"Hothouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his course, is one which Professor Tyndall has no intention whatever of admitting. And you may then observe, in the second place, that, if even in that figurative sense, the lilies of the field are the sun's workmanship, in the same sense the lilies of the hothouse are the stove's workmanship,—and in perfectly logical parallel, you, who are alive here to listen to me, because you have been warmed and fed through the winter, are the ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... the dull ears quickened to catch the pleading accents of the blessed lord? 'Do it unto Me'? none would longer count their flowers and fruit their own, the Royal seal would be seen on each, whether growing wild in copses, or carefully nurtured in hothouse and conservatory, and these treasures would be poured out for those so sadly ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... felt and spoke as she had done that night in the Man Far Low, she was unwholesome, super-refined, super-civilized—she was proceeding by the hothouse morals which she had learned in books and in European studios. When she felt as she did on that first night under the bay tree, she was ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... they paused a moment in the hall to don their coats; a stream of people with spotless bosoms eddied round the doors, as if in momentary dread of leaving this hothouse of false morals and emotions for the wet, gusty streets, where human plants thrive and die, human weeds flourish and fade under the fresh, impartial skies. The lights revealed innumerable solemn faces, gleamed innumerably on jewels, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... am not mistaken. I heard her myself when she told him so. It was in Count Schwarzenberg's hothouse; I came behind her with the ladies, and she thought I was paying no attention whatever to her and all that she was saying to Count Adolphus. But I managed to watch her constantly without attracting the attention of the ladies ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... provide the demonstration,— A good old Norse one, sound, true-born, home-bred. You draw distinction between wedded pledges And those of Love: your Logic's without flaw. They are distinguished just as roast from raw, As hothouse bloom from wilding of the hedges! Love is with us a science and an art; It long ago since ceased to animate the heart. Love is with us a trade, a special line Of business, with its union, code and sign; It is a guild ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... bright blue Chinese shawl perched on her high-piled hair, was still a picture of primitive and savage grace. They were handsome, these girls, but they were wild flowers. Mlle. N—— had the poise and delicacy of the hothouse blossom. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... that is all that any one can say. The gift is not handed down: the man of talent has a fool for a son. Nor is it acquired; but it is improved by practice. He who has not the germ of it in his veins will never possess it, in spite of all the pains of a hothouse education. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... which was dark, glossy, and of singular abundance, was put up rather soberly and primly—without curls, or other ornament, except a single flower. It was an exotic of rare beauty, and as fresh as if the hothouse gardener had just clipt it from the stem. That flower has struck deep root into my memory. I can both see it and smell it, at this moment. So brilliant, so rare, so costly as it must have been, and yet enduring only ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... black hat, but a gown that seemed to have been moulded on to her slim, faultless figure. She brought with her a musical rustle, a slight suggestion of subtle perfumes—a perfume so thin and ethereal that it was unrecognizable except in its faint suggestion of hothouse flowers. She held out her hand to Laverick, who placed for her at ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nothing to hope, nothing to cling to, nothing but black despair; and half bewildered, she received the noisy greeting of Jessie, who met her at the door, and dragged her into the drawing-room, decorated with flowers from the hothouse, told her to ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... huger broad-leaved trees in every stage of decay. The drowned vegetable soil of ages beneath me; above my head, for a hundred feet, a mass of stems and boughs, and leaves and flowers, compared with which the richest hothouse in England was poor and small. But if the sinking process which was going on continued a few hundred years, all that huge mass of wood and leaf would be sunk beneath the swamp, and covered up in mud washed down from the mountains, and sand driven in from the sea; to form ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... he could have had for the asking; but none was, in his own phraseology, "just the right thing." He wanted something unusual, and yet not exotic—something obvious, which no one else had observed—something cultivated, and yet native—something as exquisite as any hothouse orchid, but with the keen, fresh scent of the American woods and waters on its bloom. It was not a thing to be picked up every day, and so he kept on the lookout for it, and waited. Even when he found it, he was not ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Change the temperature of your body by but a few degrees and you die. But you travel through space safely, with a freezing ocean of ether about you. You travel in company with suns that throw out endless billions of degrees of heat. You are protected in a travelling hothouse, regulated exactly to suit your feeble strength and all your ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... fever, nevertheless we went down to the work-shed. It was a pitch-dark night, the air was like that in a hothouse, smelling of earth and mould. The surf boomed sullenly on the beach, and heavy squalls flogged the forest. Sometimes a rotten branch snapped, and the sound travelled, dull ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Talu, Jeddak of Okar, coming in response to the call from the warlord. Upon the decks of the sullen ships of war black-bearded yellow men looked over eagerly toward the south. Gorgeous were they in their splendid cloaks of orluk and apt. Fierce, formidable fighters from the hothouse ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wire was run from Chazy Junction to Bob West's former storage shed and a telephone gang came along and placed a private wire, with long-distance connections, in the new newspaper office. The office itself became transformed—"as full o' winders as a hothouse!" exclaimed Peggy McNutt, with bulging eyes—and neat partitions were placed for the offices. There was no longer any secret as to the plans of the "nabobs"; it was generally understood that those terribly ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... faro tables of the market increased the stakes and opened new tables. New industrial companies sprung up overnight like mushrooms, watered and sunned by the easy optimism of the hour. The rumors of war disturbed this hothouse growth. But the "big people" took advantage of these to squeeze the "little people," and all worked to the glory of the great god. In the breast of every man on the street was seated one conviction: 'This is a mighty country, and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... patience and understanding. Here was laid out before her the bared heart of the "poor little rich girl." She pieced the bits together until she had the whole picture of this odd, unnatural, hothouse child—antagonistic to her parents, to her school, yet full of feeling, and coming into the age when the emotions play such havoc. No wonder she had settled her youthful affections upon Jerry. He was so preeminently the type one loves at ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... Ormersfield wait upon him, grudging every moment spent away from him, and trying to forestall each wish, till he became almost afraid to express a desire, on account of the trouble it would cause. Mary found the Earl one day wandering among the vines in the old hothouse, in search of a flower, when, to her amusement, he selected a stiff pert double hyacinth, the special aversion of his son, who nevertheless received it most graciously, and would fain have concealed ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... here yet," said an old gray-haired Woman, who was going about and watching the hothouse of Death. "How have you found your way ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... be done? Lovers with all the glories and all the graces are supposed to be plentiful as blackberries by girls of nineteen, but have been proved to be rare hothouse fruits by girls of twenty-nine. Brehgert was rich, would live in London, and would be a husband. People did such odd things now and 'lived them down,' that she could see no reason why she should not do this and live ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... considerable item of household expenditure, and scanty would have been the supply it would have furnished; as it was we had a profusion of fruit of all kinds, from the humble gooseberry and currant to the finest peaches, nectarines, and hothouse grapes, as well as an abundant ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... could be very sweetly vivacious. When he had looked at it for a longish time he nodded and smiled, as if the pictured lips had actually spoken to him. There was a tumbler standing beside the photograph with a bunch of hothouse flowers in it, the one bright spot of colour in the dingy chamber. He took this in his disengaged hand, and nodding and smiling anew at the pretty girl's portrait, he turned about again, and walked into a bedroom beyond ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... in a discovery; he, who was so weary of the cultivated hothouse species of femininity, had chanced quite by accident upon a rare, unclassified wild-flower, that piqued his curiosity and enlisted his interest. For two months he had depended almost entirely upon his young hostess for companionship, and the fact that the large box of books ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... against the wall, a round, gate-legged table on which stood a blue china bowl filled with pink roses, a couple of luxurious easy-chairs, some old prints upon the wall. On the sideboard was a basket, as yet unpacked, filled with hothouse fruit, and on a low settee by the side of one of the easy-chairs were a little pile of reviews, several volumes of poetry, and a couple of library books. In the centre of the mantelpiece was a photograph, the photograph of ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... richer than I expected, though far from luxuriant. A fine Nauclea is a common shady tree, and Bignonia indica, now leafless, but with immense pods hanging from the branches. Acanthaceae is the prevalent natural order, consisting of gay-flowered Eranthemums, Ruellias, Barlerias, and such hothouse favourites.* [Other plants gathered here, and very typical of the Flora of this dry region, were Linum trigynum, Feronia elephantum, Aegle marmelos, Helicteres Asoca, Abrus precatorius, Flemingia; various Desmodia, Rhynchosiae, Glycine, and Grislea tomentosa very ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... these wonders is my friend!" Their eyes have never been opened to see that they are trifles; mine have been, and will be till they are closed for ever. They think a fine estate, a large conservatory, a hothouse rich as a West Indian garden, things of consequence; visit them with pleasure, and muse upon them with ten times more. I am pleased with a frame of four lights, doubtful whether the few pines it contains will ever ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... with several tempting-looking parcels in his arms, and oh, best of all, the dearest and prettiest little flowery plant growing in a pot! It was a heath—like some we had in the hothouse at home—and it was so pretty. I nearly jumped ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... the trunks. Creepers laced the great cottonwoods, tangled vines crawled about their tall, buttressed roots, and hung in festoons from the giant branches. Some of the trees were rotten and orchids covered their decay with fantastic bloom. The forest smelt like a hothouse, but the smell had an unwholesome sourness. Growth ran riot; green things shot up, choked each other, and sank ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... sight, she received the doctor as yesterday, standing. But with a nice little colour in her cheeks to-day, in place of yesterday's sad want of it. Dr. Harrison came up with one hand full of a most rare and elegant bunch of hothouse flowers. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... yet suggested, rather than fully revealed, deformity, as if the minds of these monsters sought to reveal their distortion by the very lines of their curved and wanton limbs. Upon the top of this cabinet stood a gigantic rose-coloured jar filled with orchids, the Messalinas of the hothouse, whose mauve corruption and spotted faces leered down to greet the gold goblins beneath. It was easy to imagine them whispering to each other soft histories of unknown sins, and jeering at the corrupt respectabilities of London, as they clustered together ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... childhood and maturity. Mothers and nurses cannot give this subject too much thought and care, since the welfare of future generations depends largely upon intestinal cleanliness, in view of the rich and racy life of our hothouse civilization. We are a people poisoned through constipation and diarrhea: two affections that derange more lives than all other pathological conditions together. Banish alimentary uncleanliness and you take most of the poisons from the human race—poisons that stunt the ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... preserved by constant attention. The translator has to wear a mask which is always in danger of being rudely shattered. Such an intellectual feat is likely to produce what, in the most obvious sense, one would call highly artificial work. Modern classicism must be fine-spun, and smell rather of the hothouse than the open air. Undoubtedly some exquisite literary achievements have been accomplished in this spirit; but they are, after all, calculated for the small circle of cultivated minds, and many of their merits can be ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... somewhat complex disposition, was, for a man of affairs and an American, singularly fond of the small elegances of life. Although he sat alone at dinner, the table was heaped with choice flowers and carefully selected hothouse fruit. His one glass of wine, the best of its sort, he sipped meditatively, and with the air of a connoisseur. The soft lights upon the table were such as a woman, mindful of her complexion, might have chosen. Behind his chair stood his English butler, grave, solemn-faced, ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whose gaze was difficult to endure, and whose health was so fragile, for when only a few months old he had almost died of infantile enteritis. His parents had been obliged to carry him hastily to Switzerland, and then to Hyeres, and to keep him in an atmosphere like that of a hothouse. Petted and spoiled, tended by women, like Achilles at Scyros among the daughters of Lycomedes, would he not bear all his life the stamp of too softening an education? Too pretty and too frail, with his curls and his dainty little frock, he had an air de princesse. ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... the lamps of the park went out, but the moon shone on, lustrous and splendid. First he reviewed his odd adventure in the archbishop's gardens. He had spoken to princesses before, but they were women of the world, hothouse roses that bloom and wither in a short space. The atmosphere which surrounded this princess was idyllic, pastoral. She had seen nothing of the world, its sports and pastimes, and the art of playing at love was unknown to her. Again he could see ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... help rejoicing to see how many evidences of affection to the Rector were called forth by this illness; presents of fruit poured in from all quarters, from Lord Rotherwood's choice hothouse grapes, to poor little Kezia Grey's wood-strawberries; inquiries were continual, and the stillness of the village was wonderful. There was no cricket on the hill, no talking in the street, no hallooing in the hay-field, and no burst of noise ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wheeled aloof from the table, on which were Steel's hat and gloves, and such a sheaf of book-stall literature as suggested his immediate departure upon no short journey, unless, indeed, the magazines and the Sunday newspapers turned out to be another offering to Mrs. Minchin, like the nosegay of hothouse flowers which she still held in her hand. Rachel herself had inadvertently taken the very easy-chair which was a further feature of the recess; in its cushioned depths she already felt at a needless disadvantage, with Mr. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... scourging and freezing, the Jardin de la Fontaine is serene and windless. The mistral goes always with a cloudless sky, as though the clouds were fleeing from its icy keenness, and the sun pours full upon the semi-circle of the Jardin de la Fontaine, turning it to a hothouse where the most delicate plants and shrubs can find ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... bestowed on Margaret was a box of lovely hothouse flowers. There was only "Merry ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... on that throng of the first mounts in the Service; brilliant glances by the hundred gleamed down behind hothouse bouquets of their chosen color, eager ones by the thousand stared thirstily from the crowded course, the roar of the Ring subsided for a second, a breathless attention and suspense succeeded it; the Guardsmen sat on their drags, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... in asseverations to the contrary; and Madame, running into the little salon, brought thence a pretty basket, filled with fine hothouse fruit, rosy, perfect, and tempting, reposing amongst the dark green, wax-like leaves, and pale yellow stars of, I know not what, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... to modern Spain and Italy, the early exhaustion of resources and dwarfing of political ideals which characterize most small areas become increasingly conspicuous. The history of Sweden, Denmark, and the Hanse Towns in the Baltic tells the same story, the story of a hothouse plant, forced in germination and growth, then stifled in ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... and walks with Beatrice were rare events now because he was so keen on the business of looking for his Colorado protegee. He gave them up reluctantly. Every time they went out together into the open Miss Whitford became more discontented with the hothouse existence she was living. He felt there was just a chance that if he were constant enough, he might sweep her off her feet into that deeper current of life that lay beyond the social shallows. But he had to sacrifice this chance. He was not going to let Kitty's young ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... bouquet of rare and brilliant hothouse blossoms, whose delicious fragrance had already pervaded the room. They stood side by side, yet she shrank farther, and kept her face averted, shivering perceptibly. Lifting one arm he drew down the sash to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... horribly cold and hungry; and this is a combination which kills sentiment in bigger people than myself. The emotions, like a hothouse flower or a sea-dianthus, wither curiously when aired in an east wind, or kept some hours waiting ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... at last, when he set foot on the soil, he had felt like one drunk—After the mist and the cold already begun in Northern France, he felt the sudden and voluptuous impression of a warmer climate, the sensation of going into a hothouse. There was a festival of sunlight that day; the southern wind, the exquisite southern wind, blew, and the Pyrenees had magnificent tints on the grand, free sky. Moreover, girls passed, whose laughter rang of the South and of ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... mite to the fund which purchased spring flowers—hothouse-grown, for this April was a villainous prolongation of winter—with which to strew the approach to the station and fill the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... prairies of Nebraska. She wore a tailor-made suit of dark material, a sailor hat, tan gloves with big welts on the back and stout, low-heeled Oxfords. This was the young woman who had come five thousand miles to improve her health! This was the child of the Orient, and in the Orient, woman is a hothouse flower. This was the timid young recluse to whom the soft-spoken diplomats were to carry a few roses ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... the jungle were very exciting. Ah! what a delight it is to see trees and plants at home which one has only seen as the exotics of a hothouse, or read of in books! In the day's journey I counted one hundred and twenty-six differing trees and shrubs, fifty-three trailers, seventeen epiphytes, and twenty-eight ferns. I saw more of the shrubs ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... met her at the station, looking reassuringly cheerful and at ease a magnificent new motor stood in waiting outside, with a cart for the luggage. Inside the beautiful old house the atmosphere was warmed by hot pipes, and scented with the fragrance of hothouse plants, banked together in every corner. It was not the usual case of being warm and cosy inside a room, and miserably chilled every time one crossed a passage or ascended the stairs. Mrs Percival and the girls were marvels of elegance in Parisian ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... carriages lined the streets approaching the entrance to the Academy. The great staircase leading into the main hall was carpeted with crimson baize, for Royal visitors were expected, and on each stair were placed luxuriant pots of hothouse plants which perfumed the heated air ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... as she walked last into the room, Anna uttered a guttural expression of delighted surprise, for it was as if every hothouse flower in Witanbury had been gathered to do honour to the white-clad, veiled figure who now stood, with downcast ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... have done was to take the whisky, make him look at it all round and tell it, with his own conviction and not mine, to go to hell. I ought never, never to have protected him, and made him a hothouse plant." ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the Age of the Hothouse. The element of natural growth is pushed to one side and the hothouse and the force-pump are substituted. Nature looks on tolerantly as she says: "So far you may go, but no ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... mordent. But the magnificent flight of the great stair—there are properly eleven flights, divided by as many spacious and handsomely balustraded landing-places, each flight consisting of twelve steps, and all of white marble—with its southern exposure has almost the temperature of a hothouse. There are two or three beggars basking in the sunshine near the bottom of the steps. But our models do not consort with these. Not only are they not beggars, but they belong to a different caste and a different race. We leisurely saunter up the huge stair, pausing at each landing-place ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... nodded. "And I'll save you the trouble of suggesting," he added, "that we are nothing more nor less than hothouse people!" ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... a handsome apartment, hung round with pictures and decorated with choice hothouse flowers and evergreens, as unlike as possible anything one might expect to find ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... timber have made possible a great growth of industries without protection against the Eastern states. Industries capable of eventual self-support must in most cases naturally appear in due time. Economic forces will bring them out. The protective system has often been likened to a hothouse, anticipating the season by a few weeks and at great cost. The question is whether the mere possession of the hothouse is a luxury worth the price, if meantime the products can be got more cheaply by trade. English manufactures flourished in the nineteenth century because they were well established, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... to the more refined observer ab initio—that he can no more (if as much) dare to take a liberty with the American girl than with his own countrywoman. The plum may appear to be more easily handled, but its bloom will be found to be as intact and as ethereal as in the jealously guarded hothouse fruit of Europe. He will find that her frank and charming companionability is as far removed from masculinity as from coarseness; that the points in which she differs from the European lady do not bring her nearer either to a man on the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... was sitting before her bedroom fire writing. It has a magic of its own—the bedroom fire. Not such a one as night by night warms hothouse bedrooms of the rich, but that which burns but once or twice a year. How the coals glow between the bars, how the red light shimmers on the black-lead bricks, how the posset steams upon the hob! Milk ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Noticing some rare hothouse flowers in a vase upon the table near her bed, Mrs. Waul hastened to explain to the invalid that every other day during her illness, bouquets had been brought to their hotel by the servant of some American gentleman, who was anxious to receive constant tidings ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Horace; and after all these fascinating but doubtful Lydes, Neaeras, and Pyrrhas, it is pleasant to come across a young beauty like this Phyllis, sic fidelem, sic lucro aversam. She, at least, is a fresh and fragrant violet among the languorous hothouse ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... name was coupled, as we have seen, with those of Newton and Humboldt. Newton died at eighty-six, Humboldt at ninety. These men developed slowly: the hothouse methods were not for them. Fiske at twenty knew more than any of them did at forty. Fiske at twenty-five was a better man mentally and physically than he was at thirty-five. At forty he was refused life-insurance because his measurement east ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... salons. A fete! And this evening! In the arrival of those flowers for decoration, at the moment when chance, clumsily or wickedly, so suddenly revealed that crushing news, Guy saw so much irony that he could not forbear looking at them for a moment, almost insulting in their beauty and their hothouse bloom. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... and shore, or until they sailed for a time along some wild and beautiful tropic coast. Then Chris would lean on the side of the ship looking at the mountainous or jungled shore. A scent such as comes from the opened door of a hothouse would drift out to sea to the sailors, who looked yearningly toward the land and the greenness. A warm breath of flowers, damp moss, and leaves in the sun would mingle with the rough salt smell of the sea. Chris and Amos imagined to ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... over-stimulate its intelligence, over-excite its imagination, or over-strain its mental powers. After the age of ten the great danger is over; up to that time it is the health of the body which requires care; not fuss, not rearing like a hothouse plant, but the healthy training that ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... place exclusively under the form of barter. In place of this, we find now something more than the beginnings of a national-market and distinct traces of that of a world-market. In the towns the change was even still more marked. Here we have a sudden and hothouse-like development of the influence of money. The guild-system, originally designed for associations of craftsmen, for which the chief object was the man and the work, and not the mere acquirement of profit, was changing its ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... beautiful fruit at dessert; fruit from their own hothouses; and I saw the hothouses, afterwards. Most beautiful! the purple and white grapes were hanging in thick clusters all over the vines; and quantities of different sorts of pines were growing in another hothouse. I had a bunch of Frontignacs this morning before breakfast, father; and I never ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... it, Signor Dottore. Perhaps you were not in the theatre that night. If you had been you would have seen it fast enough. The way she went on, when the Marchese Ludovico was a-giving her a lovely nosegay of flowers—hothouse flowers, if you please—as big pretty near as this table; not just a-throwing them on to the stage the way I've seen 'em do it many a time at the Fenice; but putting them into her hand; and she, the minx a coming up to the box to take 'em before all ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... overweening self-esteem may well be the hothouse atmosphere in which alone his genius can thrive, but from another point of view it seems a subtle poison gas, engendering all the ills that differentiate him from other men. Its first effect is likely to be the reflection that his genius is judged by a ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... nearly alike as possible. Place one in the country away from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with only the district school, the Sunday-school, and a few books. Remove wealth and props of every kind; and, if he has the right sort of material in him, he will thrive. Every obstacle overcome lends ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... diner. While the flowers scattered their perfumes through the room, and the plate and crystal glittered on the snowy cloth, an abundance of delicious and unexpected dishes were handed round—a sturgeon from Russia, prohibited game, truffles as big as eggs, and hothouse vegetables and fruit as full of flavour as if they had been naturally matured. It was money flung out of window, simply for the pleasure of wasting more than other people, and eating what they could not procure. The influential critic, though ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... many varieties bear heavily, and some produce fruit of exceptional merit. I have seen as fine nectarines grown in the Stanthorpe district as I have met with in any part of Australia or America, fruit of large size and the highest flavour, that compared favourably with the finest hothouse-grown fruit ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... stupidity," as Fan said afterward. Just as Polly ran down to meet Mr. Shaw one evening, and was helping him off with his coat, the bell rang, and a fine bouquet of hothouse flowers was left in Polly's hands, for she never could learn city ways, and opened the ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... to capture me, since I was brought up under artificial conditions, like cucumbers in a hothouse. Our too abundant nourishment, together with complete physical idleness, is nothing but systematic excitement of the imagination. The men of our society are fed and kept like reproductive stallions. It is sufficient to ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... Meadowsweet, by Mr. Mark Andre Raffalovich. This is really a remarkable little volume, and contains many strange and beautiful poems. To say of these poems that they are unhealthy and bring with them the heavy odours of the hothouse is to point out neither their defect nor their merit, but their quality merely. And though Mr. Raffalovich is not a wonderful poet, still he is a subtle artist in poetry. Indeed, in his way he ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the best advantage. Let it develop each nation's products as the result of natural selection. We can grow rice in India, we can grow wheat in Russia. We can put up a high tariff wall and grow rice in Russia, if we grow it in a hothouse; but it would not be so profitable as raising wheat. Tariff walls are trade restrictions. They are as obsolete as the great ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... Hall he had run flop into the arms of Mrs Stratton, who was carrying in her hands a small basket of hothouse grapes. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... be gratified at the stress laid on the 'Hampton spirit' of service as the explanation of its success, as well as the constant recognition of the spiritual in the methods as well as the aims of this hothouse of missionary effort. No one familiar with the school would have found the record complete without the stressing of this element at once its motive and its life. Few could have so well defined that elusive but ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... in," said Mr. Crewe. "You can't hurt the flowers unless you bump against the pots, and if you walk straight you can't do that. I brought the plants down from my own hothouse in Leith. Those are French geraniums—very hard to get. They're double, you see, and don't look like the scrawny things you see in this country. Yes (with a good-natured smile), I guess they do cost something. I'll ask my secretary what I paid for that plant. Is that dinner, Waters? Come right ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sown very thickly and the plants are clustered together in great numbers, so that you can pull up a score at a single handful. But now comes the process of transplanting. He first plants us and lets us grow very close to some of His children, and in great clusters in the nursery or the hothouse, but when we reach a certain stage we must be transplanted, or come to nothing. He calls us out by His Spirit and Providence into situations where we have to lean directly on Him, where He puts upon us a weight of responsibility and service so great that we have an opportunity of developing and ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... day, Kate," she remarked as we emerged from the hothouse into the moist, heavy air. "How I hate the country! except whilst the strawberries are ripe. Let's go back to the house, and read with our feet on ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... living without apparent extravagance. I do not run a yacht or keep hunters or polo ponies. My wife does not appear to be particularly lavish and continually complains of the insufficiency of her allowance. Our table is not Lucullan, by any means; and we rarely have game out of season, hothouse fruit or many flowers. Indeed, there is an elaborate fiction maintained by my wife, cook and butler that our establishment is run economically and strictly on a business basis. Perhaps it is. I hope so. I do ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... Bonanni, answering her son's question, and eating hothouse grapes; 'you cannot help me in the least, my sweet. I know you would if you could, dear child! But you will come and dine with me quietly at the Carlton on Sunday at half-past eight, just you and I. I promise you that no one shall be there, not ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... in their midst, listening to their talk, their tales, their jests, and their laughter, the unseen mantle fell upon Naomi at last, which made her a woman who had hitherto been a child. In this hothouse of sickly odours these women lived together, having no occupation but that of eating and drinking and sleeping, no education but devising new means of pleasing the lust of their husband's eye, no delight than that of supplanting one another in his love, no passion but jealousy, no diversion but ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... complete naturalness than in any other quality. Bobby noticed that, unlike nearly all the women he knew, she used no colour on her lips, and only lightly dusted her face with powder, but her cheeks seemed always to have a bloom upon them as on grapes from a hothouse. ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... are the men that move the world. The living rarely walk well in the shoes of the dead, and he who waits for them ought to go barefooted all his life. God helps those who help themselves. Self-reliance toughens our sinews and develops our manhood. "It is not in the sheltered garden or the hothouse, but on the rugged Alpine cliffs where the storm bursts most violently, that the toughest plants are reared." The man who does not rely on self, soon ceases to have any self. He becomes a zoological parasite, instead of a man. He is a lobster ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... oldest, always anxious and prudent, turned up the collar of his overcoat just as he was going out, to protect him against the vicious gust of wind at the street corner, M. Joyeuse, even when the temperature was that of a hothouse, never turned it down until he reached the office, like the lover fresh from his mistress's embrace, who dares not stir for fear of ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Sorrentine promontory, and then dashed away into the canon of Montecito, among the vineyards and orange orchards and live-oaks and palms, in vales and hills all ablaze with roses and flowers of the garden and the hothouse, which bloom the year round in the gracious sea-air, would you not, we wonder, come to yourselves in the sense of a new life where it is good form to be enthusiastic and not disgraceful to be surprised? It is a far cry from Newport to Santa Barbara, and a whole world of new sensations ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... her petite, doll-like way as when she had so fascinated him in the city, but now he could not help comparing her hothouse beauty with the brown-skinned, outdoor desirability of Jerkline Jo. Jo could have picked up this frail, silk-garbed creature and thrown her overhead; yet in pure womanliness and tenderness Lucy was not her equal. Jerkline Jo was a queen—a ruler—a fearless woman with a purpose ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... weighing half a ton and gets half a ton heavier at each stroke. You pull and pull until your spine begins to unravel at both ends, and your palms get so full of water blisters you feel as though you were carrying a bunch of hothouse grapes in each hand. And after going about nine miles you unwittingly anchor off the mouth of a popular garbage dump and everything you catch is second-hand. The sun beats down upon you with unabated fervor and the back of your neck colors up like a meerschaum ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... and the great violinist, composer, and conductor Pugnani, with his pupil Viotti (the latter playing second violin in the orchestra), were members of the company. And the King's band of foreign and native players has been called one of the best in Europe. Still, all this was but the hothouse bloom of exotics. To bring about a natural harvest of home produce something else was wanted than royal patronage, and this something sprang from the series of disasters that befell the nation in the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... some of the inconveniences of Mr. Skimpole's childhood, it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the journey he had a very good appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (including a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never thought of paying for anything. So when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly asked him what he considered a very good fee indeed, now—a liberal one—and on his replying ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... dead place. It is a branch of their universal museum, a department of dry bones. There are rich and cultivated persons, particularly Americans, who seem to think that they keep Italy, as they might keep an aviary or a hothouse, into which they might walk whenever they wanted a whiff of beauty. Browning did not feel at all in this manner; he was intrinsically incapable of offering such an insult to the soul of a nation. If he could not have loved Italy ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... there would be when it was told that not from any hothouse whatever, but from the depths of the ocean came the full, ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... and at dinner a bunch, big or little, of simple or hothouse flowers lay beside the girl's plate, ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... branches, and caught each other, and matted together; and there were hot scents, and strange flowers, and dazzling birds darting about, and thick moss, and little cascades bursting out. The path grew narrower and steeper, and the flower scents and the sultriness made it like walking in a hothouse. He heard rustlings in the undergrowth, which might have been made by any kind of wild animal; once he stepped across a deadly snake without seeing it. But it was asleep and did not hurt him. He knew the natives had been convinced that he would not reach the ledge; but for ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a-tootin' circus-tunes, 'way in some other room Jes' chokin' full o' hothouse plants and pinies and perfume; And fountains, squirtin' stiddy all the time; and statutes, made Out o' puore marble, 'peared-like, sneakin' round there ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... a small bunch of hothouse grapes from her breakfast tray and, after picking one off, suddenly began ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... outside but inside, for the arrival of the English family were going on with vigor. Pretty suites of rooms were being put into their best holiday dress for the visitors. Huge fires blazed merrily all over the house. Hothouse flowers were in profusion; hothouse fruit graced the table. The great hall quite shone with firelight and the gleam of dark old oak. Mrs. O'Shanaghgan dressed herself in her most regal black velvet dress for this auspicious occasion; and Nora, Molly, and ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... of the three or four steps that descended to the level of the hothouse floor. She receded a pace or two, with a certain offended dignity at ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... me, Dicky," he said, "and if my people haven't any cake, I can at least give you all the hothouse grapes you can eat, and some to carry home. How ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... only a gleam of light can creep through the misty atmosphere. The earth seems clothed in a garment of clouds, and the air is positively reeking with damp warmth, like the air of a hothouse. This explains ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... lay, regarding him with the intense excited absorption with which one looks at a tiny wildflower through a magnifying-lens, and watches its insignificance expanded to the size and importance of a hothouse bloom. In her mind was this thought: He is looking at me with his real self, since he has no reason for armour against me now. At first his eyes seemed masked with their customary brightness, his whole face with its usual decorous formality; then ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... an assent had been spoken, and tripped smilingly away, while Peggy went back to the big room to find a great tray full of hothouse treasures waiting to be arranged, and no availing vases in which to place them. The flowers, however, were so beautiful, and the fronds of maidenhair so green and graceful, that the work was a pleasure; she enjoyed discovering unlikely places in which to group them, and lingered ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... travelling paraphernalia,—his French novel, at which he had not looked, his dressing bag, the box in which his luncheon had been packed, and his wine flask. There was a small basket of strawberries, should he be inclined to eat fruit, and an early peach out of a hothouse, with some flowers. "God Almighty, George;—is that you?" he said. "Where the devil ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... reigns of some of our Henrys, Edwards, and Richard III., though she assuredly was of a very different extraction; indeed, it was said that she was bred up in a cottage garden, but had passed one winter in the hothouse, by which she was greatly elated, and now thought from that circumstance she was secure in having a large party from thence, not knowing the prejudice it was to memory and sight to be constantly for any length of time in such artificial air. Had it not been for this breakfast bringing Mrs. Rose ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... marked as the usual end of the great trek. Few knew that they now stood on the soil of the Oregon country. The maps and journals of Molly Wingate were no more forthcoming, for Molly Wingate no more taught the evening school, but lay delirious under the hothouse canvas cover that intensified the rays of the blazing sun. It was life or death, but by now life-and-death issue had become no ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... picturesque hall I have before described to you. It looked more picture-like and dreamy than ever. The piano was on the flat stairway just below the broad central landing. It was a grand piano, standing end outward, and perfectly banked up among hothouse flowers, so that only its gilded top was visible. Sir George Smart presided. The choicest of the elite were there. Ladies in demi-toilet and bonneted. Miss Greenfield stood among the singers on the staircase, and excited a sympathetic murmur among the audience. She is not handsome, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a glimpse of its splendour upon the night after her return from Winchester. Through the narrow opening between the folding-doors she had seen the pictures and the statues glimmering in the lamplight of the inner hall. She had seen in that brief moment a bright confusion of hothouse flowers, and trailing satin curtains, gilded mouldings, and frescoed panels, the first few shallow steps of a marble staircase, the filigree-work of ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... discovered, as maids will, that Sir Robert's intentions were—not of the best, and straightway the blushing rose becomes a frigid icicle. Well, this Northern icicle was not to be melted, and Sir Robert was for trying the effect of a Surrey hothouse. In her brother's absence he had the maid abducted and carried to a ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... chorister boy had gone straight to the grave and dropped on his knees beside it. He looked at the lovely hothouse flowers and then glanced ruefully at his own humble offering—sweetwilliam chiefly, snapdragon, stocks, and nasturtium. But he laid it there with the rest, and Angelica's heart was wrung anew as she thought of the tender ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... I'd got a chill," he muttered. "'Twasn't last night, though; 'twas going out this morning, coming back in the bus. Margaret keeps that housekeeper's room o' hers like a hothouse— that's what she does. 'Twas going out from there into the biting wind, that's what did for me. It must be awful to stand about in such weather; 'tis a wonder to me how that young fellow, Joe Chandler, can stand the life—being out in ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the road. The sound of the horse's feet were sharply distinct in the night. On all sides, but far off, the guard dogs were barking by the hidden homes of men. The air was warm as in a hothouse, but light and faintly impregnated with perfume shed surely by the mystical garments of night as she glided on with Domini towards the desert. From the blackness of the palms there came sometimes ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... beginning to be heard in the land, especially in some big London hotels. The Colorado beetle is hourly expected by Cunard steamer. The Canadian roadside erigeron is well established already in the remoter suburbs; the phylloxera battens on our hothouse vines; the American river-weed stops the navigation on our principal canals. The Ganges and the Mississippi have long since flooded the tawny Thames, as Juvenal's cynical friend declared the Syrian ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen |
