soil must be prepared before the seed ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... as this must extend some subtle influence upon those who meet regularly within their walls—these Sons of the Soil, horny-handed, and for the most part grey of head and bent with over much following of the plough. Quiet of voice are they, and profoundly sedate of gesture, while upon their wrinkled brows there sits that ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... suited for the abode of men could scarce have been found, or even imagined. The soil was sterile, unproductive, and rarely visited by game worthy of being hunted. The few roots and other articles of food they were enabled to raise, furnished but a ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... with another, and with the freehold, but capable of being separated without materially injuring the freehold;" 3rdly, articles fixed to the freehold by nails and screws, bolts or pegs, are also tenants' goods and chattels; but when sunk in the soil, or built on it, they are integral parts of the freehold, and cannot be removed. Thus, a greenhouse or conservatory attached to the house by the tenant is not removable; but the furnace and hot-water pipes ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... corners of towels, ear spoons, the ends of toothpicks, hairpins, or any other pointed instruments. It is a needless and dangerous practice, usually causing, in time, some form of inflammation. The abrasion of the skin in the canal thus produced affords a favorable soil for the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... evidence that there was some common ground between the farmer and the labour class. Working in his own fields, driving his own teams, operating his own machinery, this capitalistic labour-unionist of the soil said to himself that the farmers of Canada were entitled not merely to representation in Parliament, but to the organization of a class interest that should take hold of the country's economic horns and turn it on ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... John Hunter (1728-1793) was one of the energetic Scots who forced their way to fame without help from English universities. The cultivation of the natural sciences was only beginning to take root; and the soil, which it found congenial, was not that of the great learned institutions, which held to their old ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... there he found a second France with laws, gendarmes, and forest-keepers. He tried working a grant of land, and then a clearing, but that kind of labour did not suit him. The country and the climate tried him, and the burning heat of the sun and soil began to take effect on his robust health. At the end of two years he ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... assailed them. At last they came to Harza, where no tribes were, and at last had rest from war, and Yoth and Haneth said: "The work is done, and surely now Pegana's gods will remember." And they built a city in Harza and tilled the soil, and the green came over the waste as the wind comes over the sea, and there were fruit and cattle in Harza and the sounds of a million sheep. There they rested from their flight from all the tribes, and builded ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... Vesuvius at any time, the people of the vicinity dare its perils for the allurement of its fertile soil. A ring of populous villages encircles it, flourishing vineyards and olive groves extend on all sides, and the hand of industry does not hesitate to attack its threatening flanks. The intervals between its death-dealing throes are so long ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... power to secure carbon and oxygen from the air, as is done by all plants with green leaves. On the other hand, these bacteria have power to take the free nitrogen of the air, which enters the pores of the soil to some extent, and cause it to combine with food materials which are secured from the alfalfa sap, and thus the bacteria secure for themselves both nitrogen and the other essential plant foods. The ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... but I don't know whether you gentlemen remember how close the danger of Napoleon landing an army on English soil once was." ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... working of the "flying fox" will be of interest. The distance between the lower and upper terminals was some eight hundred feet. This was spanned by two steel-wire carrying cables, secured above by "dead men" sunk in the soil, and below by a turn around a huge rock which outcropped amongst the tussock-grass on the flat, some fifty yards from the head of the boat harbour. For hauling up the loads, a thin wire line, with a ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Christianity for the first time. As Dr. Stone says, "The cry now is not for open doors, for we have free entrance into the homes of the rich and poor. What we need now is an efficient force of trained evangelistic workers to ... follow up the seed thus sown broadcast on such receptive soil." This need the Training School for Bible ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... that our wanderings are at last ended. Here we shall stay for a time until we can choose a suitable place for our future home. When we get our house built we should be quite comfortable. We are on English soil, at any rate, and that is a great satisfaction. We are not ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... who entered this protest against imprisonment in the arms of a fine woman, was one of the human beings who are grown to perfection on English soil. He had the fat face, the pink complexion, the hard blue eyes, the scanty yellow hair, the smile with no meaning in it, the tremendous neck and shoulders, the mighty fists and feet, which are seen in complete combination in England only. Men of this ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... made sure that he had been there by examining the soil under the window. It is a part of a scout's education, you know, sir, looking for signs. We found them, too, marks of a long narrow shoe, that told us the man could never be a hobo but must be a gentleman. After ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... is the lazaret of bile, But very rarely executes its function, For the first passion stays there such a while, That all the rest creep in and form a junction, Like knots of vipers on a dunghill's soil—[168] Rage, fear, hate, jealousy, revenge, compunction— So that all mischiefs spring up from this entrail, Like Earthquakes from the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... I remembered that to a single word in conversation, or some simple accident in a street or on a road, I was indebted for some of the happiest portions of my work; they were but tiny seeds, it is true, which in the soil of my imagination had subsequently become stately trees, but I reflected that without them no stately trees would have been produced, and that, consequently, only a part in the merit of these compositions which ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Canton; such lines would be shafts driven through the heart of the Middle Kingdom, connecting the North and the South. For the entire distance, some 1,300 or 1,400 miles, the extent, fertility and variety of the soil are described as remarkable. From the North, abounding in cotton and varieties of grain and pulse, to the South, where many vegetable products of the Orient are met, the redundancy of the population is a striking feature. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... having had the free laughter and frolic of childhood. That part of the growing-up process most essential for character is literally expunged from life for them. One need spend but an hour in a city park to see that many children are restrained from the slightest running or frolic because it would soil their clothes or be otherwise "undesirable." The author recalls a private school for girls in which laughter was checked at recess because it ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... magazine, it was promised, should contain speeches of governors, addresses and answers of assemblies, their resolutions and debates, extracts of laws, with the reasons on which they were founded and the grievances intended to be remedied by them; accounts of the climate, soil, productions, trade and manufactures of all the British plantations, the constitutions of the several colonies with their respective views and interests; of remarkable trials, civil and criminal; ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... the paths, or heaped plentifully in some hollow of the hills, the effect is not without a charm. To-day the morning rose with rain, which has since changed to snow and sleet; and now the landscape is as dreary as can well be imagined,—white, with the brownness of the soil and withered grass everywhere peeping out. The swollen river, of a leaden hue, drags itself sullenly along; and this may be termed the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... build up starch. The plant takes all the carbon from which starch is made from the air, but while the atmosphere contains almost eighty per cent of nitrogen, the plant is unable to use it; it must secure its nitrogen from the decaying refuse of the soil. Thus the plant utilizes the waste products found in air and earth in the building of its ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... are, however, mostly in dates, and the general grinding principles of the several operations are nearly the same throughout the whole country. The land best suited for cotton growing is one of a sandy soil, the admixture of earth and sand being in the proportion of two parts earth to one of sand. During the winter and spring months, crops of wheat or barley are raised on it, and it is when these crops have attained ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... from God's sea Through devious ways. He mapped my course for me; I cannot change it; mine alone the toil To keep the waters free from grime and soil. The winding river ends where it began; And when my life has compassed its brief span I must return to that mysterious source. So let me gather daily on my course The perfume from the blossoms as I pass, Balm from ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... telegraph office a good deal dissatisfied. You know I did not like the phrase—in Orders, No. 68, I believe—"Drive the invaders from our soil." Since that, I see a despatch from General French, saying the enemy is crossing his wounded over the river in flats, without saying why he does not stop it, or even intimating a thought that it ought to be stopped. Still later, another despatch from General Pleasonton, by direction ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... along a pathway just wide enough for three to walk abreast, till they emerged suddenly upon a large cleared space, in whose midst grew a great banyan-tree, with arms that dropped and rooted themselves like buttresses in the soil beneath. Under the banyan-tree a raised platform stood upon posts of bamboo. The platform was covered with fine network in yellow and red; and two little stools occupied the middle, as if placed there on purpose and waiting ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... and his father had finished preparing the fields for the spring cultivation. He remembered how the young sun, in those fresh morning hours, had seemed to caress the long-deserted wintry earth with his kindling rays; and the black soil turned up by the harrow had exhaled a refreshing odour as of incense offered by nature's maternal heart. The daily increasing heat of the sun, the milder air, and the grateful receptivity of earth: all betokened the end of idle winter and ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the district of Puna was, until two centuries ago, a magnificent country, possessing a sandy soil, it is true, but one very favorable to vegetation, and with smooth and even roads. The Hawaiians of our day hold a tradition from their ancestors, that their great-grandparents beheld the advent of the ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... of reconstruction in the South as weak and vacillating—a civil and military failure. As the army advances, the South should be held as conquered soil, its civilization torn up by the roots, the property of the Southern white people confiscated and given to the negroes. The ballot must be taken from the whites and given to their slaves. We demand this just vengeance and we will ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... occupier such advantage in his contract, that he is unwilling to give it up—that he has a real interest in retaining it, and is not driven by the distresses of the present moment to destroy the future productiveness of the soil. Any rent which the landlord accepts more than this, or any system by which more rent than this is obtained, is to borrow money upon the most usurious and profligate interest—to increase the revenue of the present day by the absolute ruin of the property. Such ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... the impersonal universe whatever it required with the quietude and efficiency of a prospering plant. She lacked imagination, or she might have thought of Dent as a filial sunflower, which turned the blossom of its life always faithfully and beautifully toward her, but stood rooted in the soil of knowledge that she ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... its commencement was soon followed by many emigrants from that densely-peopled country, whose habits of industry and prudence very soon began to increase and develope the natural fertility of the soil, and whose numerous descendants have mingled with the native character some of those useful virtues which it seems scarcely probable they would possess but for this ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking |
