"Birch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had fallen the day before, and now wherever the ground was not paved the grass shone green. The birch trees in the gardens looked as if they were strewn with green fluff, the wild cherry and the poplars unrolled their long, balmy buds, and in shops and dwelling-houses the double window-frames were being removed and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... at the topmost source—fons et origo—of our chosen river. This single spring, crystal-clear and ice-cold, gushing out of the hillside in a forest of spruce and yellow birch and sugar maple, gave us the clue that we must follow for a week through ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... day of his visit he had been wont of an evening to take a walk along the shore of the lake. The road led along close under the garden. At the end of the latter, on a projecting mound, there was a bench under some tall birch trees. Elisabeth's mother had christened it the Evening Bench, because the spot faced westward, and was mostly used at that time of the day in order to enjoy a view ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... Col. Birch's recipe for rheumatic gout or acute rheumatism, commonly called in England the "Chelsea Pensioner." Half an ounce of nitre (saltpetre), half an ounce of sulphur, half an ounce of flour of mustard, half an ounce of Turkey rhubarb, quarter of an ounce of powdered guaicum. Mix, and ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... sent from Fort Ridgely to the Lower Agency, to feel the enemy, bury the dead, and perform any other service that might arise. They went as far as Little Crow's village, but not finding any signs of Indians, they returned; and on the 1st of September they reached Birch Coulie, and encamped at the head of it. Birch Coulie is a ravine extending from the upper plateau to the river bottom, nearly opposite the ferry where Captain Marsh's company ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... drinks include phosphates, ginger ale, coca cola, birch beer, root beer, and various other drinks called mashes, sours, and freezes. While these are pleasing to the taste and have the advantage of being ready to drink when prepared, it is advisable not to indulge in them too frequently, because excessive use of them is liable to affect the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... increasing. He had made efforts to improve his knowledge of the language; and he had spent many days in sketching and studying the terra-cottas and vases and coins at the British Museum. He had also taken up some study of Egyptology, through Champollion, Bunsen and Birch, in the hope of tracing the origin of Greek decorative art. Comparative mythology, at that time, was a department of philology, introduced to the English public chiefly by Max Mueller. Under his influence Ruskin entered step by step upon an inquiry which afterwards became of singular importance ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... joined hands with their leaves, like young men and maidens standing ready for a dance around a married pair. In the midst of the company stood the pair, distinguished from all the rest of the forest throng by gracefulness of form and charm of colour; the white birch, the beloved, with her husband the hornbeam. But farther off, like grave elders sitting in silence and gazing on their children and grandchildren, stood on this side hoary beeches, and on that matronly poplars; and an oak, bearded with moss, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Boston, was then a dense and silent wilderness, threaded with a few Indian trails. Along the shore several rude wigwams were scattered, the smoke curling from their fires from among the trees, with naked children playing around the birch canoes upon the beach. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... stage simultaneously opens, and the noble steamer sinks out of sight, leaving only the top of one of the smoke-pipes in view, from which emerges BILLY BIRCH, who sings to slow and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... have been made about "cart whips," etc., when I say flogging is not the most degrading punishment in the world. It may be so to a white man in most countries, but how is it to the white boy? That necessary coadjutor of the schoolmaster, the "birch," is never thought to have rendered infamous the unfortunate victim of pedagogue ire; nor did Solomon in his wisdom dream that he was counseling parents to debase their offspring, when he exhorted them ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the previous question whether they should go 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, already ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Appendix to the life of Prince Henry, Doctor Birch has given us an account of the prices of butcher's meat as commonly paid by that prince. It is there said, that the four quarters of an ox, weighing six hundred pounds, usually cost him nine pounds ten shillings, or thereabouts; that is thirty-one shillings and eight-pence per hundred ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... small enclosure round the house, and gathered juniper and birch-twigs, and kindled a fire upon the open stove built in the corner of the room. Fortunately, we had some dried reindeer and bread in our bag, and on that and the ryper and the contents of our flasks we supped. Afterwards, to while ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... had lost L500 over the deal. But it was no use crying over spilt milk. The immediate effect was that he would have to be very economical over his honeymoon expenses. However, he wouldn't say anything about the matter to Dolly that day. He would carry out his promise—give her a nice luncheon at Birch's. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... 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
... 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 feet ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... and in sheltered valleys even up to 5500 ft., when it of course comes into contact with the purely alpine flora. Tree vegetation, which reaches up as high as 6500 and 8150 ft., the latter limit on the north and west, consists of magnificent forests of birch, poplar, aspen, and Coniferae, such as Pinus cerebra, Abies sibirica, Larix sibirica, Picea obovata, and so on, though the fir is not found above 2500 ft., while the meadows are abundantly clothed with brightly coloured, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... quite right. Blinkhampton was a predestined seaside resort on the South Coast, and Iver, with certain associates, meant to develop it. They had bought it up, and laid it out for building, and arranged for a big hotel with Birch & Company, the famous furnishers. But all along in front of it—between where the street now was and the esplanade was soon to be—ran a long narrow strip, forming the estate of an elderly gentleman named Masters. Of course Masters had to be bought out, ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... gambrel-roofed cottage, on the side of Harpswell Bay, just at the head of the long cove which we have already described. The windows on two sides commanded the beautiful bay and the opposite shores, and on the other they looked out into the dense forest, through whose deep shadows of white birch and pine the silver rise and fall of ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Assyria is furnished by the magnificent bronze gates of Balawat, now in The British Museum. See Birch and Pinches, The Bronze Ornaments of the Palace Gates of ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... neither pen nor pencil can bring before you the reality. William [Footnote: William, one of Miss Edgeworth's half-brothers, had joined his sisters at Edinburgh.] says he does not, however, fear for Killarney, even after our having seen this. Here are no arbutus, but plenty of soft birch, and twinkling aspen, and dark oak. On one side of the lake the wood has been within these few years cut down. Walter Scott sent to offer the proprietor L500 for the trees on one spot, if he would spare them; but the offer came two days too late; ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... The luckless tree again is reared— (Small sign of honour or of grace!) To mark the parish market-place! Long as St. Idloes' town shall be A patroness of poesy— Long as its hospitality The bard shall freely entertain, My birch! ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... Little Furry Ones," he continued, after pressing down the tobacco in his pipe, "were born in a dry, warm, roomy den in the bank, under the roots of an old birch that slanted out over the water. The front door was deep under water. But as the old otters had few enemies to dread, being both brave and powerful, they had also a back entrance on dry land, hidden by a thicket of fir bushes. The two furry 'pups' were at first as sprawling and helpless ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... overhung it—each bank a mute monotonous screen of foliage, unbroken by glade or clearing; pine and spruce and hemlock, maple and alder; piled plumes of green, motionless, brooding, through which no sunrays broke, though here and there a silver birch drew a shaft of light upon their sombre background. Here were no English woodlands, no stretches of pale green turf, no vistas opening beneath flattened boughs, with blue distant hills and perhaps a group of antlers topping the bracken. The wild ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... To make Birch Wine:—In March bore a hole in a tree, and put in a faucet, and it will run two or three days together without hurting the tree; then put in a pin to stop it, and the next year you may draw as much from the same hole; put to every ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... quite abolished." "He did not much revive the curiosity of the public," says Johnson, in his life of Hughes; "for near thirty years elapsed before his edition was reprinted." Editions of the "Faerie Queene" came thick and fast about the middle of the century. One (by Birch) was issued in 1751, and three in 1758; including the important edition by Upton, who, of all Spenser's commentators, has entered most elaborately into the interpretation ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... what he did remember, and very well, was the moment when the bird fluttered towards the window; he could see it resting on the sill, hesitating a moment, doubting its power of flight. But it had ventured out in the air and had reached a birch, on which it alighted. There had been a rush downstairs and out of the house, but the hawk was no longer in the birch, and was never seen by him again, yet ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... wandering I struck a heavy game trail, and could see deer and bear tracks not over a day old. I filled the magazine of my rifle and plunged along at a fast pace. Here and there were thick clumps of quaking asp, mountain birch, and on the creek banks were choke cherries and plum trees. Great springs of water bubbled out of the earth, and by one of these springs I found some of the Sheep Eaters' lodges. They were decayed and fallen to the earth, but the rounded stones with which they warmed the water were there, ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... of affairs, Dominie Curtius's mood this day was not a pleasant one, and the school exercises had more to do with the whipping horse and the birch twigs than with the horn book and the ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... tolerably exact idea of his charge, returned to Quebec. He was well pleased with what he saw, but not with the ways and means of Canadian travel; for he thought it strangely unbecoming that a lieutenant-general of the king should be forced to crouch on a sheet of bark, at the bottom of a birch canoe, scarcely daring to move his head to the right or left lest he should disturb the ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... Company's agent had called his place "The Shack" because it was built entirely of logs, and a woman could not have made it more comfortable. Keith stood in the big living-room. At one end was a strong fireplace in which kindlings and birch were already laid, waiting the touch of a match. Brady's reading table and his easy chair were drawn up close; his lounging moccasins were on a footstool; pipes, tobacco, books and magazines littered the table; and out of this cheering disorder rose triumphantly the amber shoulder of ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... shop, quite crammed and choked with the abundance of its stock; a perfectly voracious little shop, with a maw as accommodating and full as any shark's. Cheese, butter, firewood, soap, pickles, matches, bacon, table-beer, peg-tops, sweetmeats, boys' kites, bird-seed, cold ham, birch brooms, hearth- stones, salt, vinegar, blacking, red-herrings, stationery, lard, mushroom-ketchup, staylaces, loaves of bread, shuttlecocks, eggs, and slate pencil; everything was fish that came to the net of this greedy little shop, and all articles were in its net. How many other kinds of petty ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... bugs and specimens which he had collected. And, for those who feel an interest in Professor Shaw, it may be agreeable to know, that in his wanderings, having discovered in a green lane, on the margin of a duck-pond, a district school in want of a pedagogue, he forthwith assumed the birch, and may be now seen at almost any hour of the day, in the midst of his noisy populace, commanding silence, or dusting them on their least honorable parts. 'Tough, are you? I'll see if I can find a tender spot. Come, no bawling, or I'll flog you till you stop. Thomas Jones, take your book, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... and whose remains we find buried in the same deposits as theirs, were of species that still hold their place as aboriginal trees of the country, or of at least the more northerly provinces of the continent. The common Scotch fir, the common birch, and a continental species of conifer of the far north, the Norwegian spruce (Abies excelsa), have been found underlying the Pleistocene drift, and rooted in the mammiferous crag; and for many ages must the old extinct elephant have ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... pause for an instant, and to reflect upon the character and circumstance of our luxurious voyage as contrasted with that of these few adventurers in their fragile birch canoes—a little over 220 years ago—is ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... That evening the birch which Sister Gabrielle kept in the dormitory was put away in a cupboard, and in the refectory the salad was turned with two long wooden spoons. These were the only changes. We went into class from ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... As pine, beech, 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 ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... horses were, and urged me to take the one belonging to the chief, since it was clever and gentle. At first I had compunctions of conscience, but no choice was left me, and I had to do it. I made a rude bridle of birch bark, and jumping on the horse, came here just ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... and I'll give you a stick," he called to her; "it's a help when you're climbing." He pulled down a slender birch, and, setting his foot on it, broke it off at the root. She stopped, with an impatient gesture, and waited while he tore off handfuls of leaves and ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... and the larks sang loud in the blue clear air; the birch-wood clothed itself in tender green; the stream, with its melting snow-drifts, wound down the mountains singing on its way; but no plough furrowed the loosened earth, and from the heights was heard no wood-horn calling the cattle at feeding time. All was still ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... with the saints, we trust.' [Footnote: [The author has somewhat altered part of a beautiful unpublished fragment of Coleridge:— "Where is the grave of Sir Arthur Orellan,— Where may the grave of that good knight be? By the marge of a brook, on the slope of Helvellyn, Under the boughs of a young birch tree. The Oak that in summer was pleasant to hear, That rustled in Autumn all withered and sear, That whistled and groan'd thro' the Winter alone, He hath gone, and a birch in his place is grown. The knight's bones ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... extended wings," sing the wild swans. "Let us bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs (rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green valley, up over the snow-drifts, to the mountain's top, whence thou canst see the North Sea, on yonder ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... beauty and variety to the landscape. Above these scattered woods rose the hill, in barren, but purple majesty; the dark rich hue, particularly in autumn, contrasting beautifully with the thickets of oak and birch, the mountain ashes and thorns, the alders and quivering aspens, which checquered and varied the descent, and not less with the dark-green and velvet turf, which composed the level part ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... BIRCH, SAMUEL, archaeologist and Egyptologist, born in London; keeper of Oriental antiquities in the British Museum; had an extensive knowledge of Egyptology, wrote largely, and contributed articles on that and kindred ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sound of his wife's voice. Sometimes the women had to bring in fire-wood themselves, but to-night he filled the great wood-box just outside the kitchen door, piling it high with green beech and maple, with plenty of dry birch and pine, taking pains to select the best and straightest sticks, even if he burrowed deep into the wood-pile. He brought the bushel basketful of kindlings last, and set it down with a cheerful grunt, having worked himself into good humor ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and slanting rain Have swept the woods and dimmed the plain. Wet winds have swayed the birch and oak, And caught and swirled away the smoke, But, all day long, the wooden ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there. The primrose pale and violet flower, Found in each cliff's narrow bower; Foxglove and nightshade side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride; Gray birch and aspen wept beneath; Aloft the ash and warrior oak, Cast anchor in the rifted rock; And higher yet the pine-tree hung, His shattered trunk, and frequent flung Where seemed the cliff to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrow ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... Jackson, Colonel Denny, Doctor Birch, and Samuel Clemens who evaded the quarantine and made the perilous night trip to Athens and looked upon the Parthenon and the sleeping city by moonlight. It is all set down in the notes, and the account varies little from that given in the book; only he ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was declared, therefore, they began to build strong fortifications in the interior of North America. It was strange to behold these warlike castles on the banks of solitary lakes and far in the midst of woods. The Indian, paddling his birch canoe on Lake Champlain, looked up at the high ramparts of Ticonderoga, stone piled on stone, bristling with cannon, and the white flag of France floating above. There were similar fortifications on Lake Ontario, and near the great Falls of Niagara, and at ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and village assemble themselves together, both men, women, and children, olde and young, all indifferently, and goe into the woodes and groves, hilles and mountaines, where they spend the night in pastyme, and in the morning they returne, bringing with them birch bowes and braunches of trees to deck their assembly withal. . . . They have twentie or fourtie yoke of oxen, every oxe having a sweete nosegay of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these draw home this Maypole (this stincking idol rather) which is covered all over ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... an education, was not fortunate in his teachers. Saint- Laurent, to whom he was first confided, was, it is true, the man in all Europe best fitted to act as the instructor of kings, but he died before his pupil was beyond the birch, and the young Prince, as I have related, fell entirely into the hands of the Abbe Dubois. This person has played such an important part in the state since the death of the King, that it is fit that he should be made known. The Abbe Dubois ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... notes by way of remark; the blackbird was heard, flute-throated, down in the hollow recesses of the wood; and the thrush, in a holly tree by the wayside, sang out his sweet, clear song that seemed to rise in strength as the wind awoke a sudden rustling through the long woods of birch and oak.—WILLIAM BLACK, in Adventures ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... 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 ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... amazing story about Jane Smif, in addition to running away, mother whipped me for the first time in my life with a birch switch. ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... had bought you shall be given to Nannie Cameron, and you shall wear your old one to the kirk. How will that suit your vanity? And you may be off to bed now directly, without any supper. There are twigs enough for a birch rod, my lady, if bed does not bring you to a better frame of mind. Run in now, and don't let me see your face before ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... at a neighbouring farm-house, where there lived one of Mr. Walsingham's tenants; a man of the name of Birch, a respectable farmer, who was originally from Ireland, and whose son was at sea with Captain Walsingham. The captain had taken young Birch under his particular care, at Mr. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... he suddenly appeared from behind a hayrick. I was so startled that I turned to fly, and in my precipitancy tripped on a tussock and fell. Mr. Diggles came to my assistance, and, when he had helped me to my feet and brushed me down with a birch broom he was carrying, I could do nothing less than buy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... his permit, built his boats,—whether light, roomy bateaux made of boards, or birch-bark canoes, or pirogues, which were simply hollowed out logs. He loaded them with paint, powder, bullets, blankets, beads, and rum, manned them with hardy voyageurs, trained all their lives in the use of pole and paddle, and started off up or down the Mississippi,[25] the Ohio, or the Wabash, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... face of the hill fell, an abrupt promontory, to the woods of the plain. Its face was scored by the weather, and the dry drainage channels were headlong cascades of grey pebbles. Clumps of heather, sparse oak scrub with young leaves of bronze, contorted birch, and this year's croziers of the bracken (heaven knows their secret for getting lush aromatic sap out of such stony poverty), all made a tough life which held up the hill, steep as it was; though the hill ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... winds so sweet with birch and fern, A sweeter memory blow; And there in spring the veeries sing The song ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... him?' asked Raja Haji, 'He had cheated me and it was not fitting that he should live; besides, he was a Chinaman, and we counted not their lives as being of any worth. In Kinta, before Mr. Birch went to Perak, they had a game called Main China, each man betting on the number of the coins which a passing Chinaman carried in his pouch, and whether they were odd or even. Thereafter, when the bets had been made, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... as the best on earth. Horapollo, or rather his commentator Bolzani, says, that when the master of the house is going a journey, he hangs out a broom of fig boughs for good luck. Our forefathers preferred a broom of birch; as if, in the master's absence, it was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... company—plenty of company! he got Taliesin—Owen Glyndwr—Iolo Morganwg and all the rest of them! and he's quite happy in their company. But once he comes down to live with us he's as rough and prickly as a birch-broom. Indeed he wass nevver used to be like this whatever; 'tis ever since his brother John die, and leave all his money ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... spied me from the village, and 'twas her brought me ashore in her birch-bark and tended me in her wick-i-up till reason came and the blood ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... delicious that he fell sound asleep the moment it began to carry him upwards; and he could not keep awake long enough even to thank the sender of it. When he awoke, he was lying on the grass under a silver birch tree, and in front of him was a red brick fort with battlements and a drawbridge. It was so like the fort in which he kept all his tin soldiers in the nursery at home that he was not at all surprised when a sentinel without a head came out in answer to his knock. He remembered ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... church, garlands of birch leaves hung here and there on the white walls and festooned the carved pulpit. Green wreaths crowned the golden angels that supported, each with one lifted hand, the sculptured altar-piece; while in the other, outstretched, they loosely held wild flowers, ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... islands casting their soft shades Across the lake; sequester'd leafy glades, That through the dimness of their twilight show Large dock leaves, spiral foxgloves, or the glow Of the wild cat's eyes, or the silvery stems Of delicate birch trees, or long grass which hems A little brook. The youth had long been viewing These pleasant things, and heaven was bedewing The mountain flowers, when his glad senses caught A trumpet's silver voice. Ah! it was fraught With many joys for him: the ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... curious hut contrived by Cluny in one of the inmost recesses of the hills. It was called 'The Cage,' and was placed in a little thicket on the rocky slope of a hill. The walls were formed by actual growing trees with stakes planted between them, the whole woven together by ropes of heather and birch. Till you were close to the hut it looked merely like a thick clump of trees and bushes. The smoke escaped along the rocks, and the stone being of a bluish colour it could easily pass unnoticed. This hut could only ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... flooded 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 ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... slenderness, once more she caught from the air an inspiration. She would incase Kedzie in a sheath of soft, white kid marked with delicate lines and set off with black gloves and a hat of green leaves. And this she would call "The White Birch." ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... stopped for a half hour at sunset, when the sky, for a few moments, showed streaks of red, then closed in for a night's drizzle. I had built what shelter I could for the woman out of boughs covered with sheets of paper birch and elm. I had made a similar shelter for myself that I might not seem to discriminate too much in favor of the Englishman, and had told the men to do the same. But they were indolent, and stopped at chopping a few hemlock boughs, which they laid across crotched aspens. In truth, our shelters ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... passage have gone; a happy journey and welcome back again! Titmouse and blackcap and a hedge-sparrow or so live now alone in the bush and undergrowth: tuitui! All is so curiously changed—the dwarf birch bleeds redly against the grey stones, a harebell here and there shows among the heather, swaying and whispering a little song: sh! But high above all hovers an eagle with outstretched neck, on his way ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... of this book is found sculptured on a certain number of the tombs of the Theban kings. It was first translated into English by Birch, then into French by Deveria, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... September I came vnto Vologhda, which is a great citie, and the riuer passeth through the midst of the same. The houses are builded with wood of Firre trees, ioyned one with another, and round without: the houses are foure square without any iron or stone worke, couered with birch barkes, and wood ouer the same: Their Churches are all of wood, two for euery parish, one to be heated for Winter, and the other ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... without evidence, also, of a much more severe climate. In a lignite bed (a species of coal) found in nearly the same latitude as the forest growth just mentioned, we detect the presence of trees that grow only in cold northern climates, such as birch, mountain pine, larch, and spruce. And in some peat-bogs of Southern Europe belonging to this age are found willows now growing only in Spitzbergen, and some species of mosses that only thrive far to the north. It is quite evident that this deposit testifies to an altogether different ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... such style, is to be found in all these books when they are good books. Compare a paragraph or two of the early Burroughs on his birch-clad lake country, or Thoreau upon Concord pines, with the "natural history paragraph" that English magazines used to publish, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... many proposed derivations of the word Pyramid. Perhaps the origin of the name suggested by the distinguished Egyptologist, Mr. Birch, from two Coptic words, "pouro," "ing," and "emahau," or "maha," "tomb,"—the two in combination signifying "the king's tomb,"—is the most correct. "Men," in Coptic, signifies "monument," "memorial;" and "pouro-men," or ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... have decided not to birch boys in the future, but to fine their parents. Several soft-hearted boys have already indicated that it will hurt them more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... Fuller's appreciation of our native trees. In few instances should we have to go far from home to find nearly all that we wanted in beautiful variety—maples, dogwoods, scarlet and chestnut oaks, the liquid- amber, the whitewood or tulip-tree, white birch, and horn-beam, or the hop-tree; not to speak of the evergreens and shrubs indigenous to our forests. Perhaps it is not generally known that the persimmon, so well remembered by old campaigners in Virginia, will grow readily in this latitude. There are forests of this tree ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... ancient extensive forests of fir and pine are found in the numerous peat bogs which supply a large proportion of the fuel locally used. In Bornholm, it should be mentioned, the flora is more like that of Sweden; not the beech, but the pine, birch and ash are the most ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... boy dearly, and she often gently chided him, but he would not listen to her, and when she urged him to be more diligent, he ran out of the room. The monks did not spare the birch rod, and soon it was a case of a whipping ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... beside my fire, slipping on a great roll of birch bark which blazed up brightly, filling the woods with light. There, under a spruce, where a dark shadow had been a moment agone, stood the mother, her eyes all ablaze with the wonder of the light; now staring steadfastly into the fire; now starting nervously, with low questioning snorts, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... bring shame to the beholder from more easy-going conditions. Everything is kept up with a strenuous virtue that imparts an air of self-respect to the landscape, which the bleaching and blackening stone walls, wandering over the hill-slopes, divide into wood lots of white birch and pine, stony pastures, and little patches of potatoes and corn. The mowing-lands alone are rich; and if the New England year is in the glory of the latest June, the breath of the clover blows honey—sweet into the car windows, and the fragrance of the new-cut hay ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fifteenth century, we offer the following synopsis, which classifies and indicates the development of the different hands used by writers and illuminators of MSS. It is constructed on the information given in Wailly's large work on Palography, and in Dr. de Grey Birch's book on the Utrecht Psalter. The former work affords excellent facsimiles, which, together with those given in the plates published by the Palographical Society, will give the student the clearest possible ideas respecting ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... recounted: and the more he related, the more he remembered himself; and it appeared as if those times had really been happy times. "But they may still come—they may still come! Humpy-Dumpy fell downstairs, and yet he got a princess!" and he thought at the moment of a nice little Birch Tree growing out in the woods: to the Fir, that would be a ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... a long, old-fashioned rough-cast house facing the east, with great wide windows on each side of the door and a veranda all the way across the front. The big lawn was quite uneven, and broken here and there by birch trees, spruces, and crazy clumps of rose-bushes, all in bloom. Altogether it was a sweet, home-like old place. The view to the south showed, over the village roofs on the hill-side, the blue of Lake Erie outlined against the sky, while to the north stretched the open, ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... narrow way which we had followed for some miles, upon one much wider, and more commodious, which my guide told me was the coach road from Wrexham to Ruthyn, and going on a little farther we came to an avenue of trees which shaded the road. It was chiefly composed of ash, sycamore and birch, and looked delightfully cool and shady. I asked my guide if it belonged to any gentleman's house. He told me that it did not, but to a public-house, called Tafarn Tywarch, which stood near the end, a little way off the road. "Why is it called Tafarn Tywarch?" said I, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... superior intelligence. Insatiable in their thirst for adventure, they were willing to assume all manner of risks or privations. Spring might find them at Lake Champlain, autumn at the head-waters of the Mississippi, a trusty birch-bark having carried them the thousand miles between. Their work did not figure very heavily in the colony's annual balance-sheet of progress with its statistics of acreage newly cleared, homes built and harvests stowed safely away. But according to their own ideals of service they valiantly served ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... on me fait tort!" preserves the custom of Normandy, and of Rollo the Dane, in Jersey, so that the sound of it "makes the workman drop his tools, the woman her knitting, the militiaman his musket, the fisherman his net, the schoolmaster his birch, and the ecrivain his babble, to await the judgment of ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... existence is the map of the Ethiopian Goldmines, dating from the time of Sethos I., the father of Rameses II., long enough before the time of the bronze tablet of Aristagoras, on which was inscribed the circuit of the whole earth, and all the sea and all rivers. (Tylor, p. 90, quoted from Birch's Archaeologia, vol. xxxiv. p. 382.) Sesostris was the first ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... glory in my evergreens. What winter-garden can compare for them 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, in endless new variety, of a few simple elements? ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... the third strake under the wale were found to be stove in, and the timbers within started. The farther they proceeded in removing the sheathing, the more they discovered the decayed state of the ship's hull. The chief damage was repaired with a birch tree, which had been cut down when they were there before, and was the only one in the neighbourhood large enough for the purpose; but Captain King gave orders that no more sheathing should be ripped off, being apprehensive that further decayed planks might be met with which ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... horse whinnying for his corn; And sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows, 15 The cattle shake their walnut bows; While peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent And down ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... not understand the life we lead; If we asked Dr. Birch to play, no doubt he'd rather read; He hates all scrambling restlessness, and chattering, scuffling noise; If he could catch us we should fare no ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and, after first gathering a few dry sticks, he struck a light, and soon made a little fire. They found a birch tree growing near, and they stripped off some pieces of the bark. These they laid upon the fire, holding the ends of two long sticks upon them, in such a manner, that, as the pieces of birch bark curled up under the influence ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... 