"Acorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... degree than he had felt hitherto. He could perceive, too, that by living out the suggestions she had made to him in the cabin—the Argentine—Stephens and Jarrott—"the very good firm to work for"—he had never got beyond her influence, no more than the oak-tree gets beyond the acorn that has been its seed. The perception of these things would have been enough to puzzle a mind not easily at home in the complex, even if the reintroduction of Judge Wayne ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... who walked marvellously fast, and cleared the way for the procession. Then a band of crickets followed all in uniform, and every one kept step to their music, though that was a difficult matter. Behind the band was the Queen Faery driving as usual her twelve Lady-Birds, which drew her acorn carriage; she was attended by a body-guard of Dor-Bugs, all in coats of mail. Then came troops of Faeries, some mounted, some on foot. They bore banners spun by the most skillful spiders and silk-worms, each company having its own device. ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... can see it from the window, and not forget to water and take care of it," added Jack, still turning the pretty brown acorn to and fro as if ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... and who had entertained me while I was in London. I had sent a card to her as soon as I was taken. The box was like a visit from Santa Claus. I remember the "Digestive Biscuits," and how good they tasted after being for a month on the horrible diet of acorn coffee, black bread, and the soup which no word that is fit for ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... the means by which they are produced. He has learned what to do; and, in part, he has learned how to do it. His after-progress will depend on the amount of force which his nature possesses; but all this is as natural as the growth of an acorn. You do not preach to the acorn that it is its duty to become a large tree; you do not preach to the art-pupil that it is his duty to become a Holbein. You plant your acorn in favourable soil, where ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... for which the legislature made provision in 1914 bears about the relation to the one that was finally built as the acorn does to the oak. It was to be a mere barge canal that might ultimately be enlarged to a ship canal. Its cost was estimated at $2,400,000, which was less than the cost of digging the New Basin canal nearly a century before, which was a great deal smaller and ran but half way between ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... my congratulations come in. All at home send you their best greetings, kisses, and embraces. The old gentleman is as sound as an acorn, or as a ripe apple freshly plucked from the tree. Don't be in the least concerned on his account; your uncle feels remarkably well. But your aunt is sick, very sick, and to all appearance she will be ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... gathered nearer. The spell was broken. That strange and mysterious look vanished from Lady Sue's face; she turned away from the speakers and idly plucked a few bunches of acorn ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... related mental faculties. With a glorified body, then, truly it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but the thought itself is rapture, that our souls at present may be as disproportioned to their future expansion, as the acorn is to the oak of a century's growth, which is infolded now, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... American Knights: "I do further solemnly promise and swear, that I will ever cherish the sublime lessons which the sacred emblems of our order suggest, and will, so far as in me lies, impart those lessons to the people of the earth, where the mystic acorn falls from its parent bough, in whose visible firmament Orion, Arcturus, and the Pleiades ride in their cold resplendent glories, and where the Southern Cross dazzles the eye of degraded humanity with its coruscations of golden light, fit emblem of Truth, while it invites our sacred order to consecrate ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... teaching of all nature shows that it must be to the end of improvement and upward growth, the increase in real virtue, in knowledge, and in wisdom. Nature is a silent preacher which holds forth upon week-days as on Sabbaths. We see the acorn grow into the oak, the egg into the bird, the maggot into the butterfly. Shall we doubt, then, that the human soul, the most precious of all things, is also upon the upward path? And how can the soul progress save through the cultivation of virtue and self-mastery? ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and smiled, And cried: "How sweet, how smart a child!" He kept his wings close hid, yet I Remembered him from days gone by, And, stepping up, I whispered this: "My boy, compound for me a kiss." His face grew thoughtful, then the rogue Lisped out: "Well, this is most in vogue: An acorn-cup of sugar first, Sprinkle quite well with bubbles burst, Then add a pinch of down that lies All over June's brown butterflies. Mix well, and take, to stir it up, The stem of one long buttercup. But, sir, you ne'er ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. Even the corpse has its own beauty. But besides this general grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Filaments slightly longer than the corolla. Anthers oval, 2-celled. Ovary superior, oval. Style longer than the stamens. Stigma peltate, sometimes bilobed, sometimes 4-lobed. Fruit about the size of an acorn, oval, fleshy, containing a milky juice; it is 2-celled and each cell contains a solitary, hard seed; of ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... the two penny post.) Would we were a sort of athereal pigs, and turned loose to feed upon spiritual mast and acorns! which would be merely a squirrel and feeding upon filberts; for what is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn? About the nuts being worth cracking, all I can say is, that where there are a throng of delightful images ready drawn, simplicity is the only thing. It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that Wordsworth, &c., should have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... many a bluebell, And crept among the flowers, And hunted in the acorn cups, And in the woodland bowers; And shook the yellow daffodils, And searched the gardens round, A-looking for the little folk I ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... have been as happy as the days were long, had thrown away all their joy in a foolish quarrel. They never met without saying disagreeable things to each other, and scolded each other so dreadfully that all their little fairy followers, for fear, would creep into acorn cups ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... bushels of nuts that I had never heard of or seen before. The nuts looked like acorns but when I picked them up I found them as hard as hickory nuts. I cracked one of them with a brick and it was almost as hard to crack as a hickory nut. It was unmistakably an acorn, I thought, and I bought a bushel of the nuts and sent them to this country. It is called Pisania by botanists and it has many of the characteristics of an acorn. The kernel of this nut comes out whole and for that reason it would be very easily cracked by mechanical means. It has a sweetness ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... mead, The golden acorn lay; And watch with care the bursting seed, And guard the tender spray; England will bless us for the deed, In ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... spilt at your gates—We thought it just that satisfaction should he made—We turned our thoughts to find out the chief persons concerned; (for a man will sometimes employ another to commit a crime he does not chuse to be guilty of himself) —We found the Acorn Whistler was the chief contriver and promoter of the mischief—We agreed that he was the man that ought to suffer—Some of his relations, who are here present, then said he deserved death, and voted for it—Accordingly he was put to death—He ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... confluence of Salt River with the Ohio, I saw, at my leisure, immense legions still going by, with a front reaching far beyond the Ohio on the west, and the beech wood forest directly on the east of me. Yet not a single bird would alight, for not a nut or acorn was that year to be seen ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... is much esteemed by the Jews in Leghorn. Perhaps Melanzana is a corruption of Malamsana.] it is much eaten in Spain and the Levant, as well as by the Moors in Barbary. It is about the size and shape of a hen's egg, inclosed in a cup like an acorn; when ripe, of a faint purple colour. It grows on a stalk about a foot high, with long spines or prickles. The people here have different ways of slicing and dressing it, by broiling, boiling, and stewing, with other ingredients: but it is at best an insipid dish. There are some caperbushes ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the elder-stems cracked and wouldn't do for flutes, he made them into telescopes. And before we went down to the brook we made jam of hips and haws from the hedge at the top of the field, and put it into acorn cups, and took it with us, that the children might not be short of rolypolies at ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... literature. We may be insects; but like the coral insect we build islands which become continents: like the bee we store sustenance for future communities. The individual perishes; but the race is immortal. The acorn of today is the oak of the next millennium. I throw my stone on the cairn and die; but later comers add another stone and yet another; ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... path. It is not much to do,' it continued meekly, 'not great and glorious deeds at which the world stands amazed; but it was all I could do, and was the work He meant for me—we must not despise the day of small things. The acorn is very small, yet look at the oak. A gentle word, a bright smile, is not hard to bestow, but oh, the blessing they can be to ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... and did as the witch had directed her, when the two children lifted their heads out of the cradle to see what she was doing, to watch, and to listen. Then one observed to the other:—'I remember seeing an oak having an acorn,' to which the other replied, 'And I remember seeing a hen having an egg,' and one of the two added, 'But I do not remember before seeing anybody brew beer in the shell ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... success, hitherto,—but only tolerable it must be confessed,—in developing them into men, there are those who would make girls grow into women by the same process. Because a gardener has nursed an acorn till it grew into an oak, they would have him cradle a grape in the same soil and way, and make it a vine. Identical education, or identical co-education, of the sexes defrauds one sex or the other, or perhaps both. It defies the ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... Perhaps it would be a little shore crab that betrayed itself by scuffling down amongst the corallite or sea-weed, perhaps a little fierce-looking bristly fish, which shot under a ledge of the rock all amongst the limpets, acorn barnacles, or the thousands of yellow and brown and striped snaily fellows that crawled about in company with the periwinkles and ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... balking Genius. Only death Can silence it, or hinder. While there's breath Or sense of feeling, it will spurn the sod, And lift itself to glory, and to God. The acorn sprouted—weeds nor flowers can choke The certain growth ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... acorn fell from among the serrated chestnut leaves, striking upon the fence with a sounding thwack, and rebounding in the weeds. Those chestnut-oaks always seem to unaccustomed eyes the creation of Nature in a fit of ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... in, winking at Jim, who dodged as if an acorn had been flipped at his eye. "Ma'm," he added, "blamed if I believe a woman ever has a right good laugh after she's past thirty. About that time nature turns down the lamp for her and she begins ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... flowerlike feet, that seemed too chaste To tread true gold: and, like the dawn On splendid peaks that lord a waste Of solitude lost gods have graced, Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped, Bound as with cestused silver,—chased With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped With ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... this act with a garland of oak branches; it being the Roman custom thus to adorn those who had saved the life of a citizen; whether the law intended some special honor to the oak, in memory of the Arcadians, a people the oracle had made famous by the name of acorn-eaters; or, the oak wreath, being sacred to Jupiter, the guardian of the city, might, therefore be thought a proper ornament for one who preserved a citizen. And the oak, in truth, is the tree which bears the most and the prettiest ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... becomes the seat of a swelling, which is more evident on the dorsal aspect, and, according to the distribution and extent of the disease, it is acorn-shaped, fusiform, or cylindrical. It is firm and elastic, and usually painless. The movements are impaired, especially if the joints are involved. In its early stages the disease is amenable to anti-syphilitic treatment, and complete recovery ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds. What else have the Hindoos, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians done, that ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... desire your good leave to gather the green plant which grows between your roots. If an acorn falls into this my right hand" (which I held out) "I will count it that you answer yes—and give you thanks." The acorn fell straight into the palm of my hand. I said, "I thank you, Oak: good growth ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... I saw it was an acorn, not the seed of one of those weak plants that spring up overnight and wither at noon. Yes, you will win." He laughed gayly, rolled his eyes and kissed his fingers. "And then you can afford to take a ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... poem of "Yardley Oak" there are some beautiful mythological allusions. The former of the two following is to the fable of Castor and Pollux; the latter is more appropriate to our present subject. Addressing the acorn he says: ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... in the animal kingdom, securing the same homologous structures in all classes and orders; so these fundamental ideas in human nature constitute its sameness and unity, under all the varying conditions of life and society. The acorn must produce an oak, and nothing else. The grain of wheat must always produce its kind. The offspring of man must always bear his image, and always exhibit the same fundamental characteristics, not only in his corporeal nature, but also in his ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... multiplying itself until it covers the whole earth, and even all the earths in the universe, if it could reach them. Is such a profession as this credible? It is entirely credible, as soon as I paraphrase it by saying that I propose to plant an acorn. And yet all magic has no mystery which is so wonderful as this universal mystery of growth: and the only reason we are not lost in amazement at it is that it goes quietly on all the time, and perfects itself under uniform conditions. But let me eliminate from the phenomenon the one element ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... so simple as to be contained within the hollow of an acorn sheath. Let it suffice that she has the left ear of Shan Tien, even as Ming-shu has the right, but on which side his hearing is better it might ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... and other condiments. The ordinary dainty throughout these islands, and in many kingdoms of the mainland of those regions, is buyo [betel]. This is made from a tree, [274] whose leaf is shaped like that of the mulberry. The fruit resembles an oak acorn, and is white inside. [275] This fruit, which is called bonga, is cut lengthwise in strips, and each strip is put into an envelope or covering made from the leaf. With the bonga is thrown in a powder of quick lime. [276] This compound ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... India, and the end is not yet. My purpose has been, not to take a snap-shot photograph, but to paint a picture of the past. Seen in a lightning-flash, even a tempest-shaken tree appears motionless. A study of the same organism from acorn to seed-bearing oak, reveals not a phase but a life. It is something like this—"to the era of Meiji" (A.D. 1868-1894) which I have essayed. Hence I am perfectly willing to accept, in advance, the verdict of smart inventors ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... each of the planets and fixed stars a great "soul of the world" as well as this earth, and are they looking down intelligently and compassionately on the little globe of ours? Had we not better build altars to all the host of heaven and return to the religion of our acorn-fed ancestors, who burned their children alive, in honor of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... stone; And scattering o'er its darkened green, Bands of the fairies may be seen, Chattering like grasshoppers, their feet Dancing a thistledown dance round it: While the great gold of the mild moon Tinges their tiny acorn shoon. ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... storm, and at last holds aloft its tons of matter against the constant tug and wrath of gravitation, and swings its Briarean arms in triumph, in defiance of the gale. Were it not for this energetic essence that crouches in the acorn and stretches its limbs every year, there would be no oak; the matter that clothes it would enjoy its stupid slumber; and when the forest monarch stands up in his sinewy, lordliest pride, let the pervading life-power, and its vassal forces that weigh ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the savage heaths were left behind, and we saw hills and dales, cork trees, and azinheiras, on the last of which trees grows that kind of sweet acorn called bolotas, which is pleasant as a chestnut, and which supplies in winter the principal food on which the numerous swine of the Alemtejo subsist. Gallant swine they are, with short legs and portly bodies of a black or dark red colour; and for the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... freely, independently—just as occasion prompts, and the effect requires. Flatter the philosophic taste that delights in generalities, and please the childish wonder which loves to fancy that the whole oak—trunk, branches, leaves—lay in the acorn. M. Louis Blanc has certainly no idea of forfeiting either of these attractions by laying claim to the other. Observe the ease and boldness with which he embraces them in his narrative of the fall of Napoleon, and the restoration ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Will ye despise the acorn, Just thrusting out its shoot, Ye giants of the forest, That strike the deepest root? Will ye despise the streamlets Upon the mountain side; Ye broad and mighty rivers, On ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... sparkling with angry fire, to warn me off from a Missouri-currant whose honey he was sipping. And many a time he has driven me out of a flower-bed. This summer, by the way, a pair of these winged emeralds fastened their mossy acorn-cup upon a bough of the same elm which the orioles had enlivened the year before. We watched all their proceedings from the window through an opera-glass, and saw their two nestlings grow from black needles with a tuft of down at the lower ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... characteristics of the ornament of the time, is 103-1/2 inches high, 94 inches long, 68 inches wide. The majority of the beds were smaller and lower, however, and the pillars usually rose out of drum-like members, huge acorn-like bulbs that were often so large as to be ugly. They appeared also on other articles of furniture. When in good proportion, with pillars tapering from them, they were very effective, and gradually they grew smaller. Some ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... Keeping house In the fork of a tree, With nuts in a crevice, And an acorn or two; What cares he For blossoming boughs, Or the song-singing bevies Of birds in their glee, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... tree There was of swine a huge company, That grunted as they crunched the mast: For that was ripe, and fell full fast. Then they trotted away, for the wind grew high: 5 One acorn they left, and no more might you spy. Next came a Raven, that liked not such folly: He belonged, they did say, to the witch Melancholy! Blacker was he than blackest jet, Flew low in the rain, and his feathers not wet. 10 He picked up the acorn ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... profound slumber, which was not broken until the sun had risen high, and the birds were whistling gaily among the branches—some of them gazing at her in mute surprise, as if they had discovered some new species of gigantic acorn. ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... Devonshire, was not a man of superior abilities, but was a man strictly faithful to his word. If, for instance, he had promised you an acorn, and none had grown that year in his woods, he would not have contented himself with that excuse: he would have sent to Denmark for it, so unconditional was he in keeping his word—so high as to the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... acorn year," said Uncle Solon, reflectively. "I dunno, but ye all know how bitter a red-oak acorn is. I shouldn't wonder a mite ef your cows had taken to eatin' them oak acorns. Critters will, sometimes. Mine did, once. Fust one will take it up, then the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... brought up with them. The groove wherein the portcullis had run was as fresh as if only cut yesterday, the very tooling of the stone being visible. Close to this hung a bell-pull formed of a large wooden acorn attached to a vertical rod. Somerset's application brought a woman from the porter's door, who informed him that the day before having been the weekly show-day for visitors, it was doubtful if he ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... pick up most of their subsistence in the forest. The "mast" of the beech-tree, the nut of the hickory, the fruit of the Chinquapin oak, the acorn, and many other seeds and berries, furnish them with food. Many roots besides, and grasses, contribute to sustain them, and they make an occasional meal off a snake whenever they can get hold of one. Indeed it may ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... do in marriage, and you will be broken. But be faithful to it and to the high traditions which generations of suffering men and women have worked out for you, and you will be broken as the bud is broken into the blossom, as the acorn is broken into the oak—broken into a higher and stronger life. On the other hand rebel against it, attempt to drag it down or cast it from its place, and it will crush you, and grind some part of your higher nature to powder. How strangely ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... in the trees, where the bees make it. The wax is worth sixteen or twenty reals an arroba, and a jar of honey one real. I saw a tree which had many honeycombs hanging on the branches. The mountains are fuller of wild boars than are the commons of Espana of swine and cattle in acorn time. One of those swine, if it is fat, is worth two reals, but only one if not fat; and a deer is worth the same sum. There are almost no fruits of Espana. There are melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, and radishes of the country, and quantities of cabbages and lettuce. There are many ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... often see the design on old clocks that purport to be Willards; but Simon Willard, his descendants attest, never used a decoration so elaborate. Instead he preferred simple things such as a brass acorn or one carved from wood; a gilt ball, or combination of ball and spear-head. But the ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... country was a prey to every misfortune. 'Evil was the state of Ireland during his reign; fruitless her corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; and fruitless her rivers; her cattle without milk; her fruit without plenty, for there used to be but one acorn on ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... the churches of the Gentiles," and recognizes a Church of Rome as established in Priscilla's own house (see Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 16). It is highly probable that that was the tiny acorn from which has grown the present great oak—the Roman Catholic Church,—which would profit much by more remembrance and imitation of the modest and undogmatic women who helped to give it being and who ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... soak it in lime-water, by which the hair is easily detached; but the cuticle and under part of the skin, the cellular substance, are scraped off after it has been soaked in the lime water. A great variety of substances have been used for tanning, as the acorn-cup of the oriental bark; catechu and sumach have been also used; but the oak bark is most generally used, as furnishing a large quantity of astringent matter. It is not the business of the chemist to describe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it must have been! It was as large—as large—but, in short, I am afraid to say how immeasurably large it was. To speak within bounds, it was ten times larger than a great mill-wheel; and, all of metal as it was, it floated over the heaving surges more lightly than an acorn-cup adown the brook. The waves tumbled it onward, until it grazed against the shore, within a short distance of the spot where Hercules ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at a distance. On the branches were hanging the great mameis, just like the inside of cocoa-nuts when the inner shell has been cracked off. It appeared that Nature was not acquainted with M. De La Fontaine's works, or she would probably have got a hint from the fable of the acorn and the pumpkin, and not have hung mameis and cocoa-nuts at such a ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad disagreement: they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood, but they were quarreling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... Church guards is all for the folk that ask it in God's name, not for one's kindred, or for another more vile. The flesh of mortals is so soft that a good beginning suffices not below from the springing of the oak to the forming of the acorn. Peter began without gold and without silver, and I with prayers and with fasting, and Francis in humility his convent; and if thou lookest at the source of each, and then lookest again whither it has run, thou wilt see dark made of the white. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... is over by Gardnerville. In that hole Indians can always find plenty of wild-grub—wild-wheat, wild potato, wild acorn—plenty there. Snow very deep. No difference. Always plenty wild grub there. I see that hole. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... time, there was a little brown Field Mouse; and one day he was out in the fields to see what he could see. He was running along in the grass, poking his nose into everything and looking with his two eyes all about, when he saw a smooth, shiny acorn, lying in the grass. It was such a fine shiny little acorn that he thought he would take it home with him; so he put out his paw to touch it, but the little acorn rolled away from him. He ran after it, but it kept rolling on, just ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... train, to trace the forests wild: But she perforce withholds the loved boy, Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But they do square; that all their elves for fear Creep into acorn cups, ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... been munching on the apple, the boy had dug a hole, put some sweet acorn nuts into it, and covered them up with dirt. Squinty had not seen him do this, but Squinty thought he could find the nuts just ...
— Squinty the Comical Pig - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... a double dome, whose figure may be imagined by supposing a small acorn set on the truncated top of a large one, (the horizontal diameter of both being considerably longer in proportion to the perpendicular than is common with that fruit,) and each of these domes is surrounded by a row of prism-shaped ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... two draw-strings of gold and red braid, each ending in an ornamental oval acorn of silver thread and coloured silks, probably worked on canvas over a wooden core, ending in a tassel similar to those ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... the form of an idea or a conception exists in the mind of the sculptor, and he fashions the marble accordingly. Does the book exist in the pot of printer's ink? Living things exist in the germ, the oak in the acorn, the chick in the egg, but from the world of dead matter there is no resurrection or evolution. Life alone puts a particular stamp upon it. We may say that the snowflake exists in the cloud vapor because of the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... The groves of Penshurst. SYDNEY here was born, Sydney, than whom no gentler, braver man His own delightful genius ever feign'd, Illustrating the vales of Arcady, With courteous courage and with loyal loves. Upon his natal day an acorn here Was planted; it grew up a stately oak, And in the beauty of its strength it stood And flourished, when his perishable part Had mouldered dust to dust. That stately oak Itself hath perished now, but Sydney's fame Endureth in his ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... to aid his thoughts, Mr. Fujinami drew from about his person a case which contained a thin bamboo pipe, called kiseru in Japanese, having a metal bowl of the size and shape of the socket of an acorn. He filled this diminutive bowl with a little wad of tobacco, which looked like coarse brown hair. He kindled it from the charcoal ember in the hibachi. He took three sucks of smoke, breathing them slowly out of his mouth again in thick grey whorls. Then with three hard raps against ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... that wonderful things happen haphazard like meteors and miracles. But I believe if we could take the time to investigate, we would find that most of these miraculous and glorious oaks grow out of a quiet commonplace acorn. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... sterilize the water, or distil and aerate it; it must be pure and soft. Better still: drink toast- or rice-water; kefyr, four days old; koumiss; lactic-acid water; zoolak; egg lemonade; sterilized milk with one third lime-water; whortleberry wine; acorn cocoa; unfermented grape-juice. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... a oak. Look; from a little acorn like this it grew. See, this is a acorn, and in the start that tree wasn't no bigger than this ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the other side and went to sleep again. The hammer came back to Thor's hand. As soon as Skyrmir snored he flung it again, aiming at the Giant's forehead. It struck there. The Giant opened his eyes. "Has an acorn fallen on my forehead?" ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... an old oak tree There was of swine a huge company, That grunted as they crunch'd the mast: For that was ripe and fell full fast. Then they trotted away, for the wind it grew high One acorn they left and no more might you spy. Next came a Raven that liked not such folly: He belonged, they did say, to the witch Melancholy! Blacker was he than blackest jet, Flew low in the rain and his feathers not wet. He picked up the acorn and buried it straight ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... grass was always under him, and the crackling of last autumn's leaves and last summer's twigs—minute dead of the infinite greatness—troubled him. Something portentous seemed connected with the patient noises about him. An acorn dropped, striking a thin fine powder out of a frail oak pod. He took it up, tossing it. He had never ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... acorn that gave birth to thee? Can'st thou trace back thy line of ancestry? We're match'd, old friend, and let us not repine, Darkness o'erhangs thy origin and mine; Both may be truly honourable: yet, We'll date our honours from the day we met; When, of my worldly wealth ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... of Christ accomplishing itself in humanity at the present time. And the Christian story is no myth but a reality, not because we can prove true the beliefs of the first century, but because those beliefs contained within them a larger and more enduring belief. The acorn has not perished because it has ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... me— Speak not you for him; he's a traitor.—Come; I'll manacle thy neck and feet together: Sea-water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be The fresh-brook muscles, wither'd roots, and husks Wherein the acorn cradled: follow. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... The next day the uproar on the hills was terrific. Frightened out of their wits, the bears forsook the acorn field and fled ingloriously to their secret haunts in the mountains to ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his arm-chair. One's attitude towards Life's Little Difficulties should be that of the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn one day, and happened to doze. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak, sixty feet from the ground. He thought he would ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Harcourt?) Size medium, short, slightly acorn-shaped; cracking qualities medium; Shell rather thick, but very smooth inside; kernel short, very plump; meat yellow; very tender; rich; very good. (Report Sec. ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... generally his argument is a rope of sand. Its strength is the strength of the separate particles. He is perpetually hooking things together that do not go together. It is like putting an apple on a pumpkin vine, or an acorn on a hickory. "A club foot and a club wit." "Why should we fear," he says, "to be crushed by the same elements—we who are made up of the same elements?" But were we void of fear, we should be crushed much oftener than we are. The electricity in our bodies does not prevent ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... thousand acorns, so cunningly coloured, and so admirably contrived as to be practically indistinguishable from the genuine fruit of the oak. Each of these thousand artists may present me with his manufactured acorn, and may assure me of its genuineness. And, alas! I may be quite deceived and taken in; yes, but only for a time. When I plant them in the soil, together with the genuine acorn, and give them time to develop, the fraud is detected, and the truth revealed. For the real seed proves its worth. ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... a mystery to Sheba, how a dignified minister could care for the companionship of such a harum-scarum little creature as her grandson. She did know the tie that bound them, but their natures were as near akin as the acorn and the oak. In John Jay the man saw his own childhood with all its unanswered questions and dumb, groping ambitions; while the boy, looking up to his "Rev'und Gawge" as the highest standard of all manliness, ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of circulation has been started with a beginning of fifty to a hundred volumes, and the little acorn of learning thus planted has grown up in the course of years to a great tree, full of fruitful and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Washington and Lincoln are inseparably associated, and yet as the popular historian would have us believe one spent his entire life in chopping down acorn trees and the other splitting them up into rails. Washington could not tell a story. Lincoln always could. [Laughter.] And Lincoln's stories always possessed the true geometrical requisites, they were never too long, and never too broad. [Laughter.