"Twig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... us one: it was suspended on the very point of a twig. She says, they adopt this plan to secure them from the attacks of the monkey and the snake. They form them in the shape of a hen's egg, cut in half. The eggs are not bigger than a pea, of a clear white, with a few yellow specks here and there. I wish I had ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... had been keeping time with his tail to this declamatory crescendo. With the last effort he cocked it a shade too high, lost his balance, and landed, considerably ruffled, some four feet beneath his own reserved and particular twig. His eye was on me, and I felt it too serious a matter for laughter. He made what was evidently intended for a dignified ascent, choosing, with minute exactness, the steps he had originally employed on my approach. It was a full minute before he broke the ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... seeking, made one bound for her with her rake, and with such a scream as certainly to scare little Black-and-white out of at least one of the nine lives to which she is supposed to be entitled. But pussy was too swift and swiftly scrambled to the very topmost twig that would hold her weight, while Tattine danced about in helpless rage on the grass beneath the tree. "Tattine is having a fit," thought little Black-and-white, scared half to death and quite ready to have a little fit of her own, to judge ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... popped in a big iron cage, where the 'ose plays upon you like fun; A lawn, or a house a-fire, CHARLIE, could not be more thoroughly done. Sez I, "I'm insured, dontcher know, mate; so don't waste the water, d'ye 'ear?" But he didn't appear to arf twig. He seemed jest a bit thick ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... shrub is sooner or later destined to a chief place amongst our ornamental flowering shrubs. P. japonica Maulei (syn Cydonia Maulei), from Japan (1874), is a rare shrub as yet, small of growth, and with every twig festooned with the brightest of orange-scarlet flowers. It is quite hardy, and succeeds well under treatment that will suit ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... have a great commission to execute a Breviary for our house, and our holy Father was pleased to say that the spirit of the blessed Angelico had in some little humble measure descended on me, and now I am busy day and night; for not a twig rustles, not a bird flies, nor a flower blossoms, but I begin to see therein some hint of holy adornment to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... and listened, and she began to feel strange pangs. She drew her cloak more closely round her, and saw that the stars already stood in the sky. But still Joseph came not. And from the hill the singer: "And from the root of Jesse a twig shall spring." And a second voice: "And all nations shall rise up and sing her praises." So did the shepherds sing the songs of their old kings ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... the world with fagots big That make a crackling racket, But I'm content with but a whispering twig ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... Oh, what's the use!" Val kicked at a long twig. A warm wind brought in its hold the heavy scent of flowering bushes and trees. His shirt clung to his shoulders damply. It was hot even in the shade of the oaks. Rupert had gone to town to see LeFleur and hear the worst, so that Pirate's ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... brass nails, was securely bolted, but not a cannon {158} had been loaded. The bushrangers then cast aside all clothing that would hamper, and, pistol in hand, advanced silent and stealthy as wild-cats. Not a twig crunched beneath the moccasin tread. The water lay like glass, and the fort slept silent as death. Hastily each raider had knelt for the blessing of the priest. Pistols had been recharged. Iberville bade his wild Indians not to forget ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... did not try to respond in kind—with her lips at least. She began teasing the youth about his crinkly hair. Breaking a twig as she spoke, she threw it carelessly at his hair, and it stuck in the closely curled locks. She laughed gayly at him. Perhaps in some way rather subtly than suddenly, as by a ghostly messenger from afar, he may have been made aware of her beautiful body, of the exquisite lines ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Vesta, catching sight of a low, flashing touch of red as a robin lighted upon a twig nearby. Her hand was up, and her eyes ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... pounding of our hearts. We grew quite stiff in our cramped positions, but feared to shift a limb and waited for three-quarters of an hour before we dared to worm our way cautiously in the other direction. The snap of a twig was like that of a rifle on the stillness of ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... twig is bent so the tree is inclined. The young mind is plastic and capable of receiving impressions, and we know that the impressions made in our youth ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... (Orthoptera) is made up of the earwigs, cockroaches, crickets, grass-hoppers, and their allies the locusts, with Bamboo-insects and the curious walking-leaf (so-called from their resemblance to a Bamboo twig and a foliage leaf respectively), the praying ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... instinct—in short the whole romantic cycle of German and northern poetry, awoke little by little in my memory and laid claim upon my sympathy. It is a poetry of bracing quality, and acts upon one like a moral tonic. Strange charm of imagination! A twig of pine wood and a few spider-webs are enough to make countries, epochs, and nations ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mourns the encumber'd land it's human load: Too soon arrives the inauspicious hour; The Natal Hour of the unhappy Man, Who all his life goes mourning up and down That there is neither bough, nor mud, nor straw That he may take to make himself a hut; No, not in all his native land a twig That he may take, nor spot of green grass turf, Where without trespass he may set his foot. Now Want and Poverty wage War with Love; And hard the conflict: horrible the thought, That Love, who boasts of his all-conquering impulse, Should have to mourn ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... country and our people, as we find them at the present day. But again, as in geology, so here, we find few traces in our own immediate neighbourhood of the earlier links in this series—the people who preceded the historic Britons. On Twig Moor, near Brigg, in the north of the county, a tract of ground very similar to our own Moor, many flint implements have been found. On an excursion of our “Naturalists’ Union” to that tract, one of the party found “a handful” of stone “knives and finely-chipped arrow heads.” ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... birthright. The repetition of "great"—"he was my great-great-grandfather;" "you can add another 'great' for yourself"— hummed in his ears. A full half a minute ticked by before he grasped at the remainder of his father's speech, and, like a breaking twig, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... seeking to call attention to a particular bird on a tree, and failing to do so by mere indication. Descriptive signs are resorted to, perhaps suggesting the bill and wings of the bird, its manner of clinging to the twig with its feet, its size by seeming to hold it between the hands, its color by pointing to objects of the same hue; perhaps by the action of shooting into a tree, picking up the supposed fallen game, and plucking ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... hammer, would have slain the giantess had not the other Asas held him back, bidding him not forget the last duty to the dead god. So Thor hallowed the pyre with a touch of his sacred hammer and kindled it with a thorn twig, which ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... notion prevailed with respect to discovering the proper place to dig wells. There were certain persons, I do not remember what they were called, whether water doctors or water witches, who professed to be able, with the aid of a small hazel crotched twig, which was held firmly in both hands with the crotch inverted, to tell where a well should be sunk with a certainty of finding water. The process was simply to walk about with the twig thus held, and when the right place was reached, the forked ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... According to all laws, human and divine, the King ought to punish Madame de Montespan, and, instead of censuring her, he wishes to make her a duchess! . . . Let him make her a princess, even a highness, if he likes; he has all the power in his hands. I am only a twig; he is an oak. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... arm-pit. With the force of his huge fist he swung him round and stretched him out at arm's length, all collar and shanks. The man hung like a mole from the twig. Yet, while Beppo poured out the tale of his iniquities, his eyes gave the turn of a twinkle, showing that he could have answered one whom he did not fear. The charge brought against him was, that for the last six months he had been ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... invaders were inside the shack he was now certain. It was not a fire. There was neither smoke nor flame. Softly he crept nearer, the thick matting of pine needles muffling his footsteps. But how his heart beat! Suppose a twig should crack beneath his feet and warn the vandals of his approach? And suppose they rushed out, caught him, and—for a moment he halted with fear; then, summoning every particle of courage he possessed, he tiptoed on and contrived to reach one of ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... thing. I couldn't even find a broken twig in any of the little clumps of outgrowing trees. There wasn't a sign of the sand having been disturbed anywhere down the face of the cliff, and I shouldn't think a human being had been on that beach during our lifetimes. I have had ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... watched from the dock side were kind and said nothing. The old admirals who had come down to visit the ship were used to these things, or perhaps they did not twig it. After all, what did it matter, it was sailing day, we were all as proud as peacocks of our little ship, and from that day forward we pulled together and played the game, or ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... looked straight before him, apparently at a bluebird balanced on a twig, but it was not the bird he ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the birds began to reappear. A jay screamed somewhere deep in the yellowing woods; black-capped chickadees dropped from twig to twig, cheeping inquiringly. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... merely whispering with their leaves, (for every tree talks to itself in that way, even when it stands alone in the middle of a pasture,) but grating their boughs against each other, as old horn-handed farmers press their dry, rustling palms together, dropping a nut or a leaf or a twig, clicking to the tap of a woodpecker, or rustling as a squirrel flashes along a branch. It was now the season of singing-birds, and the woods were haunted with mysterious, tender music. The voices of the birds which love the deeper ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Goodie She trots betimes Over the meadows To Farmer Grimes. And never was queen With jewelry rich As those same hedges From twig to ditch; Like Dutchmen's coffers, Fruit, thorn, and flower - They shone like William And Mary's bower. And be sure Old Goodie Went back to Weep, So tired with her basket She scarce ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... song-priest placed the sacred wands around the rainbow, commencing on the west side of the painting, and repeated a prayer, pointing his finger to the head of each figure. He also placed a small gourd of medicine water in the hands of the rainbow goddess and laid a small cedar twig on the gourd. The invalid upon entering the lodge was handed an Apache basket containing sacred meal, which he sprinkled over the painting and placed the basket near the feet of the rainbow goddesses; ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... under that tree you're in," Kiddie Katydid informed him. Kiddie never moved as he spoke, but clung closely to a twig in the bush where he was hiding. Being green himself, he hardly thought that Mr. Nighthawk would be able to discover him amongst shrubbery ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... their hold upon life. While sitting one evening under the trees by the roadside, my attention was called to the unusual conduct of half a dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An elderly man was moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turned upward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that the shank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certain spot, the twig ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... valley, and the delightful notes of a few were strangely contrasted with the harsh and discordant croaking of others. "The modest partridge appeared in company with the magnificent Balearic crane, with his regal crest; and delicate humming birds hopped from twig to twig with others of an unknown species; some of them were of a dark shining green; some had red silky wings and purple bodies; some were variegated with stripes of crimson and gold; and these chirped and warbled from among the ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... If he's made the best use of his time, His twig he'll so carefully lime That every bird Will come down at his word, Whatever its ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... at my watch; it was six o'clock, and thus wanted two hours to daybreak. Hurriedly I left the inn and went out again. A rimy frost had come upon every twig and bush and tree, and in the light of the moon the ice crystals sparkled as though the spirits had scattered myriads of precious stones everywhere. But I thought not of this. I made my way toward the spot from which I thought ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... quickly-smothered squeak which made me quite cower before the eye of Bhima Gandharva as he stood looking calmly forward beside me. So we tramped on through the thickets and grasses. An hour passed; the deployed huntsmen had again drawn in together, somewhat bored; we were all red-faced and twig-tattooed; no tiger was to be found; we gathered into a sort of circle and were looking at each other with that half-foolish, half-mad disconsolateness which men's faces show when they are unsuccessfully engaged in a matter which does not amount to much even after it is successfully ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... down upon them, without the shade of a twig overhead; and the water that a little while before had sung of death rippled with its old musical joy, and about them the birds sang, and very near to them a pair of mating red-squirrels chattered and played in a mountain-ash ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... awaken'd earth and sky With one sensation, and those wakeful Birds Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy, As if one quick and sudden Gale had swept An hundred airy harps! And she hath watch'd Many a Nightingale perch giddily On blosmy twig still swinging from the breeze, And to that motion tune his wanton song, Like tipsy Joy that reels ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... yet it came into my mind as unconsciously as you broke off that twig just now. If I do not get what I lack, nothing can be accomplished—there can be no explosion! I shall abandon the whole thing and let myself ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... were interrupted by his eldest daughter who asked him for a leaf of the lime-tree, which she wanted for a sunshade for her doll. He stepped on the seat and raised his hand to break off a little twig, when a constable appeared and rudely ordered him not to touch the trees. A fresh humiliation. At the same time the constable requested him not to allow his children to play on the graves, which was against ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... The slender birches had faded utterly, the stately beeches resembled dim ghosts of trees and only the spruces retained, imperfectly, their shape and form. Thurston was country bred, and, lifting high his feet to clear bramble trailer and fallen twig, he walked by feeling instead of sight. The beck moaned a little more loudly, and there was a heavy astringent odor of damp earth and decaying leaves. When beast and bird were still again it seemed as if Nature, worn out by the productive ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... for Ella's; and moreover I opine it's a woman's—though for the matter o' that I only guess at it. The third you perceive is the child's; and them thar three are the only ones you can find that arn't Indian's. Now note agin that the trail's spread here, and that here and thar a twig's snapped on the bushes along thar way; which the red-skins have done a purpose to make thar course conspicuous, to draw thar pursuers on arter 'em, prehaps for an ambush, prehaps to keep them ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... that shows there's Injuns round: a moccasin track, a smell of smoke, a twig bent, a village, one stone a-top of another or a white settlement scalped and burned—they all are Injun signs. They all mean something, and the Injuns read them an' make them, too, ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... depend for their subsistence on vegetable products obtainable only by the destruction of the plant, and they seem to confine their consumption almost exclusively to the annual harvest of leaf or twig, or at least of parts of the vegetable easily reproduced. If there are exceptions to this rule, they are in cases where the numbers of the animal are so proportioned to the abundance of the vegetable that there ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... dressing-gown upon the public place, picking up quaint stories from the cattle-drivers off the Cevennes, and the villagers who came in to sell their olives and their grapes, their vinegar and their vine-twig faggots, as they do unto this day. To him may be owing much of the sound respect for natural science, and much, too, of the contempt for the superstition around them, which is notable in that group of great naturalists who were boys in Montpellier ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... few to save it.) She backed up against a tree and stretched her arms out like this"—Havelock made a clumsy stage-gesture of aversion from Chantry, the villain. "And for an instant he thought she was afraid of a Jersey cow that had come up to take part in the discussion. So he threw a twig at its nose." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and Prue says Friday parties are always sure to end in trouble for the devil puts powder in the cakes and the only way to stop him is to turn them three times round when they're baking and touch them each time with a forked hazel twig." ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... consists of a twig or a little branch. One end of it is chewed and softened. The softened fibres serve the purpose of a brush. Such a brush is used only once. It is thrown away after the brushing of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... acquainted with a charming young lady, who proved to be a second-cousin of my father's. She belongs to the aristocratic branch of our family. Every family tree has an aristocratic branch, or bough, or little twig at least, I believe. She was a Todworth; and having always heard my other relations mention with immense pride and respect the Todworths,—as if it was one of the solid satisfactions of life to be able to speak of 'my uncle Todworth,' or 'my cousins the Todworths,'—I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... hammers are skilfully pierced, and wooden or horn implements are often found. The vases are of various shapes, all provided with handles, and are covered with ornaments, some made with the fingers of the potter, others with the help of a twig or some fine string. On the other hand, there are no hatchets of foreign rock; commerce and intercourse with people at a distance had ceased, or at least become rarer. The tools are fixed into handles of stag horn, which are found in ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... had the queen on his right, and Madame de Stael on his left. The servant of the latter had laid a little green twig on her napkin, which she twisted between her fingers while speaking, as was her habit. The conversation was animated, and it was amusing to observe Madame de Stael gesticulating with the little twig in her fingers. One ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... of him; then everything became quiet. The same stillness reigned all around; and this proved that the pursuers, while certainly approaching with the greatest possible alacrity, were anxious to cover their movements. Tyope stood still, undecided what to do. The sound of a breaking or bending twig, faint though audible, caused him to crouch behind a cedar bush again. He held his breath, listened, and peered through the branches. Soon a man appeared,—a Navajo; but whether it was Nacaytzusle or not, he could not discover. The Indian glided across the open space as noiselessly ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... conscience, Indian blood-thirstiness, Indian diabolism—histories which, though of wild woods, are almost as full of things unangelic as the Newgate Calendar or the Annals of Europe. In these Indian narratives and traditions the lad is thoroughly grounded. "As the twig is bent the tree's inclined." The instinct of antipathy against an Indian grows in the backwoodsman with the sense of good and bad, right and wrong. In one breath he learns that a brother is to be loved, and an Indian ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... went along the causeway and out into the wood, where the outposts stood listening for any crack of a twig which might betray a German footstep. I was startled when I came suddenly upon two men, almost invisible, against the tree-trunks. There they stood, motionless, with their rifles ready, peering through the brushwood. If I ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... distance could be seen a cluster of log cabins, with a water-mill over a dammed pool shaded by birch trees and looking bright as glass in the twilight. He approached her silently, his hatchet stuck in his iron belt, a thick cudgel in his hand; there were leaves and bits of twig in his tangled hair, in his matted beard; bunches of rags he had wound round the links fluttered from his waist. A faint clink of his fetters made the woman turn her head. Too terrified by this savage apparition to jump up or ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... a little man, and he had a little gun, And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead; He shot Johnnie Twig through the middle of his wig, And knocked it right ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... pretensions dares to approach the ladies of the group; see how he advances, as on tiptoe, all the hair of his body standing on end, and with a thundering rush drives headlong away this bold intruder, and then comes swaggering back! But, hark—a twig has broken! Suddenly the buck wheels round, facing the quarter whence the sound proceeded. Look at him now, and say, is he not a quarry ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... paralekta, which always rests among dead or dry leaves and has itself leaf-like wings spotted over with specks to imitate the tiny fungi growths on the foliage it resembles. "It sits on a nearly upright twig, the wings fitting closely back to back, concealing the antennae and head, which are drawn up between their bases. The little tails of the hind wings touch the branch and form a perfect stalk to the leaf, which ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... away into the woods while his mother was sleeping. And when he went he took great pains not to disturb her. He was careful not to step on a single twig. For young as he was, he knew that the sound of a breaking twig was enough to rouse his mother instantly out of the deepest sleep. And he made sure that he didn't set his little feet on any stones. For he knew that at the merest click of a hoof his mother would bound ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... beginning to stir with the resurrection-life of spring; and the hills set round the town had that faint flush of indescribable colour that tinges slopes of grass as the sleeping sap begins to stir. The elm-trees in the court were hazy with growth as the buds fattened at the end of every twig, and a group of daffodils here and there were beginning to burst their sheaths of gold. There on the little lawn before the guest-house were half a dozen white and lavender patches of colour that ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... reached up to a shelf, showing an arm like a brown twig, and took down a glass bottle covered with red and green lines. He removed the stopper, made Domini take off her glove, touched her bare hand with the stopper, then with his forefinger gently rubbed the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... In that book he likens an ice-storm to his impressions derived from reading descriptions of the Taj Mahal, that wonderful tomb of a fair East Indian queen. It is a marvelous bit of word-painting—his description of that majestic vision: "When every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume." It will pay any one to look up that description and read it all, though it has ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and the stories they tell: that it is always the biggest fish that escaped. But in this case it seemed to be true, for strung on a willow twig was Injun's catch, about ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... we proceed within the shadow of the wooded bank, which makes it darker. After gliding past the sombre maze of boughs for a long time, we come upon an open space where the tall trees are burning. The shape of every branch and twig is expressed in a deep red glow, and as the light wind stirs and ruffles it, they seem to vegetate in fire. It is such a sight as we read of in legends of enchanted forests: saving that it is sad to see these noble works wasting ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... still as a spring night can be. Unseen and unheard the life of the earth streamed upwards in twig and blade and leaf, pushing on to the miracle of the prophet Jonas, to be revealed in wealth of color and scent and sound a fortnight later. The wind had fallen; the last doors were shut, and the two figures standing here were as still as all else. To neither of them occurred even the thinnest ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... host of the Achaians that speaketh contrary to thee. Folk-devouring king! seeing thou rulest men of naught; else were this despite, thou son of Atreus, thy last. But I will speak my word to thee, and swear a mighty oath therewith: verily by this staff that shall no more put forth leaf or twig, seeing it hath for ever left its trunk among the hills, neither shall it grow green again, because the axe hath stripped it of leaves and bark; and now the sons of the Achaians that exercise judgment bear it in their hands, even they that by Zeus' command watch over the traditions—so ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... classes'—an absurd and shallow system which has been urged by quacks and dabblers in world-bettering, and which has been exhausted without avail in England—the system dear to single-sided Gradgrinds and illiterate men who grasp a twig here and there without knowing of the existence of the trunk and roots. It lays down a perfectly scientific and universal basis, believing that the most insignificant industry, to be perfectly understood and pursued, must proceed from a knowledge of the great principles of science ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... account of him; yet manfully he will face whatever comes. Whatever comes? It is the summer that is coming! As certain as to-day's snow and cold, the season of all beauty and warmth and delight is on its way! The apple-blossoms, the wild-flowers, the budding of every twig, the greenness of the pastures, the rejoicing life of animals and birds and insects, the sweet airs of May, the sunshine of June,—these, and all varied loveliness beyond imagination's reach or heart's desire, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... great anger. The jackal's greatest asset and protection, when he meets with an enemy, is bluff. He raises his ugly mane, lifts his ungainly shoulders and assumes the look of a Jason, while in reality he is as harmless as a mouse, and the smallest child could drive him away with a twig. His bravery is all pose—a make-believe game—which he plays over and over again with every one ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... of night take on all manner of disguises. A twig snaps, and one thinks that somebody is running for his life. A door slams, and one feels it to be the sudden heart-thump of ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... was another adjustment of the index, another outshooting of vibratory force, a rapid up and down motion of the index to include a certain range of vibrations, and the crow itself was gone—vanished in empty space! There was the bare twig on which a moment before it had stood. Behind, in the sky, was the white cloud against which its black form had been sharply outlined, but there was ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... amain the Runic stroke, The harp began so sweet to ring, The wild bird on the twig that sat Forgot ...
— Ermeline - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... right was a small fir-tree, which had been fixed in the ground, and had become completely covered so that the tree itself had disappeared, its crystal incrustation showing every elegance of variety in form. From each twig of the different boughs, complicated groups of icicles streamed down. The mass to the left, however, was the grandest and most beautiful. It consisted of two vast heads, with several others of less height resembling a group of lions' heads bending ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... these are matters for after discussion. Or does this, which occurred in my own case, happen from the same cause? Thrown from a carriage upon one occasion, I struck my forehead a blow upon the place where a twig of the artery advances from the temple, and immediately, within the time in which twenty beats could have been made I felt a tumour the size of an egg developed, without either heat or any great pain: the near vicinity of the artery had caused the blood to ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... with her twig broom raised and dripping, and scanned him eagerly. "Is it anything about the ship that came yesterday? I heard among the women that it is the war-vessel of Eric's kinsman, Thorkel Farserk, just come back from ravaging ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... purple and gold. Her luxuriant blond hair, the richissima capellatura bionda, was gathered in a net behind and, parted in the middle, fell to her shoulders in long curls on either side of her face; and on her forehead, just where the hair was parted, she wore a twig of laurel, cunningly wrought in gold and ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... thing happened that none of them had mentioned, because they were not sure enough that it would. A brown thrush, catching the unusual atmosphere of the orchard that morning, selected the tallest twig of an apple tree and showed that orchard what ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... through flesh and heart: "ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE!" Half-mad he clasped both hands upon his brow, Amidst the storm of voices, till they died, And all was silence, save the reckless song Of a young bird upon a twig without. Then a defiant, ghastly face he raised, And shrieked, "'T is false! I am no longer thine!" And through the windows open to the park, Rushed forth, beyond the sight ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... studied, leads to a solid, dignified, flowing style, rich in design, and independent in its individuality. Counterpoint, said a critic in the London Musical News, shows the student how to make a harmonic phrase like a well-shaped tree, of which every bough, twig and leaf secures for itself the greatest independence, the fullest measure of light and air. Composer, interpreter and listener may all profit by ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... suddenly self-assertive. The rustle of squirrels along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed each in turn with critical speculation, his ugly head cocked very much to one side. He instinctively mistrusted all wearers of petticoats, and had found the buffalo incident very much more to ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... spot where she had given Oliver Leach his dismissal, and where she had first met John Walden. The wind rustled softly through the boughs, which bent and swayed before her, as though the grand old trees said: 'Thanks to you, we live!' Birds flew from twig to twig,—and the persistent murmur of many bees working amid the wild thyme which spread itself in perfumed purple patches among the moss and grass, sounded like the far-off hum of a ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Water evidently used to be scarcer there, and even now there are places where good wells aren't plentiful. You go along with a hazel twig, and it dips when you cross water running underground. That is, if you have the gift in you. Anybody can't do it. You think that quite foolish, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... twig of the nest is laid," remarked Marufa, indolently eyeing the tusk, "it is difficult to entice the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... by, and the children still played in their camp. One day, while all were gone on a play-search for food, Joseph was left on guard in a hollow tree with merely a peep-hole through which to watch. He heard the cracking of a twig; to his surprise, something moved cautiously through the bushes. It was a real Indian boy. He crept to the wigwam door, peeped in, and then thrust in his arm. Joseph could not tell whether it was to take or to leave something. As the lad turned, he proved to be Assacon. ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... with the sunshine on the wet drops, and things smelling good, like they do after rain—leaves, and grass, and good earth. I tell you it made a fellow feel as if the whole world was his brother. And when Mr. Rob. lit on that twig and swelled his red breast as if he knew the whole thing was his, and began to let them notes out, calling for his lady friend to come and go halves with him, I just had to laugh and speak to him, and that was when Lord Mount Dunstan heard me and jumped ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Ice-tower of Avignon. The all-hiding Earth has received him, the bloated Tilebeard: may we never look upon his like again!—Jourdan one names; the other Hundreds are not named. Alas, they, like confused faggots, lie massed together for us; counted by the cartload: and yet not an individual faggot-twig of them but had a Life and History; and was cut, not without pangs as when ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... saw him going down the road toward the Byers place four nights out of the seven. He had a quick, light step at variance with his sturdy build, and very different from the heavy, slouching gait of the work-weary farmer. He had a habit of carrying in his hand a little twig or switch cut from a tree. This he would twirl blithely as he walked along. The switch and the twirl represented just so much energy and animal spirits. He never so much as flicked a dandelion head ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... along the edge of the woods. He had found something quite to his liking and was much absorbed, when suddenly a fresh puff of wind blew the strong body scent of a man full into his nostrils. He looked this way and that but could see no man. Then a twig snapped in the cover near at hand, and a squirrel hunter stepped into view, not fifty feet away. The hunter was probably much more astonished than was Black Bruin. The great shaggy brute was so close to him that he looked ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... to put the leaves on your boughs. Gather a small twig with four or five leaves on it, put it into water, put a sheet of light-colored or white paper behind it, so that all the leaves may be relieved in dark from the white field; then sketch in their dark shape carefully with pencil ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... though. Anyway, she seemed to be a little island in the mist—the faint, faint, ethereal dew-mist—where nobody walked. You could hear them—a rustle here, a squeak there, a thud somewhere else, a displaced leaf, a cracked twig—this only once—a drumming, a patter, a sniff, a snuffle, a sigh; but they all passed by on the other side, so to say, and gave the silver tabby room to think. Apparently cats are not considered good company in the wild; lonely creatures, they are ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... covenant shall stand forever, whatsoever may befall. As sure as this sceptre which I bear—once it was a tree, but a cunning workman closed it in bronze, to be the glory of the Latian kings—shall never again bear twig or leaf, so surely shall this covenant ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... a little leaf was heard to cry and sigh, as leaves often do, when a gentle wind is blowing. And the twig said, "What is ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... globe in which they were kept, but I could never feel sure that they ate the flies, and fearing they would be starved I tried giving them a little sweet food, a drop of raspberry syrup at the end of a twig; it seemed to be the right thing, for they greedily sucked it in, but in spite of all my care they only lived four weeks; which, however, is probably the term of ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... kind indicated he will find that he has gone out for a walk with a tiger. He has no dignified Mr. Asquith to deal with now. If Northcliffe, by any journalistic sensations, interferes in what in Lloyd George's opinion is the proper and efficient conduct of the war, Lloyd George will break him like a twig and without a second thought. Some people of Britain talk of what will happen to Lloyd George when Northcliffe throws him over. One can only smile. To stop the publication of the Daily Mail and the Times, wrecking a million pounds' worth ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... the silence more intense, while all the time the air grew colder. All at once a dead branch snapped sharply. Estein looked round keenly, but in the dusk of the pine stems his eye could pick out nothing. For a minute everything was still, and then a twig cracked again. This time he could see plainly a man come from behind a tree and stand in the outskirts of the wood. For a minute they stood looking at each other. The man, so far as he could discern in the waning light, wore the native skin coat and cap, and seemed to hold in his hands ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... lake. The spectacle arrested him, as it arrested all men, by some occult power beyond the mere attraction of beauty or magnitude; even the teamster never passed it without the tribute of a stone or broken twig tossed into ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... threatening to burn the house over the other's head if he dared to take possession of it. The matter was finally adjusted by the opportune intervention of a neighbor who stood in high repute for wisdom. At his suggestion, they should each plant side by side a twig or sprout of some tree or herb, and he to whose plant God gave growth should be the owner of the farm. This advice was accepted; for God, both thought, was a safer arbiter than man. One of the brothers, Arne, chose ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... she inadvertently stepped on a dry twig that snapped sharply under her foot, and at the sound the man had turned fiercely, like an animal at bay. Then he wheeled about and made as though to flee for the shelter of ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... thousand devils with whips were after them, and in the sunny intervals there is nothing in any of nature's moods to equal the clear sharpness of the atmosphere, all the mellowness and indistinctness beaten out of it, and every leaf and twig glistening coldly bright. It is not becoming, a north-westerly gale; it treats us as it treats the garden, but with opposite results, roughly rubbing the softness out of our faces, as I can see when I look at the babies, and avoid the further proof of my own reflection ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... would not face the furze. I tried hard to see her, but it was no use; the tangle was too thick; she had gone. I called out to her softly; but I got no answer; only, at some little distance away, I heard a twig snap under ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... afterwards poking the eggs beneath the bark. As the tree continues to grow, the area between the slits dies, making a very rough appearance of the bark and an area into which spores of disease and bacteria may enter. The twig that is badly scarred very often dies, and sometimes young trees just set out are marked so badly ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... moment Molly considered her brother's cold and handsome young face. She put out a hand, plucked a twig from a low drooping bough, and peeling the gummy rind, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... As he spoke a twig with a fresh yellow break in it fell from a tree and struck his upturned face. He winced at the thought that the bullet might have flown a few feet lower. And meanwhile the sound of the firing ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... bonnet keeps out no steel blade!" So trenchant was the Templar's weapon, that it shore asunder, as it had been a willow-twig, the tough and plaited handle of the mace, which the ill-fated Saxon reared to parry the blow, and, descending on his head, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... "I twig!" Jimmie declared, skipping about the room. "The stolen boy is next of succession to some measly old throne! What? And he was sent out here to get him out of the zone of danger, and now ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... A twig snapped under his foot with a sharp noise. Noises are always creepy when one is alone in a strange place. Sunny sat down to rest a minute, ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... "is a bud that grew on a twig that grew on a bush that grew from the ground that marks the resting place of the ashes of Queen's, and to you, Katherine, as true historian of our noble class, do I ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... deer were skipping gaily over the plains. The wolves were hiding in their holes. We came at length to a stream. It was skirted by a grove, into which we made our way, and there we kindled a fire, and prepared our breakfast. We filled our coffee kettle from the brook. A hazel twig served us for a toasting fork; and we were soon engaged in one of the pleasantest parts of a hungry traveller's work. We relished our bread and ham and coffee amazingly. The wolves might be snuffing the odor of our viands, and coveting our repast; but they remained within ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Chair is a new one, or almost new, and for the present would seem to float in the void, like Mahomet's coffin. Wherefore, being one who (in my Lord Chief Justice Crewe's phrase) would 'take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it'; being also prone (with Bacon) to believe that 'the counsels to which Time hath not been called, Time will not ratify'; I do assure you that, had any legacy of guidance been discovered among the papers left by my predecessor, it would have been eagerly ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... fatigue my reader with these dull matters of fact, but that my duty as a faithful historian requires that I should be particular; and, in truth, as I am now treating of the critical period when our city, like a young twig, first received the twists and turns which have since contributed to give it its present picturesque irregularity, I cannot be too minute ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... perked up their pretty heads in Mary's cottage garden, and throughout all nature there came that inexplicable, indefinite, soft pulsation of new life and new love which we call the spring. Tiny buds, rosy and shining with sap, began to gleam like rough jewels on every twig and tree—a colony of rooks which had abode in the elms surrounding Weircombe Church, started to make great ado about their housekeeping, and kept up as much jabber as though they were inaugurating an Irish night in the House of Commons,—and, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... sound is a token of life. On high, bare, or snow-covered mountains the sense of oppression comes in great part from the absence of sound. But stand in spring under a broad, sapful Norway maple, leafless as yet, its every twig and spray clad in tender green flowerets, and listen to the musical murmur of bees above you, full of life and promise, a heavenly harmony from unseen choristers. Here is a symbol of the creative energy, unceasing, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... with ashes, hastened, and delayed not, until he stood before the gate of Paradise. Then prayed he, "Let my father find pity, kind-hearted one, and send to him fruit from the tree of life." Quickly there stood the glittering cherub, and instead of the tree of life, he held a twig of three leaves in his hand. "Carry this to thy father," said he, friendly, "his last consolation is here; for eternal life dwells not on the earth." Swiftly hastened Seth, threw himself down, and said, "No fruit of the tree of life bring I to thee, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... Observation 23. A twig submerged in a ditch was scraped. Gemiasma verdans found abundantly with many other things, which if rehearsed would ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... were lighted. What a brilliance, what splendor! The Tree trembled so in all its branches that one of the candles set fire to a green twig, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... soon produced a recognizable imitation of Tom Madison's "Old Dan Tucker." My success quite pleased me, and I became so absorbed that I quite lost account of the time and place. There was no one to hear me save a bluejay which for an hour or more kept me company. He sat on a twig just across the brook, cocking his head at me, and saucily wagging his tail. Occasionally he would dart off among the trees crying shrilly; but his curiosity would always get the better of him and back he would come again to try to solve the ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... earlier treatise that deals in detail with the subject, the Hippocratic work On generation. 'The manner of generation of trees and plants are these: spontaneous, from a seed, from a root, from a piece torn off, from a branch or twig, from the trunk itself, or from pieces of the wood cut up small.'[21] The marvel of germination must have awakened admiration from a very early date. We have already seen it occupying a more ancient ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... of it, if we're inclined to make it longer," he replied. "Suppose now, a craft was to make her appearance in the south-east, we should have to make sail after her, and it might be many a day before we got back to port, do ye see. Do you twig, my ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... desperate leap and landed beside Amy on the stump while Betty and Mollie stepped to one side out of the reptile's path. Then, almost miraculously—or so Betty thought when she looked back upon it afterward—her eye fell upon a forked twig lying at her feet. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... really very agreeable; and to look at her face is like being shone upon by a ray of the sun. She never walks, but bounds and dances along, and this motion, in her diminutive person, does not give the idea of violence. It is like a bird, hopping from twig to twig, and chirping merrily all the time. Sometimes she is rather vulgar, but even that works well enough into her character, and accords with it. On continued observation, one discovers that she is not a little girl, but really a little woman, with all the prerogatives ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... down, and when the Giant let go, the tree flew up in the air, and the Tailor was taken with it. He came down on the other side, however, unhurt, and the Giant said, "What does that mean? Are you not strong enough to hold that twig?" "My strength did not fail me," said the Tailor; "do you imagine that that was a hard task for one who has slain seven at one blow? I sprang over the tree simply because the hunters were shooting down here in the ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... firmly fixed on the sand. Bar Shalmon walked towards a tree and climbed it. In a few moments he returned, holding a twig in ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... O Tapio's daughter! Drive the game in this direction, Out into the open heathland. If it runs with heavy footsteps, Or is lazy in its running, Take a switch from out the bushes, Or a birch-twig from the valley, 180 Switch the game upon the haunches, And upon the flanks, O whip it, Drive it swiftly on before you, Make it hasten quickly onward, To the man who here awaits it, In the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... wicket open a little way and peeped in. The actor was standing just by the fust crane talking to two of the hands off of the Saltram. He'd got 'is back to the light, but 'ow it was they didn't twig ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... Turnspit turnrostilo. Turnstile turnkruco. Turpentine terebinto. Turpitude hontindajxo. Turquoise turkiso. Turret tureto. Turtle-dove turto. Tusk dentego. Tutor guvernisto. Twain du. Tweezers prenileto. Twelve dekdu. Twig brancxeto. Twilight vespera krepusko. Twin dunaskito. Twine sxnureto. Twinkle brileti. Twist tordi. Twitter pepi. Two du. Tympanum oreltamburo. Type (model) modelo. Type tipo, preslitero. Typhoid (fever) tifa ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... in charge of the pack train having deserted them before the travelers got back from the rim, Dad picked up a half breed whom the boys named Chow, because he was always chewing. If not food, Chow was forever munching on a leaf or a twig or a stick. His jaws were ever at work until the boys were working their own jaws out of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... be more graceful and delicate than these little creatures. They obtain their food from the calyx of the flowers, round which they flutter like butterflies, and indeed are very often mistaken for them in their rapid flight. It is very seldom that they are seen on a branch or twig in a state of repose. After passing through the valley, we reached the Serra, as the Brazilians term the summit of each mountain that they cross; the present one was 3,000 feet high. A broad paved road, traversing virgin forests, runs up the ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... sun had just gone down. And Gramarye ... Gramarye had never looked one half so beautiful.... All her hard lines were gone. Every sacred twig of her had put on a wedding garment. The wild mystery of the place had been exquisitely veiled. The majesty of desolation was in full dress. Far as the eye could reach, the toss of the glorious woods had become unspeakably ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... in the graves; and I have even seen a confession of the faith written on paper and placed on a twig before the face of the dead. At the appointed seasons— especially at the great Feast of Sacrifice—offerings are brought to the grave. The family party passes through the cemetery, the women bearing baskets of bread and bottles of ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... depredations of crows and squirrels. To start the oriole's nest successfully is quite an engineering feat. The birds inspect the branches many times before they make a decision. When they have decided on the site, the mother bird brings her first string or vegetable fiber and attaches it to a twig by winding it around and around many times, leaving one or both ends hanging free. I have nests where these foundation strings are wound around a twig a dozen times. In her blind windings and tuckings and loopings the bird occasionally ties a substantial knot, but it is never the result of a deliberate ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... open hence, Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, Where the strawberry runs red, With white star-flower overhead; Cumbered by dry twig and cone, Shredded husks of seedlings flown, Mine of mole and spotted flint: Of dire wizardry no hint, Save mayhap the print that shows Hasty outward-tripping toes, Heels to terror on the mould. These, the woods of Westermain, Are as others ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... over the little gray-brown chrysalis of the Papilio Cresphontes, that splendid swallowtail whose hideous caterpillar we in the South call the orange puppy, from the fancied resemblance the hump upon it bears to the head of a young dog. Its chrysalis looks so much like a bit of snapped-off twig that the casual eye misses it, fastened to a stem by a girdle of silk ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... came the real hazard of the night. If the coastguard or any belated wanderer should blunder upon us, we stood convicted of kidnapping a corpse, and (as the Vicar afterwards allowed) there was simply no explanation to be given. When we gained the orchard and pushed through the broken fence, every twig that crackled fetched my heart into my mouth: and I drew my first breath of something like ease when at length, in the withy bed at the foot of Gunner's Meadow, we laid our burden down behind ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a step nearer, to gain a better view of the proceedings, but as she did so her foot trod noisily on a dead twig. ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... (in Anglo-Saxon, Mistiltan) is derived, says Dr. Prior, from mistil, "different," and tan, "a twig," [346] because so unlike the tree it grows upon; or, perhaps, mist may refer to excrement, and the adjective, viscum, bear some collateral reference to viscera, "entrails." Probably our viscum plant differs from that of the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... also may have been coined at home. "That was the idear, don't you twig, missis? I never did 'old ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... gold, passing into orange, and that to red; and on nearing it find it tiled all over with the flowers of a creeper, {118b} arranged in flat rows of spreading brushes, some foot or two long, and holding each hundreds of flowers, growing on one side only of the twig, and turning their multitudinous golden and orange stamens upright to the sun. There—I cannot describe it. It must be seen first afar off, and then close, to understand the vagaries of splendour ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... is nearly done, thrust a twig or wooden skewer into it, down to the bottom. If the stick come out clean and dry, the cake is almost baked. When quite done, it will shrink from she sides of the pan, and cease making a noise. Then withdraw the coals (if baked ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... be trusted. Accidents happen so quickly that it is over before we know it and the terrible damage is done. Sometimes the trigger will catch on a coat button or a twig, and, bang! an unexpected discharge takes place and if you were careless just for an instant, it may cost some one his life. Especial care must be taken in loading and unloading a gun. It is at this time that a gun is most ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... made shew, Daz der minnende mot That an amorous mind behaves Reht als der vrie fogel tot Even as the bird in the open air, Der durch die friheit dier hat Who, by the liberty he enjoys, Vf daz gelimde twi gestat Slightly sits on the lime-twig down; Als er des limes danne entsebet As soon as he the lime descrys, Vnd er sieh vf ze fluhte hebet And rises up to fly in haste, So chlebet er mit den fossen an. His feet are clinging to ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... raining; Molly made quite sure of it by looking into the little puddles upon the walk. At first she thought there were drops still falling upon them, but it was only the wind which ruffled the surface. The green grass was misty with rain and upon the bushes the shining drops hung from every twig. Presently a sudden burst of sunshine broke through the clouds and changed the drops to sparkles of light. "There!" exclaimed Molly, "I see a piece of blue sky. Now I may go, mayn't I, mother? ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... the root of a stately cedar, sprang up, twenty years ago, a shoot of that most hardy and beautiful of native creepers, the wild woodbine or American ivy. It crept steadily upward, laying hold of branch and twig, casting out, first, tendrils, then ropes, to make sure its hold—a thing of beauty all summer, a coat of many colors in autumn, until it reached the top of the tree. To-day, the only vestige of cedar-individuality that remains to sight, is in the trunk, the bare branches, stripped of all slight ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... party left the palace, and turned away from Nijio round to the highway of Toin, and passed by the mansion of Genji, who witnessed their passing, and sent the following to the lady-mother with a twig of Sakaki (divine tree):— ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... yesterday, whilst he was scrambling with Philip for what remained of the contents." I inquired for the eldest; and she had scarcely time to tell me that he was driving a couple of geese home from the meadow, when he ran up, and handed Philip an osier-twig. I talked a little longer with the woman, and found that she was the daughter of the schoolmaster, and that her husband was gone on a journey into Switzerland for some money a relation had left him. "They wanted ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... took to beef, but he remained hyperaesthetic, and could see better in a bad light than Daumer or Feuerbach. Some 'dowsers,' we know, can detect subterranean water, by the sensations of their hands, without using a twig, or divining rod, and others can 'spot' gold hidden under the carpet, with the twig. Kaspar, merely with the bare hand, detected (without touching it?) a needle under a table cloth. He gradually lost these gifts, and the theory seems to have ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... back against a good, stout tree; he poked the fire into a blaze the moment it showed signs of dying down; he was quicker than any of them to notice the least sound in the night about them—a fish jumping in the lake, a twig snapping in the bush, the dropping of occasional fragments of frozen snow from the branches overhead where the heat loosened them. His voice, too, changed a little in quality, becoming a shade less confident, lower also in tone. Fear, to put it plainly, hovered ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... good deal in that," commented Haigh, blinking at the shabby black steamer thoughtfully. "You'd better pop down below in case he has ventured his little self on deck, and should happen to twig you. But still it's best to be on the safe side." He chose a cigar, lighted it and puffed for a minute, and then took it out of his mouth and grinned at the glowing end. "Look here. The fellow doesn't know me from Adam. I'll slip ashore, and see ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne |
