"Birch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sky was reddening before sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it a couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of the Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus Aurelius), and so under the frowning heights of Theben on a spur of the Carpathians, where ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... up before Eddie's dazzled eyes when he least expected it. It was at the close of a particularly hot day when it seemed to Eddie that every one in town had had everything from birch beer to peach ice cream. On his way home to supper he stopped at the postoffice with a handful of letters that old man Kunz had given him to mail. His mother had told him that they would have corn out of their own garden for supper that night, and Eddie was in something of a hurry. ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... into Committee. On this previous question 136 had voted No, with Sir Charles Wolseley and Mr. Strickland (two of the Council of State) for their tellers, but 141 had voted Yea, with Bradshaw and Colonel Birch for their tellers. In other words, it had been carried by a majority of five that it fell within the province of the House to determine whether the Single-Person element in the Government of the Commonwealth, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... salmon-trout. Farther to the westward, two other rivers flow into it, one of which is much broader than the other, and has a large cataract at some distance from its mouth. The upper parts of the mountains are covered partly with moss, and partly with low brush-wood, birch, and alder, and many berry-bearing shrubs and plants, but no high trees. We found here both arnica and colts-foot in great plenty. Brother Kohlmeister gathered and dried a quantity of each, as they are used in medical cases, and the former cannot ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... call it, which, when a boy makes it in the street is no formidable thing, but when made by a multitude is a most hideous shriek, almost as terrible as an Indian yell; the people crying, "Kill them, kill them. Knock them over," heaving snowballs, oyster shells, clubs, white-birch sticks three inches and a half in diameter; consider yourselves in this situation, and then judge whether a reasonable man in the soldiers' situation would not have concluded they were going to kill him. I believe if I were to reverse the scene, I should ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... was a good deal of a disciplinarian, and upheld the standard of the family with a birch switch when it showed a tendency to deteriorate. Once, when I was being punished for some unfortunate doings which had taken place in the village school, I felt called upon to explain after the whipping had begun that I ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... on, "our pleasant times in Scotland? Ah, it is a restful place, your Highland home, with the beautiful purple hills rolling away in the distance, and the glorious moors covered with fragrant heather, and the gurgling of the river that runs between birch and fir and willow, making music all day long for those who have the ears to listen, and the hearts to understand the pretty love tune it sings! You know Frenchmen always have more or less sympathy with the Scotch—some old association, perhaps, with the romantic times ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... frame, to protect it from injury by the weather, until their return. Among other things which lay strewed about here, were a spear-shaft, eight feet in length, recently made and ochred; parts of old canoes, fragments of their skin-dresses, &c. For some distance around, the trunks of many of the birch, and of that species of spruce pine called here the Var (Pinus balsamifera), had been rinded; these people using the inner part of the bark of that kind of tree for food. Some of the cuts in the trees with the axe were evidently made the preceding year. ...
— Report of Mr. W. E. Cormack's journey in search of the Red Indians - in Newfoundland • W. E. Cormack
... eyes an autograph letter of her sister, Miss Pinkerton, was an object of as deep veneration as would have been a letter from a sovereign. Only when her pupils quitted the establishment, or when they were about to be married, and once, when poor Miss Birch died of the scarlet fever, was Miss Pinkerton known to write personally to the parents of her pupils; and it was Jemima's opinion that if anything could have consoled Mrs. Birch for her daughter's loss, it would have been that pious and eloquent ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... an hour later, we had got down to the table-land, I found myself suddenly in front of a long, quaint, double log cottage, set between two immense bowlders, and roofed with layers of birch bark, covered with turf, which was blue with wild pansies. It was as if it were built under a bed of heart's-ease. It was very old, and had evidently been a house of some pretension, for there was much curious carving about the doors, and indeed about the ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... immemorial, till the fatal deluge of the fire-water burst upon the red men, and swept their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott, and his followers, came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their long beards in the spring. The richest goblet, then, was of birch-bark. Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here, out of the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm, and laid it on the brow of the first town-born child. For ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... assumed an aspect of grandeur and magnificence in harmony with his chivalric mania. The leaky craft in which he sat became a majestic barge; the skipper, some wrinkled Charon who doubtless had ferried many a brave knight to his death beneath yonder castle's walls. That seeming birch-stump on the farther shore was the castle champion, armed cap-a-pie in silver harness and ready with drawn sword to do battle against all comers. Trim the sail, ferryman, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... amused himself by making a toy theatre for his little Hans, and showed him how to work the puppets, and make them act little plays. This was a winter amusement. In the long summer days he would often take the child to the woods—and here, in the great birch forests, the two would spend the hours, hardly saying a word to each other, but each dreaming his own dreams as they sauntered along ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Henry James, for instance, wrote a review of "Drum Taps" in the Nation, November 16, 1865. In the lusty heyday and assurance of twenty-two years, he laid the birch on smartly. It is just a little saddening to find that even so clear-sighted an observer as Henry James could not see through the chaotic form of Whitman to the great vision and throbbing music that seem ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... banks were low. Then Boone forced his way noiselessly into a patch of bushes that grew at the very water's edge, and Simon Kenton followed him. The two reappeared in a minute, carrying a spacious canoe of birch bark. ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... full of burgoo, or hasty pudding, with which she occasionally fed him out of the cook's iron ladle. Two or three stout men were habited as sea nymphs, to attend on the goddess: they carried a looking-glass, some curry-combs, a birch-broom, and a pot of red paint, by ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... appearances, to wear cotton and woollen and silk; and beads and trinkets are in no extraordinary demand. Beavers and furs are seen upon our streets; and the sound of the piano heard in the land, is not a very unusual disturbance. Our boys, as of old, smoke cigars in secret, fearful of ancient birch, and gum drops still adhere to the pockets of our girls in school. We don't see a very remarkable difference between the children about us and those we knew at a somewhat early age. Brick and stone rise with us into comfortable and even aspiring buildings, and the price of board ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his wife and Miss Beggs recurred, intensified—one an absolute wreck and the other as solidly slender as a birch tree. Fate had played a disgusting trick on him. In the prime of his life he was tied to a hopeless invalid. It put an unfair tension on him. Women were charming, gracious—or else they were nothing. If Emmy's money had been an assistance at first he had ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to the window, and looking in, he saw the young girl seated on an armchair made of rough birch boughs, with a little prayer-book on her knee; her fair arm supporting her head, while a mass of golden ringlets half veiled her face, which was as pale as an alabaster statue; the extreme sadness of its expression rendering her ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... There were birch twigs caught in the straps of the digger's "swag," and he had a bit of rata flower stuck in the band of his hat. "That's where he's come from!" Tresco pointed in the direction of the great range of mountains which could be seen distinctly through ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... lay in the valley and on the hills. Summer lingered in the garden but on the ridge the nights were cool and in the swamplands, Hughie said, already the maples were coloring with a hint of colder weather. Here and there on birch and poplar fluttered ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... copies. But it is only a slight specimen of the sad state of art and literature in England, neglected equally by Conservatives, Liberals and Radicals. What has been done for the endowment of research? What is our equivalent for the Prix de Rome? Since the death of Dr. Birch, who can fairly deal with a Demotic papyrus? Contrast the Societe Anthropologique and its palace and professors in Paris with our "Institute" au second in a corner of Hanover Square and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... air of deep dejection; yet he bore his woes in silence, doubtless avoiding any concession that should suggest the need of another clarification of his system. Once, when nobody was looking, he cautiously withdrew a handful of scraped birch bark from his pocket and gave it to me, remarking that he thought it was "a little more bracin' than them ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... alkanet-root. Methylated spirits and a small quantity of dragon's blood will also produce a mild red. Any yellow wood can be improved by an alcoholic solution of Persian berries, fustic, turmeric, or gamboge. An aqueous decoction of barberry-root will serve the same purpose. Birch when preferred a warm tint may be sponged with oil, very slightly tinted with rose-madder or Venetian red; the greatest care should be used, or it will be rendered unnatural in appearance by becoming too red. Maple which ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... "Mr. Birch," said Mrs. Van Kirk, "this is my daughter Miss Edith," and as Halfdan sprang to his feet and bowed with ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... mastiff-birch, was expected to assist in guarding our castle, — an honourable duty which her courage and fidelity amply warranted us in confiding to her. Of the former quality, I shall mention an instance that occurred during the voyage. We had one day ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... of birch bark under the trees. But it hasn't any stove-pipe!" said Flaxie, who had never forgotten that unfortunate ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... of the night, they beheld a number of dark objects on the lake before them. It was a fleet of Iroquois canoes, heavier and slower craft than those of the Algonquins, for they were made of oak-or elm-bark, instead of the light paper-birch ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... remember the river was swollen to a point higher than it had ever reached within the memory of any body in the settlement. Marie is venturesome, and since a child has shown a keen delight in going upon boats, or paddling a canoe; so one day, during the visit which I have mentioned, she got into a birch that swung in a little pond formed behind her uncle's premises by the over-flowing of the stream's channel. Untying the canoe, she seized the blade and began to paddle about in the lazy water. Presently ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... successful novel was The Spy, 1821, a tale of the Revolutionary War, the scene of which was laid in Westchester County, N. Y., where the author was then residing. The hero of this story, Harvey Birch, was one of the most skillfully drawn figures on his canvas. In 1823 he published the Pioneers, a work somewhat overladen with description, in which he drew for material upon his boyish recollections of frontier ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... miles beyond Havenfiord I saw the first birch-trees, which, however, did not exceed two or three feet in height, also some bilberry-plants. A number of little butterflies, all of one colour, and, as it seemed to me, of the same species, fluttered among the ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... bushes she hastened, nor noticed that the evening shadows fell; on past the birch groves she ran, nor noticed ...
— Stories from the Ballads - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... right there are only a few single trees, between which the fiord is visible. In front is seen the corner of a boat-shed with a boat drawn up. Under the old trees on the left stands a table with a bench and one or two chairs, all made of thin birch-staves. It is a heavy, damp day, ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... I have a most distinct recollection of Mr. Harlan Thornton. When I was ten years old you brought me some lumps of spruce-gum in a birch-bark box and I declined it, saying that young ladies did not chew gum. But I took it when you looked so sad, and I carried it away to boarding-school, and I found out that young ladies do chew gum—when no one is watching them. That gift made me very popular, sir, and now I thank ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... in moonlight and the birch trees wavered their stark shadows across it like supplicating arms. Suddenly I heard the soft padded sound of snow falling upon snow, to slowly perceive a figure, the slender figure of a young child attempting to arouse itself ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... him uneasily. It was only the moonlight on the bark of a silver birch. Conscious of having betrayed weakness, he ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... birch twigs are so sharp. I'd sooner go 20 miles than go to school on Mondays. My master asks where I've been. 'Milking ducks,' I tell him, and he gives me pepper for it. I only wish he was a hare, and my book a wild cat, and all his books dogs. Wouldn't I blow my horn! ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... light tent, made with poles stuck into the ground, in a circle, fastened together at the top, and covered on the outside with skins of wild animals, or with birch bark. The Indians light a fire of sticks and logs on the ground, in the middle of the wigwam, and lie or sit all round it; the smoke goes up to the top and escapes. In the winter, they bank it up with snow, and it ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... giving them some money and a drink of Jamaica spirits, with which they seemed vastly pleased. I looked into one of their huts; it was made of poles like unto a tent, only it was covered with the silver-colored bark of the birch, instead of hempen stuff. A bark mat, braided of many exceeding brilliant colors, covered a goodly part of the space inside; and from the poles we saw fishes hanging, and strips of dried meat. On a pile of skins in the corner sat a young woman with a child a-nursing; they ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... genuine besom, made of birch stems, cut out in the country, and brought into town tied up in bundles like fagots; suitable enough for those stalwart men who drag them along so leisurely, but burdensome for the hands of the wretched little waifs, who, tattered and unkempt, make a pretence of keeping the crossings clean; ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... List the Saxon's silvery laughter, and his humming hives of gain. Swiftly sped the tawny runner o'er the pathless prairies then, Now the iron-reindeer sooner carries weal or woe to men. On thy bosom, Royal River, silent sped the birch canoe, Bearing brave with bow and quiver, on his way to war or woo; Now with flaunting flags and streamers—mighty monsters of the deep— Lo the puffing, panting steamers, through thy foaming waters ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... southward from Clarksburg with three brigades, having left the Upper Potomac line in command of General Kelley, and the Cheat Mountain region in command of General J. J. Reynolds. His route (already indicated) was a rough one, and the portion of it between Sutton and Summersville, over Birch Mountain, was very wild and difficult. He crossed the mountain on the 9th, and left his bivouac on the morning of the 10th of September, before daybreak. Marching through Summersville, he reached ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... she disappeared from view behind a clump of birch trees. Then leaving the highway he walked slowly along the trail leading ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... with them, as well as with the little flowers that grew at their feet; and he tried to teach her how to know each separate kind by the bark and leaf and manner of growth. The pine and hemlock and fir were easily learnt; the white birch, too; beyond those, at first, she was perpetually confounding one with another. Mr. Van Brunt had to go over and over his instructions never weary, always vastly amused. Pleasant lessons these were! Ellen thought so, and Mr. Van Brunt thought ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... I declare I was beat, and I hav'n't never got over bein' beat about that. So we growed up together, always out in the woods between schools, huntin' checker-berries, and young winter-greens, and prince's piney, and huckleberries, and saxifrax, and birch, and all them woodsy things that children hanker arter; and by-'n'-by we got to goin' to the 'Cademy; and when Hetty was seventeen she went in to Hartford to her Aunt Smith's for a spell, to do chores, and get a little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... extended up to a wood of firs, and out of this wood the small river which bore the name of the family came rushing down the field in a gully, went under the road, swept around to the right and along the edge of a birch copse just below the house. The little stream grew quieter there and widened into a mill pond. At the lower end was a broken dam and beside it a dismantled mill. Here was peace for Roger's soul. The next day at dawn he awakened, and through the window close by his bed he ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... tiny stream. Upon the bosom of the blue lakelet, the fountain of thy life, I have launched my birchen boat; and yielding to thy current, have floated softly southward. I have passed the meadows where the wild rice ripens on thy banks, where the white birch mirrors its silvery stem, and tall coniferae fling their pyramid shapes, on thy surface. I have seen the red Chippewa cleave thy crystal waters in his bark canoe—the giant moose lave his flanks in thy cooling ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... have been domesticated for thousands of years in several quarters of the world; the earliest known record of pigeons is in the fifth Aegyptian dynasty, about 3000 B.C., as was pointed out to me by Professor Lepsius; but Mr. Birch informs me that pigeons are given in a bill of fare in the previous dynasty. In the time of the Romans, as we hear from Pliny, immense prices were given for pigeons; "nay, they are come to this pass, that they ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... bicornis, Cooke, the appendiculate sporidia are similar, and the conidia would also appear to partake of the character of Stilbospora. We may remark here that we have seen a brown mould, probably an undescribed species of Dematiei, growing in definite patches around the openings in birch bark caused by the crumpent ostiola of the perithecia of Melanconis stilbostoma, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... tree. The landscape, in Europe and America, begins to wear a modern aspect. Long before the end of the Cretaceous most of the modern genera of Angiosperm trees have developed. To the fig and sassafras are now added the birch, beech, oak, poplar, walnut, willow, ivy, mulberry, holly, laurel, myrtle, maple, oleander, magnolia, plane, bread-fruit, and sweet-gum. Most of the American trees of to-day are known. The sequoias (the giant Californian trees) still represent the conifers ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... steps under Sittaford Tor, near the river's twin birthplaces. He also knew where the great peel rested, on their annual migration from sea to moor; where the kingfisher's nest of fish-bones lay hidden; where the otter had her home beneath the bank, and its inland vent-hole behind a silver birch. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... ran wild and roamed the woods of Lincolnshire in search of all the curious things that the woods hold in store for boys. The father occasionally made stern efforts to "correct" his sons. In the use of the birch he was ambidextrous. But I have noticed that in households where a strap hangs behind the kitchen-door, for ready use, it is not utilized so much for pure discipline as to ease the feelings of the parent. They say that expression is a need of the human heart; and I am ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the trouble that was causing his sickness; but he was very weak and faint, and he slept long after the birds were up and singing. He was a little afraid at first to eat anything when he finally crawled from his hole in the decayed tree branch; but, recognizing some sweet birch trees, he ate moderately of the leaves ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... one time was Assistant Secretary of State in charge of American Republic Affairs. In recent years, Mr. Braden has given leadership to many patriotic organizations and efforts, such as For America and The John Birch Society; and, in testimony before various committees of Congress, he has given much valuable information about communist influences in the ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... all their jewels' worth. Then O ye shepherds of the Church Down, down with Mahomet's creed! Leave not the fighters in the lurch! For if to scourge yourselves you speed 480 Then Rome may spare the birch. You should sell your chalices, Yes and pawn your breviaries, Turn your gourds into flasks, and e'er Of bread and parsnips make your fare, 485 To vanquish ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... with mine? True, I have but four kinds—Scotch fir, holly, furze, and the heath; and by way of relief to them, only brows of brown fern, sheets of yellow bog-grass, and here and there a leafless birch, whose purple tresses are even more lovely to my eye than those fragrant green ones which she puts on in spring. Well: in painting as in music, what effects are more grand than those produced by the scientific combination, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... live to clear up all these mysteries. His work was taken up and extended by his pupil Rossellini, and in particular by Dr. Richard Lepsius in Germany, followed by M. Bernouf, and by Samuel Birch of the British Museum, and more recently by such well-known Egyptologists as MM. Maspero and Mariette and Chabas, in France, Dr. Brugsch, in Germany, and Dr. E. Wallis Budge, the present head of the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum. But the task of later investigators ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... wigwam, a description of the manner and stages of its construction may be interesting. Poles, twelve or fourteen feet long, are placed in the ground, these meeting at the top, and leaving an opening through which the smoke may escape. Over the poles are placed nets, made of flags, or birch bark, and, sometimes, the skins ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... that the inhabitants of the place were greatly excited, and were running to and fro. The globe was lowered to within three hundred feet of the earth. As they neared the spot, two of the anchors were dropped, and soon caught in the birch tree tops. The ship strained tremendously at the cables for a moment or two, and then rode easily at anchorage, three hundred ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... issue eastwards through a narrow gorge into Loch Affric. It was a place remarkably well adapted for the purpose of a resisting party. A rocky boss, called Torr-a-Bheathaich, then densely covered with birch, closes up the glen as with a gate. The black mountain stream, "spear-deep," sweeps round it. A narrow path wound up the rock, admitting of passengers in single file. Here lay Murchison with the best of his people, while inferior adherents were ready to make demonstrations ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... she featly footed, With the herd-boy hasting after, Sprang she on a trunk uprooted, Clung she by a roping vine; Leaped behind a birch, and told, Still eluding, through its fine, Mocking, slender, leafy laughter, Why her finger tips ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... the spoil in that hall, along with Fairfax Fearneley, Esq., the owner. The fourteen names are given, doubtless "mighty men of yore;" but, among them all, Sir Fletcher Norton, Attorney-General, and Major-General Birch were the only ones with which I had any association in 1855. Passing on from Oakwell there lie houses right and left, which were well known to Miss Bronte when she lived at Roe Head, as the hospitable homes of some of her school-fellows. Lanes branch off for three or four miles ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... here," he said, "a little birch forest. It helps, your Majesty, it helps." Faithfully did it play its part in my day, though I cannot bear witness that it helped. But its day passed, too, and is gone. The world moves and all the while forward. ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... The Birch is the queen of trees, with her feathery foliage, scarcely visible in spring but turning to leaves of gold in autumn; the pendulous twigs tinged with purple, and silver stems so brilliantly marked ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... still by the birch-tree's root In the heather. The hare was running with nimble foot O'er the heather. Was ever brighter a sunshine-day, Before, behind me, and every ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... bounds, And winged zephyrs waft the floating joy 190 Through all the regions near: afflictive birch No more the school-boy dreads, his prison broke, Scampering he flies, nor heeds his master's call; The weary traveller forgets his road, And climbs the adjacent hill; the ploughman leaves The unfinished furrow; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... common in leaves, as seen among herbs, in cultivated varieties of Coleus and in the brown leaved form of the ordinary white clover, among trees and shrubs in the hazelnut (Corylus), the beech (Fagus), the birch (Betula), the barberry (Berberis) and many others. But though most of these forms are very ornamental and abundant [134] in parks and gardens, little is as yet known concerning the origin of their varietal attributes and their constancy, when propagated by ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... some travellers came to the house. They stopped at the door and asked for milk; the mother brought them brimming bowlsful, and the shy little girl crept up behind her mother with her birch-bark baskets of berries. The gentlemen took them and thanked her, and one told of his own little Mary at home, far away over the great sea. Jeannette often thinks of her, and wonders whether her papa has gone home ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... glancing up, "what are you two amateurs about? As usual, I'm ready to begin before Rex is awake!" and stepping to the edge he landed his flies with a flourish in a young birch tree. Rex came and disengaged them, and he received the assistance with ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... "That's birch for him," he muttered, as he passed through the baize door, which shut out the noise of the school from the rest of the house; and the boy drew a deep breath as he crossed the hall toward the study, connected in his mind with scoldings ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... chateau cliff to where the water, conveyed to the summit, dribbled and dropped, or squirted and splashed, nourishing countless fronds of fern and beds of moss, and many a bog plant. The cedars and umbrella pines in the spring sun exhaled their aromatic breath, and the flowering birch rained down its yellow dust over one from its ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?— By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch-tree! The oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year, And whistled and roared in the winter alone, Is gone,—and the birch in its stead is grown.