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 its skulls ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Signore Tommaso de' Medici, the Chamberlain of the Court, and gave him instructions to set the boy at liberty, after administering the useful punishment of twenty strokes with a birch rod, and giving him a severe reprimand ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... rose, and, after, women wailed their warriors slain, 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 sweep; And behold ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... sections, overgrown with artemisia, wormwood, and wild tansy; he gazed ... and that fresh, fertile nakedness and wildness of the steppe, that verdure, those long hillocks, the ravines with stubby oak bushes, the grey hamlets, the flexible birch-trees,—this whole Russian picture, which he had not seen for a long time, wafted into his soul sweet and, at the same time, painful sensations, weighed on his breast with a certain agreeable oppression. His thoughts slowly roved about; their outlines were as indistinct ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... many who didn't. 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 ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... should be of a different kind. The task of governing well was becoming more and more difficult, and reigning monarchs were criticized in an open fashion, such as had not hitherto been possible. After much thought the post was given to Mr Henry Birch (formerly a master at Eton College, and at that time rector of Prestwich, near Manchester), who had made a very favourable impression upon ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... concerning the lake and vicinity. When Fern Rock was reached, all went ashore, and our hero pointed out the ferns he had seen, and dug up such as the others wished to take along. An hour was spent over the ferns, and in getting some birch bark, and then they started on the return ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... on either side, the high pines, breathing their fragrance out into the darkness, and, like ghosts amongst them, the silver stems of birch-trees. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... THOMAS BIRCH, the well-known painter, died in Philadelphia on the 14th of January, at the ripe age of seventy-two, after a life of quiet and laborious devotion to his profession. He was distinguished in a particular department of landscape and marine painting, delighting in the treatment of coast and river ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... usefulness as implements of persuasion, being now employed exclusively as foot-gear. The lissom birch thrives ungarnered in the thicket, where grace and gentleness supply the whilom vigor of its sway. The unyielding barrel-stave, that formerly occupied a place of honor and convenience in the household, is now relegated, a harmless thing, to a forgotten corner of the cellar, and no ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... gooseberry (Ribes Grossularia) and the red oranges. The red hue is far more 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, ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... Philip knew anything about were quite small, and were called canoes. They were made either of birch bark fastened over a light wooden frame, or of logs that had been hollowed by ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... that likes birds; if you'll come with me, I'll show 'ee what no man ever seed afore"; and Caleb, fired with curiosity, followed him away to a distance from home, out from the downs, into the woods and to a place where he had never been, where there were bracken and heath with birch and thorn-trees scattered about. On cautiously approaching a clump of birches they saw a big, thrush-like bird fly out of a large nest about ten feet from the ground, and settle on a tree close by, where it was joined by its mate. The old man pointed out that ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... weight aloof, To hide it where one ghastly birch Held up the rafters of the roof, And grim old pine-trees ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... my beautiful, it is not the sunset nor the pale green sky shimmering through the curtain of the silver birch, nor the quietness; it is not the hopping of birds upon the lawn, nor the darkness stealing over ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... not touch them without her permission. In many cases such property was very extensive. Among the Menomini Indians, for instance, a woman of good circumstances would own as many as 1200 to 1500 birch-bark vessels.[178] In the New Mexico Pueblos what comes from the outside of the house as soon as it is inside is put under the immediate control of the women. Bandelier, in his report of his tour in Mexico, tells us that "his host at Cochiti, New Mexico, could ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... The birch-bark canoe, made by the Indians of the northern rivers and lakes, is really a work of art. It is a model of lightness, and when we consider its frailty, and then the way in which it can be managed in the most turbulent currents, our admiration is divided between the craft ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... 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 affection, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... keen observation reduced to a saying or a story. It is true that the oak-tree is a black witch so far as lightning is concerned and that the beech and alder are white witches. The proportion of trees struck by lightning has often been counted and for every fifty-four oaks struck, only one beech, or birch, or maple or alder is struck. Elms are fairly dangerous, being forty to the beech's one, and pines are less so, their ratio being fifteen. Not only this, boys, but a good deal depends on the way in which a tree is struck. An oak-tree may be riven into splinters, showing the terrible resistance that ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler |
