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Twining   Listen
adjective
Twining  adj.  The act of one who, or that which, twines; (Bot.) the act of climbing spirally.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Twining" Quotes from Famous Books



... I will build a bower for thee, sweet, A verdurous shelter from the noonday heat, Thick rustling ivy, broad and green, and shining, With honeysuckle creeping up and twining Its nectared sweetness round thee; violets And daisies with their fringed coronets And the white bells of tiny valley lilies, And golden-leaved narcissi—daffodillies Shall grow around thy dwelling—luscious fare Of fruit on which the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... I got hold of a part strong enough to check the progress of the log; but the current was so swift that I was nearly dragged from it. By twining my legs around the log, I held on till its momentum was overcome; and then I had no difficulty in drawing it in till the end touched the shore. After much persuasion I induced Sim to work himself along the stick till he reached the dry land; for we had passed beyond the greatest depression ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... the rainfall precipitated off the slopes of Castle-an-dinas begot vast torrents which, upon their roaring way, tore the very heart out of steep and stony lanes, flooded farmyards, plowed up miles of hillside, leaped the wall of the cemetery below and spread twining ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... feasted their eyes on the scene, as the two girls, with twining arms and many innovations on the regular step, whirled through the rooms, and then Zell's quick ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... Miss Keene, now thoroughly alarmed, and releasing herself from the twining arms about her. "For Heaven's sake let me go! I must see somebody! Where ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... ruffled waters. Strange! The woods at first convey the impression of profound repose, and yet, if you watch their ways with open ear, you find the life which is in them is restless and nervous as that of a woman: the little twigs are crossing and twining and separating like slender fingers that cannot be still; the stray leaf is to be flattened into its place like a truant curl; the limbs sway and twist, impatient of their constrained attitude; and the rounded masses of foliage swell upward and subside from time to time with long soft sighs, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... greater importance to him when the Blombergs placed above the altar the Madonna and Child which he, who tried all the arts, had copied with his own hand from an ancient painting. This had been in July; but when, on the Virgin's Assumption day in August, Barbara was twining a beautiful garland of summer flowers around it, and he, with an overflowing heart, was helping her, his head accidentally struck against hers, and to comfort her he compassionately kissed the bruised spot. Only a short time ago she had frankly thrown ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... heavy underwood and brush, and he had no choice but to dodge his way between the clumps. But when he got out to the broad open space on the brow of the hill, where no trees had ever grown, he found an almost tropical growth of wild grass and azalea, with bull-brier twining over everything in every direction. He found it worse than ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... Allah, I love thee and trust in thee, but I know that I cannot be thine.' 'And what is there to hinder?' asked he. Quoth she, 'Tonight, I will tell thee my story, that thou mayst accept my excuse.' Then she threw herself upon him and twining her arms about his neck, kissed him and wheedled him, promising him her favours; and they continued to toy and laugh till love got complete possession of them. They abode thus for a whole month, sleeping ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... place. The hall itself was built of rough, greenish-gray stone, and over the whole front of it, twining round the windows, hanging over the doors, grew clinging, ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler

... desolation of Kilauea, I realized more fully the beauty of Hilo, as it appeared in the gloaming. The rain had ceased, cool breezes rustled through the palm-groves and sighed through the funereal foliage of the pandanus. Under thick canopies of the glossy breadfruit and banana, groups of natives were twining garlands of roses and ohia blossoms. The lights of happy foreign homes flashed from under verandahs festooned with passion-flowers, and the low chant, to me nearly intolerable, but which the natives love, mingled with the ceaseless ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... look upwards among the dense leaves of a gigantic maple tree whose lower branches were matted with twining convolvulus ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... then examined, with all its glories of gold, bronze, and orange. Then there was a skipping, twining, silvery, long-nose that could hardly be kept in the net, a fish that looked remarkably like an eel, save for its regularly shaped mackerel tail, and long beak-like nose. Sea-bream were the next—ruddy looking, large-eyed fish, not ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... for it is on dead flat ground, the famous castle of Malepartus, which beheld the base murder of Lampe the hare, and many a seely soul beside. I know it well; a patch of sand-heaps, mingled with great holes, amid the twining fir-roots; ancient home of the last of the wild beasts. And thither, unto Malepartus safe and strong, trots Reinecke, where he hopes to be snug among the labyrinthine windings, and innumerable starting-holes, as the old apologue ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... had met there in the woods by accident; and now they fought, not with sword or rifle, but with long and deadly hunting-knives, that flash in the light as they go turning, and twining, and twisting over the green-sward. At last, the Tory is down!—down on the green-sward, with the knee of the Continental upon his breast,—that up-raised knife quivering in the light,—that dark-gray eye flashing death ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... that cheered my heart. The fields were not only dug, but manured, and, still better, planted and sown. The smell of manure was quite new to me. I had never met with it on the other side of the Apennines. I was delighted at the sight of trees. There were rows of vines twining around elms planted in fields of hemp, wheat, or clover. In some places the vines and elms were replaced by mulberry-trees. What mingled riches were here lavished by nature! How bounteous is the earth! Here were mingled together, in rich profusion, bread, wine, shirts, silk gowns, and ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... trodden grasses and the flaunting cowslips face downwards. A low, incessant moaning came from the muffled mouth. Her hands were knotted in her hair. She writhed like a crushed snake, and all of her slender neck and face that could be seen and the little ears that her clutching, twining fingers sometimes bared and sometimes covered ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... witness-chair, picking his way through feet and legs. As he turned, facing the coroner, his hand upraised, Ollie looked at him steadily, her fingers fluttering and twining. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... water—using its roots as legs with which, as it were, to wade away from shore. When darkness fell suddenly on the landscape, as it is prone to do in tropical regions, the gnarled roots of those mangroves assumed the appearance of twining snakes in Nigel's eyes. Possessing a strongly imaginative mind he could with difficulty resist the belief that he saw them moving slimily about in the black water, and, in the dim mysterious light, tree stems and other objects assumed the appearance of hideous living forms, so that he was ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... tongue adventures The first tones of imitation, Or with magic speed o'ermasters The philosophy of language Twining round the mind of others, Preferences, and pains and pleasures, Tendrils strong, of sentient being, Seeking kindness and indulgence, Loving sports and smiles, and gladness, Tenderest love goes forth to meet it, Love that every ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... bodily out of his dreams. The same sunbeam that had dazzled the doctor between the bed- curtains gleamed on the weather-beaten gilding which had once adorned this mysterious symbol, and showed it to be an enormous serpent, twining round a wooden post, and reaching quite from the floor of the ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that all commenced to declare that if Paradise could be found on earth, they could not conceive what other form than that of this garden could be given to it, nor what beauty could be added to it. Wandering happily about it, twining from the branches of various trees beautiful garlands, hearing everywhere the songs of maybe twenty kinds of birds as it were in contest with each other, they became aware of another charm of which, to the others ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... sure she must have seen those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got his nightmare vision, described by another as "cemeteries of departed greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and mutilated inscriptions." Such a black dungeon faced the page that held the blue sky and the single bird; at the bottom of it something was coiled,—what, and whether meant for dead or alive, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... novices had gathered around him, and their faces had grown pale and their eyes bright as they listened with parted lips, entranced in admiration, twining their arms about one another's shoulders and holding closely together, half in fear, half in delight. The older nuns had turned from their tasks and paused, in passing by, to hear the pilgrim's story. Too well they knew the truth of what he spoke. Many a one ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke

... child! don't you remember who brought Frisk out of the train for you that day in the fog?' But Dolly hung her head and drooped her long lashes, twining her fingers with one of those sudden attacks of awkwardness that sometimes seize the most self-possessed children. 'You never thanked him then, you know,' continued Mabel; 'aren't you going to say a ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... indifferent in the immense solidity of their life, which endures for ages, to that short and fleeting life in the heart of the man who crept painfully amongst their shadows in search of a refuge from the unceasing reproach of his thoughts. Amongst their smooth trunks a clear brook meandered for a time in twining lacets before it made up its mind to take a leap into the hurrying river, over the edge of the steep bank. There was also a pathway there and it seemed frequented. Willems landed, and following the capricious promise of the track soon found himself ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... few minutes. The material, which an old traveller says is of "leaves interwoven not contemptibly with one another," is a grass growing everywhere on the hills, plaited and attached to strips of cane or bamboo- palm (Raphia vinifera); the gable "walls" are often a cheque- pattern, produced by twining "tie-tie," "monkey rope," or creepers, stained black, round the dull-yellow groundwork; and one end is pierced for a doorway, that must not front the winds and rains. It is a small square hole, keeping the interior dark and cool; and the defence is ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... vp eyes in labour with her teares, Which ioy did weep for woe to leaue those spheares Which downe her face made paths vnto her necke, And setling there shewd like a carquenet; Anon she teares her haire, away it flings, Which twining on her fingers shewd like rings; Then she assayes to speake, but sighs and teares Eats vp her words and multiplies her feares. Why wert thou borne (quoth she) to die so soone, And leaue the world poore of perfection; ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... was joined a monstrous figure of an animal, with three heads: the biggest, in the middle, was that of a lion; that of a dog fawning came out on the right side, and that of ravenous wolf on the left: a serpent was represented twining round these three animals, and laying its head on the right hand of Serapis: on the idol's head was placed a bushel, an emblem of the fertility of the earth. The statue was made of precious stones, wood, and all sorts of metal together; its color was at first blue, but ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... the torrid heat, by the reed-fringed, crocodile-haunted lagoon, his dreams had wafted him into a more than Paradise. Eyes, starry with a radiant love-light, had laughed into his; around his neck the twining of arms, and the soft, caressing touch of soothing hands upon his life-weary head; the whisper of love-tones, deep, burning, tremulous, into his ear. And from this he had awakened, had awakened to the reality—to the ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... sponsorial appellation—Kate was unhappily fair and well-favoured. Her hair was dark as the raven-plume; but her skin, white as the purest statuary marble, grew fairer beneath the black and glossy wreaths twining gracefully about her neck. Her cheek was bright as the first blush of the morning, and ever and anon, as a deeper hue was thrown upon its rich but softened radiance, she looked like a vision from Mahomet's paradise—a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... and causes his working apparatus to vanish before ten o'clock; then, twining his arms around the beloved grandmother's neck, he quietly whispers all the secret in her ear, and awaits ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... of brush; the edge of a red blanket peeped from the door; a burnt-out fire smoked on a stone fireplace, and blackened earthen vessels lay near. The white seeds of the cottonwoods were flying light as feathers; plum-trees were pink in blossom; there were vines twining all about; through the openings in the foliage shone the blue of sky and red of cliff. Patches of blossoming Bowers were here and there lit to brilliance by golden shafts of sunlight. The twitter of birds and hum of bees were almost ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... house. Only one of the twelve windows which dotted the three floors was lighted. This was on the second floor at the corner of the house. A little balcony, covered with virgin vines which climbed the walls, twining themselves around the iron railing and falling thence in festoons from the window, overhung the garden. On both sides of the windows, close to the balcony, large-leafed trees met and formed above the cornice a bower of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... to heap so much gold, and not have even the distich of a poor poet engraven upon thy monument? Valiant Porthos! he still, without doubt, sleeps, lost, forgotten, beneath the rock the shepherds of the heath take for the gigantic abode of a dolmen. And so many twining branches, so many mosses, bent by the bitter wind of ocean, so many lichens solder thy sepulcher to earth, that no passers-by will imagine such a block of granite could ever have been supported by the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Confounding, astounding, Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound. Receding and speeding, And shocking and rocking, 5 And darting and parting, And threading and spreading, And whizzing and hissing, And dripping and skipping, And hitting and spitting, 10 And shining and twining, And rattling and battling, And shaking and quaking, And pouring and roaring, And waving and raving, 15 And tossing and crossing, And running and stunning, And hurrying and skurrying, And glittering ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... family. The fruit and flower resemble those of the wood vetch. It is thus described in Professor Eaton's "Manual of Botany for North America," published in 1836:—"Color of corolla, blue and purple; time of flowering, July (and August in Nova Scotia), perennial; stem, twining; leaves, pinnate, with seven lance-ovate leaflets; racemes shorter than the leaves, axillary; root, tuberous. Root very nutritive; ought to be ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... was to seeing such things, he could not get tired of looking at these. They were far more beautiful than any of those which were really French, and had come from over the seas; and from every graceful twig and twining tendril, there looked up at him a pair of soft brown eyes, whose gentle glances went down, and made themselves a home in ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... being loath to let go all for lost; and even as the man that is fallen into the river, will catch hold of anything when he is struggling for life, though it tend to hold him faster under the water to drown him: so, I say, while these poor creatures, as they lie struggling and twining under the ireful countenance of the Judge; they will bring out yet one more faint and weak groan, and there goes life and all; their last sigh is this—Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and gave thee no meat: or when ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... weeds," said Beale. They were, in fact, convolvuluses, little pink ones with their tendrils and leaves laid flat to the dry earth by the wayside, and in a water-meadow below the road level big white ones twining among ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... the trees had thrown down from their branches those singular aerial roots so common here, and seemed standing on stilts. Here and there, when we coasted along by the bank, we had a glimpse into the deeper forest, with its drapery of lianas and various creeping vines, and its parasitic sipos twining close around the trunks, or swinging themselves from branch to branch like loose cordage. But usually the margin of the lake was a gently sloping bank, covered with a green so vivid and yet so soft that it seemed as if the earth had been born afresh in its six months' baptism, and had come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... bronze figure stood erect those who watched could see that the serpent was all in motion, gliding, twining and crawling all over the priest's stalwart frame, while he too seemed to be working hard with his hands, trying to control the reptile's movements, but only for it to go on gliding rapidly through his fingers; ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... good-sized game-basket, cocked hat in shape, was then, after a diligent search, found, brought forth, and replenished with biscuits (for we had not, and could not buy, any bread), three pots of preserved meats, three bottles of champagne, the same of claret, one bottle of brandy, one of Twining's chocolate tin cases filled with tea, both green and black, and a like, though larger, one concealed from the inquisitive gaze ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... In the twining of English holly and Western pine upon the great English novelist's grave the poet expresses a happy thought. He calls East and West together in common appreciation of one whose influence was not merely local but worldwide. He invites the old world and ...
— Dickens in Camp • Bret Harte

... evergreens. The rooms grew into aromatic bowers. Autumn leaves and ferns gave to the heavier decorations a light, airy beauty which he had never seen before. Grace itself Amy appeared as she mounted the step-ladder and reached here and there, twining ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... voice, "it's a tidy little floater with nice warm blankets, but it will never hold up two." Cadogan could see a long spanner, or bar, held ready on the shoulder of the man on the raft. The man in the water was now twining his legs about him, whereupon, still clinging to his man, Cadogan dived, porpoise-like, head down into the sea. When he felt his feet under he kicked once, twice, three times powerfully. ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... ring—my love! recall How many rings, delicious all, His arms around that neck hath twisted, Twining warmer far than this did! Where are they all, so sweet, so many? Oh! dearest, give back all, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... don't even know the initials on the brand," I said to myself as I stood on the front steps under a honeysuckle vine that was twining with a musky rose in a death struggle as to the strength of their perfumes, and watched Adam go padding swiftly and silently away from me down the long avenue of elms. A mocking-bird in a tree over by the fence was pouring out showers of notes of liquid love, ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... described in Nicholas Nickleby, which he was writing at the time. Mrs. Nickleby, in allusion to her old home, calls it "the beautiful little thatched white house one storey high, covered all over with ivy and creeping plants, with an exquisite little porch with twining honeysuckles and all sorts ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... Isaura sang low to herself the song which had so affected her listener; then she fell into abstracted revery, but she felt a strange and new sort of happiness. In dressing for M. Savarin's dinner, and twining the classic ivy wreath in her dark locks, her Italian servant exclaimed, "How beautiful ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... house through whose latticed sides the gadding vines were so interlocked and twined, as to remind you of the legend of Salmacis and Hermes' son, sat a girl. Her wide-brimmed hat rested upon the seat beside her, and round about it was a double girdle of ivy, as if twining there. Looking through the door of the dainty place you could not see the girl's face; for she had turned her head, and her chin was resting upon her slim, white hands, as she read from a book that lay ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... glossy spray? O Arjun, say, where is she now Who loved to touch thy scented bough? Do not thy graceful friend forget, But tell me, is she living yet? Speak, Basil, thou must surely know, For like her limbs thy branches show,— Most lovely in thy fair array Of twining plant and tender spray. Sweet Tila, fairest of the trees, Melodious with the hum of bees, Where is my darling Sita, tell,— The dame who loved thy flowers so well? Asoka, act thy gentle part,— Named ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... laughed he grew more angry, for his prize was what he had previously called a "bow-wow" and attributed to me. For it was a good-sized dog-fish, one which had to be held at head and tail lest in its twining and lashing about it should strike with its spine and do ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... brought kitchen utensils, dogs, horses, carriages, chests, baskets and bales, but have dragged with them, thousands of miles, a whole host of servants. They tell me that some of them have no other work than twining of garlands and preparing ointments. Their priests too, whom they call Magi, are here with them. I should like to know what they are for? of what use is a priest ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... barefooted in those times, sir; but smart extraordinary, and a terble notion of being dressy, too. Twisting ferns about her lil neck for lace, sticking a mountain thistle, sparkling with dew, on her breast for a diamond, twining a trail of fuchsia round her head for a crown—aw, dear! aw, dear! And now—well, well, to think! ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... in the deepening twilight, the belt of sunshine was rapidly climbing toward the topmost palisades with the purple shadows in the gorge mounting, twisting and eddying in skeins of mist, twining up toward them. One spire ahead glowed golden. The cloud drifted down upon it, glooming and glowing on its sunset side. The crag pierced it, ripped it as it glided along, like the knife of a diver in the belly of a shark. A cold wind blew from the riven mass. Then ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... over these again are stately figures, each embodying some sacred abstraction—"Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers"—with angels swinging censers, and graceful nymphs, and laughing satyrs—a strange combination of paganism and Christianity—amid wreaths of flowers, and arabesques twining round the groups and over every vacant space, partly framing, partly hiding, the heraldic devices which commemorate Sixtus and his family:—a web of lovely forms and brilliant colours, combined in an intricate and ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... outward flow; Around the fountain to its widest part, The wondrous lazite bands now curling start And mingle with bright amethyst that glows, To a broad diamond band,—contracting grows To uk-ni stone, turquoise, and clustering pearls, Inlaid with gold in many curious curls Of twining vines and tendrils bearing birds, Among the leaves and blooming flowers, that words May not reveal, such loveliness in art, With fancies spirit hands can only start From plastic elements before the eye, And mingle there the charms ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... shall," said Zillah, twining her arms again about his neck and kissing him fondly. "I promise you that from this time forward I ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... twelve men, of whom four had been with the Brown party. They were R. B. Stanton, Langdon Gibson, Harry McDonald, and Elmer Kane, in boat No. 1, called the Bonnie Jean, John Hislop F. A. Nims, Reginald Travers, and W. H. Edwards in boat No. 2, called the Lillie; and A. B. Twining, H. G. Ballard, L. G. Brown, and James Hogue, the cook, in the Marie, boat No. 3. Christmas dinner was eaten at Lee's Ferry, with wild flowers picked that day for decoration. On the 28th they started into the great canyon, passed the old wreck of a boat and part of a miner's outfit, and on the ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... said, twining her white arms round his swarthy neck and looking up into his murderous eyes with something like genuine adoration. "We shall get the wife's dowry for ourselves, by degrees, every farthing of it, and it shall be the dower of ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... fragrant pine-needles. The girls had found some oak-leaves ("It is my belief," said Mr. Merryweather, "that if Bell went to a picnic in a coal-mine or on a sand-bank, she would still manage to find oak-leaves somewhere!"), and were busily twining garlands for ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards

... "not a bit like a girl, you know,—more like—well, no, there's nothing tomboyish about her, but she's spirited and never gets tired or sickish like other girls." And many a time Dorothy had declared to some choice confidential friend of the twining-arms sort, that Donald was "perfectly splendid! nicer than all the boys she ever had ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge

... Here a wall had caved in, there an arch had fallen out. The thoroughfare was strewn with fallen lintels, broken marble screens, blocks of red sandstone, bricks, and in between them the fig and pipal nourished with the bebel-thorn, the ak, the mimosa, the insidious convolvulus twining everywhere. At the far end of the street a yawning black arch rose in the white, beautiful facade of a marble temple on whose uppermost pinnacle the Eye ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... twining around, and flinging off a great wealth of tendrils from their supporting-poles (pedamenta). The figs begin to show the purple bloom of fruitage, and the villicus, who has just now come in from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... about the room. Smarlinghue, still twining his hands in a helpless, frightened way, still circling his lips nervously with the tip of his tongue, followed the other's movements in miserable apprehension with ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... black, tightly buttoned suit, and kept his eyes with their heavy lids steadily bent upon the head of the animal. To all the notary's questions, he replied only by monosyllables, passing his fingers every now and then through his bushy brown locks, and twining them in his forked beard, a sure indication with him of preoccupation and ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... darling. At his first cry it might be said that she recognized him. She seems to say, "It is he." She takes him without the slightest embarrassment, her movements are natural, she shows no awkwardness, and in her two twining arms the baby finds a place to fit him, and falls asleep contentedly in the nest created for him. It would be thought that woman serves a mysterious apprenticeship to maternity. Man, on the other hand, is greatly troubled by the birth of a child. The first wail of the little creature stirs ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... bolero inexorably demanded. Then Maestro Mario smote the deck sharply with his heels, let go a cry like an Indian's war-whoop, and made two leaps into the air, smiting his heels against each other. He came down on the points of his toes, waving the scarf from his left hand; and twining his right arm about my sister's waist, he swept her away with him. They danced for at least half an hour, running the one after the other, waltzing, tripping, turning, leaping. The children and Gordon shouted with delight, while my father, M. Carpentier, and even Alix clapped their hands, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... flowers. Beside the way, on the green banks, sat groups of children, clad with paradisiacal simplicity, awaiting their fathers and mothers. At a vineyard's hedge a sweet girl, tall, stately and melancholy, was twining a garland in the cap of a stout young fellow who rested one broad hand lightly upon her shoulder. Old women, bent and wrinkled, hobbled out from the fields, getting help from their sons or grandsons. Sometimes I met a shaggy white horse drawing a cart in which a dozen sonsie lasses, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... attack upon the bread and fruit. "Oh, here, this is good! Only I think it's time we got some meat. I'd give anything for a bit of commissariat bacon. You want to hear what I did, sir. Well, it was next to nothing but crawl like a slug in and out amongst trees, scratting one's self with that long, twining, climbing palm, and not once daring to stand up ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... vol. from Colbert's library, bound in red and yellow morocco, on which is painted, on a blue ground, a vine laden with grapes twining round the trunk of a tree. On either side and in gold letters is the device, Sin e doppo la morte (until and after death). Following the title-page, on which the work is called "The Decameron of the most high and most illustrious Princess, Madame Margaret of France," is a curious preface ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... clay elephants—her flower-pots. "I can almost imagine it!" said she; and the lamp wished so much that there was a wax candle to light and be put in it, so that she could plainly see everything just as the lamp saw it; the tall trees, the thick branches twining into one another, the black men on horseback, and whole trains of elephants, which, with their broad feet, ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen

... crescent moon. Comes it with sunrise, when the sunrise floats From Night's bold towers, vast in the East, and gray Till tower and wall flash into fiery clouds, Moving along the verge, stately and slow, Ordered by the old music of the spheres? Perchance it trembles in October's oaks; Or, twining with the brilliant, berried vine, Would hide the tender, melancholy elm. Well might it rest within those solemn woods Where sunlight never falls—whose tops are green With airs from heaven,—its ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard

... her arms round his neck. He kissed her, unlaced her soft, twining arms, and set off on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... been washed spread on the bushes to bleach. All the windows of this gipsy-van of the river were wide open, and the air and light entered freely into every part of the dwelling-house under which flowed the stream. A lady was dressing herself before one of these open windows, twining up large braids of dark hair, her large arms bare to the shoulder, and somewhat farther. I immediately steered out into the channel to avoid intrusion; but I felt that she was regarding me with all a matron's ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... fireman heap in the coke, and stir the blazing mass. I would have outstripped the wind, had it been possible. Faster and faster—hedges and trees, bridges and stations, flashing past—villages no sooner seen than gone—telegraph wires twisting, and dipping, and twining themselves in one, with the awful swiftness of our pace! Faster and faster, till the fireman at my side looks white and scared, and refuses to add more fuel to the furnace. Faster and faster, till the wind rushes in our faces and drives the breath back ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... Nature had cunningly planned That men's names with their trades should agree, There's Twining the tea-man, who lives in the Strand, Would be whining if ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... drooped lower, her fingers twining and intertwining nervously, and her dry lips almost ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... majority of human beings. Although the soil has much to do with the character of vegetation, climate has infinitely more. It is temperature which causes the moss and lichens of the barren tundras in the far north to be replaced by orchids, twining vines, and mahogany trees near the equator. It is rainfall which determines that vigorous forests shall grow in the Appalachians in latitudes where grasslands prevail in the plains and deserts in the ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington

... slothfulness prevailed. To be prefect meant to bear on his shoulder's Caesar's person and also thousands of public affairs. And why should he perform that labor? Was it not better to read poetry in his splendid library, look at vases and statues, or hold to his breast the divine body of Eunice, twining her golden hair through his fingers, and inclining his lips to her coral ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... girl had a human love for the forest flowers; she says to thee, Madhari Creeper: 'Oh, most radiant of twining plants, receive my embraces, and return them with thy flexible arms: from this day, though at a distance, I shall forever be thine.' How unconventional! I fancy Mlle. L. must have inherited this style of conversation from her mamma; all very well, when confined to flowers and 'creeping' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... were held together by the same tie-twining as in the matting (fig. 2). There is an overhand knot between each of the bundles. The twining cord itself is 2-ply, Z-twisted in a loose twist. This method served to fasten the bundles to the cord, space them, and to hold them closely. This tying consists ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey

... snorting steam horse, train, people, and all, and out came this abrupt question. "Little friend" was a mite of a girl of nine, dressed in a homely blue serge frock and jacket, with blue velvet hat to match: a shy little midge of a grey-eyed maiden, with sunny brown curls twining about her forehead and rippling down upon her shoulders, nestling in one corner of the carriage—the sole occupant thereof until this merry questioner came to ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield

... horn is sounding, And gayly o'er each brook and fence His noble steed is bounding. There's beauty in the glorious sun When high mid heaven 't is shining, There's beauty in the forest oak When vines are round it twining; There's beauty in each flower that blooms, Each star whose light is glancing From heaven to earth, as on apace 'T is noiselessly advancing. Beauties are all around thy path, And gloriously they're shining; Nature hath placed them everywhere, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... that distinguishes man from the brute, or, to satisfy a scrupulous accuracy of definition, that distinguishes the British man from the foreign brute? But heaven knows where that striving might lead us, if our affections had not a trick of twining round those old inferior things; if the loves and sanctities of our life had no deep immovable roots in memory. One's delight in an elderberry bush overhanging the confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a more gladdening sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia spreading itself on the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... a low chair, her lap filled with holly leaves and bright berries, sat Nora, and her slender fingers were busy twining them into little garlands to brighten up their poor abode. Very pale and fragile looked the girl, almost too fragile to struggle with the world, but her sweet face was happier than when last we saw her kneeling at her mother's feet. It was as though the ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer

... touched her bosom," he cried, twining it around Karl's head and shoulders, so that its fragrance ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien

... "I question whether our native carvers may not be found to be equal to any whose works we hear so much of in Popish churches, in other countries. And there is no doubt of the superiority of their subjects. Look at these elegant twining flowers, and that fine brooding eagle! How much better to copy the beautiful works of God that are before our eyes, than to make durable pictures of the Popish idolatries and superstitions, which should all have been forgotten ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... go t'sleep 'ere wi' me. W'll put yo' t' ri's. Y'll 'av' a luvly dress t'morro', an' a go' time. Wait t'l y'see the young man we'll find y' t'morro'. Now go t'bed." Those twining fingers ceased toying with the girl's hair and deftly slipped a protecting hook from an all-too-easy eye in the back of ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... this, the ill-advised settlers picked up the trail of the redskins and started in pursuit. A body of scouts who were slightly in the lead emerged, after various exciting adventures, upon the broad hills that skirt the Delaware river. Below them they could see the Indians twining in and out among the trees. The red men were evidently making for a shallow place where they might ford ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... translucent lids, whose texture fine 40 Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below With unapparent fire, The baby Sleep is pillowed: Her golden tresses shade The bosom's stainless pride, 45 Twining like tendrils of the parasite Around ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... my ain Tammy gae doun to the Howe And cut me a rock of the widdershins grow, Of good rantree for to carry my tow, And a spindle of the same for the twining o't." ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... weight was greater than they could bear. But the greatest beauty of the house at Hollowdell, or, as it was called in the neighbourhood, "The Grange," was the ivy, which did not creep there, but ran, and ran all over the place—sides, roof, and all—even twining, and twisting, and growing right up amongst the two great old-fashioned chimney-stacks, round the pots, and some shoots even drooping in them, and getting black and dry amongst the smoke that came curling ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... line of cliffs, walled round by a rough, high precipice, which almost encircles and shuts in a little space of sand. In front, the sea appears as between the pillars of a portal. In the rear, the precipice is broken and intermixed with earth, which gives nourishment not only to-clinging and twining shrubs, but to trees, that gripe the rock with their naked roots, and seem to struggle hard for footing and for soil enough to live upon. These are fir-trees; but oaks hang their heavy branches from above, and throw down acorns ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... between thumb and forefinger as he withdrew it from her hair. It was as horrible and heroic a sight as man could wish to see. It made my flesh crawl. The centipede, seven inches of squirming legs, writhed and twisted and dashed itself about his hand, the body twining around the fingers and the legs digging into the skin and scratching as the beast endeavoured to free itself. It bit him twice—I saw it—though he assured the ladies that he was not harmed as he dropped it upon the walk and stamped it into the gravel. But I saw him in the ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London

... me, soft and strong, and beholding all the pleading beauty of her, the tender allure of her eyes, the quiver of her scarlet mouth and all her compelling loveliness, I stooped to her embrace; but even so, chancing to lift my gaze seaward, I broke the clasp of these twining arms and rose suddenly to my feet. For there, her rag of sail spread to the light-breathing air, was a boat standing in for ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... hills ran a little river, and now it looked like some ribbon of silver, twining in and out amid the green carpet of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope

... prelude; then, with ever-increasing force, down came the rain in torrents, smearing out the fog from the atmosphere, as a painter, with a sponge, might wipe a color from his canvas. Long tails of yellow vapor, twining—twining—but always coiling downward, floated like snakes about them; and the oily waters of the Thames became pock-marked in ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... every hour. He was the beauty of the three, and my mother's favourite. Never, indeed, have I seen the countenance of man so perfect, so glowingly yet delicately handsome, as that of Aubrey Devereux. Locks, soft, glossy, and twining into ringlets, fell in dark profusion over a brow whiter than marble; his eyes were black and tender as a Georgian girl's; his lips, his teeth, the contour of his face, were all cast in the same feminine and faultless mould; his hands would ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... just as the Elmoran was about to turn, the great Zulu made a spring, and in the growing light we could see his long lean hands close round the Masai's throat. Then followed a convulsive twining of the two dark bodies, and in another second I saw the Masai's head bent back, and heard a sharp crack, something like that of a dry twig snapping, and he fell down upon the ground, his limbs ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... and speeding, And shocking and rocking, And darting and parting. And threading and spreading, And whizzing and hissing, And dripping and skipping, And hitting and splitting, And shining and twining, And rattling and battling, And shaking and quaking, And pouring and roaring, And waving and raving, And tossing and crossing, And flowing and going, And running and stunning, And foaming and roaming, And dinning and spinning, And dropping and hopping, And working and jerking, And guggling ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... was twining himself closely around his mother's heart. He had become her idol. Napoleon was then in the zenith of his power, and it was understood that Napoleon Charles was to inherit the imperial sceptre. The warmth of his heart and his ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... of dust-sheets and broom-handles. Supposing Christine went still further from him—supposing she left him altogether alone? She wouldn't do it of her free will, but there were things people couldn't help. People died. The thought was a cruel hand twining itself into the strings of his heart. He tried to see her face. Was she young? He didn't know. He had never thought about it. She had been grown-up. That covered everything. Now in the pale, unreal light her face and hair were a strange dead ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... big fellow of about forty, stared at a vine-tree, quite exposed to view, which stood close to the farmhouse, twining like a serpent under the shutters the entire length of ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... the moonbeams' Crystal spray, Nestling in Heaven All the day, Falling by night-time, Silvery showers, Twining with love-rhyme ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... swiftly flew that conquering one To Zeus on high, and round the throne Twining a small indignant hand, Prayed him to send redeeming To Pytho from that troublous band Sprung from the darks ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... to the old mine, there was not far from it one pleasant spot where I loved dearly to go. It was on the hillside, where, 'neath the shadow of a gracefully twining grapevine, lay a large, flat rock. Thither would I often repair, and sit for hours, listening to the hum of the running water brook, or the song of the summer birds, who, like me, seemed to love that place. Often would I gaze far off at the ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... pale, small, elfin faces peeped out from every mossy corner,—or the scent of secret violets in the grass, filling the air with the delicate sweetness of a breathing made warm by the April sun. Or when the thrill of summer drew the wild roses running quickly from the earth skyward, twining their stems together in fantastic arches and tufts of deep pink and flush-white blossom, and the briony wreaths with their small bright green stars swung pendent from over-shadowing boughs like garlands for a sylvan festival. Or the thousands ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... 'Nephew Horace' to me till death parts us. Horace was now seven years old, and I felt only too thankful to mark in him the evidences of a real love to that Saviour whom his good old nurse had taught him to know and serve in his childish way. And so the boy was twining himself tight round my heart, and, to tell the honest truth, I began to dread the father's return, and almost to hope he might never come back to claim ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson

... could not have been desired. The morning had been hazy, but as the sun shone out the fog had gradually risen, until now there remained but a suspicion of it, floating like a plume, above the frowning walls of Edinburgh Castle, and twining a fairy wreath round the unfinished columns of the national monument upon the Calton Hill. The broad stretch of the Prince's Street Gardens, which occupy the valley between the old town and the new, looked green and spring-like, and their fountains sparkled merrily in the sunshine. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Samson blinded and bound, but triumphant over his enemies, who sent for him to make sport by feats of strength on the feast of Dagon. Having amused the multitude for a time, he was allowed to rest awhile against the "grand stand," and, twining his arms round two of the supporting pillars, he pulled the whole edifice down, and died himself in the general ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... serpent kind he has a particular fancy for, and has always a number of them—that he has tamed—in his pockets or under his waistcoat. To loll back in his rocking-chair, to talk about geology, and pat the head of a large snake, when twining itself about his neck, is to him supreme felicity. Every year in the vacation he makes an excursion to the hills, and I was told that, upon one of these occasions, being taken up by the stage-coach, which had several members of Congress in it going to Washington, the learned Doctor ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... took the armour of the three fallen knights, and tied it round their horses. Twining the three bridle reins into one, he gave it ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor

... Ivan's eyes paused at it, and he was seized by the impulse to speak to his mother from that spot. Repressing himself, however, he sat down beside a table on which he leaned an elbow, supporting his head upon his hand. Presently his eyes drooped shut. The unwonted sweetness of the air, the long, twining sun-shadows of late afternoon, the intense, country stillness, all of them helped the oppression of memory, till gradually he began to feel himself enwrapped in a shimmering, elusive mist of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... castle; and then opening a stone door, which I should have taken for the wall itself, we went through a long passage, and down other steps cut in the solid rock, when another door delivered us into a cave. After turning and twining about, for some time, we reached the mouth of it, and I found myself on the sea-beach at the foot of the cliffs, with the chateau above. A boat was in waiting, into which the ruffians got, forcing me along with them, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... peaked gables and flat mansard-roofs Flutter the flags. The avenues are arcaded with them, The narrow alleys are bleached with stripes and stars. For War is declared, And the people gird themselves Silently—sternly— Only the flags make arabesques in the sunshine, Twining the red of blood and the silver of achievement Into a gay, waving pattern Over the awful, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... poor then costly gifts.' I felt as you do when I first went among them, but I don't believe our teacher would ever excuse us from going since she thinks it right. I should think," continued Rosalie, twining her arms lovingly about her companion, and drawing as near to her as possible, "that what you have seen to-day would make you enjoy this pleasant room, and these nice ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... ways sustain comparison with ours. Why do we not imitate the Roman architecture? for they say that anciently fires were not made in the houses, but on the outside, and at the foot of them, whence the heat was conveyed to the whole fabric by pipes contrived in the wall, which were drawn twining about the rooms that were to be warmed: which I have seen plainly described somewhere in Seneca. This German hearing me commend the conveniences and beauties of his city, which truly deserves it, began to compassionate ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... you take dis yer w'ip," continued the old man, twining the leather thong around the little boy's neck, "en scamper up ter de big 'ouse en tell Miss Sally fer ter gin you some un it de nex' time she fine yo' tracks ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... beautiful enough for a crown for a god," said she, twining it together at the ends. "Will you let me turn you into Apollo for a moment?" And, without thinking, she let it fall lightly on his head. "No Apollo was ever so beautiful," she involuntarily exclaimed. "If only you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... his eyes Ralph plunged headlong into the green glades of the Kenside and looked no more. Winsome walked slowly and sedately back, not looking on the world any more, but only twining and pulling roughly the strings of her sunbonnet till one came off. Winsome threw it on the grass. What did it matter now? She would wear it no longer. There was none to cherish the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... shall be saved," whispered the child, twining her arms more closely round her father's neck, and laying her wet ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... closed the gate, she caught sight of Lloyd Fenneben, leaning motionless against the gray bole of the elm tree. But she was looking through a tangle of purple oak leaves and twining bitter-sweet branches, and Fenneben was ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... fancy; but with it came the greater fear of his return, and the pathetic figure was banished. "And, besides, he's in Sacramento by this time, and like as not forgotten us all," he muttered; and, twining this poppy and mandragora around his pillow, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... It lay in the Mermaid's hand, all glowing with its magic blue, pale and dark by turns, its wonderful veins panting as if it were a living thing, its threads of gold moving and twining underneath, round the red heart burning deep in the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various



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