— The knight's bones are dust, And his good ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... with none but the Snow under her, and the Heaven over her, in a misty and rainy season. She sent then unto a French Priest, that he would speak unto her Squaw Mistress, who then, without condescending to look upon her, allow'd her a little Birch-Rind, to cover her Head from the Injuries of the Weather, and a little bit of dried Moose, which being boiled, she drunk the Broth, and gave it unto ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... From a scraping on birch bark by Tomak Josephs, Indian Governor at Peter Dona's Point, Maine. The Mik um wees always wears a red cap like the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Dr. Thomas Birch, in a letter dated June 15, 1764, says that this letter was by Mr. Philip Yorke, afterwards Earl of Hardwicke, who was author also of another piece in the Spectator, but his son could not ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... his boys, four in all, fairly carved a farm out of the big forest that covered the cold rocky hills. Giant work it was for them in such heavy timber—pine, hemlock, maple, beech and birch—the clearing of a single acre being a man's work for a year. The place where the maples were thickest was reserved for a sugar grove, and from it was made all of the sweet material they needed, and some besides. Economy of the very strictest kind had ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... said Mr. Barly, closing one eye, and nodding his head a number of times. "There is indeed. But those days are over, Mr. Frye. When I was a child I had the fear of God put into me. It was put into me with a birch rod. But nowadays, Mr. Frye, the children neglect their sums, and grow up wild as nettles. I don't know what ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... She walked across the Park, and I followed, praising God, whose image she is. On the further side the Pole met her in his furs, and she walked with him for an hour in the sun. She had no wrappage to hide her blissful shape. Close-fitted, erect, free- moving, gracious as a young birch-tree. Master, she is ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... with a strictness unknown to American boys and girls of to-day. Even small acts of disrespect or disobedience were promptly punished, and to aid in the work of correction the Bryant home as well as that of almost every neighbor was provided with a good-sized bundle of birch sticks hanging warningly on the kitchen wall. As the poet himself tells us in a sketch of his early life, the children looked upon the older people of the family with so much awe that they could not go to them freely nor act naturally in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... oak and the birch and whatever the other trees are called stick out one polite branch on this side and ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... forrard, and raised her to my arms: spiling thereby a new weskit and a pair of crimson smalcloes. I rushed forrard. I say, very nearly knocking down the old sweeper who was hobbling away as fast as posibil. We took her to Birch's; we provided her with a hackney-coach and every lucksury, and carried her home ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the afternoon when Lionel found himself driving along a loftily-winding road overlooking the wide and fertile valley of the Aivron. Right down below him, and visible through the birch-trees, was the river itself, of a brilliant, clear-shining blue, save where in some more distant sweeps it shone a silver-white; on the other side of the broad strath rose a range of hill fringed ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... asunder. In this respect the unsuspecting creek was an asset of incalculable value. The boxes of his wagons could boast of nothing up to date, that was not possessed by the wheels; and in many cases the tongues and whiffletrees and neck-yokes had been substituted by raw maples or birch secured on the ranch. His unwritten law was to buy nothing that would cost money, and to import nothing that could be produced on the farm even if it was only a poor makeshift substitute. No part was ever replaced until it had gone hopelessly on strike, and necessity was his only motive power ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... on her birth. Theodore Fitzhedingham could never think of paying attention to the daughter of a Hindoo woman and old Sneezum, the bullock contractor of Bunderjumm. One day I had been at work in one of the plantations, and just as I was marking with my hand-axe a birch tree to be felled, a thought came into my head. I left the cross half executed, and threw the axe on the bank, hurried home, and locked myself in the study. Pen and paper were lying before me, and in a moment I had got deep ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... furs have been dispatched for Montreal, MacKenzie launches out on May 9 of 1793 with a thirty-foot birch canoe, six voyageurs, and Alexander Mackay as lieutenant, for the hinterland beyond the Rockies. This time the going was against stream,—hard paddling, but safer than with a {328} swift current in a river with dangerous rapids. Ten days later the river ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... ground; and in the Hunting Moon the leaves of this undergrowth have turned to purest yellow, without touch or trace of red, so that the sombre forest is carpeted with gold. Here and there shows a birch or aspen, also bright, pure light yellow, as though a brilliant sun were striking down through painted windows. Groups of yellow-leafed larches add to the splendour. And close to the ground grow little ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... name is forever associated with Westminster, and he ruled the school with his terrible birch rod for upward of fifty-seven years. "My rod is my sieve," he said, "and who can not pass through it is no boy for me." So many able boys, however, passed through it, that he could point to the Bench of Bishops, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... native trees and immediately replant saplings of certain introduced varieties about the farmyard or along the streets. In this way a forest growth of oak, elm, beech, butternut, hemlock, basswood, and birch is cleared off to give room for saplings of soft maple, cottonwood, and brittle willow. It is felt that the inexpensiveness of leaving the forest trees standing would derogate from the dignity that should invest an article ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... to look upon them. The height of land or plateau which constitutes the interior of the Labrador peninsula is from 2,000 to 2,500 feet above the sea level, fairly heavily wooded with spruce, fir, hackmatack, and birch, and not at all the desolate waste it has been pictured by many writers. The barrenness of Labrador is confined to the coast, and one cannot enter the interior in any direction without being struck by the latent possibilities of the peninsula were it not for the abundance of flies and mosquitoes. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... American Indians composed of a number of long sticks stuck in the ground in a circle, and bending inwards till their other ends met, and were secured together with a band. Instead of being covered with birch bark, these were thatched very neatly with dry grass or reeds, and formed very warm abodes. In the centre a pile of ashes showed where their fires were placed. Their canoes were very like those of North America, being built of bark, with ribs neatly formed, and kept in shape by several beams ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the heavens, gave pearly tints to the clouds that floated near it; the pines on the shore flung dark masses against the oaks and maples, or stood as a Rembrandt background for the boughs of the trees on which the moonlight fell, or for some ghostly procession of the white birch trunks. The water, in the shadows as dark and smooth as a Claude Lorraine glass, showed far off in the moonlight faint quivers of its surface here and there, as if the breeze so longed for were coming to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... I had occasion to visit the Falls of St. Anthony, a village of a few houses on the east side of the Mississippi River, ten miles Northwest of St. Paul. I crossed the river to the west side in a birch bark canoe, navigated by Tapper, the ferryman for many years after, until the suspension bridge was built. Examining the Falls, I went down to an old saw mill built by and for the soldiers at Fort Snelling and measured the retrocession of the fall by the ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... seen all along the coast, that is to say they had been hollowed from cottonwood or pine trees and afterward steamed and spread by means of hot water to meet the maker's idea of the proper line of grace and speed. They were really beautiful and sat the water almost as gracefully as the birch-bark canoe of the Chippewas. At each end they rose into a sort of neck, which terminated often in a head carved to resemble a deer or some fabled animal. Some of them had white bands encircling the throat of this figurehead. Their paddles were short ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... singing and hardly breathed, they stood so still. They looked at St. Nicholas with big, big eyes. In one hand St. Nicholas carried two large packages; in the other, a birch rod. ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... favourite retreat, a cluster of slender birch trees deep in the forest, she seated herself on a fallen trunk and unrolled her crocheting. Through the thin foliage the sun filtered over her hair and spangled the ground at her feet. A breeze as gentle as herself whispered above her head in friendly ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... over which we could see a large volume of water rushing with headlong force and speed, bubbling, foaming, and roaring into the channel which leads to the loch. Above us was a bridge thrown across the chasm, while the mountain sides were clothed with graceful birch and other trees. We had brought a copy of Burns, whose lines on ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... puzzle of the school was how to account for her close relationship to old Rippenger. Such an apple on such a crab-tree seemed monstrous. Heriot said that he hoped Boddy would marry old Rippenger's real daughter, and, said he, that's birch-twigs. I related his sparkling speech to Julia, who laughed, accusing him, however, of impudence. She let me see a portrait of her dead mother, an Irish lady raising dark eyelashes, whom she resembled. I talked of the portrait to Heriot, and as I had privileges ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Douggie" went up to a young sapling that grew at the base of the fallen tree. Bending it down to the ground, as an archer bends his bow, he gave a sudden spring, and let the tough birch catapult him to the ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, bass-wood, maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these mortals blended their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-like picturesqueness; a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance. ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Aspine good for Staves, the Cypress Funeral. The Laurel, Meed of mighty Conquerors, And Poets sage; the Fir that weepeth still, The Willow worn of forlorn Paramours, The Yew obedient to the Bender's Will. The Birch for Shafts, the Sallow for the Mill; The Myrrhe sweet bleeding in the bitter Wound, The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill, The fruitful Olive, and the Plantane round, The Carver Helm, the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... doubt, give thee as much wealth as thou desirest.' Thus addressed, O king, Gautama cheerfully set out from that place, eating on the way, to his fill, fruits sweet as ambrosia. Beholding the sandal and aloe and birch trees that stood along the road, and enjoying their refreshing shade, the Brahmana proceeded quickly. He then reached the city known by the name of Meruvraja. It had large porches made of stone, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... wet snow, snapped in his face and blinded him with its damp burden; and he knew long before nightfall that another night in the woods was inevitable. He could feed the horse on young twigs of beech and birch; fresh moss, and new-peeled bark (fodder the animal would have resented with scorn under any other conditions); but hunger has no law concerning food. Scott himself was famished; but his pipe and tobacco were a refuge whose value he knew before, and his charge was tired ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... tried to have a school, and to this end had hired an elderly Irishman, who gave hard lessons and a taste of the birch to children who had exhausted themselves in the mills and had no zest for learning. Mr. Dale had taken on more than two hundred pauper children from the workhouses and these were a sore trial ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... well on its way by now—though Gwendolyn could not recall the moment of starting. The Piper had not waited to be invited, but strolled along with the others, his birch-stemmed tobacco-pipe in a corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets, and the pig-poke a-swing at ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... from the tall brass andirons or claw-footed chair and table. Sometimes he glanced shyly at the mother, but getting no answering smile kept silence. Once or twice the girl whispered a word to him, as the logs fell and a sheet of flame from the hickory and the quick-burning birch set free the stored-up sunshine of many a summer day. A moment later, the ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... as long as this room—six ash-trees, one butternut, and a birch sapling thrown in for a witch spectre. Say no more, Paul. Sit you down and keep Olive company. I will go, if only for the sake of showing these silly little hussies that there is no call for a gospel woman with prayer in her heart to be ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... decided not to birch boys in the future, but to fine their parents. Several soft-hearted boys have already indicated that it will hurt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... on an errand—not a particularly romantic one, as it happened, only to pay a bill for Miss Todd at a farm-house a few miles away. If the errand was prosaic the farm and its surroundings looked attractive; it stood on a hill with a beautiful group of birch-trees behind it, and a small stream came rippling down at the bottom of the garden. The path from the high road was blocked by a cart left standing with a load of straw, so it would be impossible to ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Giant's Stairway and sat down in the little rock chapel. There was a picnic at the Lovers' Leap, and I had that side of the island to myself. I was leaning back, half asleep, in the deep shadow, when the sound of voices roused me; a birch-bark canoe was passing close in shore, and two were in it,—Jeannette and our surgeon. I could not hear their words, but I noticed Rodney's expression as he leaned forward. Jeannette was paddling slowly; her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes brilliant. Another moment and ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... to a little scrubby thing, that looked very like a birch rod. I proceeded to examine it most minutely, while Collins waited with all the intense anxiety of a man whose character ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... settlement, where the trail that came up from the railroad thirty miles away forked off into two wavy ribands that melted into a waste of snow. Lander's consisted then of five or six frame houses and stores, a hotel of the same material, several sod stables, and a few birch-log barns; and its inhabitants considered it one of the most promising places in Western Canada. That, however, is the land of promise, a promise that is in due time usually fulfilled, and the men of Lander's were, for the most part, shrewdly practical ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... verge of the line with a dense fence of stunted trees just before him and the wilderness of snow beyond, sloping up to the crest, outlined in white against the solid gray sky. The Spartans of the forest were around him—fir, pine, spruce, birch, and trembling little aspens up there among the stoutest. All were of one height, clean-shaven by the volleys of the wind-driven sand and pebbles that clipped off any treetop that aspired above the mass. In solid numbers was their salvation, and they grew ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... didn't know which, but he was quite sure that he liked her better than any woman he had seen for a long time. He had not known her a week, and she already absorbed his thoughts. And, during the drive home, he hardly saw the forest. Once a birch, whose faint leaves and branches dissolved in a glittering light, drew his thoughts away from Mildred. She lay upon his shoulder, his arm was affectionately around her, and, looking at him out of eyes whose brown seemed to soften in ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... The cedar will burn all right, but it is a good thing to have the birch. We shall have a supper worth while in a few minutes. Stacy, get busy ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... snow—careered out of the north and followed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen and such-like sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few naked cottages and bleak fields,—these were the characters of the country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into three or ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little way down the road from the old house, they projected a roadway which swept round, horseshoe fashion, till it met itself again within a space of some twenty yards or so; and this sweep made a frontage—upon its inclosed bit of natural, moss-turfed green, sprinkled with birch and pine and oak trees, and with gray out-croppings of rock here and there—for the twenty houses, behind which opened the rest of the unspoiled, irregular, open slope and swell and dingle of the hill-foot tract that dipped down at one reach, we ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... a deep breath. The safe disappearances he had read about flashed through his mind. But he didn't believe it. It couldn't be! Yet, there was the empty corner with the birch panels forming the back of the show-windows, and no safe. In a daze, he walked over to the corner, intending to feel about with his hands and make sure the safe was really gone. Before he got there, there flashed into sight in place of the safe, ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer |
