"Twig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flowers so enchanted our venerable lady that there was nothing that she wouldn't do. 'Pao-yue,' she said to every one she met, 'is the one, after all, who shows me much attention. So much so, that he has even thought of bringing me a twig of flowers! And yet, the others bear me a grudge on account of the love that I lavish on him!' Our venerable mistress, you all know very well, has never had much to say to me. I have all along not been much of a favourite in the old lady's ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... odd-looking being, lean as a heron, wry-necked, but amazingly quick on his feet. Had not Mrs. Morran said that he hobbled as fast as other folk ran? He kept his eyes on the ground and seemed to be talking to himself as he went, but he was alert enough, for the dropping of a twig from a dying magnolia transferred him in an instant into a figure of active vigilance. No risks could be run with that watcher. He took a key from his pocket, opened the garden door and entered the verandah. For a moment his shuffle ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... clinched teeth Alfred touched the spurs to Roger and then threw himself forward. The gallant beast responded nobly. Up, up, up he rose, clearing all but the topmost branches. Alfred turned again and saw the giant roan make the leap without touching a twig. The next instant Roger went splash into a swamp. He sank to his knees in the soft black soil. He could move but one foot at a time, and Alfred saw at a glance he had won the race. The great weight of the roan handicapped him ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the green twilight of the woods a gentle wind was blowing, laden with the scent of earth and hidden flowers. Dewdrops twinkled in the grass and hung glistening from every leaf and twig, and beyond all was the sheen of ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... man, and he had a little gun, And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead; He shot Johnnie Twig through the middle of his wig, And knocked it right ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... too," said Cooney, "so soft, and even, and small, and warm, that it's playin' the very devil. Nothin' could stand it. Why it ud make a rotten twig grow if it was put into ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... each tiny blade grew big And taller stood to hear, And every leaf on every twig Was like a ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... unhappy destiny of pigs, but they would meet him by sections later on, so the captain assured them. The house and buildings were spotless in paint and whitewash; the yard was raked clean of every dead leaf and twig; the whole establishment was so neat that Caroline remarked ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake! Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morning. Every motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... to be desecrated?" "Has the idolater broken off dry bark, or green boughs; has he taken from it a staff, or a twig, or even a leaf—it is desecrated." "Has he trimmed it for the sake of the tree?" "It is forbidden." "Has he trimmed it, but not for the sake of the ...
— Hebrew Literature
... I couldn't even find a broken twig in any of the little clumps of outgrowing trees. There wasn't a sign of the sand having been disturbed anywhere down the face of the cliff, and I shouldn't think a human being had been on that beach during our lifetimes. I have had my night's work ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Nut trees are sometimes attacked by the twig girdler[24] (Fig. 11). This beetle lays eggs in the twigs, which are girdled so as to stop the flow of sap that would normally prevent hatching. The girdled twigs usually become detached from the trees and as a result the nut-bearing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... come to you, it isn't proper,' said she, as sweet as honey. He tried to climb over the hedge, but it seemed to grow higher and higher. Then he tried to push through, but it grew thicker and thicker, and he was in despair. So he patiently broke twig after twig till he had made a little hole through which he peeped, saying imploringly, 'Let me in! Let me in!' But the pretty princess did not seem to understand, for she picked her roses quietly, and left him to fight his way in. Whether he did or not, Frank ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... stepped softly, as if he feared to alarm somebody or something. The moss beneath his feet gave no sound. Not even a twig snapped. Without knowing that he did so, Hodge imitated ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... he had added a wife and family to his cares, but the dawn was speedily overcast. Everything retrograded with him towards the verge of the miry Slough of Despond, which yawns for insolvent debtors; and after catching at each twig, and experiencing the protracted agony of feeling them one by one elude his grasp, he actually sunk into the miry pit whence he had been extricated by the professional ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... holds his finger up at some one, opens his eyes wide, and purses up his lips. There is a sound of a light snapping. The sportsmen look at each other significantly, and tell each other with their eyes that it is nothing. It is the snapping of a dry twig or a bit of bark. The shadows of evening keep growing and growing, the patches of crimson gradually grow dim, and the ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a G, drill-sergeants who believe in black-boards and visible numerators, statistical fellows who judge of the future fate of the republic by the average attendance at the "Primaries," may not agree with me in my idea of bending the twig. I do believe, that, if Dame Nature herself should apply for a school, some of these wise Dogberries would report her "unqualyfide." I will not murder my pretty pet. So she be gentle, kindly, and loving, what care I if at sixteen years of age she cannot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the lonely isle of St. Helena without cutting a twig from the willow that drooped over the grave of Napoleon, prior to the removal of the body by the government of Louis Philippe. Many of them have since been planted in different parts of Europe, and have grown into trees ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Turnstile turnkruco. Turpentine terebinto. Turpitude hontindajxo. Turquoise turkiso. Turret tureto. Turtle-dove turto. Tusk dentego. Tutor guvernisto. Twain du. Tweezers prenileto. Twelve dekdu. Twig brancxeto. Twilight vespera krepusko. Twin dunaskito. Twine sxnureto. Twinkle brileti. Twist tordi. Twitter pepi. Two du. Tympanum oreltamburo. Type (model) modelo. Type tipo, preslitero. Typhoid (fever) tifa febro. Typhus tifo. Typical ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... noiselessly, without treading on a leaf or a twig, to a neighboring thicket, from which the horse and dog were not visible. He then lay down in the bushy top of a fallen pine, and without the assistance of any "call," such as hunters generally make use of, uttered the low, cautious cry of the wild turkey. This he repeated a number ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... it with his foot and put his whole weight on it, just as he had seen his father do to the other tree,—snap went the tree like a twig, and Salar tumbled head over heels and ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... twigs of a year's growth, a central pith, a single ring of reticulated tissue arranged in lines that radiate outwards, and a thin layer of enveloping bark. Nothing, then, can be more certain than that this ancient twig, which must be accepted as representative of the foliage of whole forests of the Secondary ages in Scotland, formed part of a conifer of the Lias; and the foliage of several of the other twigs, its contemporaries, though I have failed to ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... some meandering rivulet, which make The best philosophy untrue that aims But to console man for his grievances. I have remembered when the winter came, High in my chamber in the frosty nights, When in the still light of the cheerful moon, On every twig and rail and jutting spout, The icy spears were adding to their length Against the arrows of the coming sun, How in the shimmering noon of summer past Some unrecorded beam slanted across The upland pastures where the Johnswort grew; Or heard, amid the verdure ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... window was enough; the open window and a broken twig or two. But quietly, quietly. Antony mustn't hear. And Antony had not heard.... But he had seen a shadow ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... on stems, mamma," she continued, dropping anemones over her mother's hands, one by one;—"that is what Mr. Raleigh calls them. When may I see the snow? You shall wrap me in eider, that I may be like all the boughs and branches. How buoyant the earth must be, when every twig becomes a feather!" And she moved toward Mr. Raleigh, singing, "Oh, would I had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... exclusively our own, and for whose correctness we would stake our hump, we learn that James Burke, the honoured member of the P.R., was seen to walk home on the night of Tuesday last with three fresh herrings on a twig. After supper, he consoled himself with a pint ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... Charmer; Maggie, the Circassian Girl; and the rest of the side-show employees enter the tent. Then he removed his Number Eight mustache and put it in his pocket, and balanced his mirror against a twig. Mr. Gubb ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... only intercepted him to thank him for his gift. Then she told him that he would find Violet alone in the drawing room. He went in, and found the little creature perched upon the music stool, before the open piano, trying a new piece of music. She lighted down like a little bird from a twig and came to meet him. He greeted his betrothed with more warmth of love than a younger man might have ventured upon—but, then, Mr. Fabian was no freshman in the college of love. And Violet, though she did ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... return. The ant at last met one of his companions, who was also carrying a burden. They stopped, took counsel for an instant, bringing their antennae together, and started for the hillock. The second ant then left his burden, and both together then seized a twig and introduced its end beneath the first load which had been abandoned because of its weight. By acting on the free extremity of the twig they were able to use it exactly as a lever, and succeeded almost without trouble in passing their booty on to the other side ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... hadn't ye?' Oh, no! he didn't mean to be rude, he really meant to help; but my blood was up, and my hair was down, and I was very short with him, I fear, and trundled off alone with my dignity. Then a branch fell out and got tangled in the wheel, and while I was getting it out a twig snapped into my eyes; and there was a stone in my shoe, and altogether,—well, it was only a mile to the grove, but it was twenty miles back, I can tell you. Before I reached the campus my arms were so sore, and my foot so lame, and my eye so painful, that my pride ran out at the ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... such thing," returned Dotty. "Jump in, Fly, and sit on the bag." And off moved the gay little party, "the middle-aged sister" laughing so she could hardly push, Flyaway dancing up and down on the rag-bag, like a humming-bird balancing itself on a twig; Grace and Susy looking down from the "green chamber" window, and saying to each other, with wounded family pride, "Should you think grandma would allow it?" Out in the street the young rag-merchants were greeted by ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... with their course rising like a thin twig out of the sea showed the silhouette of the lighthouse, while between it and the now faintly discernible mainland tiny dots of ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... master's horse to place them in his belt, and he gave him orders to let all the king's horses get before him, and as he should overtake one horse after the other, to take one of the twigs and strike the horse with it over the crupper, and then let that twig fall; and after that to take another twig, and do in like manner to every one of the horses, as he should overtake them, enjoining the horseman strictly to watch when his own horse should stumble, and to throw down his cap on the spot. All these things did the youth fulfil, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... tree must be symmetrical from its roots to its topmost bough. Beneficence may not stand alone; it must spring out of a consistent character, must be a branch of activity, harmonizing with other shoots from the common stock. Else, it will be like a verdant twig on a rotten trunk, growing up amid broken and withered limbs, the sighing ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... rustling in the bushes at one side of the garden, and the sound of a breaking twig, and, seizing a hoe which stood by the door, he sprang toward the point from ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... the back door and crept along the shadows of the hill. Beneath his foot a dry twig snapped. It was enough. He fled panic-stricken, pursued by all the demons of hell his fears could evoke. A deadly, unnerving terror clutched at his throat. The pounding blood seemed ready to burst the veins at ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... water-mill over a dammed pool shaded by birch trees and looking bright as glass in the twilight. He approached her silently, his hatchet stuck in his iron belt, a thick cudgel in his hand; there were leaves and bits of twig in his tangled hair, in his matted beard; bunches of rags he had wound round the links fluttered from his waist. A faint clink of his fetters made the woman turn her head. Too terrified by this savage apparition to jump up or even to scream, she was yet too stout-hearted to faint.... Expecting ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... you would write more criticism, about Spenser &c. I think I could say something about him myself—but Lord bless me—these "merchants and their spicy drugs" which are so harmonious to sing of, they lime-twig up my poor soul and body, till I shall forget I ever thought myself a bit of a genius! I can't even put a few thoughts on paper for a newspaper. I "engross," when I should pen a paragraph. Confusion blast all mercantile transactions, all traffick, exchange of commodities, intercourse between nations, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... yet cheeks were pale, For ice hail they had leaden hail; In that fine forest, green and big, There stayed unbroken not one twig. ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... look at a king. A barking dog never bites. If his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? If two men ride a horse, one must ride behind. Stone walls do not a prison make. A merry heart goes all the day. Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just. As the twig is bent, so the tree ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... keep it up—brown study as usual!" cried Charteris. "Why, I believe the beggar takes me for a ghost! Hal, old boy!" bending from the saddle he bestowed on Gerrard a most unghostly clap on the shoulder. "I'm come back to plague you; do you twig—eh?" ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... inn, long shored and trussed and buttressed, fell at length under the mere weight of years, and the place as it was is but a fading image in the memory of former guests. They, indeed, recall the ancient wooden stair; they recall the rainy evening, the wide hearth, the blaze of the twig fire, and the company that gathered round the pillar in the kitchen. But the material fabric is now dust; soon, with the last of its inhabitants, its very memory shall follow; and they, in their turn, shall suffer the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unable to exercise his soldiers at target-shooting without obtaining permission to place the target in some neighboring state—I found the garden-walks and public roads so fearfully clean, every leaf and twig being swept up daily, and preserved to manure the duchy, that during a pedestrian tour of three days I was absolutely ashamed to spit any where. There was no possible chance of doing it without expunging a soldier or ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the white world. The snow had fallen thick, and neither sun nor wind had as yet made any impression upon it; the covering of the road was thick and well beaten, and on every exposed level surface lay the white treasure piled up. Every twig and branch of the trees still held its burden; every roof was blanketed; there had been no time yet for smoke and soil to come upon the pure surfaces; and on all this fell the pale moon rays, casting pale shadows and making the world somehow look like something better than ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Jeremiah was to plant and build up. Here he planted, and here he did build. He planted and built a throne, a college, and a religion. Turn to Ezekiel, chapter xvi., and read the famous riddle. Tea Tephi is the tender twig that was cropped off from the high cedar, King Zedekiah, and planted among the merchants by great waters on the mountain of Israel. She was the tender one that was to take root downward. To Jeremiah, the Lord ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... gointer be de hawk. Lemme git myself a stick to mark wid. (The curtain rises slowly. As it goes up the game is being organized. The boy who is the hawk is squatting center stage in the street before the store with a short twig in his hand. The largest girl is lining up ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... window, on what I presumed would prove a scene of devastation. All was fair and smiling, gaze where I would. Here was the trim and smoothly shaven lawn—there the blooming parterre—beyond the early flowering shrubs not a twig, not a leaf injured. I ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... fishermen and the stories they tell: that it is always the biggest fish that escaped. But in this case it seemed to be true, for strung on a willow twig was Injun's catch, ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... precisely what I have stated, though all probability is against it. I was curious enough to watch him and could make no mistake. He had a copious beard descending to his stomach, the half snowy white, the half a lustrous black. Upon a depending twig he had fixed a tin-edged mirror, in his hand was a small tooth-comb. With this he raked his beard over and over again, occasionally dipping it in a tin cup at his side. He looked in the glass, picked up a strand of beard, examined it minutely underneath, dipped ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... the ceremony of homage. It was accompanied by an oath of fealty, and the whole was concluded by the act of investiture, whereby the lord put his vassal in actual possession of the land, or by placing in his hand a clod of earth or a twig, symbolized the delivery to him of the estate for which he had just now ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... ill-disposed woman, named Susy Martin, living in Salisbury. Mr. Pike, who dwells near this Martin, saith she is no witch, although an arrant scold, as was her mother before her; and as for the girl, he saith that a birch twig, smartly laid on, would cure her sooner than the hanging of all the old women in the Colony. Mistress Weare says this is not the first time the Evil Spirit hath been at work in Hampton; for they did all ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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, Eliot, when the trees are covered with sleet till every twig twinkles like a diamond. And the frost on the window-panes—oh, if I could only lay my face against the cold glass now, how good it ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... beckoning to me fiercely and pointing to the green balsam top. I gripped my rifle and started to creep toward them. A little twig, about as thick as the tip of a fishing rod, cracked under my knee. There was a terrible crash behind the balsam, a plunging through the underbrush and a rattling among the branches, a lumbering gallop up ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... poets fire the world with fagots big That make a crackling racket, But I'm content with but a whispering twig ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... dried leaves and the sharp crack of a breaking twig now crept upon the ear; and P——, a sportsman at all points and at all times, had already turned in the direction whence the interruption came; and, as I was about to speak, he grasped me convulsively by the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... are you afraid of?" cried the dwarf in a little, dry voice, that sounded like the cracking of a dry twig beneath ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... grumbler, silenced, but not convinced, turned sulkily away. It did not relish the kind advice of its true friend, nor did it at all intend to follow it, but still it settled down on its tiny twig so very quietly, that all its relatives firmly believed it had given up its foolish scheme of imaginary happy freedom; but they were mistaken, for a few days after a north wind came quite unexpectedly upon them. It bent the Aspen ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... master passion. Like the locust, he consumed every dry twig and green branch of knowledge. Before he was ten years of age he believed he had read every book that could be borrowed within a radius of six miles. He read the Bible through, every word, when he was five years old; at ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... roar the Laidly Worm reared back and before Childe Wynd stood his sister Margaret. He wrapped his cloak about her, and then went up to the castle with her. When he reached the keep, he went off to the witch queen's bower, and when he saw her, he touched her with a twig of a rowan tree. No sooner had he touched her than she shrivelled up and shrivelled up, till she became a huge ugly toad, with bold staring eyes and a horrible hiss. She croaked and she hissed, and then hopped away down the castle steps, and Childe Wynd took his ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... of the business office as shown in its influence in the home circle. The reader will recall the extraordinary popularity which certain English romances, setting forth humble unpoetic life, have enjoyed of late years. We refer to the Adam Bede and Silas Marner school of tales, in which every twig is drawn, every life-lineament set forth with a sort of DENNER minuteness—truthful, yet constrained, accurate but petty. In this novel, Mr. KIMBALL, while retaining all the accuracy of Adam Bede, has swept more broadly and forcibly out into life;—there ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... it was six o'clock, and thus wanted two hours to daybreak. Hurriedly I left the inn and went out again. A rimy frost had come upon every twig and bush and tree, and in the light of the moon the ice crystals sparkled as though the spirits had scattered myriads of precious stones everywhere. But I thought not of this. I made my way toward the spot from which I thought I had heard the sound ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... there was no help for it, seeing that my country was not born at all. I was of those doomed to imperfect achievement, and under a curse, as it were, like some race of birds compelled to spend the time, needed for the making of the nest, in argument as to the convenience of moss and twig and lichen. Le Gallienne and Davidson, and even Symons, were provincial at their setting out, but their provincialism was curable, mine incurable; while the one conviction shared by all the younger men, but principally by Johnson ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... sign bearing the dazzling legend, "Starbottle and Bungstarter, Attorneys and Counselors," glowed with an insufferable light; the two pine-trees still left in the clearing around the house, ineffective as shade, seemed only to have absorbed the day-long heat through every scorched and crisp twig and fibre, to radiate it again with the pungent smell of a slowly smouldering fire; the air was motionless yet vibrating in the sunlight; on distant shallows the half-dried river was ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... us, splendid fellows, all eyes and ears, who could detect the slightest indication of an enemy's presence far or near, whether it were the broken twig at one's feet or the sudden rising of a bird in the distance, kept us well informed of all transpiring on every side. For a hundred miles we marched through the Arab chieftain's land without any of its inhabitants dreaming of the presence of a hostile force, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... in a throttling violence. The bright short grass lay all one way like brushed hair. Every shrub in the garden tugged at its roots like a dog at the collar, and strained every leaping leaf after the hunting and exterminating element. Now and again a twig would snap and fly like a bolt from an arbalist. The three men stood stiffly and aslant against the wind, as if leaning against a wall. The two ladies disappeared into the house; rather, to speak truly, they were blown into the house. Their two frocks, blue and white, looked like two big broken flowers, ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... and cooled by the rains, has not had time to get hot and tired, and the air has that crystal quality which is the charm of this season in South India. Every wrinkle on the brown trunks of the trees in the compound, every twig and leaf, stands out with a special distinctness of its own, and the mountains in the distance glisten as if made ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... the log like the strings of a harp; a mighty "Ho!" from the gang, a short, tense haul, and it moves a trifle forward. A fresh grip, another shout, and forward again. It is like watching half a score of ants about a twig. And at last the freed log slides out ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... masters say, and got a big future. Handsome little rogue, too. He's none of your ordinary boys. He's a twig from the cedar-top." ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... heard sad plainings breathe, and none could see From whom they might have issu'd. In amaze Fast bound I stood. He, as it seem'd, believ'd, That I had thought so many voices came From some amid those thickets close conceal'd, And thus his speech resum'd: "If thou lop off A single twig from one of those ill plants, The thought thou hast ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... started violently. Her ear had caught the snapping of a twig close at hand, beyond the concealing wall. At the next moment she saw a stealthy hand slip past the opening by which she had entered, and the top of a ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... main stem, or trunk, and many leading branches. These principal branches are each also divided into several minor branches, and these also throw out many lesser limbs and twigs. So it is with languages. As the smallest twig at the extreme end of either of those limbs can be traced to the trunk through the main branches, so all the various languages that are in use to-day, can and may be traced to a few older ones, and these, again, to one ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... termed composition. When we reflect, that from our infancy to the natural decline of our intellectual powers, we are employed, during our waking hours, in the exercise of language;[8]—by conversation, often desultory, where we range through a variety of topics, as the bird sports from branch to twig; to the more deliberate act of composition, where the mind enduringly broods on the subject;—or when we read, and attentively consider the thoughts of others:—these occupations contribute to augment our ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... Over everything lay a thick covering of white. The lawn, the sidewalks, the street, the roofs of houses were hidden by it; the top of the fence was outlined with it; great mantles draped the post tops and the fans of the fir tree; every branch and twig of every tree bore its burden; Martin, wielding a very broad wooden shovel, was engaged in clearing a way to the front gate. Just as Bobby looked out, the milkman, his vehicle on runners and his team decorated with the strings of bells that had aroused the ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... moment in making an effort to better my position in the manner I had been directed. Mrs Reichardt had thrown a heavy stone into the water among the sharks, the loud splash of which had driven them away. Before they again made their appearance, I had caught a firm hold of the twig, and flung myself up into ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... summer's night. When the sky was clear, and the moon was bright, They had been roused from the haunted ground, By the yelp and bay of the fairy hound; They had heard the tiny bugle-horn, They had heard the twang of the maize-silk string, When the vine-twig bows were tightly drawn, And the nettle shaft through air was borne, Feathered with down of the hum-bird's wing. And now they deemed the courier-ouphe, Some hunter sprite of the elfin ground; And they watched till they saw him mount the roof That canopies the world around; Then glad ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... be the bride of a working artisan. As he thought of this, as his imagination went to work on all the abominable circumstances of such a betrothal, he threw from his hand into the stream with all the vehemence of passion a little twig which he held. It was too, too frightful, too disgusting; and then so absolutely unexpected, so unlike her personal demeanour, so contrary to the look of her eyes, to the tone of her voice, to every motion of her body! She had been sweet, and gentle, and gracious, till ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... plants. Many plants can be propagated by what are termed layers. To do this, nothing more is necessary than to select a shoot, as near the root as possible, and having partially divided it with a knife, make an upward slit in it, and then placing a bit of twig between the divided parts, press it down to the ground, burying the joint beneath the surface of the soil. To plant from cuttings, some care is necessary as regards green-house plants, but nothing is easier than to rear fresh stocks of roses, currants and gooseberries from cuttings, ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... drifted to crotch and twig and limb. They gathered on the brim of Buck's slouch hat, filled out the wrinkles in his big coat, whitened his hair and his long mustache, and sifted into the yellow, twisting path ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... Prince immediately snatched up a broom, and was off to the garden. Here he swept a path, there he trained a twig. The Water King ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... bond, and broke it not with me. I am but the ship in which his hopes were stow'd And with the which, well-pleased and confident, He traversed the open sea; now he beholds it In eminent jeopardy among the coast-rocks, And hurries to preserve his wares. As light As the free bird from the hospitable twig Where it had nested, he flies off from me: No human tie is snapp'd betwixt us two. Yea, he deserves to find himself deceived Who seeks a heart in the unthinking man. Like shadows on a stream, the forms of life Impress their characters on the smooth forehead, Nought sinks into the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... Ste. Marie's brain and tortured him. He was in a state of nervous tension that was almost unendurable, and the little noises of the night outside, a wind-stirred rustle of leaves, a bird's flutter among the branches, the sound of a cracking twig, made him start violently and ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... of these busy old gentlemen, worrying about with awkward gait, as if troubled with the gout or with corns on his toes, casting about many a prying look, turning down first one eye, then the other, in earnest consideration upon every straw he meets with, until espying some mighty twig, large enough to make a rafter for his air-castle, he will seize upon it with avidity, and hurry away with it to the tree top; fearing, apparently, lest you should dispute with ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... became interested in a mighty battle between a colony of red ants which seemed to be attacking a colony of big black ants that had in some way infringed on some international agreement, or overstepped the color-line. Pete picked up a twig and hastily scraped up a sand barricade, to protect the red ants, who, despite their valor, seemed to be getting the worst of it. Black ants scurried to the top of the barricade to be grappled by the tiny red ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... are (as yet) dirt under my feet; my problem is architectural, creative—to get this stuff jointed and moving. If I can do that, I will trouble you for style; anybody might write it, and it would be splendid; well-engineered, the masses right, the blooming thing travelling—twig? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proprieties than on being one of the best pistol-shots in the army. While riding in the country, he would often put his horse into a gallop, and with a pistol in each hand, never fail to cut off, in passing, the heads of the ducks or chickens which he took as his target. He could cut off a small twig from a tree at twenty-five paces; and I have even heard it said (I am far from guaranteeing the truth of this) that on one occasion, with the consent of the party whose imprudence thus put his life in peril, he cut half in two the stem of a clay pipe, hardly three ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... not bear the agony. And then, while we counted out the last seconds of the half, came a snap like that of a whip's lash, and the bowl of Richter's pipe lay smouldering on the grass. The noble had cut the stem as clean as it were sapling twig, and there stood Richter with the piece still clenched in his teeth, his eyes ablaze, and his cheek running blood. He pushed the surgeon away when he came forward with his needles. The Count was smiling as he put up his sword, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... she said nothing; neither did she purr. They must have smelt her, though. Anyway, she seemed to be a little island in the mist—the faint, faint, ethereal dew-mist—where nobody walked. You could hear them—a rustle here, a squeak there, a thud somewhere else, a displaced leaf, a cracked twig—this only once—a drumming, a patter, a sniff, a snuffle, a sigh; but they all passed by on the other side, so to say, and gave the silver tabby room to think. Apparently cats are not considered good company in the wild; lonely creatures, they ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... a silence for some long moments. Embers in the fire broke and fell; the horses cropped the grass; a nut or twig dropped somewhere ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... perch above the sitting female and shade her with his outstretched wings. But in this case there was no perch for the male bird, had he been disposed to make a sunshade of himself. I thought to lend a hand in this direction myself, and so stuck a leafy twig beside the nest. This was probably an unwise interference; it guided disaster to the spot; the nest was broken up, and the mother-bird was probably caught, as I never ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... dripping with dew. We saw a great many specimens of what I was told was the "long palm;" it looked to me like a kind of brake or fern, with drooping branches twenty feet in length. There were trees with hardly a leaf; but each branch and twig crowned with orange-yellow blossoms. Again we would see a tree covered with feathery, purple flowers. Along some parts of the way, was a profusion of "Indian shot," so called, I suppose, because the seeds are black, hard, and round, looking like large shot. Here and there drooped a ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... ventured out again, trembling at every bush I passed, and thinking each twig that touched me a savage. The next day I concealed myself in the same manner, and at night travelled forward, keeping off the main road, used by the Indians, as much as possible, which made my journey far longer, and more painful than ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... and closed the door—in the instant when he lost sight of her—his disinclination to be associated with the private theatricals revived. At the foot of the house-steps he stopped again; plucked a twig from a plant near him; broke it in his hand; and looked about him uneasily, on this side and on that. The path to the left led back to his father's cottage—the way of escape lay ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... feeling almost of fright. He felt a tingling in his cheeks, his eyes were chill with momentary tears; he would have liked to move quite noiselessly, to steal along in secret. A cross gust of wind blew suddenly on him; he almost shuddered, and his heart stood still; a drowsy beetle fell off a twig and dropped with a thud on the path; Bersenyev uttered a subdued 'Ah!' and again stopped. But he began to think of Elena, and all these passing sensations vanished at once; there remained only the reviving sense of the night freshness, of ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... my sister's son, and I fear she will never forgive thee. But pluck up courage, go to her and demand thy husband, and she'll have to give him up to thee if thou canst do all that she demands from thee. Take this twig; if she asks what I think she will ask, strike it on the ground thrice and help will ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... sardonically as she swept away with the young soldier. Then his rather dreary eye strayed to the green and prickly growths round the well, growths of that curious cactus formation in which one thick leaf grows directly out of the other without stalk or twig. It gave his fanciful mind a sinister feeling of a blind growth without shape or purpose. A flower or shrub in the West grows to the blossom which is its crown, and is content. But this was as if hands could grow out of hands or legs grow ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... recurring cry, repeated with such regularity, seemed awful, and the deep low sigh uttered by Breezy sounded quite startling; but there was nothing else—no sound of the powerful cats coming cautiously round, winding in and out among the rocks and bushes, and not a twig was stirred. ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... everything with a soft, mild radiance; and the trees, with their tracery of bough and twig, stood out distinctly. Before we could discover the creature, it flew with noiseless wing from a maple near the door to another perch up the lane, and again uttered its ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... although, strictly speaking, the Navajo has no shuttle. If the figure to be woven is a long stripe, or one where the weft must be passed through 6 inches or more of the shed at one time, the yarn is wound on a slender twig or splinter, or shoved through on the end of such a piece of wood; but where the pattern is intricate, and the weft passes at each turn through only a few inches of the shed, the yarn is wound into small skeins or balls and shoved through ...
— Navajo weavers • Washington Matthews
... moving clouds. Now and then, however, it broke through a rift, flooding the lagoon with its silvery light and throwing the black sides of the Mariella into bold relief. Not a breath of air stirred leaf or twig. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... with her rake, and with such a scream as certainly to scare little Black-and-white out of at least one of the nine lives to which she is supposed to be entitled. But pussy was too swift and swiftly scrambled to the very topmost twig that would hold her weight, while Tattine danced about in helpless rage on the grass beneath the tree. "Tattine is having a fit," thought little Black-and-white, scared half to death and quite ready to have ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... by surreptitious visits to the mill stream, and when, with a little hazel rod, length of whipcord, and rude hooks whipped to twisted horsehair, we would hurry home to breakfast with a dozen roach strung through the gills upon a twig of osier. They ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the contrast between the two Visions—the blossoming twig and the boiling caldron brewing tempests from the North. Unrelated as these seem, they symbolise together Jeremiah's prophesying throughout. For in fact this was all blossom and storm, beauty and terror, tender yearning and thunders ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... heard a twig snap, and then a figure came along, noiselessly, and placed itself at the window. Charlie gave him but a moment to listen, then he sprang forward, and, with his whole strength, brought his cudgel down upon the man's ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... bush and from tree to tree. He was very strong and clever with his knife and knew how to cut the dry and dead wood away, and could tell when an unpromising bough or twig had still green life in it. In the course of half an hour Mary thought she could tell too, and when he cut through a lifeless-looking branch she would cry out joyfully under her breath when she caught sight of the least shade of moist ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... complete it is too late to save her. Train a child from infancy to look upon a certain line of life as the one and only line for her, make the prospect attractive, and surround her with every possible unholy influence; in short, bend the twig and keep it bent for the greater part of sixteen years, or even only six—is there much room for doubt as to how it will grow? An heir to the property may be required; but with the facts of life before us, can we be content to allow the adoption of a child ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... through the Capitol grounds on their way down town, for it gave them a little thrill of delight to pass the clumps of trees. On this evening the grounds were specially beautiful. A heavy fall of damp snow covered every twig and grass-blade. They walked slowly down the winding path till they reached the open lawn just before ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... were neatly folded and the small canvas bucket was filled. All she was likely to need was ready, and the boxes that had held her outfit were arranged to make a seat and wash-stand. She felt grateful for this thought for her comfort, and putting out the miner's lamp, sat down on the twig-bed and hooked the ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... the masters. And under that roof he had made his first feeble protest against life; he had dreamed those valiant dreams of youth that never come true, no matter how successful one may become in after life. Every waking means an illusion gone, another twig pruned from the tree of ardent fancy; and when one is old there is neither shade ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... possible at any period At length the twig was becoming the tree Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war Chief seafaring nations of the world were already protestant Conceding it ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... not come between me and happiness with her soft and hypocritical ways!" said Ellen, snapping off the leaves of a twig near her, and looking upon the retreating figures of her sister and cousin, who were going up the avenue. Then turning to a point where she could see in the distance the dim form of Henry Moore, she took the seat ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... skulking behind every fence, and rock, and tree. They concealed themselves in orchards, sheds, and barns. King Philip himself was with them, guiding, with amazing skill and energy, all the measures for the attack. Not a voice, or a footfall, or the rustling of a twig was heard, as the savages stood in immovable and breathless silence, waiting the signal for the onset. The torch was ready to be lighted; the musket loaded and primed; the knife ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... hide from sight, And snap the seeds and toss 'em; The blue-tit hop, with pert delight, About the crab-tree blossom; The homely robin shall draw near, And sing a song most tender; The black-cap whistle soft and clear, Swayed on a twig top slender; The weasel from the hedge-row creep, So crafty and so cruel, The rabbit from the tussock leap, And splash the frosty jewel. I care not what the season be— Spring, summer, autumn, winter— In morning sweet, or noon-day heat, Or when the moonbeams ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... forward in utter silence—more silence than necessary. The American water keeper, Madrigal, and the Mexican guard were too profoundly busy with a crap game on the floor under the lantern to be disturbed by the mere breaking of a twig. ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... somniferous school of literature. The profound depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful, and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself that he stirred not in his chair when old Roger Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid his ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bog moss of brightest emerald green; while a clump of the screw wall moss in fruit, with its curious little box-like capsules, supports a gray or yellow lichen, which has been gently removed from some old wall or tree. A bit of stick or a twig, incrusted with a bright orange-colored lichen, supports a trailing branch of delicate green ivy, the most beautiful and adaptable of all winter foliage. Over this little arrangement is placed a bell glass, to preserve it from dust and the effect of a dry atmosphere; ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various |
