"Stalk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laughter and as candid as logic. He built the temple in three concentric courts, which were cooler and more exquisite in substance each than the other. For the outer wall was a hedge of white lilies, ranked so thick that a green stalk was hardly to be seen; and the wall within that was of crystal, which smashed the sun into a million stars. And the wall within that, which was the tower itself, was a tower of pure water, forced up in an everlasting fountain; and upon the very tip ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... rise heavenward from the evening altar; And round the sacrifices, blazing high, Flesh-eating demons stalk, like red cloud-masses, And cast colossal shadows ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... to overcome the effect of early neglect. If the culture of the growing stalk is passed over, the corn in the ear can not be full. If the bodily needs of the boy are unmet, he can not reach his full development as a man. If his budding intellectual life, his awakening feeling life, or the delicate unfolding of his spiritual life is ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... timber line. On all sides can be seen strange flowers, of lovely forms and varied hues. Plants which attain considerable proportions on the plains are here reduced to their lowest forms. It is not an unusual thing to find a sunflower stalk in the prairies rising from a height of eight to ten feet; here they grow like dandelions in the grass, yet retaining all their characteristics of form and color. Beyond this mountain meadow are great fields of disintegrated granite, broken cubes of pink rock, so vast in ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... watching. This multiplicity afforded them a wonderful spectacle, but that was about all. If they should crawl three yards farther they would indubitably be espied by some one. It was impossible to single out a beast as the object of a stalk: all the others must be considered, too. There ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... preparing the hide, and greasing our harness. Charley, in riding after the horses, came to some fine lagoons, which were surrounded by a deep green belt of Nelumbiums. This plant grows, with a simple tap root, in the deep soft mud, bearing one large peltate leaf on a leaf stalk, about eight feet high, and from twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, the flower-stalk being of the same length or even longer, crowned with a pink flower resembling that of a Nymphaea, but much larger: its seed-vessel is a large cone, with perpendicular holes in its cellular ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... . . . in the late afternoon. Now you come to mention it, I'd a notion at the time he wasn't anxious to be seen. For he came over the fields at the back—across the ten-acre field that Mrs Bosenna carried last week—and a very tidy crop, I'm told, though but moderate long in the stalk. . . . Well, there he was comin' across the stubble—at a fine pace, too, with his coat 'pon his arm—when as I guess he spied me down in the road below and stopped short, danderin' about an' pretendin' to poke up weeds with his stick. 'Some new-fashioned farmin',' thought I; 'weedin' ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a painful thorn the floweret's stalk upon: Behind each cupboard's gilded doors there lurks a Skeleton: The crumpled roseleaf mocks repose, beneath the bed of down: In proof of which attend the tale of Bach ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... by too rapid clearing the island has become unwooded, the sugar-houses have begun to want fuel. A little stalk (sugar-cane destitute of its juice) used to be employed to quicken the fire beneath the old cauldrons (tachos); but it is only since the introduction of reverberating furnaces by the emigrants of Saint Domingo that the attempt has been ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... retreat the soldiers got very thirsty for tobacco (they always used the word thirsty), and they would sometimes come across an old field off which the tobacco had been cut and the suckers had re-sprouted from the old stalk, and would cut off these suckers and dry them by the fire and chew them. "Sneak" had somehow or other got hold of a plug or two, and knowing that he would be begged for a chew, had cut it up in little bits of pieces about one-fourth ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... wouldn't part with my darling leeches for all the world. Do you see how they are dancing now? That means rain. When they lie quite sullen at the bottom of the glass, then I know we are going to have fine weather. That one on the stalk—do you see how he is wriggling, poor sweet pet?—that one I call Fuzz, and this one at the bottom of the glass is Buzz. Then there are their children, Thunder and Lightning, and the little Stars. The Stars are the tiny ones. I manage them myself. I ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... trail leaving a brown and torn surface on the earth, wide on both sides of the plantation. Scarcely a trace of greenness was left where once the corn-field had been. Here and there, ears of grain, broken and trampled into the torn earth, hinted what had been; but for the most part hillock, stalk, corn-blade, vine, and melon were all crushed into an indistinguishable confusion, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... particular that we take off our hats, to the astonishment of the park-keeper. Everything has in fact another side to it, like the moon, the patroness of nonsense. Viewed from that other side, a bird is a blossom broken loose from its chain of stalk, a man a quadruped begging on its hind legs, a house a gigantesque hat to cover a man from the sun, a chair an apparatus of four wooden legs for a cripple with ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... Blivar! But, gentlemen of the jury, if you convict my client, his children will be doomed to pine away in a state of hopeless matrimony; and his beautiful wife i will stand lone and delighted like a dried up mullen-stalk in a ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... northern consists of a long spit of land running out to the north-west, in places not more than a furlong in width, but expanding at its northern extremity to a breadth of nearly two miles. The long isthmus, and the peninsula in which it ends, have been compared to the stalk and blossom of a flower.[5175] The flower was the ancient Gades, the modern Cadiz. The Phoenician occupation of the site is witnessed to by Strabo, Diodorus, Scymnus Chius, Mela, Pliny, Velleius Paterculus, AElian and ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... their hands. Food would be laid down before them and kneeling, or on all-fours like dogs, they had to pick it up with their teeth. Perhaps their lot might be so far mitigated that a maiden would be permitted to convey food to their mouths on the end of a fern-stalk—a much less disagreeable process for the eater. Growing fields of the sweet potato were sacred for obvious reasons, as were those who were working therein. So were burial-places and the bones of the dead. The author above-mentioned chancing one day on a journey ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... for you that you can walk. You have the advantage of youth, and you haven't as much to carry as I have. Well, I propose we have a few minutes' rest? and we will occupy ourselves in watching Waveney stalk those mergansers. There's a job for you, Waveney. They are the most detestable birds alive to have near a forest ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... connecting link between the vegetable kingdom and the decorations of a Waldorf-Astoria scene in a Third Avenue theatre. I haven't looked up our family tree, but I believe we were raised by grafting a gum overshoe on to a 30-cent table d'hote stalk of asparagus. You take a white bulldog with a Bourke Cockran air of independence about him and a rubber plant and there you have the fauna and flora of a flat. What the shamrock is to Ireland the rubber plant is to the ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... their immense cup-shaped crimson blossoms clustering on long stalks above great floating leaves—leaves nearly approaching three feet in diameter I think; and everywhere about the leaves hover birds and along the margins of the lagoons stalk countless waders, cranes, jabiroos, and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... cultivated are the Oronoco and the Sweet Scented; they differ only in the form of the leaves, those of the latter variety being shorter and broader than the other. They are annual herbaceous plants, rising with strong erect stems to the height of from six to nine feet, with fine handsome foliage. The stalk near the root is often an inch or more in diameter, and surrounded by a hairy clammy substance, of a greenish yellow color. The leaves are of a light green; they grow alternately, at intervals of two or three inches on the stalk; they are oblong and spear-shaped; those lowest on the stalk are about ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... in the pages of which are to be found the hurried notes—often but a few strokes and scratches intended to serve as a mnemonic—upon which his finished drawings and sketches were based. Frequently he would stalk an imposing Sergent de Ville, or Cuirassier with resplendent helmet and flowing horse-hair plume, for miles along the boulevards, making furtive notes, when opportunities presented themselves and conditions were favourable, of the details of epaulettes, ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... each ear separately and plant in separate rows, marked and numbered from one to ten. As soon as the corn in these rows begins to tassel go through them every few days and remove the tassel from every stalk that is not forming an ear; so that the pollen or tassel dust of the barren stalk may not fall on the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... tuition of Yambo, our capataz, and the other Gauchos, we became adepts in the use of both bolas and lasso. Away up among the beetling crags and in the deep, gloomy caverns we had to stalk the guanacos as the Swiss mountaineer stalks the chamois. Oh, our adventures among the rocks were sometimes thrilling enough! But here on the plains another kind of tactics was pursued. I doubt if ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... Bow Wow her thimble," and off the old gentleman rabbit started, limping along on his red, white and blue striped rheumatism crutch, that Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy had gnawed for him out of a bean-pole. Excuse me, I mean corn stalk. ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... was walking by the shore of the sea he found a reed, or, as some say, a tall stalk of fennel, growing; and when he had broken it off he saw that its hollow center was filled with a dry, soft pith which would burn slowly and keep on fire a long time. He took the long stalk in his hands, and started with it ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... to half-past seven. She saw the postman emerge from beneath the bare boughs of the park trees, come through the wicket, dive through the shrubbery, reappear on the lawn, stalk across it without reference to paths—as country postmen do—and come to the porch. She heard him fling the bag down on the seat, and turn away towards the village, without hindering himself for ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... found the top Of a wheat-stalk droop and lop They chucked it underneath the chin And praised the lavish crop, Till it lifted with the pride Of the heads it grew beside, And then the South Wind and the Sun Went ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... sat together. Words had been the clouds in which the lightning of their thoughts had been lost; they had been the disguises in which the truth of things masqueraded. They had not dared to be silent, lest the truth should stalk naked before them. Silence would have revealed their unhappiness; they would not have dared to look closely and deeply into each other's face, lest revelation should force them to say, "It has been a mistake; let us end it." So they had talked ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as we have said, at the death of any chief is very ancient. According to their story, a chief called Marapan more than ten thousand years ago, while easing his body asked a slave of his for some grass with which to clean himself. The slave threw to him a large stalk of reed-grass, which seems to have hit the chief on the knee, causing a wound. As he was at the time a very old man, he died, as they say, from the blow; but before his death he gave orders that, when he should die, the slave and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... another Corn called Tanna; It is much eaten in the Northern Parts, in Conde Uda but little sown. It is as small as the former, but yieldeth a far greater encrease. From one grain may spring up two, three, four or five stalks, according as the ground is, on each stalk one ear, that contains thousands of grains. I think it gives the greatest encrease of any one feed in the World. Each Husbandman sowes not above a Pottle at a Seeds-time. It growes up two foot, or two foot ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Those in the National Collection have generally been referred to the late Bronze Age. These sickles are all very small, and it has been thought that the Irish, like the Gauls, cut only the ear of the corn, and burnt the stalk. A recent find of moulds in County Antrim contained a mould for casting a sickle without a socket like the Continental examples, and shows that this type was also known in Ireland in the later Bronze Age (fig. 75). The bronze sickles have an important bearing on ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey
... and turned them from God. He practised idolatry with a baked stone, and prostrated himself before his own idol; and finally, as a fit punishment, he was first stoned to death, upon the eve of the passover, and then hung up upon a cross made of a cabbage-stalk, after which, Onkelos, the fallen Titus' sister's son, conjured him up out of hell." [Footnote: Although the Jews deny that Christ is named in the Talmud, saying that another Jesus is meant, yet Eisenmenger has fully proved the contrary, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... The stalk had risen rather accidentally. The hunchback—now in a manner attached to the party of Hussars—had been himself loitering near the end of the lane, and saw the cochero as he came out on the road. He knew the latter was being sought for, and by no one more zealously than ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... the apple-blossoms and the dewdrops shining on every blade of grass. Oh, it smells so fresh and sweet and delicious! Now I'm in the corn-fields and the tall green corn is rustling in the wind, and the morning-glories climb up every stalk and shake the dew out of their purple bells. Now I can hear the bucket splash down in the well, and come up cold and dripping. And now I'm dabbling my fingers in the spring down in the old stone spring house, and standing on the cold, wet rocks in my bare feet. And there's the winter mornings, ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... upright stem branched off on either side three arms decorated with what the Book calls 'beaten work,' and what we in modern jewellers' technicality call repousse work, each of which bore on its top, like a flower on its stalk, a shallow cup filled with oil, in which a wick floated. There were thus seven lamps in all, including that on the central stem. The material was costly, the work adorning it was artistic, the oil with which it was fed was carefully prepared, the number of its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... longer while he racked his brain for some clue to this woman's identity. For a man who has lived the varied life Luck had lived, his conscience was remarkably clean; but no one enjoys having mystery stalk unawares up to one's door. However, he opened the door and went out, feeling sensitively the curious expectancy of the Happy Family, and faced the woman who stood just beyond the doorway. One look, and he stopped dead still in the middle of the ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... right eye. I did not turn but kept my eyes glued to the wolf. Nor can I tell whether I had stirred the rabbit up, or whether the wolf had been chasing or stalking it. I should have liked to know, for I have never seen a wolf stalking a rabbit, though I have often seen him stalk fowl. Had he pulled up when he saw me? As I said, I cannot tell, for now he was standing in the characteristic wolf-way, half turned, head bent back, tail stretched out nearly horizontally. The tail sank, the whole beast seemed to shrink, ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... cabins, with scarcely any covering; feeding on unripe potatoes and yellow weed, and feigning sickness, in order to get into hospitals. He continued:—"This is the condition of a country blest by nature with fertility, but barren from the want of cultivation, and whose inhabitants stalk through the land enduring the extremity of misery and want. Did we govern ourselves? Who did this? You, Englishmen!—I say, you did it? It is the result of your policy and domination!" With respect to the bill before the house, Mr. O'Connell ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... beautiful hills they are! And yet, not for the whole world's beauty would I stand in the sunshine and the shadow of them any more. It would be a mockery, like the taking back of a broken flower to its stalk.'[4] ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... not from the path thereof; and if thou be not content with a summary of proof, I will set it out to thee in detail. God on thee, where is the boy beside the girl and who shall liken the kid to the wild cow? The girl is soft of speech, fair of shape, like a stalk of sweet basil, with teeth like chamomile-petals and hair like halters. Her cheeks are like blood-red anemones and her face like an apple; she hath lips like wine and breasts like double pomegranates and a shape flexile as a willow-wand. Her body is rounded and well-formed: she hath a ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... Professor Morris was a changed man. For the first time in all his orderly humdrum student existence, he had had to face war and death and murder, and all the crimes that stalk through a ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... about four inches, water is let in again; then comes the weeding, which has to be done several times. When the crop is ripe, the ears are cut with a sickle (ka rashi) generally, so as to leave almost the entire stalk, and are left is different parts of the field. A peculiarity about the Lynngam and the Khasis and Mikirs of the low hills, or Bhois as they are called, is that they reckon it sang, or taboo, to use the sickle. ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... calm a space In this gloomy vigil place; Though these confines haunted be Naught of harm can come to thee— Nothing canst thou see or hear Of the ghosts that stalk anear, For around thee Membril flings Charms of Fay ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... first was taught to go; And Zephyr, when he came to woo His Flora, had his motions[10] too; And thus did Venus learn to lead The Idalian brawls, and so to tread, As if the wind, not she, did walk, Nor press'd a flower, nor bow'd a stalk. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... me very much! If she had seen me, I was a lost man. She would have changed me into a lizard, a toad, or a bat. She took a paltry herb—the paltriest I ever saw—of a pale sickly yellow, with red and black marks, like the flames, as they say, of hell. The horror of the thing is, that the whole stalk was hairy like a man, with long, black, sticky hairs. She plucked it roughly, with a grunt, and suddenly I saw her no more. She could not have run away so quick; she must have flown. What a dreadful thing that woman is! How dangerous to ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Memphian dungeon! there began The lore of Mystery, the mask of man; There Fraud with Science leagued, in early times, Plann'd a resplendent course of holy crimes, Stalk'd o'er the nations with gigantic pace, With sacred symbols charm'd the cheated race, Taught them new grades of ignorance to gain, And punish truth with more than mortal pain,— Unfold at last thy cope! that man may see The mines of mischief he has drawn from thee. —Wide gapes the porch with hieroglyphics ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... stooping over a plant, and letting a great scarlet berry specked with golden seeds fall over into his hand. "Now see: finger nail and thumb nail; turn 'em into scissors; draw one against the other, and the stalk's through. That's the way to do it, and the rest of the bunch not hurt. Now then, your back's ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... the fig tree—from twelve to eighteen inches long, rather fleshy, and of a dark green. The fruit, when full-grown, is from six to nine inches round, and of an oval form—when ripe, of a rich, yellow tinge; it generally hangs in clusters of two or three, on a small thick stalk; the pulp is white, partly farinaceous, and partly fibrous, but when ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... flower does show So yellow-green, and sickly too? Ask me why the stalk is weak And bending, yet it doth not break? I will answer,—these discover What fainting hopes ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... me, Ye fairy Elves that be; O'er tops of dewy grass, So nimbly do we pass, The young and tender stalk Ne'er bends where ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... which God, Divine Providence, Christ, Christianity are systematically excluded and ridiculed as myths of by-gone days; when, we say, such theories are rampant in the halls of our modern universities, should we be astonished to see outright infidelity, political socialism, religious anarchy, stalk the length and breadth of the land? "Impurity, obscenity, moral corruption in many forms, with the ever consequent cynicism and pessimism, forerunners of moral decadence, destruction of the original, ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... opaque, and 0.03 of an inch long, and may be readily perceived upon splitting the stalk, though the outside orifice at which they were introduced is scarcely visible. They soon increase somewhat in bulk, causing a swelling of the stalk, and hatch in two weeks—more or less, according to the temperature; ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... strange animal. Instinct and imitation make in her an approach to reason which is sometimes almost startling. She mimics all that she sees us do, with the dexterity of a monkey, and far more of gravity and apparent purpose; cracks nuts and eats them; gathers currants and severs them from the stalk with the most delicate nicety; filches and munches apples and pears; is as dangerous in an orchard as a schoolboy; smells to flowers; smiles at meeting; answers in a pretty lively voice when spoken to (sad pity ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... threatening letter, draw a coffin, skull, and cross-bones, fight a policeman, or even make a speech. We were never a delegate at a convention, an envoy to America, a divisional executive, a deputation, or a demonstration. We were nothing. We wilted under the blight of our good landlord as the green stalk wilts under the frost of the black night.... Hand me that knife. The ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... his brows with a severe strain of memory. "There's Cinderella; an' there's Ally Babby or the fifty thieves—if it wasn't forty—I'm not rightly sure which, but it don't much matter; an' there's Jack the Giant-killer, an' Jack and the Pea-stalk—no; let me see; it was a beanstalk, I think—anyhow, it was the stalk of a vegetable o' some sort. Why, I wonder it never struck me before to tell you ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... don't want! I don't want to stalk in and say here's the hero of romance that has saved your brother! I want to get her home, and show her that I can be civil without being satirical, and then, perhaps, she ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is sich a man. Blast you, you forward skunks, git out of this! Say, you woods-colt with the humps on your shoulders and a stalk-knife by your side, help drive these hogs into the Ohio River. They've got more devils in 'em than what's-his-name, in the Holy Scripture, cast into all the swine of Jerusalem. Git out, I ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell, Comparing it to her Adonis' breath; 1172 And says within her bosom it shall dwell, Since he himself is reft from her by death: She drops the stalk, and in the breach appears Green dropping sap, which she compares ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... and all the necklaces of all the Miss Ormsbys. She has no taste, no judgment; none at all, poor thing! but she can imitate as well as those Chinese painters, who, in their drawings, give you the flower of one plant stuck on the stalk of another, and garnished with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... clearer to an English reader if "a stork" were substituted for the goat: "When a stork stoops to drink of the Neda;" and the "stalk" of the fig ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Calcol echoed, "Behold your king!" and raising a stalk of hyssop, on which was a sponge that he had dipped in the posca, the thin wine the soldiers drink, he offered ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... disappeared. The place where he had been lying was plainly to be identified, and there was no cover save a tiny bush between two and three feet high. We were quite certain he had neither seen nor winded us. Either he had risen and fled forward into the ravine up which we had made our stalk, or else he had entered the small thicket. F. agreed to stay on watch where he was, while I slipped back and examined the earth to ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... folded newspaper, a pair of small gilt scissors and a saucer. Low Jinks spread the newspaper at one end of the table, arranged the vases in a semicircle upon it, and placed the gilt scissors precisely in alignment with the right-hand vase of the semicircle, and the saucer (for the stalk ends) precisely in alignment with the left-hand vase. She then withdrew, closing the door with exquisite softness. Sabre had never seen this rite before. The perfection of its performance was impressive. He thought, "Mabel is marvellous." He said, "Shall I ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... as a lawyer you ought to have some good sense. Look at me! Tell me if I am likely to seduce any one. I cannot tie my own shoes, nor even stoop. For these twenty years past, the Lord be praised, I have not dared to put on a pair of stays under pain of sudden death. I was as thin as an asparagus stalk when I was seventeen, and pretty too—I may say so now. So I married Jeanrenaud, a good fellow, and headman on the salt-barges. I had my boy, who is a fine young man; he is my pride, and it is not holding myself cheap to say he is ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... realize the Greek thoughts of the Earth Mother, as we find them spoken by the poets. But take it merely as personified Abundance,—the goddess of black furrow and tawny grass,—how commonplace it is, and how poor! The hair is grand, and there is one stalk of wheat set in it, which is enough to indicate the goddess who is meant; but, in that very office, ignoble, for it shows that the artist could only inform you that this was Demeter by such a symbol. ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... who had hitherto been a compact sturdy child, short for her age, began to grow in the most alarming manner; the "Bean-stalk," her brothers called her, and one really could almost believe she had shot up in a night, the growth was so sudden. Her arms and legs seemed to be everywhere, always sprawling about in a spider-like manner in unexpected places, so that she ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... displaces the other, owing to the fact that the almond and palma Christi abound there. The latter plant springs up spontaneously on every manure-heap or neglected spot of ground; and might be cultivated, as in India, with great advantage, the leaf to be used as food for the caterpillar, the stalk as fodder for cattle, and the seed for the expression of castor-oil. The Dutch took advantage of this facility, and gave every encouragement to the cultivation of silk at Jaffna[1], but it never ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... them, Some green, some white, some red, on them infus'd, These lov'd, these fear'd, they blush'd to be so us'd. The peascod green, oft with no little toil He'd seek for in the fattest, fertil'st soil And rend it from the stalk to bring it to her, And in her bosom for acceptance woo her. No berry in the grove or forest grew That fit for nourishment the kind bird knew, Nor any powerful herb in open field To serve her brood the teeming earth did yield, But with his ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... yourself, sir; I'll reach up for it." Not all the conductors I met afterwards were as polite as this, but he has as good a right to pose as the type of American conductor as the overbearing ruffians who stalk through the books of sundry British tourists. In judging him it should be remembered that he democratically feels himself on a level with his passengers, that he would be insulted by the offer of a tip, that he is harassed all day long by hundreds of foolish questions from foolish travellers, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... same time leaving vistas of the adobe church, golden yellow in the sunlight; beyond were placed the flowering plants—roses in immense numbers, a great variety of lilies of different tints, a few century plants, one of them with its huge flower stalk high in air, and a large passion vine, trained along the adobe wall enclosing the garden on the west. These were the most prominent of the plants, brought from Mexico and Spain, reminding him of his old home; and ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... wilful, self-sustained young creature of extraordinary beauty and grace, who was devoted to her father, and to him alone. I saw Thorpe one evening pick up, by stealth, the petals of a crimson rose which had dropped from the stalk that still nestled in the black ribbon at her throat, and I laughed at him for his pains as he laid them carefully away ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... own poniard perish.—Ha! who's this? Or is't a change of death? By all my honours, New murder; thou hast slain old Polybus: Incest and parricide,—thy father's murderer! Out, thou infernal flame!—Now all is dark, All blind and dismal, most triumphant mischief! And now, while thus I stalk about the room, I challenge Fate to find another wretch Like ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the soldiers were stalking the renegades, the commissioner of Indian affairs sent out to stalk the soldiers. Investigation as to the cause of this inexplicable outbreak was demanded. Those very chiefs had left the capital in unbounded good humor not two months before, and who was responsible for this sudden and baleful change of heart? It was a matter soon and easily settled. ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... weeds is pizen," Jasper spoke up, cutting off a yellow plume with his whip. "They look suthin' like the stalk of angelica an' sometimes they air dug up by mistake fur sich. See that squirrel. Look how he rattles up that hickory bark. Wall, down yan we turn to the right an' go up a little rise, dip down ag'in, then go up an' keep on a goin' up fur about a mile ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... the fundamental character of people is not greatly alterable, but that the alteration of their circumstances will certainly influence the effect and working of their capacities and instincts. The buttercup which is tall with a flower at the end of a high firm stalk and leaves with slender spike fingers, if it grows in an open meadow, becomes a stunted flower on a short stem, and its leaves form squat webs, in order to force its growth on a close-cropped lawn. The experience of the American Army shows us that to cut off opportunity and suggestion ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the order and in the twinkling of an eye reached the edge of the rocks. Peering around carefully in all directions he slid down a thick liana stalk and announced that there was no smoke, but that there were "niama." It was easy to surmise that he was speaking not of guinea-fowl but of some bulkier game, for he pointed at Stas' short rifle and afterwards put his fingers on his ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... marine world, familiar with abnormal creations. The whale looks from eyes on the top of his head; the flat-fish, sole, halibut have both eyes on the same side; and certain Crustacea place the organ on a foot-stalk, as if one were to hold up his eye in his hand to include a wider horizon. But the monster which the fish now sees differs from all these. It has four great goggle eyes arranged symmetrically around its head. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... our Indian hemp, Asclepias incarnata. "The fibres of the bark are strong, and capable of being wrought into a fine soft thread; but it is very difficult to separate the bark from the stalk. It is said to have been used by the Indians for bow-strings."—Vide Cutler in Memoirs of the American Academy, Vol. I. p. 424. It is the Swamp Milkweed of Gray, and grows in wet grounds. One variety is common in New England. The ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... will gain for them all that may be desired to make life happy. We might illustrate the thought by saying that they sow or plant their money and hope that it will bring forth a fruitage of the blessings for which they long. [Draw the bag of money, the earth line, the stalk of the plant and the outline of the foliage, all with black.] And what do the possessors of riches expect as a harvest in return for the sowing of their wealth? First, let us put down Pleasure. [Put in the word Pleasure, using red for the lettering.] And they expect to be ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... includes, the lower; the intellectual does not exclude, but necessarily includes, the sentient; the sentient, the animal; and the animal, the vital—to its lowest degrees. Wisdom is the hidden root which thrusts forth the stalk of prudence; and these uniting feed and uphold 'the bright consummate flower'—National Happiness—the end, the conspicuous crown, and ornament of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... beautiful than our lovely Indigo, and he flew beside her full of life and joy. He lit on the side of a cockle stem, and on the instant caught sight of me. Alas! he seemed suddenly turned to stone. He held onto that stalk as if his little legs had been bars of iron and I a devouring monster. When he had collected his wits enough to fly off, instead of the careless gay flight with which he had come out through the open ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... all a dream, Prince James asked himself, even the vision of the lovely lady in the garden? At that thought his heart grew heavy. Then, as if to comfort him, a dove flew in at his window carrying in her mouth a sprig of gilliflowers. Upon the stalk in golden letters were written the words, "Awake! Awake! lover, I bring thee ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... a blue rectangle in the upper hoist-side corner bearing, all in white, 14 five-pointed stars encircling a cogwheel containing a stalk of rice; the 14 stars ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... field, were sorely tempted, and, it must be told, as sorely fell. But no sorer was their fall than that of my beloved poppies. Where the grain holds the dew and takes the bite from the sun the soil is moist, and in such soil it is easier to pull the poppies out by the roots than to break the stalk. Now the city folk, like other folk, are inclined to move along the line of least resistance, and for each flower they gathered, there were also gathered many crisp-rolled buds and with them all the possibilities and future beauties of the plant for ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... natterjack, so rare elsewhere, differing from a toad in that it has a yellow band down its back, has here a paradise. It may be seen at eve perched on a stalk of willow herb or running—it does not hop—round the sundew, clearing the glutinous stamens of the flies that have been caught by them, and calling in a tone like the warning note ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Says I, 'It's no use, old feller,—yer might as well give her up;' and the way his eyes popped, just as if he expected I war'nt goin to finish him. I tell ye, boys, it required some spunk about then, for the critter got his claws upon me with a death grip, and the dogs ripped him like an old corn stalk, and would'nt keep off. And then there was no fracturin his skull; and seeing how he was overpowering me, I just seizes him by the throat and pops his head off quicker than ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Bananas grow in Africa, and the pygmies are very fond of them. Often they come out of the forests to get bananas from the trees on which they grow. If a pygmy sees a good bunch of bananas that he would like to have, he shoots his arrow into the stalk. When the owner of the tree sees the arrow he knows how it came there. So he leaves the stalk until the pygmy takes it away. Sometimes a pygmy pays for the bunch of bananas with pieces of meat. He wraps up a piece of meat in grass ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... killers. He had grown up with the settled conviction that other men's quarrels did not concern him so long as he was not directly involved, and that what did not concern him he had no right to discuss. If he stood aside and let violence stalk by unhindered, he was merely doing what he had been taught to do from the time he could walk. "Mind your own business and let other folks do the same," had been the family slogan in Lone's home. There had been nothing in Lone's later life to convince him that minding his own business ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... stared—stared like the veriest schoolboy at the tall, stately figure, clad in shimmering pale green satin that rippled about her feet as she walked, brought out a bit of colour in her cheeks and lips, deepened the brown of her eyes, and, like the stalk and leaves of a tiger-lily, faded into utter insignificance before the burnished ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... in silent admiration. On the central stalk stood poised the figure of a girl so exquisitely formed and colored and so lovely in the expression of her delicate features that Dorothy thought she had never seen so sweet and adorable a creature in all her life. The maiden's gown was soft as satin and fell about her in ample folds, while dainty ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... precisely as you would creamed asparagus. Cut the stalks in six-inch lengths, quarter them to facilitate cooking and handling, and boil in salted water. Drain, arrange in a hot dish, and pour over a carefully made cream sauce. I might add that one stalk would furnish sufficient material for several families. This dish should be popular in southwestern states where the plant grows profusely; and to cultivate these plants for shipping to Eastern markets would be quite as feasible as the shipping of asparagus, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... gentle reader, and come along with me. It is glorious weather; there is a tender blue in the May sky; the smooth young leaves of the willows glisten as though they had been polished; the wide even road is all covered with that delicate grass with the little reddish stalk that the sheep are so fond of nibbling; to right and to left, over the long sloping hillsides, the green rye is softly waving; the shadows of small clouds glide in thin long streaks over it. In the distance is the dark mass of forests, the glitter of ponds, yellow patches of village; larks in ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... of that tender love which he has ever felt for her; not to give additional poignancy to that grief which he wishes to assuage, but to inspire her with the sweet idea that two lives have grown upon the same stalk; and that by their union they will become an additional defence to each other in that dark futurity where the pity of the Supreme God is the last refuge of our thoughts. Alas! is it possible to form a just conception of all the emotions ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... of life related to their special study. In like manner those young men, who in our universities are destined to study vast and complex sciences, must in the beginning undertake the quiet and restful work of preparing an infusion, or the section of a rose-stalk, and thus experience, as they observe through the microscope, that emotion born of wonder, which awakens the consciousness and attracts it to the mysteries of life with a passionate enthusiasm. It was thus that we, accustomed hitherto to read in school only ponderous ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... not In their accelerated graves, nor will 330 Till Foscari fills his. Each night I see them Stalk frowning round my couch, and, pointing towards The ducal ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... saddle, a turban of many folds on his head, a striped robe drawn close to the waist, his face thin, coffee-colored, hawk-nosed, and lightning-eyed, he looked a king of the desert. Galloping down on the Christian, he twirled the formidable lance dextrously, until it seemed not more than a stalk of dried papyrus. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... drawing-room they found a very thin, short-sighted looking woman sitting quietly, apparently engaged in examining the pictures and ornaments through a double eyeglass with a slender tortoise shell stalk, which she held in her hand. She had a curious face, with a long rather Jewish nose, and a thin-lipped mouth, a face wrinkled about the small eyes, above which was pasted a thick fringe of light brown hair covered with a ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... two stout gipsy lads, who peered down at him from a little farther on, and then drew softly away to shelter themselves among the bushes and ferns till they were beyond hearing. When, stooping low, they ran off towards the wood, but in a stealthy furtive manner as if they were trying to stalk some wild animal and cut it off farther on, where the place was most solitary ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... after they had eaten they dug up earth and gathered leaves with which to fill the gaps in Morano's garments when they should hang on Rodriguez, they plucked a geranium with whose dye they deepened Rodriguez' complexion, and with the sap from the stalk of a weed Morano toned to a pallor the ruddy brown of his tough cheeks. Then they changed clothes altogether, which made Morano gasp: and after that nothing remained but to cut off the delicate black moustachios of Rodriguez and to ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... of later times, deemed it as their privilege or duty to stalk and destroy these animals, pursuing them even to their dens. The common people preferred attacking the gazelle, the oryx, the mouflon sheep, the ibex, the wild ox, and the ostrich, but did not disdain more humble game, such as the porcupine and long-eared hare: nondescript packs, in which the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was strangely quiet. I stole a little nearer—and then turned and went gently back to Nimrod. He was convulsed with silent and unnecessary laughter. My elaborate stalk had been made ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... which he had placed the objects he had occasionally made, and which his master allowed him to keep there—light, air-thin vessels of graceful shapes: an ampulla of exquisite outline with a long curved spout that bent upwards and then outwards and over like the stalk of a lily of the valley; a large drinking-glass set on a stem so slender that one would doubt its strength to carry the weight of a full measure, yet so strong that the cup might have been filled with lead without breaking it; a broad dish that was nothing but a shadow against the light, ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... looking over the side, where, in the clear water, half-hidden by a shelf of rock, he could see what at first made him start, for it looked like an enormous flat spider lying about three feet down, watching him with a couple of eyes like small peas, mounted, mushroom-fashion, on a stalk. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... pyramid, or a huge architectural mushroom. This appearance has been given to the monument by the removal of the large blocks of stone which formed the basement, leaving the massive superincumbent weight to be supported on a very narrow stalk of conglomerate masonry. It is a striking proof of the extraordinary solidity and tenacity of Roman architecture, defying the laws of gravitation. It is called the sepulchre of the Metelli, the family of Caecilia Metella; ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... I was startled by a sudden and strange rumour that all the potato fields in the district were blighted, and that a stench had arisen emanating from their decaying stalk. The report was true, the stalks being withered; and a new, strange stench was to be noticed which became a well-known feature in 'the blight' for years after. On being dug up it was found that the potato was rapidly blackening ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... use of this, indeed, seems to be for the supply of nourishment to the downy or feathery part of the stem; for 'tis obvious enough in all sorts of Feathers, that 'tis plac'd just under the roots of the branches that grow out of either side of the quill or stalk, and is exactly shap'd according to the ranking of those branches, coming no lower into the quill, then just the beginning of the downy branches, and growing onely on the under side of of the quill where those branches do so. Now, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... losing all. If they decline what I suggest, you scarcely need to ask what I will do. What would you do in my position? Would you drop the war where it is? Or would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rose water? Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means unapplied? I am in no boastful mood. I shall not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can, to save the government, which is my ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... we saw for the first time an open mine, scientifically worked by the men of old. They chose a pear-shaped quartz-reef; the upper dome exposed, the converging slopes set and hidden in green trap to the east and west, and the invisible stalk extending downwards, probably deep into Earth's bowels. They began by sinking, as we see from certain rounded apertures, a line of shafts striking north-north-east (45—50 mag.) to south-south-west across the summit, which may measure one hundred and twenty yards. The intervening ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... Aunt Mary; "Cotton! Cotton! C-O-T-T-O-N! It beats the Dutch how deaf everyone is gettin', an' if I had your ears in particular, Arethusa, I'd certainly hire a carpenter to get at 'em with a bit-stalk. Jus's if you didn't know as well as I do how many stockin's I've got already! I should think you'd quit bein' so heedless, an' use your commonsense, anyhow. I've found commonsense a very handy ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... and performed her toilette. She looked exceptionally fresh and beautiful. A sweet fragrance pervaded her cheeks. Pao-yue then cut, with a pair of bamboo scissors, a stalk, with two autumn orchids, which had blossomed in a flower pot, and he pinned it in her side-hair. But a maid was unexpectedly seen to enter the room, sent by Li Wan to come and call her, so she quitted his ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... betrayingly, but the Terrans displayed no interest in those who spied upon them. An insect with wings of brilliant green gauze detached itself from the stalk of a grass tree and fluttered ahead of the Traders as if it were an official herald. From the red soil crushed by their boots arose a pungent odor which fought with the scent they carried with them. Dane swallowed three ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... encumbered her in order to lie down on the sofa: she took a cornelian pin out of her cape, and before she laid it down on the table she showed it to me, and desired me to read a motto engraved upon it round a stalk of lilies. The words were, "Oblivion of injuries; pardon for offences."—"I much fear," added that virtuous Princess, "this maxim has but little influence among our enemies; but it ought not to be less dear to us on ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... carpentere, Paraventure* in scorn, for I am one: *perhaps And, by your leave, I shall him quite anon. Right in his churlish termes will I speak, I pray to God his necke might to-break. He can well in mine eye see a stalk, But in his own he cannot see ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... was almost mad at us, "Can anybody help it that he gets bald? My pop's beginning to lose some of his hair on top...." Then he grabbed his stick which he had leaned up against the beech tree for a jiffy, and struck very fiercely at a tall brown mullein stalk that was standing there in a little open space, and the seeds scattered in every direction, one of them hitting me hard right on my freckled face just below my right eye, and stung like everything; then Little Jim started ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... how the chaps were getting on: to find out if they had used up all their paint yet, or to bring them some putty so that they should not have to leave their work to go to get anything themselves: and then very often Rushton himself would come and stalk quietly about the house or stand silently behind the men, watching them as they worked. He seldom spoke to anyone, but just stood there like a graven image, or walked about like a dumb animal—a pig, as the men used to say. This individual had a very exalted idea of his ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Bagobo. One pair was too weak to make the journey from the drought-cursed land, and staid at Cibolan. One day the man crawled out into the ruined fields to see if he could not find some one thing alive, and when he arrived there he saw, to his amazement, a single stalk of sugar cane growing lustily. He cut it with his knife, and water began to come out until there was enough for the couple to drink. The flow did not cease until the rains came again to refresh the land. From these two the tribe has again grown until it numbers its members ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole |
