"Midsummer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... striking as any thing I ever saw done in the same line at Washoe. But it is not a feature confined to Russia. I notice the same thing every where all over the world; and what vexes me about it is that I never get tired myself, and rarely hungry or thirsty. Here, in midsummer, with a sweltering hot sun, and an atmosphere that would almost smother a salamander, were whole legions of officers, elegantly-dressed ladies, and a rabble of miscellaneous second and third class passengers like myself, puffing, blowing, eating, drinking, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... memorials remain, Felix Mendelssohn spent, with his parents and sister Fanny, several years of his wonderful youth; and the "Gartenhaus" of this estate witnessed the memorable private performance of the work which first revealed his greatness to the world,—the "Overture to the Midsummer Night's Dream." ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... hind feet, and the bear tears the signal tree with tooth and claw. Since this is done from time to time, when the bear happens to be near the tree, it is kept fresh as long as the region is claimed. But it is especially done in midsummer when the bears are pairing, and helps them to find suitable companions, nor all are then roaming the woods seeking mates; all call and leave their mark on the sign post, so the next bear, thanks to his exquisite nose, can tell at once the sex of the bear that called last and ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the glowing midsummer his truant brother returned, and my new-born interest vanished like snow before the ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... those— New patriarchs of the new-found under world— Who stand like Jacob, on the virgin lawns, And count their flocks' increase? To them that day Shall dawn in glory, and solstitial blaze Of full midsummer sun: to them that morn Gay flowers beneath their feet, gay birds aloft Shall tell of naught but summer; but to them, Ere yet, unwarned by carol or by chime, They spring into the saddle, thrills may come From ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... to produce a poet able to write both A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet, the Celtic imagination must blend with the Anglo-Saxon seriousness. As we shall see, this was ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... had been the chief of Mr. Troy Wilkins's two stenographers for seven months now—midsummer of 1907, when she was twenty-six. She had climbed to thirteen dollars a week. The few hundred dollars which she had received from Captain Golden's insurance were gone, and her mother and she had to make a science of saving—economize ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... throbbed with pain as she pressed the great cakes of the golden treasure back and forth in the blue bowl, for it was a quiet time and Rose Mary was tearing up some of her own roots. Her sad eyes looked out over Harpeth Valley, which lay in a swoon with the midsummer heat. The lush blue-grass rose almost knee deep around the grazing cattle in the meadows, and in the fields the green grain was fast turning to a harvest hue. Almost as far as her eyes could reach ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sweltering July afternoon in May, one of those escapades of the New York climate when the population finds itself in the grip of midsummer discomforts without having had time to get seasoned to them. I went into the Park. I had come away from the Chaikins' under the impression that if I could raise two or three thousand dollars I might be able, by means of perseverance and diplomacy, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... down the road a piece, 'ith dust so deep It teched the bay mare's fetlocks, an' the sun So b'ilin' hot, the peewees dassn't peep, Seemed like midsummer 'fore the spring's begun! An' me plumb beat an' good-for-nothin'-like An' awful lonedsome fer a sight o' you ... I come to that big locus' by the pike, An' she was all in bloom, an' trembly, too, With breezes like drug-store perfumery. I stood ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... at this reception, passed through an ante-room into a handsomely furnished apartment full of books and pictures. In spite of the fact that it was still very little past midsummer there was a cheery fire in the grate, and on a table set near a roomy arm-chair was set such creature comforts as a spirit-case, a syphon, a tumbler, and a novel—from which things Spargo argued that Mr. Elphick had been taking his ease since his dinner. But in another armchair on the opposite ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... Thus in the midsummer of 1850 did the nation, with intense relief, see the imminent disaster of civil discord averted,—or was it only postponed? It was ominous that no men who were deeply in earnest in public affairs were sincerely satisfied. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Offerings or Gatherings in church or at the church door became more frequent[272] and more systematized. As time went on these collections were regularly taken up in many parishes every quarter, usually at Easter, Midsummer, Michaelmas and Christmas.[273] Hence the name quarterage.[274] When the proceeds went to general church furnishing and repairing, the gatherings wrere sometimes called in the accounts "church works."[275] As the sum given ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... world's dimension, crowds it with agents in rank and order, as quickly reduces the big reality to be the glimpses of the moon. These tricks of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer Night's Dream admits me? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone Castle, the moonlight of Portia's villa, "the antres vast and desarts ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... kept in the middle of the great stream, and sometimes it seemed pleasanter to be near the shore. The midsummer flowers were coming into blossom, and the grass and trees had long since lost the brilliance of their greenness, and wore a look of maturity and completion, as if they had already finished their growth. There was a beautiful softness and harmony of color, a repose ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... they turned and looked back, and they had to shut their eyes, and open them very slowly, a little bit at a time, because the sight was too dazzling for their eyes to be able to bear. It was something like trying to look at the sun at high noon on Midsummer Day. For the whole of the sand-pit was full, right up to the very top, with new shining gold pieces, and all the little bank-martins' little front doors were covered out of sight. Where the road for carts wound into the gravel-pit the gold lay in heaps like stones lie by the roadside, ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... had neither sold nor bought stock, but had moused around, with the skill of an old habitue, for information concerning the eligibility of the two men who were seeking his daughter's hand. In the midsummer dullness and holiday stagnation the impending operation in the Catskills was the only one that promised anything whatever. He became more fully satisfied that Arnault's firm was prospering. They had been ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... a clear midsummer-day; the earth was clad in the freshest verdure; not a cloud floated in the sky; not a breath of wind stirred the air, or ruffled the limpid waters of the Niemen. The river was silent, as though it was conscious of its importance, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... By midsummer they began to appreciate the fact that this was to be a hard job. When the flowers faded on the southern slopes, they were not more than half-way up the hill. Each day the sun swung lower across the canals, all the to-morrows were shorter than the yesterdays, and there was not ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... what river-men call "the blossoming of the water" takes place in the Hudson River; the water is full of minute vegetable organisms; they are seasonal and temporary; they are born of the midsummer heats. By and by the water is clear again. Life in the universe seems as seasonal and fugitive as this blossoming of the water. More and more does science hold us to the view of the unity of nature—that ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... penguins. In this time also the captain, with the master and I, made some salt, by filling some holes in the rocks with sea-water, which in six days was changed to salt by evaporation, it being now Midsummer in this southern hemisphere. Thus did God feed us in the desert, even as with manna from heaven. The 22d December we departed from Port Desire for Penguin island, where, with great difficulty, we got 14,000 of the dried birds on board, during which we had nearly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... fate I have suggested many factors: her mother's fundamental instincts; her father's mistaken upbringing of the girl; her own nature, and the suggestive influence of her fiance on a weak and degenerate brain; furthermore, and more directly: the festive mood of the Midsummer Eve; the absence of her father; her physical condition; her preoccupation with the animals; the excitation of the dance; the dusk of the night; the strongly aphrodisiacal influence of the flowers; and lastly ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... In midsummer the temperature of the lower reaches seems as great as that of a furnace. At the same season in the mountain and high mesa country, especially in the shade of the beautiful forests, the atmosphere is ideal; but in winter these higher levels are covered deep with snow, swept ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... buttons, which were in size about equal to an old-fashioned China saucer, were buttoned to the very throat, thereby setting off his shape to peculiar advantage; his breeches were buckskin, and much soiled; his stockings blue yarn, although it was midsummer; and his shoes were provided with buckles of dimensions proportionate to the aforesaid buttons; his age might have been seventy, but his walk was quick, and the movements of his whole system showed great activity both of mind and body. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... Gilia, Clarkia, candytuft, red flax, tassel flowers, blue Anchusa, Gaillardia, and a multitude besides of seasonable annuals, which can all be raised quite easily without a frame or green-house, and what excuse has any farmer for having a flowerless garden in midsummer?—William Falconer, ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... William Blake—how the far freer, far firmer fantasy that wrote "Midsummer Night's Dream"—would have revell'd night or day, and beyond stint, in one of our American corn fields! Truly, in color, outline, material and spiritual suggestiveness, where any more inclosing theme ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... rejoicing and merry-making among the people, for they were all abroad, feasting and drinking from great mead horns in the open air, and shouting barbarous songs to the noise of rude instruments. When it grew to such duskiness as there may be in a midsummer night countless fires were lit, near at hand and far away, on the hills around; and on the ridges above the river children ran about with blazing brands of pine-wood, and young men and maidens gathered at the flaming beacon. Wheels, ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... where is the man would strike the lyre, Or spurn with his foot the thief, Or melt all day, In a Midsummer way, At ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... round these black veterans like flies around a western water hole in midsummer, and their shrill laughter makes the air fairly vibrate as they bandy jests with the cheeky herds. The girls are rather pleasing in appearance, though far from being pretty. As a rule, they wear clean print dresses ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... against growing any other plants than the grapevines lest red spiders, thrips, or mealy bugs are introduced with the plants, but in the case of mushrooms no such grounds are tenable. As the vines have yielded their fruit by midsummer and ripened their wood early so as to be ready for starting into growth again in December or January, the grapery is kept cool and ventilated in the fall and early winter, but this need not interfere with the mushroom crop. Box up the beds or make them in frames inside ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... breath and trembling limbs, she discovered something white lying on the bed of moss, so still and white, that it might have been mistaken in the dimness for a snow-drift, were it not a midsummer eve. All the old superstitions implanted in her infant mind by Miss Thusa's terrific legends, seized upon her imagination. Any thing white and still, reminded her of the never-to-be-forgotten moment when she gazed upon ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... In Midsummer of this year I went to Dr. Butler's School. (Chapter I./5. Darwin entered Dr. Butler's school in Shrewsbury in the summer of 1818, and remained there till 1825 ("Life and Letters," I., page 30).) I well recollect the first going there, which oddly enough ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... after mine, I had not the heart to do it. "No!" said I (and I said it aloud for the purpose of preventing drowsiness)—"no; I will fight this battle alone! I will repeat some stanzas from my favourite authors. Yes, I will try to remember a portion of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream.' It will be somewhat appropriate to my ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... this high-tide of business slackened, and by the close of the second week we were moderately idle. On Midsummer morning I descended to find, to my vast astonishment, Mr. Trapp seated at table before a bowl of bread and milk and wearing a thick blue guernsey tucked inside his trousers, the waist of which reached so high as to reduce his braces to mere shoulder-straps. I could not imagine why he, a ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with the green water-fall Ralph's vision might have kept faith with him; but how could he hope to surprise it in the midsummer crowds of St. Moritz? Undine, at any rate, had found there what she wanted; and when he was at her side, and her radiant smile included him, every other question was in abeyance. But there were hours ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Early on Midsummer Day the hero and his bride rode out of Gunther's dwelling, and turned their faces northward. And with them was a noble retinue of warriors,—five hundred brave Burgundians, with Eckewart as their chief,—who had sworn to be Queen Kriemhild's ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... Midsummer came and passed, and still no sign from the outer world came to relieve the growing anxiety of the boys so long marooned on these unfrequented shores. They had kept very small account of the passing of the days, and perhaps none ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... 57: At the seat of war, a series of decisive French victories had culminated in the battle of Solferino, on Midsummer Day (see ante, Introductory Note to Chapter XXVIII). But the French Emperor was beginning to think these successes too dearly purchased, at the expense of so many French lives, and, actuated either ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... gates," where merchants and strangers lived, each nation with separate "burses" or store-houses, where they lodged. From this centre to the land of Gog and Magog and the champaign-land of Bargu, the Great Khan travelled every year in midsummer for the fresh air of the plateau country of central Asia, as well as for a better view of the great Russian and Bactrian sub-kingdoms of his House. The six months of spring and autumn were spent in slow ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... The stillness of the midsummer day was broken by the sound of far-off singing. It came in full-toned volume across the fields, the high soaring of women's voices blended with the ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... a luminous disk about seven times more extensive than that with which we are familiar on the Earth, and when Mercury is at perihelion (that is, nearest to the Sun), his inhabitants receive ten times more light and heat than we obtain at midsummer. In all probability, it would be impossible for us to set foot on this planet without being shattered ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... called the poet-laureate of the primrose time, but I don't know whether he sings in midsummer, and I have not seen him hereabouts. I must write and ask my dear Man of the North. The Man of the North, I sometimes think, had a Fairy Grandmother who was a robin; and perhaps she made a nest of fresh moss and put him in the green wood ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Old Sol cannot do, the brisk winds will contribute. The result is usually a red-eyed, red-nosed, flakey-skinned little woman, whom one would never suspect of having been rollicking through a few weeks of midsummer joys. If her ears are not blistered, her nose is, and if her complexion is not harsh and rough from lack of care, it is bespeckled with freckles and covered with a deep layer of golden brown tan that has distributed itself like patches on a ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... midsummer-day The meadow-sides are sweet with hay. I seek the coolest sheltered seat Just where the field and forest meet,— Where grow the pine-trees tall and bland, The ancient oaks austere and grand, And fringy roots and pebbles fret The ripples ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... was all the better for the severest kind of a bit. So Miss Bell wrote about colonial exhibitions and popular spectacles, and country outings for babies of the slums, and longed for a fairer field. As midsummer came on there arrived a dearth in these objects of orthodox interest, and Rattray told her she might submit "anything on the nail" that occurred to her, in addition to such work as the office could ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... was wrapped up in it until I had to part from it. My father stood high in public esteem. My mother was a leader in society. All doors were open to me. I had many friends. Going back to Tennessee in the midsummer of 1861, via Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, there happened a railway break and a halt of several hours at a village on the Ohio. I strolled down to the river and sat myself upon the brink, almost despairing—nigh heartbroken—when I began to feel an irresistible ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... thee, gentle mortal, sing again: Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note, So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape; And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me, On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee. MIDSUMMER ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... spring Thorhall got serving-men, and set up house at his farm; then the hauntings began to go off while the sun was at its height; and so things went on to midsummer. That summer a ship came out to Hunawater, wherein was a man named Thorgaut. He was an outlander of kin, big and stout, and two men's strength he had. He was unhired and single, and would fain do some work, for he was moneyless. Now Thorhall rode to ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... Christian, and so doing he will fulfil the duties that are especially his; but let the knight-errant explore the corners of the earth and penetrate the most intricate labyrinths, at each step let him attempt impossibilities, on desolate heaths let him endure the burning rays of the midsummer sun, and the bitter inclemency of the winter winds and frosts; let no lions daunt him, no monsters terrify him, no dragons make him quail; for to seek these, to attack those, and to vanquish all, are in truth his main duties. I, then, as it has fallen to my lot to be a member of knight-errantry, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... columns, whose bases are green, whose capitals are carved with rare and curious birds, supporting the arches of the alcoves. The Cairo lattice-work in the lower arched recesses lets in only so much of the hot light of midsummer (for it is in summer that one should see it to appreciate its last charm), as consists with the coolness, and the quiet, and the perfect Oriental repose, which give the chamber ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... long past the hour 'of night's black arch, the keystone,' and the early dawn of a midsummer morning was already bestowing its first calm sweet smile on the smoke-begrimed streets and world-worn thoroughfares of mighty London, as well as on the dewy hay-fields, shady lanes, green hedgerows, and quiet country homes of rural England. The morning star, large, mild, and lustrous, was ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... shallows warm, But with tidings of the battle, and the fear of the fateful storm? What loureth now behind us, what pileth clouds before, On either hand what gathereth save the stormy tide of war? Now grows midsummer mirky, and fallow falls the morn, And dusketh the Moon's Sister, and the trees look overworn; God's Ash tree shakes and shivers, and the sheer cliff standeth white As the bones of the giants' father when the ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Edited by Sarah W. Hiestand. Illustrations after Smirke and the Droeshout portrait. Paper, 15 cents; ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... and sits down to wait till I have finished; her presence is as pleasant to my mind as the perfume of the fresh hay and spicy flowers, as the glow of the westering sun, as the repose of the midsummer eve ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... existence. He also tells us that until he and his brother saw the letter they had little idea of the extreme poverty and anxiety which their father had experienced during his time in London. Obviously Crabbe himself had been reticent on the subject even with his own family. From the midsummer of 1780, when the "Journal to Mira" comes to an end, to the February or March of the following year, there is a blank in the Biography which the son was unable to fill. At the time the fragment of Diary closes, Crabbe was apparently ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... priests. Until that day, I have never paid any attention to what I deemed blasphemy. I have listened for a moment, but at the first word of error, or the first repetition of one of your sacred names, I have always stopped my ears, and heard no more. But this last Midsummer, when we were driven into Lincoln Cathedral, the new Bishop was in the pulpit. And he spake not like the other priests. I could not stop my ears. Why should I, when he read the words of one of our own prophets, and in the holy tongue, rendering it ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the guise Of Midsummer, where the Past Like a weary beggar lies In the shadow Time has cast; And as blends the bloom of trees With the drowsy hum of bees, Fragrant thoughts and murmurs blend, Tom Van Arden, ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... had I known a time so subtly, viciously, confidently to withhold its omens. Queer weather, indeed! here, in early spring, with drift-ice still coming in vast floes from the north, queer weather to draw the sweat from us, while a midsummer blue loom of the main-land hung high and fantastically shaped in the thick air. Breathless, ominously colored weather! Why, the like, for stillness and beggarly expression of intention, had never been known to Twist Tickle: they talked with indignation of it on Eli Flack's stage; 'twas a day ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... visiting list. He wasn't exactly gregarious. And yet in a sense that kind of temperament is so rare that Sappho, Nelson, and Shelley shared it. To the stodgy, suety world of course it's little else than sheer moonshine, midsummer madness. Naturally, in its own charming and stodgy way the world kept flickering cold water in his direction. Naturally it hissed.... I shall find the book. You shall have the ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... that scale neither as compared with elephants;" the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, "safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentlemen between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer vacation," were all of them like dreams of the Danish poet, coloured into a semblance of life by the grotesque humour of the English Novelist. But dear little Dot, who was rather of the dumpling's shape—"but I don't myself object to that"—and good, lumbering John ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... give the reader an account of the origin and history of Hallowe'en, how it absorbed some customs belonging to other days in the year,—such as May Day, Midsummer, and Christmas. The context is illustrated by selections from ancient and modern poetry and ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... Where crowded streets affright She stood in beggary, Unknown, though faithful to her high degree,— O, then her praise 'twere easy to forget. Yet ever here, For all of time's prompt fickleness— From plenteous June and wide largess Of full midsummer days, To dwarf December pitiless Amid the earth's uncomplimented ways— Yea, constant through the changeful year, This queenly Height commands our praise. To stand in meek unflinching hardihood When fortune blows its storm of fright, And work to full ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... woods or paddling up the creeks, the Frenchmen encountered always the same rude fare, hominy, beans, and fish. Before them was always the same glassy river, shimmering in the fierce midsummer heat; around them ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... "White Poppies," by May Kendall, which ran through Sylvia's Journal, is a little too grown-up to be included; nor can the "Heroines of the Poets," which appeared in the same place, be dragged in to augment the scanty list, any more than the "Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Keats's Poems." It is singular that the fancy of Mr. Anning Bell, which seems exactly calculated to attract a child and its parent at the same time, has not been more frequently requisitioned for this purpose. In the two "Banbury Cross" ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... Greek influence. Not only at Christmas are ceremonial "trees" to be found in Germany. In the Erzgebirge there is dancing at the summer solstice round "St. John's tree," a pyramid decked with garlands and flowers, and lit up at night by candles.{28} At midsummer "in the towns of the Upper Harz Mountains tall fir-trees, with the bark peeled off their lower trunks, were set up in open places and decked with flowers and eggs, which were painted yellow and red. Round these trees the young folk ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... Demetrius' "Well roar'd, Lion!" in act v, scene 1 of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The lion, of course, is the familiar Christian ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... is, that the maid you sent down, John Farelly's sister, is married; but the portion and settlement are yet a secret. The cows here never give milk on midsummer eve. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... out in spring to lay their eggs on the leaves of their caterpillars' food-plants. The larvae feed and grow through the early summer months, in the case of the Small Tortoiseshell (Vanessa urticae) pupating before midsummer and developing into a July brood of butterflies whose offspring after a late summer life-cycle, hibernate; while for the larger species of the group there is, in our islands, only one complete life-cycle in the year, though the same insects in warmer countries may be double-brooded. ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... went to my room, too, but not to sleep. I was too miserably anxious about the morrow. The night was lovely—bright as day and warm as midsummer. I sat by the window looking out, and saw Kate walking up and down the tamarack avenue with that mysterious Mr. Richards. They lingered there for over an hour, and then I heard them coming softly upstairs, and going to ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... hearing him, exclaimed, "That's more than thee can tell," and then fled. The Enemy flung this great stone after him, but hit only the friar's heel. The investigators of Stonehenge say that when standing on the altar-stone the midsummer sun is seen to rise to the north-east directly over the "Friar's Heel." The traces of the avenue in which it stands are, however, soon found to divide into two smaller avenues, one running south-east and the other north, and the latter is ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... realm through which she moved as she went forward under the great trees that rose straight and tall from a black soil, making pillared aisles away from her on every side. The fern was thick under foot—it would brush her saddle-girth, come midsummer. Down the long vistas under the greening trees, where the moist air hung thick, her bemused eyes caught the occasional roseflash of azalea through the pearly mist, her nostril was greeted by their wandering, intensely sweet perfume, with ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... loved the fire on the chilly evenings such as creep over the mountain region even in midsummer. He would watch Link replenish the blaze with fresh ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... the "Wonder-Book" here. The fresher play of Hawthorne's mind with those old subjects is seen in nothing more agreeably than in the graceful Introduction and interludes which he has thrown around the mythological tales, like the tendrils of a vine curling over a sculptured capital. This midsummer task—it was very uncommon for him to write in the hot season—perhaps had something to do with further unsettling Hawthorne's health, which at this time was not good. The somewhat sluggish atmosphere of the far inland valley did not suit his sea-braced temperament; ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... an every-day man at ordinary times, and was even said, when his wife, who had been long ill, died, to have clasped his hands and exclaimed, "Hip, hip, hurrah!" adding only as an afterthought, "The Lord's will be done." But midsummer was his great opportunity. Then took place the rouping of the seats in the parish church. The scene was the kirk itself, and the seats being put up to auction were knocked down to the highest bidder. This sometimes led to the breaking of the peace. Every person ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... It was midsummer when we arrived at this place, and the weather, which had for a long time been wet and gloomy, now became bright and glorious; I was subjected to but little control, and passed my time pleasantly enough, principally in wandering about the neighbouring country. It ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... It was one midsummer afternoon that he reached Ashurst; he went at once to the rectory, though with no thought of asking Dr. Howe's permission to address his niece. It seemed to John as though there were only their two souls in the great sunny ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... whose own soul had enough of spirituality to respond to hers, and whose eye could appreciate the subtlety of a beauty which is of the mind as well as of the body, there was not in all wide London upon that midsummer day a sweeter girl than Maude Selby, as she sat in her grey merino dress with the London sun tagging her brown curls with that ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... morning she came up to the store early in order that the partners might go down to the house for breakfast. They had gone and she had just finished placing on the counters and in other likely spots about the store sheets of sticky fly paper. Flies are a nuisance in South Harniss in midsummer and Captain Shad detested them. Just as the last sheet was laid in place, a young fellow and a girl came in. Mary-'Gusta recognized them both. The girl was the seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy summer resident, a Mr. Keith from Chicago. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... knew they would encounter cold weather, for the autumn had fairly set in, and some portions of the trail carried them to an elevation where it was chilly in midsummer. Each took a thick blanket. The captain donned his military coat, with the empty sleeve pinned to the breast, caught up his saddle and trappings, his Winchester and revolver, and buckled the cartridge belt around his waist. Then he was ready. Neither of the others took coat or ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... an army of 40,000 men was none too large for the purpose, especially as it was wholly impracticable to reenforce King's Bridge from Brooklyn, or vice versa. But from one or another cause the army had fallen below 25,000 effectives by midsummer, counting also the militia, who formed a floating and most uncertain constituent of it. For the present, therefore, King's Bridge was held as an outpost, or until the enemy's plan of attack should be clearly developed; for whether Howe would first assail the works at Brooklyn, ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... spot within children's foot-range of Beechhurst than Great-Ash Ford. On a glowing midsummer day it was a perfect paradise for idlers. Not far off, yet half buried out of sight amongst its fruit trees, was a farmhouse thatched with reeds, very old, and weather-stained of all golden, brown, and orange tints. A row ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... "In the midsummer holidays, 1825, I went to pay a visit to Walter and Sarah, and it was then I first made acquaintance with John and Frank Newman. The latter was spending the Long Vacation with Mr. Mayers to assist him in teaching the young men, though he was only nineteen. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... be commenced. Well, the experts who grow Mushrooms in the open ground for market gather crops almost the year round; but a beginner will do wisely to start under the most favourable natural conditions, and these will be found about midsummer, because the bed will commence bearing before winter creates difficulty as ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... very proud of him, and let him have anything he liked, and in the midsummer holidays Johnson used to bring his father's trap and take Rupert out for drives, and Mrs. Johnson used to put meat pies and strawberries in a basket under the seat, so that it was a kind of picnic, for ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Weber's last great production. The celebrated poet Wieland composed the poem underlying the libretto, from the mediaeval romance of Huon of Bordeaux. The scenes are laid in fairy-land, and it may be almost called a German "Midsummer-Night's Dream," though the story differs widely from the charming phantasy of our own Shakespeare. The opera of "Oberon" was written for Kemble, of the Covent Garden theatre, in London, and was produced ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... to be meaning to spend the winter in Rome. Cecilia met him in the early dusk at the gate of her little garden, amid a studied combination of floral perfumes. A rosy widow of twenty-eight, half cousin, half hostess, doing the honors of an odorous cottage on a midsummer evening, was a phenomenon to which the young man's imagination was able to do ample justice. Cecilia was always gracious, but this evening she was almost joyous. She was in a happy mood, and Mallet imagined there was a private reason for ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... cursed Abdul Hamid had been rebuked by the powers of Europe for butchering Bulgars, so he turned on us Armenians in order to prove to himself that he could do as he pleased in his own house. I tell you, murder and rape in those days were as common as flies at midsummer! I escaped, and worked my passage in the stoke-hole of a little merchant steamer —they were little ships in those days. And when I reached America without money or friends they let me land because I had been told ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal imagination will be appreciated by all; but by none so thoroughly as by him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved, to bathe in the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... a beautiful day, with the haze of fall shrouding the distance, a hint of brown tingeing the prairie grass, the sun a bit milder with its rays and paler in its face than in midsummer. And the old sun seemed a trifle lazy, as if lying back awaiting the frost that would nip the rolling mesa, to be followed by the gales that would sweep across it, then by the whirling blizzards that ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... procession of blocks was steadily drifting along. Unless Zero came sliding down again pretty soon from Boreal regions, the sheets that filled the coves and clung to the shores would also sail away southward, and the whole Hudson be left clear as in midsummer. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... glass set in agate frames; but the windows, eight in number, formed the principal attraction. On the glass, hill and mountain scenery was depicted, the summits in some of them appearing beyond wide, barren plains, whitened with the noonday splendor and heat of midsummer, untempered by a cloud, the soaring peaks showing a pearly luster which seemed to remove them to an infinite distance. To look out, as it were, from the imitation shade of such an arbor, or pavilion, over those ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... unto others, others will do unto you. What I give, I get. If I love you, really and truly and actively love you, you are as sure to love me in return as the earth is sure to be warmed by the rays of the midsummer sun. If I hate you, ill-treat you and abuse you, I am equally certain to arouse the same kind of antagonism towards me, unless the Divine nature is so developed that it is dominant in you, and you have learned to love your enemies. What can be plainer? The Golden Rule is the ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the autumn younger the farther south one went. There was a trip down a certain historic river,—historic, as our rivers went, and admirably scenic always. He recalled an exceptional hotel on one of its best reaches; one overrun in midsummer, but doubtless quiet at this season. It stood in the midst of some striking cliffs and gorges; and possibly one of the little river- steamers was in commission, or could ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... takes,—sonnet, song, or dramatic poetry,—it shows the touch of the master hand, the inspiration of the master mind. Of his plays those which are still most frequently acted are the tragedies "Hamlet," "Macbeth," "King Lear," and "Othello," the comedies "Midsummer-night's Dream," "The Merchant of Venice," "As You Like It," and "The Comedy of Errors," and the historical plays "Julius Caesar," "King Henry IV," "King ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... over the fire (for a fire is good company in the mountains, even of a midsummer evening) with that freedom and abandon which the isolation, the hour, and the circumstances begot. Kerry had told his name, his birthplace, the habits and temperament of his parents, his present hopes and aspirations—barring one; he had even sketched an outline of Katy—Katy, who was waiting for ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... sighted land, and by eleven o'clock they were so near that they could see, shimmering in the heat of the midsummer sun, the white beach of coral sand and the drooping palms that make all the island of Nukapu green.[33] Looking out under their hands to the island, the men aboard The Southern Cross could see four great canoes, with their ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... poor girl is in calm water at last, I hope. She was to have been married on Midsummer Day, and, the night before, Mrs. Grail died; so they put it off. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... and laid the vielle lovingly beside him, "another four leagues to Westminster, and I weary enough of shoe- leather already, and not another penny piece in my pocket 'til I win back to good King Ned. A brave holiday I have had, from Candlemas to Midsummer; free to sing or to be silent, to smile or frown; wide England instead of palace walls; a crust of bread and a jug of cider instead of a king's banquet. Now but another few leagues and the cage again. Money in my pocket, true; but a song here and a song there, such as suit the fancy ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... ports or harbors exist on the southern side of the Southern Ocean; ice conditions limit use of most of them to short periods in midsummer; even then some cannot be entered without icebreaker escort; most antarctic ports are operated by government research stations and, except in an emergency, are not open to commercial or private vessels; vessels in any port south of 60 degrees south are subject ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... At midsummer, 1916, the political lull desired by Colonel House actually set in. The Colonel betook himself to one of the beautiful lakes of New Hampshire, in the far north of the United States, where in the ordinary way I could only reach him by letter or telegram. How secret we kept our communications ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... necessarily have at all times two persons at least: the mover of the figures and the audience, the puppeteer and the puppetee, the letter-writer and the letter-reader. The play presented is, therefore, a play within a play: like the Mousetrap in Hamlet, like Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream, like the romantic drama of Gayferos and Melisandra which Don Quixote witnessed with a select company of acquaintance at an inn. The temperament of this presented spectator, himself or herself ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... conceited that this had never struck me? And yet—but here comes Harriet, and I must put you away, dear diary. I blush at my voluminousness. If every evening is to take up so many pages, my book will be full at Midsummer! But was not this ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... adjoining room, not so brightly lit, afforded further harbourage, while without was the pillared portico, with roses and fireflies and a view of the flare upon the horizon. From some hidden nook the violins played Italian opera. On the mantles and on one or two tables, midsummer flowers bloomed ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... and sniffed. His natural voice gave a faint whine of discontent. "I'm supposed to have a nose," he complained. "This is like trying to smell out a lone mouse in a zoological garden in midsummer." ...
— History Repeats • George Oliver Smith
... those days which we sometimes have in May, summer days in advance of the main body, and more beautiful, perhaps, than any that follow, because they are days of anticipation and hope, our delight in the full midsummer being sobered by the thought of approaching autumn and winter. When they reached the bridge Mr. Bellamy remembered that he had forgotten his cheque-book and his money, and it was of no use to go ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... if you could touch me, I should hurt you. Besides, I was two hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve; and a man must not fall in love with ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Mannhardt misses a point. What the Hirpi did was not merely to leap through light embers, as in the Roman Palilia, and the parallel doings in Scotland, England, France, and elsewhere, at Midsummer (St. John's Eve). The Hirpi would not be freed from military service and all other State imposts for merely doing what any set of peasants do yearly for nothing. Nor would Varro have found it necessary ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... midsummer, hardly the priests have their rattles out of their hands. You hear them calling from the house-tops, and the beat of bare feet on the dancing places. But the summer after Father Letrado built his chapel of the Immaculate ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... have left us their account books very carefully kept, and one Walter de Henley in 1250 wrote a book on the Art of Husbandry, which gives us much information. The rent of land was about sixpence per acre. They ploughed three times a year, in autumn, April, and at midsummer, and used oxen for their plough-teams. Women helped their husbands in ploughing and harvest work. An old writer describes the farmer's wife "walking by him with a long goad, in a cutted cote cutted ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... between the rains give the finest weather possible. These rains are less frequent in March, and cease altogether in April and May, when gradually the grass dies and the whole aspect of things changes, first to yellow, then to brown, and by midsummer all is burnt up and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... it is believed that "seven-year-old children will become beautiful by dancing in the flax," and in some parts of Germany "when an infant seems weakly and thrives slowly, it is placed naked upon the turf on Midsummer Day, and flax-seed is sprinkled over it; the idea being, that, as the flax-seed grows, so the child will gradually grow stronger" (435. 278, 279); flowers and plants are sometimes associated with ill-luck and death. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain |
