"Soil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... family become shrubs.[62] It would seem as if the {214} liliaceous plants, mingled with the gramina, assumed the place of the flowers of our meadows. Their form is indeed striking; they dazzle by the variety and splendor of their colours; but, too high above the soil, they disturb that harmonious relation which exists among the plants that compose our meadows and our turf. Nature, in her beneficence, has given the landscape under every zone its peculiar type ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... soldiers had been dug in the pestilential morass of Dundalk. It was owing to the exertions and sacrifices of the English people that, from the basaltic pillars of Ulster to the lakes of Kerry, the Saxon settlers were trampling on the children of the soil. The colony in Ireland was therefore emphatically a dependency; a dependency, not merely by the common law of the realm, but by the nature of things. It was absurd to claim independence for a community which could not cease to be dependent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the powers were foes; So oft the surge, in watery mountains spread, Beats on his back, or bursts upon his head. Yet dauntless still the adverse flood he braves, And still indignant bounds above the waves. Tired by the tides, his knees relax with toil; Wash'd from beneath him slides the slimy soil; When thus (his eyes on heaven's expansion thrown) Forth bursts the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... were accustomed to speak of civil government in the United States as if it had dropped from heaven, or had been specially created by some kind of miracle upon American soil; and we were apt to think that in mere republican forms there was some kind of mystic virtue which made them a cure for all political evils. Our later experience with cities has rudely disturbed this too confident frame of mind. It has furnished facts which do not seem to fit our theory, so that ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... legend and of story in that quaint and copious Doric speech which makes so direct an appeal to the hearts of men whether they are to the manner born or not. It is surely a paradox that a nation which, in the making, had the hardest kind of work to extract a scanty living from a stubborn soil, and still harder work to defend their independence, their liberties, their faith from foes of their own kindred, should be best known to the world for the romantic ideals they have cherished and the chivalrous follies for which ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... purpose, than to let it hang downward. Should the stitches give way and the skin tend to retract, the plan proposed on a previous page can be followed to advantage. In urinating, care must be taken not to soil the dressings; some patients are very careless about this if not warned. The penis should hang nearly perpendicular while in the act, and all dribbling should have ceased and the meatus and underneath be mopped dry with some soft cotton before raising the organ; nothing so irritates the parts, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... his neighbors. He had died seized of four "eighties," all paid for, and two-thirds cleared for cultivation. Eighty acres of cleared bottom land was looked upon as a fair farm. One might own a thousand acres of rich soil covered with as fine oak, walnut, and poplar as the world could produce and might still be a poor man, though the timber in these latter days would bring a fortune. Cleared land was wealth at the time of which I write, and in building their houses the settlers ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... and rancorous tooth Do soil and bite fair worth and truth, And merit to distress betray, To soothe the heart Anne hath a way; She hath a way to chase despair, To heal all grief, to cure all care, Turn foulest night to fairest day: Thou know'st, fond heart, Anne hath a way, She hath a way, Anne Hathaway, ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... scrub—you must scrape!" growled Jack, "you must traffic with cans and pails, Nor keep the spoil of the good brown soil in the rim of your finger-nails! The morning path you must tread to your bath—you must wash ere the night descends, And all for the cause of conventional laws and the soapmakers' dividends! But if 'tis sooth that our meal in truth depends on our washing, Jill, By the sacred right ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... dangerous ground—they did not wish to leave any tracks behind them. In all truth there was absolutely nothing to show that they had ever been in that part of the country. At last they came to what looked like a high hill with a wall-like cliff surmounting it. They stepped on to the firm clayey soil where the sage-bush waved, and had their midday meal. As soon as that had been disposed ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... interior causes of decline, which arise from the produce of the soil becoming unequal to the sustenance of a ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... secure him from all toil and that a world of pleasure was within his reach, did not seem to touch him with any alluring sense. He was going to remain until the vein of the Twin Springs had a big hole made in it; and the rich soil of the old river he had staked out as a reserve for himself and his partners, to either work or sell. Through his one-sided conversations with Harris he learned that he, too, wanted to remain in the camp where their gold had been found. Doctors, medicines, luxuries, could be ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... moments of our passing lives that are recorded only in our under-consciousnesses, to rise in other years in character formed, in traits established, in events fructified. And in the years when the evil days came not, John Barclay's tragedy was stirring in the soil of his soul. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... figure came to the fore in Max Halbe, a West Prussian and an individuality deeply rooted in the soil of his forefathers. That soil and his close kinship with nature gave Halbe a firmer foundation than the shifting quicksands of metropolitan life offered. These were the premises upon which he set out to build. But ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Beauty, produced in such a soil, were not, as might at first be supposed, tropic growths of wanton and luxurious curves, wild, spontaneous utterances of superabundant Life. The finely-studied perception of the Greek artist admitted no merely animal, vegetable, instinctive, licentious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... although the preternatural appearances by which they are said to have been followed may raise a smile, are matters of historic notoriety with which every Japanese is familiar, furnish a forcible illustration of the relations which exist between the tenant and the lord of the soil, and of the boundless power for good or for evil exercised by the latter. It is rather remarkable that in a country where the peasant—placed as he is next to the soldier, and before the artisan and merchant, in the four classes into which the people are divided—enjoys no small consideration, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... various animals that frequented it; and the mud-holes formed by the elephants grew deeper and more given to spurt out water as the great animals passed on till the edge of the river was reached, when they plunged in on to what now seemed to be firm, gravelly soil, with the clear stream pressing against their sides, till the smaller elephant ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... more inspired than here, where they worked and died. Michelangelo (at the end of it) may be more surprising in the Vatican; but here are his wonderful Medici tombs. How it came about that between the years 1300 and 1500 Italian soil—and chiefly Tuscan soil—threw up such masters, not only with the will and spirit to do what they did but with the power too, no one will ever be able to explain. But there it is. In the history of the world two centuries were suddenly given mysteriously to the activities of Italian men of ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... writer; while the results forced upon her mind the conviction, that the tender bud, nurtured with so much care and fidelity, and watered with so many prayers and tears, would never be permitted to burst into full flower, in the ungenial soil of earth. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... issues: air pollution from industrial emissions; rivers polluted from raw sewage, heavy metals, detergents; deforestation; forest damage from air pollution and resulting acid rain; soil contamination from heavy metals from ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that Mrs. Croly did not write more in her latter years, when her native wisdom had ripened in the soil of a rich experience. ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... land of Egypt is the narrow strip of alluvial soil which forms the Nile banks, and the fertile delta which spreads fan-like from Cairo to the sea. These two divisions of the land practically constitute Upper and Lower Egypt. In area each is less than Wales, while the total population of the country is not twice ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... page of their history can be found on record in the history of this country, or hardly an allusion to their existence. My own race, once a very numerous, powerful and warlike tribe of Indians, who proudly trod upon this soil, is also near the end of existence. In a few more generations they will be so intermingled with the Caucasian race as to be hardly distinguished as descended from the Indian nations, and their language will be lost. I myself was brought up in a pure Indian style, and lived in a wigwam, and have ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... into the world again. Mayhap I may find some other wrong to right, or some other kingdom to win. It was thus that my kin, in the golden age long past, went faring over the land and sea, and met their doom at last. They were not home-abiders, nor tillers of the soil; but the world was their abiding-place, and they ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... assumed when it so pleased her, an expression which contrasted powerfully with her true nature, shameless creature that she really was, of the most monstrous, confessed, and openly-displayed perversity; such as, in fact, often spring up from the rotting soil of great cities. Extraordinary things were related about Silviane's tastes and fancies. Some said that she was a door-keeper's, others a doctor's, daughter. In any case she had managed to acquire instruction ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... unbated zeal, The horseman plied with scourge and steel; For jaded now and spent with toil, Embossed with foam and dark with soil, While every gasp with sobs he drew, The laboring stag strained ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from about eighteen years old to white-headed men past sixty. Most of them looked healthy and a little embrowned by recent exposure to the weather; and here and there was a pinched face which told its own tale. I got into talk with a quiet, hardy-looking man, dressed in soil-stained corduroy. He was a kind of overlooker. He told me that there were from eighty to ninety factory hands employed in that quarry. "But," said he, "it varies a bit, yo known. Some on 'em gets knocked up neaw an' then, an' ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... coalescing, and finding a higher meaning in the unifying ideal of race,—the ideal of fostering the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to, but in conformity with, the greater ideals of the American republic, in order that some day, on American soil, two world races may give each to each those characteristics which both so sadly lack. Already we come not altogether empty-handed: there is to-day no true American music but the sweet wild melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales are Indian and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... 1844. The machine was not really adapted to the hills of the Valley of Virginia, and farmers hesitated to buy a contrivance which needed the attention of a skilled mechanic. McCormick made a trip through the Middle West. In the rolling prairies, mile after mile of rich soil without a tree or a stone, he saw his future dominion. Hussey had moved East. McCormick did the opposite; he moved West, ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... heaps of rubbish cover for many an acre the face of the land.... On all sides, fragments of glass, marble, pottery, and inscribed brick are mingled with that peculiar nitrous and blanched soil, which, bred from the remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the site of Babylon a naked and a hideous waste. Owls [which are of a large gray kind, and often found in flocks of nearly a hundred] start from the scanty ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... they may differ on the question of the extent to which they are the cause or consequence of disease. Facts generally seem to bear out the opinion that a great number of skin diseases are aggravated, and even produced, by fungi. Robin[F] insists that a peculiar soil is necessary, and Dr. Fox says it is usually taught that tuberculous, scrofulous, and dirty people furnish the best nidus. It is scarcely necessary to enumerate all these diseases, with which medical men are familiar, but simply to indicate a few. There is favus or scall-head, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... house in which I am living stands almost on the spot where some particularly precious skeletons, attributed to prehistoric men and women, were dug up about twenty years ago, when the late Mr. Christy was here busily disturbing the soil that had been allowed to remain unmoved for ages. The overleaning rock, which is separated from my temporary home only by a few yards, probably afforded shelter to generations of those degraded human beings from whom the anthropologist ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... character, independence, leisure, fortune, consideration already acquired, and devotion,—all this is seldom united in one individual. An entire society is not decapitated with impunity. Nations are like their soil: after having pared off the vegetable earth, we find only the sand beneath, and that is unproductive. The Constituent Assembly had forgotten this truth, or rather its abdication had assumed the form of a vengeance. The royalist party had voted the non-re-eligibility, in order ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... and mellow like the early days of September. It so was now; the country was wrapped in with happy content, birds rose and hung, like telegraph wires, beyond the windows. On a slanting brown field gulls from the sea, white and shining, were hovering, wheeling, sinking into the soil. And yet, as he went, he was not leaving March Square behind, but rather taking it with him. He was taking the children too—Bim, Angelina, John, even Sarah (against her will), and it was not her who was in charge of the party. He felt as though, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... shores, so that we scarcely knew where to make a landing. Finally we halted on the right, constantly watching the boats' lines lest the sand should melt away and take our little ships with it. Along the bases of the cliffs above the high waters were narrow strips of rocky soil, supporting a few stunted cottonwoods and hackberry trees, which, with some stramonium bushes in blossom, were the sum total of vegetation. In every way the Junction is a desolate place. It is the beginning of Cataract Canyon, and forty-one miles must be put behind ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... he who, blind to universal laws, Sees but effects, unconscious of their cause,— Believes each image in itself is bright, Not robed in drapery of reflected light,— Is like the rustic who, amidst his toil, Has found some crystal in his meagre soil, And, lost in rapture, thinks for him alone Earth worked her wonders on the sparkling stone, Nor dreams that Nature, with as nice a line, Carved countless angles ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... has its mystery and its beauty, its logic and its explanation; and the epigraph given me by Fabre himself, which appears on the title-page of this volume, is in no way deceptive. The tiny insects buried in the soil or creeping over leaf or blade have for him been sufficient to evoke the most important, the most fascinating problems, and have revealed a whole world of ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... tall, broad-shouldered sailor, with his hands in the pockets of his pea-jacket. She saw him by the caves in Peru, his flannel shirt and his belted trousers faded by the sun and water, torn and worn, and stained by the soil on which they so often sat, with his long hair and beard, and the battered felt hat, which was the last thing she saw as his boat faded away in the distance, when she stood watching it from the sandy beach. She saw him as she had imagined him after she had received his letter, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... array was every variety of vegetable reared on Greek or Egyptian soil; here speckless fruits of every size and hue were set out, and there ready baked, shining, golden-brown pasties were displayed. Those containing meat, fish or the mussels of Canopus were prepared in Alexandria ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... other patiently. "There is not a spot on French soil where I can set foot and be safe; but if man's justice, like God's, took all into account, if man's justice deigned to inquire which was the monster—the murderer or his victim—then I might hold up my head among my fellows. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... to England, with a population of 1,722,666, and a soil capable of supporting 20,000,000. No State in the Valley of the Mississippi offers so great an inducement to the settler as the State of Illinois. There is no part of the world where all the conditions of climate and soil so admirably combine to produce those two great ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... looked out of the little window of his room on the day of his arrival. The whole of its trunk was evergrown with dry moss, its bare, rugged branches, sparsely covered with reddish leaves, rose crookedly, like some old arms held up in supplication. Nejdanov stepped firmly on to the dark soil beneath the tree and pulled out the object he had taken from the table drawer. He looked up intently at the windows of the little house. "If somebody were to see me now, perhaps I wouldn't do it," he thought. But no human being was to be ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... churches and houses of Christian men had begun to rise. The natives had begun to cultivate the arts of civilisation, and to appreciate, in some degree, the inestimable blessings of Christianity. The plough had torn up the virgin soil, and the anchors of merchant-ships had begun to kiss the strand. The crimes peculiar to civilised men had not yet been developed. The place had all the romance and freshness of ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... forest along the banks is most inspiring, magnificent here. Down the terraced slopes and right to the water's edge on the alluvial soil it stands in ranks. Each year, of course, the floods undercut the banks, and more trees fall, to become at last the flotsam of the shore a ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... upon the temple like a swarm of mason bees; and the extent of the mischief they perpetrated in the course of centuries may be gathered from the fact that they raised the level of the surrounding soil to such a height that the obelisks, the colossi, and the entrance pylon were buried to a depth of 40 feet, while inside the building the level of the native village was 50 feet above the original pavement. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... service to the nation that Saxon and Norman should fight together under the holy cross. Hitherto the races have stood far too much apart. They have seen each other's bad qualities rather than good; but methinks that when the Saxon and the Norman stand side by side on the soil of the Holy Land, and shout together for England, it must needs bind them together, and lead them to feel that they are no longer Normans and Saxons, but Englishmen. I intend to preach on the village green at Evesham next Sunday morning on this subject, and ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... wholesale banishments, I have been fairly at the mercy of my poor deserted female relatives. Sisters, nieces, cousins, they have all come flocking to me for protection. I have fourteen free-born souls, I tell you, under my single roof, and how are we to live? We can get nothing out of the soil—that is in the hands of the enemy; nothing from my house property, for there is scarcely a living soul left in the city; my furniture? no one will buy it; money? there is none to be borrowed—you would have a better chance to find it ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... other arrangements suitable to the circumstances. Having promised me the slaughter of Karna, thou hast not, O hero, kept that promise. Bringing us into the midst of foes, why hast thou broken us into pieces by throwing us down on a hard soil? Expecting diverse good things and benefits from thee, O Arjuna, we have always uttered blessings on thee. All those expectations, however, O prince, have proved vain like those of persons expectant of fruit getting instead of a tree burthened only with flowers! Like a fish-hook hid ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the bushranger!—purgatory of England!—happy scene, where the sheep-stealer is metamorphosed into the shepherd; the highwayman is the guardian of the road; the dandy is delicate no more, and earns his daily bread; and the Court of Chancery is unknown—hail to thee, soil of larceny and love! of pickpockets and principle! of every fraud under heaven, and primeval virtue! daughter of jails, and mother of empires!—hail to thee, New South Wales! In all my years—and I am now no boy—and in all my travels—and I am now at the antipodes—I have never heard any maxim ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... pleasure-grounds which lie immediately beneath it in the valley, and are the chief source of their fertility, for, as they are mostly formed of earth which has been carried from other places, they possess no original or natural soil capable of supporting vegetation. As there is but little water in the pool during the dry season, the Arabs dam up the several streams in order to collect a sufficient quantity in small ponds adjoining each garden, and this they all do at the same time, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... situated—a bold hilly tract. The shores of the bay are studded with villas, and exhibit enclosures: some used for agriculture, some for gardens, one for a mosque, with a cemetery around it. It is said they are extremely fertile; the first example we have seen of the exuberance of the African soil. The villas, we are told, belong to the Consular Establishment. We saw our own, who, if at home, put no remembrance upon us. Like the Cambridge Professor and the elephant, "We were a paltry beast," and he would not see us, though ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... be nothing else along the road to look at, an English hedge might well suffice to occupy the eyes, and, to a depth beyond what he would suppose, the heart of an American. We often set out hedges in our own soil, but might as well set out figs or pineapples and expect to gather fruit of them. Something grows, to be sure, which we choose to call a hedge; but it lacks the dense, luxuriant variety of vegetation that is accumulated into the English original, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not yield copious and sweet milk; the soil ceases to be fertile; water ceases to be sweet; and the medicinal and edible herbs lose their virtues of healing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... The soil that erst so seemly was to seen, Was all despoiled of her beauteous hew, And soote fresh flowers wherewith the summers queen, Had clad the earth, new Boreas blasts down blew And small fowls flocking in their songs did rew The winter's wrath, wherewith each thing defaste, In woeful wise ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... could never again encounter without fiery resentment the Broadway peddler's faith that farmers invariably say "Waal, by heck." For she had spent an hour talking to one Dakota farmer, genial-eyed, quiet of speech. He had explained the relation of alfalfa to soil-chemistry; had spoken of his daughter, who taught economics in a state university; and asked Mr. Boltwood how turbines were ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the Kaiser had always said: 'I am Head of the Reich, and have nothing to live upon!' On one preliminary, Carteret had always been inexorable: 'Have done with your French auxiliaries; send every soul of them home; the German soil once cleared of them, much will be possible; till then nothing.' KAISER: 'Well, give me back my Bavaria; my Bavaria, and something suitable to live upon, as Head of the Reich: some decent Annual ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a field has been inundated with water the crop will be spoiled; but if covered with snow it will be improved, as the soil is warmed and ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... Archangel to San Francisco he had met with his second failure since leaving St. Petersburg. It was his intention to move the Sitkan colony down to the mouth of the Columbia River; not only pressed by the need of a more beneficent soil, but as a first insidious advance upon San Francisco Bay. Upon this trip it would be enough to make a survey of the ground and bury a copper plate inscribed: "Possession of the Russian Empire." The Juno had encountered terrific storms. After three desperate attempts to reach the mouth of the river, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... be asked how the materials for those first stratified deposits were provided. In later times, when an abundant and various soil covered the earth, when every river brought down to the ocean, not only its yearly tribute of mud or clay or lime, but the debris of animals and plants that lived and died in its waters or along its banks, when every lake and pond ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... belt of mangroves the soil was densely covered with that heterogeneous jumble of parasitic creepers of all descriptions spoken of in Africa by the generic denomination of "bush," thickly interspersed with trees, many of which were ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... course; wearing away its banks on one side, while it forms new ones on the other. Its channel is shifting continually. Islands are formed, and then washed away; and while the old forests on one side are undermined and swept off, a young growth springs up from the new soil upon the other. With all these changes, the water is so charged with mud and sand that it is perfectly opaque, and in a few minutes deposits a sediment an inch thick in the bottom of a tumbler. The river was now high; but when we descended in the autumn it was fallen ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... so that, in spite of the labour we had already gone through, we were well able to continue it. Having at length driven in the stakes all round, we commenced an embankment. The outer crust of the soil looked hard and dry enough; but we soon found, on digging down, that it was sufficiently soft to enable us to get our spades into ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... right That shrines its fellow. "So pattering rains The dark roots drink—and healthful juice slow drains Deep 'neath the mould; and with their secret toil Bear stainless, leaf and flow'r above the soil. Noblest the soul that self hath most forgot; Strongest the self which hath most humbly wrought; Purest the soul that in full light serene, Unquestioning, enwrapt, God's field doth glean. I have seen worlds far hence; thy tender feet Bleeding, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... backsliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but, with the Prophet, O Earth, Earth, Earth, to tell the very soil itself what God hath determined of Coniah and his seed for ever. But I trust I shall have spoken persuasion to abundance of sensible and ingenuous men,—to some perhaps whom God may raise of these stones to become Children ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... good or bad. And it was an English judge, a century ago, that issued that other great proclamation, and established that great principle, that when a slave, let him belong to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon English soil his fetters, by that act, fall away and he is a free man ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a gentle breeze from the westward imparted a feeling of freshness to the air, whilst it wafted to the pedestrians the subtly mingled perfumes of the thousand varied plants and flowers which flourished in the deep rich soil of the island. As the ladies walked quietly on up the gently sloping valley toward the hills their enjoyment increased with every step. Hitherto they had only ventured abroad at night; and lovely as the landscape ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... grove, testing each tree as they advanced. They scanned the trunks and thumped them with clubs to make sure that they were not hollow. They peered at them from all sides, looking for holes and hollow limbs. With sticks they scratched away the leaves from about the bases of the trees, turning up the soil for several inches and testing it for hidden wires. All the trees seemed sound. No hollow limbs were discovered. No suspicious marks were found in the earth about the tree trunks. The tall trees noted ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... science found at Hoxne, in Suffolk, about twelve feet below the surface of the soil, worked flints, which had evidently been the natural weapons of a people who had no knowledge of metals. With these flints were found some strange bones with the gigantic jaw of an animal then unknown. Frere adds that the number of chips of flint ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... that inspired this apparently one-sided attachment was never very apparent. The almost passionate loyalty and affections of youth are hardy plants, thriving abundantly on the scantiest soil. ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... the unknown! I am thrown upon the shore. I am covering myself with the sand. I am filling my mouth with the earth. I am burrowing my body into the soil. ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... Paros is a large and important island situated near the center of the southern portion of the AEgean Sea. It is of an oval form, and is about twelve miles long. The surface of the land is beautifully diversified and very picturesque, while, at the same time, the soil is very fertile. In the days of Miltiades, it was very wealthy and populous, and there was a large city, called also Paros, on the western coast of the island, near the sea. There is a modern town built upon the site of the former city, which presents ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... night as I plodded past these woods or struggled through them. The temptation was to go into the wood and walk on firmer soil—but the thickets were many, and not a furlong did it profit me. Then there were thorns, you must know, and abundant long-clawed creepers that grasped the legs and kept them fixed till they were tenderly extricated by the hand. When I came to the pine-wood it was night, and the many ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... April I commenced a new fort with ditch and earthwork around the magazines, but the sandy nature of the soil will cause much trouble during ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... claim Of Chieftain in their leader's name; Adventurers they, from far who roved, To live by battle which they loved. There the Italian's clouded face, The swarthy Spaniard's there you trace; The mountain-loving Switzer there More freely breathed in mountain-air; The Fleming there despised the soil That paid so ill the labourer's toil; Their rolls showed French and German name; And merry England's exiles came, To share, with ill-concealed disdain, Of Scotland's pay the scanty gain. All brave in arms, well trained to wield The heavy halberd, brand, and shield; In camps licentious, wild, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... For the last ten years he had never ceased urging his employer to assume the reins of government himself. His entreaties, protestations and threats of resignation had been unheeded. Craven felt sure that he would never relinquish his post, he had grown into the soil and was as firmly fixed as the Towers itself. He was an institution in the county, a personality on the bench. He ruled his own domains with a kindly but absolute autocracy which succeeded perfectly on the Craven estates and was the envy of other agents, who had not his ability to do likewise. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... watercourses; at five miles came in amongst a quantity of detached hills of lime and sandstone; the ground strewed with bronzed burnt small stones and takes the print of an animal's foot readily, having a light soil under. At the end of this distance, six and three-quarter miles, two creeks again full in view, one apparently on bearing 9 degrees, passing above and below a small table-topped hill, the other on bearing of 40 degrees, which ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... forgive us, Miss Rose, but this is strictly a limited expedition. We children want to be as mischievous as we like without the controlling influence of grown-up people. No best frocks, please, Mrs Wallace! Just holland pinafores that we can soil as much as we like!" pleaded the Captain, feeling more than rewarded for his firmness as he met the adoring glances of three pairs ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Elizabeth, for in the year 1564 the celebrated black-lead mines of Borrowdale, in Cumberland, were discovered. With the opening of this mine, the first material steps were taken to implant on English soil a lead pencil industry which in the course of time was ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... the eye of the Christian in the very soil of Judea, because it was pressed by the footprints of our Blessed Redeemer. With what reverent steps we would enter the cave of Bethlehem because there was born the Savior of the world. With what religious demeanor we would ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... laces of fine quality and gorgeous design. Blonde laces in both cream and black are almost indigenous to the soil, and a particular kind of black Blonde, embroidered with colours, specially appealed to ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... loose in a camp for half an hour, with a good sharp knife in his possession, can do a tremendous amount of destruction. Why, he might begin by cutting the bags that held their sugar, so that every bit of it mixed with the soil and was lost. Half a dozen other things seemed to flash through Paul's mind as he crouched there and watched the dimly seen figure descending slowly ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... the wintry blast, And gladly seek a more congenial soil, So flatterers halt when fortune's lure is past, And basely ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of dead trees, leaping across the sun-baked Martian soil, running silently together. They went up a little rise, across a narrow ridge. Suddenly Erick stopped, throwing himself down flat on the ground. The others did the same, pressing themselves against the soil, gasping ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... have obtained his experience as a child and not as a man; that only the good part, the flower and fruit of it, was plucked by him; and that nothing of the evil part, none of the earth in which the seed was planted, remained to soil him. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and to exercise a special care for tender plants which need protection until there is no longer any danger of frost. The beauty of a flower depends very much upon its content. Many flowers need particular soils; some need dry soil, some moisture, some shade, and some sun; and the gardener, who is a kind of mother to the flowers, will have to remember all those things. In return, the flowers, which have a real sense of gratitude to those who care for them tenderly, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... weather he put into a harbour about ten leagues east of Monte Cristo. He was here struck by the advantages of its spacious harbour, there being also two rivers watering a green and beautiful plain, while the soil appeared to be fertile, and excellent fish were found. It was also at no great distance from ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... last white patch had melted or evaporated from the exposed slopes, these sheltered drifts would lie undiminished and when summer really came, they gave birth to scores of trickling rills. Vegetation sprang up in that moist, needle-mulched soil as luxuriant as any in the tropics. From the time the furry anemone lifted its lavender-blue petals above the dwindling snow patch, until the apples formed on the wild rose bushes and the kinnikinic berries turned red, it was a continuous nosegay. Indian paintbrush, marigolds, blue and ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... duller, until we descend to the plane of impure, sensual, coarse passion, which is manifested by an ugly, dull, muddy crimson of a repulsive appearance, suggesting blood mixed with dirty earth or barnyard soil. ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and was invented at a very early period, being perhaps nearly coeval with the cultivation of the soil itself. Anciently, the tenants (in England) in some manors, were not allowed to have their rural implements sharpened by any but those whom the lord appointed; for which an acknowledgment was to be paid, called agusa dura; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... once led to enquire, it is scarcely in the power of accident wholly to impede the progress of enquiry. And should accident be favourable, that progress would indeed be rapid! By his intercourse with Anna his mind is become impregnated with the seeds of truth; and surely the soil is too rich for these seeds not to spring, bud, and bear a plenteous harvest. Ay, Oliver, fear not. It is not the beauty of the picture that seduces, but the laws of necessity, which declare the result for which we hope to ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... mountains. The weather is very hot in summer and very cold in winter, with scorching or icy winds blasting across the land because there are no forests to break their force. Great gray boulders thrust out of purple-green hillsides, and rivers cut deep gorges in the gray soil. This central part is made up of two regions, Old and New Castile. Old Castile is to the north, and cattle are raised in the green fields fed ...
— Getting to know Spain • Dee Day
... Though never so pressing 230 The call of the tavern, Their weight will not deaden The soul of the peasant And will not benumb it. The road that's before him Is broad and unending.... When old fields, exhausted, Play false to the reaper, He'll seek near the forest For soil more productive. 240 The work may be hard, But the new plot repays him: It yields a rich harvest Without being manured. A soil just as fertile Lies hid in the soul Of the people of Russia: O Sower, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... beauty, it never enters into our minds that they grew so of themselves, or gave to themselves their delicate and exquisite perfumes. We know that the skill of the gardener had something to do with their growth and beauty; we know, moreover, that rain and sunshine, the quality of soil, and other natural influences, did what was totally beyond the power of the gardener; and finally we come to God, who is, ultimately, the sole Author of their very ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... that certain rules were mummies embalmed by the hand of pedants. In fine, it seemed to me that there were two kinds of Art: the one, serene with an Olympic serenity, the Art of all ages that belongs to no country; the other, more impassioned, that has its roots in one's native soil.... The first that of Homer, of Phidias, of Virgil, of Tasso; the other that of the Prophets, of Dante, of Shakespeare, of Byron. And I have tried to cling to this last, because I was pleased to see how these great men take the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the main branch has remained, and is, in fact, very sincerely Protestant. Both Ernest and Albert are much attached to it, and when deviations took place they were connected more with new branches transplanted out of the parent soil than with what more properly must be considered as ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... heart, Sir George," he said, "but remember you are transferring a tender plant into a strange soil. There are not many of your countrymen to whom I would confide such a trust, for I know the risk they run who ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... that lies over against this lake hath the same name of Gennesareth; its nature is wonderful as well as its beauty; its soil is so fruitful that all sorts of trees can grow upon it, and the inhabitants accordingly plant all sorts of trees there; for the temper of the air is so well mixed, that it agrees very well with those ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... other poems pass away, The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes; Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature.' ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... more really benefited than the individual worker toiling only for himself. Who is most truly served—the man who makes a garment, or the man who enjoys its warmth? the builder of the house, or the dweller therein? the tiller of the soil, or he who eats the fruit thereof? Yet, how rarely does the skilful artisan, or he who labours in the field, think of, or care for, those who are to enjoy the good things of life he is producing! His thought is on what ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... feathers and the rebuilt nest being left undisturbed. The caverns are lined with a white guano, now some feet thick, since it has ceased to be sought for manure; the Martialists having discovered means of saturating the soil with ammonia procured from the nitrogen of the atmosphere, which with the sewage and other similar materials enables them to dispense with this valuable bird manure. Whether the white colour of the island, perceptible even in a large Terrestrial telescope, is in any degree due to ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... resplendent glories moving in a sphere 'as calm as it is bright,' so, in the other, whirling clouds and jets of vapour as in the crater of a volcano. One shuddering glance over the rim of it should suffice to warn from lingering near, lest the unsteady soil should crumble ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of that party. Here, among the candidates who presented themselves for nomination, the professional politician found himself an object of suspicion. The lawyer lost some of his political availability. Men who could claim to be close to the soil had an advantage. ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... That our climate, soil and situation are such as to insure as much health, riches and prosperity as any people can rationally wish, seems not to be doubted. Our natural advantages do not indeed promise such an accumulation of wealth as might satisfy ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... "these lettuces are of a kind which only grow in yellow soil. Look," and lifting the vegetables she revealed beneath row upon row of gold coin. "Examine it before you count," ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... thing, especially as the grave-digger was laid up in his bed, from long working in a damp soil and sitting down to take his dinner on cold tombstones, and I was consequently under obligation to go alone, for it was too late to hope to get any other companion. However, I wasn't unprepared for it; as the old gentleman had often made it a request that the bell should be tolled as soon ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Dr Thorpe; "saving, of course, so much Latin as a physician must needs pick up withal. I count I could bray like a jackass an' I tried, and that were good enough for any strange-born companion as ever cumbered the soil of ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... edifices, the Campo-Santo, is a cemetery, the soil of which, brought from Palestine, is holy ground. Four high walls of polished marble surround it with their white and crowded panels. Inside, a square gallery forms a promenade opening into the court through arcades trellised with ogive windows. It is filled with funereal ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... replant an awful lot of the stuff that is now just planted this year. We lost a lot of the plantings that were made last year because of injury. As you folks probably know that have been there before, we labored under very great difficulties on soil conditions in that we have mostly ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... breast a niggardly subsistence. Their re-entrance into the surrounding parishes was viewed with great suspicion; their renewed settlement opposed by every ingenious contrivance; those who availed themselves of their labour were careful that they should not become dwellers on the soil; and though, from the excessive competition, there were few districts in the kingdom where the rate of wages was more depressed, those who were fortunate enough to obtain the scant remuneration, had, in addition ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... pity of it! What floods of weeping! There is a tone about which strikes me as going well with the grace of these leafless birch-trees against the sky, the pale silver of their bark, and a certain delicate odour of decay which rises from the soil. It is all one half-light; and the heroine, nay! The hero himself also, that dainty Chevalier des Grieux, with all his fervour, have, I think, but a half-life in them truly, from the first. And I could fancy myself almost ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... recognize the right of Maryland to repeal the Constitution of the United States, and if any convention there, called by whatever authority, under whatever auspices, undertake to inaugurate revolution in Maryland, their authority will be resisted and defied in arms on the soil of Maryland, in the name and by the authority of the Constitution of the ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... Indian chiefs to be burnt alive, for the massacre of three of his followers! *3 The heart sickens at the recital of such atrocities perpetrated on an unoffending people, or, at least, guilty of no other crime than that of defending their own soil too well. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... constructed of the felled trunks, was built, a half-circle in form, with the river at its two ends. This was the extent of their precautions. The returning scouts reported that the forest in advance was empty of foes. The tawny host cast themselves in full security on the grassy soil, setting no guards, and were soon lost in slumber, with that blind trust in fortune which has ever been one of the weak features of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... to go out to the pump every evening and bathe his chapped and soil-kissed feet and wipe them on the grass before retiring, thus introducing one of the refinements of Rome in this ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... not expec' monsieur to fight anybody. Would I fight you, you think? That was why I had my servants, that evening we play. I would gladly fight almos' any one in the won'; but I did not wish to soil my hand ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... sleep never took place in the house. Hidden in the thickest part of the neighbouring jungle was a sort of nest to which led no path. He never entered nor left by the same way, so that the tropic growth on the rich soil, being so rarely trod upon, ever obliterated the slightest sign of his having passed that way. Whenever he slept, Jerry was trained to remain on guard and never ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... we sound al alyk. But of it we have sundrie diphthonges: oa, as to roar, a boar, a boat, a coat; oi, as coin, join, foil, soil; oo, as food, good, blood; ou, as house, mouse, &c. Thus, we commonlie wryt mountan, fountan, quhilk it wer more etymological to wryt montan, fontan, ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... and theology, but because it was to that city, and not to Athens, that Rome turned for her models, and it was through the survival, such as it was, of the Latin language that culture lived at all. When, at the Renaissance, Greek literature dawned upon Europe, the soil had been in some measure prepared for it. But, to get rid of the details of history, which are always wearisome and usually inaccurate, let us say generally, that the forms of art have been due to the Greek critical spirit. To it we owe the epic, the lyric, the entire ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... away a mound thought to be that of the pocket gopher, Thomomys sturgisi. A trap set in one direction in the tunnel caught the mole; a trap set in the other direction in the tunnel was later covered with soil, evidently by a gopher. After the capture a thorough inspection of the area revealed no "raised" tunnels, typical of Scalopus. A series of Thomomys was taken in this area in sets placed in tunnels ...
— Two New Moles (Genus Scalopus) from Mexico and Texas • Rollin H. Baker |