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... proudest hour. Paganism had been met and conquered. The Church had passed through a baptism of blood, and was now wholly consecrated to the cause of its Great Head. Here Christianity flowered, here it brought forth rich fruit in the lives of its tenacious adherents. Here the acorn had become the sturdy oak, under which the soldiers of the cross pitched their tents. The African Church had ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... Zounds! it does execution point blanc:—ay, ay, none of your pimping acorn glasses for me, but your manly, old English half-pint bumpers, my dear: they try a fellow's stamina at ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... strain on my reason than the attempt to explain the mysteries of biology and astronomy. Observation and classification do not necessarily imply elucidation. The miracle of the foetus taking human shape and soul, or of the oak rising out of the acorn and the brown earth is to me as baffling as the materialization of a spirit. The marvels of the cell-life and the daily chemistry which maintain the body charm my attention as much as the mysterious clouds of light with which spirits are wont to signalize their ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... intervening table, Mr. Boner straightened from a stooping inspection of a lower desk drawer, and Joe saw him furtively wipe a knife blade on the leg of his trousers and then turn upon him a look of mildest blue. There was a bulge in his left cheek as round as an acorn. Neither spoke. A privacy had been violated. Joe ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... he, 'shall I give you a kiss?' and she replied with a slight primness, 'If you please.' She made herself rather cheap by inclining her face toward him, but he merely dropped an acorn button into her hand; so she slowly returned her face to where it had been before, and said nicely that she would wear his kiss on the chain round her neck. It was lucky that she did put it on that chain, for it was afterwards ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... people is law and must act directly upon its object, we have gradually lost out of mind the true significance of the constitutional system. Those numberless intermediary institutions—which logically grew out of the Christian idea of mediation, as the oak naturally grows out of the acorn, and which wonderfully reconciled liberty with authority, freedom with order, the finite with the infinite—have become more and more obsolete, and less and less understood. They have crumbled away like the stately columns of a magnificent but neglected cathedral. They have become dead branches that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... An acorn has in itself the potentiality not of one oak-tree alone, but of a forest of oak-trees, to the thousandth generation, and indeed of oak-trees without end. There is no sort of law of "conservation" here. It is not as if something were passed on ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... how much value was formerly attached to the right of turning out swine in wooded wastes, during the acorn season, it seems probable that Sir R. Harley might be the king's "Porcarius," or receiver of the money paid for an annual license to depasture hogs in the royal forests; and, after all, Porkership is as like ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... This acorn of the holy oak was forwarded to me with a manuscript note, signed by the editor, on the part of the {400} "London Society of Theological Utilitarians," who say, "they trust you may be induced to give this momentous subject your consideration." ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... on acorns. It is even possible that the veneration in which they held the oak had no other origin. This primitive food continued in use, at least in times of famine, up to the eighth century, and we find in the regulations of St. Chrodegand that if, in consequence of a bad year, the acorn or beech-nut became scarce, it was the bishop's duty to provide something to make up for it. Eight centuries later, when Rene du Bellay, Bishop of Mans, came to report to Francis I. the fearful poverty of his diocese, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... would soberly carry grain to town; yet the real strength of the fable is when it dealt with the shut pool in which certain unfortunate raindrops are imprisoned among slugs and snails, and in the company of an old toad. The sodden contentment of the fallen acorn is strangely significant; and it is astonishing how unpleasantly we are startled by the appearance of her horrible lover, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... again, have received their denomination from their forms, such as the Trefoil, because it is three-leaved; Pentaphylon, for having five leaves; Serpolet, because it creepeth along the ground; Helxine, Petast, Myrobalon, which the Arabians called Been, as if you would say an acorn, for it hath a kind of resemblance thereto, and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the biggest things of life grow out of the tiniest ones. There is the old simile of the acorn and the oak, for instance. But oaks take a long time to grow, and everybody concerned in oak culture is calmly expecting them to do it. Imagine an acorn exploding to let out an oak huge enough to shadow ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... has it, "Great oaks from little acorns grow," and all of us who remember the saying have thus some idea of what the beginning of an oak is. But what of the beginning of the acorn? In a general way, one inferentially supposes that there must be a flower somewhere in the life-history of the towering white oak that has defied the storms of centuries and seems a type of everything sturdy and strong and masculine; but what sort of a flower could one imagine as the source ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... down the long walks seeking them. Perhaps they were a present, and she had given a luck-penny for them, lest they should cut love. Sarah said the housekeeper might have dropped them there; but Sarah was not a person of sentiment. I did not show her the marble I found by the hedge, the acorn I picked up in the park, nor a puny pansy which, half way back to a wild heartsease, had touched me as a pathetic memorial of better days. When I got home, I put the scissors, the marble, and the pansy into a box. The acorn I hung in a bottle ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that of Blake, is simple to the verge of innocence. Such rhythmic intricacies as those of Shelley, Tennyson, and Swinburne he never dreamed of. But his manner has this perfection: it fits his matter as the cup of the acorn fits its meat. ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... been spoiled if he hadn't had a stroke of good fortune. Since he was no longer leading the nutting party he wanted to prevent his friends from following Noisy Jake to the place where the oak trees grew, to have an acorn hunt. ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Shiva Temples. Above it and farther to the left, is Isis Temple (seven thousand and twenty-eight feet), the cap of which, at this angle, presents the appearance of two acorn-like structures resting upon their cups, the taller of which is carved out of the cross-bedded sandstone. It is the eastern supporter of Shiva Temple (seven thousand six hundred and fifty feet), of which Captain Dutton, who named it, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... back, and rested her cheek on her hand. They were under the drooping branches of an elm that stood holding to the edge of the bank. Well out over the water sat one of the squirrels, his tail sweeping above his head, nibbling an acorn, and looking with hasty little glances at the canoe. She watched him, and memories came into her eyes. There had been squirrels on her father's seignory who would take nuts from her hand, burying them slyly under the bushes, ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... mushroom's head Our table we do spread; A corn of rye or wheat Is manchet which we eat, Pearly drops of dew we drink In acorn cups filled ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... and the trees shed in noisy water-drops the moisture they had collected from the thick air, an acorn occasionally falling from its cup to the ground, in company with the drippings. In the meads, sheets of spiders'-web, almost opaque with wet, hung in folds over the fences, and the falling leaves appeared in every variety of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... human habitation,—I could find in my conscience to put him to death; but here we have intruded upon his own domain, which he holds in common with all other children of earth and air; and we have no right to slay him on his own ground. Now we look about us more minutely, and observe that the acorn-cups of last year are strewn plentifully on the bank and on the path. There is always pleasure in examining an acorn-cup,—perhaps associated with fairy banquets, where they were said to compose the table-service. Here, too, are those balls which grow as excrescences on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... no free colonies erected; then the improvements of this quarter of the globe might be ascribed to penal laws; but they have the same relation to its present prosperity as the numerous parts of an edifice have to each other—not such as of the oak to the acorn. When, therefore, it is stated that transportation has been the making of these colonies, it should be rather said it was the cause of their establishment. The outlay of the crown, although great, has been small compared with the outlay of the people. The chief ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... let us view Your acorn goblets fill'd with dew; Nor warn us hence till we have seen The nut-shell chariot ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... and noticed an immense rock split and shattered by the roots of a tree, or perhaps by the might of an insignificant looking fungus? I have, many times, and I never see such a rock without thinking of its aptness as an illustration of this Socialist philosophy. A tiny acorn tossed by the wind finds lodgment in some small crevice of a rock which has stood for thousands of years, a rock so big and strong that men choose it as an emblem of the Everlasting. Soon the warm caresses of ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... croplands will likely be a puddle duck, for most of this group are sure-footed and can walk and run well on land. Their diet is mostly vegetable, and grain-fed mallards or pintails or acorn-fattened wood ducks ...
— Ducks at a Distance - A Waterfowl Identification Guide • Robert W. Hines
... causes, and the records of mankind are full of examples for such contemplations. It is, however, a more profitable employment to trace the constituent principles of future greatness in their kernel; to detect in the acorn at our feet the germ of that majestic oak, whose roots shoot down to the centre and whose branches aspire to the skies. Let it be, then, our present occupation to inquire and endeavor to ascertain the causes first put in operation at the period of our commemoration, and already productive ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... about us! Tinman practicing in his Court suit before the chiwal-glass! And that good fellow, the carpenter, Crickledon, who has lived with the sea fronting him all his life, and has never been in a boat, and he confesses he has only once gone inland, and has never seen an acorn!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... found an assortment of big and little sizes of solid wood bodies with guttered blades turning up in front with a sharp point, or perhaps curling over above the toe. In this case they sometimes ended in an acorn; if this acorn was of brass, it transfigured the boy who wore that skate; he might have been otherwise all rags and patches, but the brass acorn made him splendid from head to foot. When you had bought your skates, you took them to a carpenter, and stood awe-strickenly about while he pierced ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... from our house, in the woods, and I went over there and laid down and watched it run by. I laid awful still, thinking I wisht I was away from that town. Purty soon a squirrel comes down and sets on a log and watches me. I throwed an acorn at him, and he scooted up a tree quicker'n scatt. And then I wisht I hadn't scared him away, fur it looked like he knowed I was in trouble. Purty soon I takes a swim, and comes out and lays there some more, spitting into ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... a mind, and have set myself to fulfil it. When I was yet a little lad, and drove the swine out to feed on the hill yonder, when the acorns had fallen, afore Farmer Gyrton's father had gracious leave from the feoffees to put up the fence that doth now so sorely vex us, I found one day a great acorn, as big as a dow's egg, and of a rich and wondrous brown, and this acorn I bore home and planted in kind earth in the corner of my dad's garden, thinking that it would grow, and that one day I would hew its growth and use it for a staff. Now that was fifty long years ago, lads, and there where ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Puritan, in 1584, who on going to court was taxed by Queen Mary with having erected a Puritan college. "No, madam," he replied, "far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws, but I have set an acorn, which when it becomes an oak God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof." Sir William Temple was educated at Emmanuel. Christ's College is near by, chiefly interesting from its associations with Milton, whose rooms are still pointed out, while a mulberry ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... his, and at the end of the sixth night the thing arose, perfect as far as his hand could perfect it; begotten by a chance and ignorant word as have been many of the greatest works the world has seen;—oaks sprung from the acorn that a careless ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... never saw a vacant place in his estate, but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... intellectual satisfaction. But the poodle is there. Faust has brought home with him something that will now haunt him to the last moment of his life. There has been awakened in his nature the germ of that acorn (to use Goethe's metaphor with regard to Hamlet) that will soon strike root and shatter the vase ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... Steve, where be all your plots for bravery? You always meant to seek your fortune—not bide here like an acorn for ever." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... endeavouring to tear up an acorn-bearing oak from the earth; {and}, as he was grasping it in his embrace, and was shaking it on this side and that, and was moving about the loosened tree, the lance of Pirithoues hurled at the ribs of Petraeus, transfixed his struggling breast together ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the food of her infancy; the Silkworm disdains any foliage other than that of the mulberry-tree. The Spurge Hawk-moth requires the caustic milk-sap of the tithymals: the Corn-weevil the grain of wheat; the Pea-weevil, the seeds of the Leguminosae; the Balaninus (A genus of Beetles including the Acorn-weevil, the Nut-weevil and others.—Translator's Note.) the hazel-nut, the chestnut, the acorn; the Brachycera (A division of Flies including the Gad-flies and Robber-flies.—Translator's Note.) the clove of garlic. Each has its diet, each ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... so touches some of us as a thing with "makings" in it, a thing with untold potentialities in it, a thing which may come in the future to God only knows what. Talk of the caterpillar which is to develop into the butterfly or the acorn which shall one day be a mighty oak. Why, these miracles are but child's play compared with the miracles potentially wrapped up in this poor little self. No wildest fairy tale can suggest the wonder of its possibilities ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... autumn, When the leaves are turning brown, From a tall oak's topmost branches Fell a little acorn down. ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... perhaps, not a whole plank of that old galley can be now remaining in this, so often careened, repaired, and adorned since that time, I see nothing ridiculous in declaring that it is the same ship; any more than in saying the oak I planted an acorn thirty years ago, is the same tree I saw spring up then a little twig, which not even a moderate sceptic will deny; though he takes so much pains to persuade plain folks out of their own existence, by laughing ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... gathered the brown acorn in its shade, And ere he slept, still gazing upward, caught Sweet glimpses of the night, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... over sixty or seventy distinct specimens of the cucumber-shaped product. From the centre of its large broad leaves, which gather at the top, when it has reached the height of twelve or fifteen feet there springs forth a large purple bud ten inches long, shaped like a huge acorn, though more pointed. This cone hangs suspended from a strong stem, upon which a leaf unfolds, displaying a cluster of young fruit. As soon as these are large enough to support the heat of the sun and the chill of the rain, this ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... latter is a sort of acorn which keeps good for a long time. When pounded into an oily paste it is not altogether ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... clusters of small white flowers, having a brownish shade in the centre, about the same size as the lilac, which it resembles. The fruit is a drupe, about the size of a small hedge strawberry, containing one seed, and of the shape of an acorn, which when ripe is soft and of a dark ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... they started, playing tag, and hide the acorn, and all such games like that, including one called "Please Don't Pull My Tail and I Won't Pull Yours." ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... panel of the fence next to the one on which Bushie was sitting, and squared himself for the confab, which the little master opened thus; "Burl, just look at them crows up there on the dead limb of that big acorn-tree; what ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... We shall see this as we look at what these people are, at what they were, and at what they hope to become; not historically, but psychologically, as one might perceive, were he but wise enough, in an acorn, besides the nut itself, two oaks, that one from which it fell, and that other which from it will rise. These three states, which we may call its potential past, present, and future, may be observed and studied in three special outgrowths of a race's ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... How can the acorn become a mighty forest monarch if planted in a pint pot and crossed with a fuzzy-wuzzy chrysanthemum? How can the Numidian lion's whelp become a king of beasts if reared in a cage and fed on cold potatoes, muzzled and made to dance ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sat down, one day, upon an acorn, and finding it a very comfortable seat, went soundly to sleep. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly, that when the sleeper awoke he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Spirit. "I will try what can be done for you." So saying, he went to the side of the little maiden Musk-rat, and whispered certain words in her ear. When he had done this, he went to the forest near them, cut down a young pine-tree, dug up a root of the hemlock, took a spruce cone, an oak acorn, a hickery nut, and a birch-leaf, and laid them all in the fire which the Nanticoke had kindled. While they were burning, he walked round the fire muttering many words in an unknown tongue, and striking the earth repeatedly ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... merely growlin' towards this Mexican, would make him quit out like a jack rabbit. "As I observes prior, courage is frequent the froots of what a gent don't know. Take grizzly b'ars. Back fifty years, when them squirrel rifles is preevalent; when a acorn shell holds a charge of powder, an' bullets runs as light an' little as sixty-four to the pound, why son! you-all could shoot up a grizzly till sundown an' hardly gain his disdain. It's a fluke if you downs one. That sport who can show a set of grizzly b'ar claws, them times, has ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... said of the dream that the stone which was despised by the architect has become the corner-stone. The acorn of the dream, of the ephemeral and inconsiderable product of our soul, dates from the earliest times. Before that, men saw in the dream a prophecy for the future, a warning spirit, a comforter, a messenger of the gods. Now we join forces with it in order to explore the subconscious, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... it is, perhaps, these laws that it obeys with a resistless impulse, even in the case of those of its impulses which apparently are the most unreasoned. It seems at times as if nations were submitted to secret forces analogous to those which compel the acorn to transform itself into an oak or a ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... wall she could but just see her chin in it. As she slowly tied her pink bonnet strings she grew happier. In truth, she would have been a maiden hard to console if the face that looked back at her from the quaint oak leaf and acorn wreath had not comforted her inmost soul, and made her again at peace with herself. And as the mother looked on she too was comforted; and in five minutes more, when Little Bel was ready to say good-by, they flung their arms around each other, and embraced and kissed, and the daughter ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... animals of an intermediate type were found. The sea-squirt has in its early youth the line of cartilage through the body which, in embryonic development, represents the first stage of the backbone; the lancelet and the Appendicularia have a rod of cartilage throughout life; the "acorn-headed worm" shows traces of it. These are regarded as surviving specimens of various groups of animals which, in early times, fell between the Invertebrate and Vertebrate worlds, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... out his hand to Spiegelberg). Spiegelberg, thou art a great man! or else a blind hog has by chance found an acorn. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... world, a New Zealand paddle on the wall, opposite to a couple of Australian spears. Hanks of sea-weed hung from nails. There was a caulking hammer that had been fished up from the bottom of some dock, all covered with acorn barnacles, and an old bottle incrusted with oyster-shells, the glass having begun to imitate the iridescent lining of the oyster. Under the side-table was a giant oyster from off the coast of Java. Over the chimney-glass the snout of a sword-fish. A cannon-ball—a thirty-two pounder—rested in ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... there the wooden-chuck doth tread, And from the oak-tree's top The red, red squirrels on thy head The frequent acorn drop. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells |
