"Birch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Island, and the red men prayed for water. It is true that they could get it at Lake Ronkonkoma, but some of them were many miles from there, and, beside, they feared the spirits at that place: the girl who plied its waters in a phosphor-shining birch, seeking her recreant lover; and the powerful guardians that the Great Spirit had put in charge to keep the fish from being caught, for these fish were the souls of men, awaiting deliverance into another form. The people gathered about their villages in bands and besought ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... be done daily, hourly, momently, in order that the draught of life may steadily increase. And to do this unflinchingly, a man must be his own schoolmaster, must recognise that he is always in need of wisdom, must be ready to practise any austerities, to use the birch-rod unhesitatingly against himself, in order to gain his end. It becomes evident to any one who regards the subject seriously, that only a man who has the potentialities in him both of the voluptuary and the stoic has any chance of entering the Golden Gates. He must be capable of ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... the water was knee-deep; and I think we kept this day mostly the direction west and northwest. The woods that we traversed consisted in the beginning mostly of oaks, but after three or four hours' marching it was mostly birch trees. It snowed the whole day, so it was very heavy marching over the hills; and after seven leagues, by guess, we arrived at a little house made of bark in the forest, where we lighted a fire and stopped for ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... tent, made with poles stuck into the ground, in a circle, fastened together at the top, and covered on the outside with skins of wild animals, or with birch bark. The Indians light a fire of sticks and logs on the ground, in the middle of the wigwam, and lie or sit all round it; the smoke goes up to the top and escapes. In the winter, they bank it up with snow, and ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... for a season. He found them an exceedingly good tempered and very communicative people. They told him that there was another town higher up the river, and Cartier determined upon visiting that congregation of birch bark tents or huts, pitched on a spot of land called Hochelaga, now the site of Montreal. At Hochelaga the "new Governor" met with a magnificent reception. A thousand natives assembled to meet him on the shore, and the compliment was returned by presents of "tin" beads, and other trifles. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... that was ever found of him. But it was supposed that the child had subsisted, perhaps for weeks, on the berries and other sustenance such as a forest-child knew how to find in the woods. I forgot to say, above, that a piece of birch or other bark was found, which he appeared to have gnawed. It was thought that the cry of "Father! father!" which the mother and little sister heard in the night-time, was really the little fellow's voice, then within hearing of his home; but he wandered away again, and at last sank ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... each of us was to go (though, as a matter of fact, he never acted according to such instructions, but always followed his own devices). Then he unleashed the hounds, fastened the leashes to his saddle, whistled to the pack, and disappeared among the young birch trees the liberated hounds jumping about him in high delight, wagging their tails, and sniffing and gambolling with one another as they dispersed ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... at a neighbouring farm-house, where there lived one of Mr. Walsingham's tenants; a man of the name of Birch, a respectable farmer, who was originally from Ireland, and whose son was at sea with Captain Walsingham. The captain had taken young Birch under his particular care, at Mr. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... legislators blue, Pouring their moral poison-gas On all the joys our fathers knew; The very flowers in the grass Are safe no more, and, lad and lass, 'Ware the old birch-rod and the cane! Here comes our modern Hudibras!— Don't ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... were found to be stove in, and the timbers within started. The farther they proceeded in removing the sheathing, the more they discovered the decayed state of the ship's hull. The chief damage was repaired with a birch tree, which had been cut down when they were there before, and was the only one in the neighbourhood large enough for the purpose; but Captain King gave orders that no more sheathing should be ripped off, being ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... suspicion at the approaching carriage, the long ditches, overgrown with mugwort, wormwood, and mountain ash; and as he watched the fresh fertile wilderness and solitude of this steppe country, the greenness, the long slopes, and valleys with stunted oak bushes, the grey villages, and scant birch trees,—the whole Russian landscape, so long unseen by him, stirred emotion at once pleasant, sweet and almost painful in his heart, and he felt weighed down by a kind of pleasant oppression. Slowly his ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... sketch of his character. Stretched out as if to guard the countess, as a miser guards his hoard, that enormous hand was covered with hair so thick, it presented such a network of veins and projecting muscles, that it gave the idea of a branch of birch clasped with a growth ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... Brahmanas! That chief, induced by my request, will, without doubt, give thee as much wealth as thou desirest.' Thus addressed, O king, Gautama cheerfully set out from that place, eating on the way, to his fill, fruits sweet as ambrosia. Beholding the sandal and aloe and birch trees that stood along the road, and enjoying their refreshing shade, the Brahmana proceeded quickly. He then reached the city known by the name of Meruvraja. It had large porches made of stone, and high ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... most considerable papers communicated to the society, which have, hitherto, not been published, are inserted, in their proper order, as a supplement to the Philosophical Transactions. By Thomas Birch, D. D. secretary to the Royal ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... found themselves outside of the battle-field in a narrow loamy ravine overgrown with dwarfish trees. The ravine was deep and had washed-out clay slopes. High above it stretched a muddy, uneven strip of grey sky, which poured an unceasing rain upon the soaked red clay, upon the small wet birch trees, and the group of soldiers, who had lost their way and driven by inertia were ...
— The Shield • Various
... cluster of slender birch trees deep in the forest, she seated herself on a fallen trunk and unrolled her crocheting. Through the thin foliage the sun filtered over her hair and spangled the ground at her feet. A breeze as gentle as herself whispered above her head in friendly commune with the ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... the lake was quite covered with the citron-yellow leaves from the elms and maples; here and there were spots of a darker foliage. It was very pleasant, very clean to walk on this tigerskin-carpet, and to watch the leaves fall down like snow; the birch looked even lighter and more graceful with its branches almost bare and the roan-tree was wonderful with its heavy scarlet cluster of berries. And the sky was so blue, so blue, and the wood seemed so much bigger, one could look so far between the trunks. And then of course ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... fiercely at the air with her thin hands. Her eyes started out, foam was on her lips, and she shook in her fury like a birch-tree in the wind, looking so evil that Asmund drew ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... wood, so I can cook good," she ordered when they came back. "I want pine or birch. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... arises the harmony that strikes us in the wildest natural landscapes,—in the relative shapes of rocks, the harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning spring,—compared with the visual effect from the greater number of artificial plantations?—From this, that the natural landscape is effected, as it were, by a single ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... flooded in moonlight and the birch trees wavered their stark shadows across it like supplicating arms. Suddenly I heard the soft padded sound of snow falling upon snow, to slowly perceive a figure, the slender figure of a young child attempting to arouse itself ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... had been progressing for some time before the captain's arrival. In front of the bluff of rock blazed a fire made of birch and maple, and on a spit before this a huge piece of venison was roasting. A hideous old woman, with eyes like a rattlesnake, and draggled hair coloured like the moss upon an aged fir, stood by the spit, which every few moments she turned. ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... ever forget it as long as they live. The hit does that; for a kick is a very striking thing, that's a fact. There has been no good scholars since birch rods went out o' school, and sentiment ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... mean the short birch for me, Steele," said the factor gloomily. "Lac Bain is just now the emptiest, most fallen-to-pieces, unbusiness-like post between the Athabasca and the Bay. We've had two bad seasons running, and everything has gone wrong. Colonel Becker is a big one with ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... that dace or perch? Said Alderman Birch; I take it for herring, Said Alderman Perring. This jack's very good, Said Alderman Wood; But its bones might a man slay, Said Alderman Ansley. I'll butter what I get, Said Alderman Heygate. Give me some stewed carp, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... received from head-quarters, that all officers absent on leave should instantly return to duty. This was a disagreeable piece of intelligence, particularly at that hour, but necessitas non habet legem, as Dr. Birch used to tell our hero at school—the orders were imperative. Long and loud were the laments and remonstrances of the party, we are assured. After ordering Dart to be saddled, the Lieutenant stepped into the hall to have a moment's survey ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... most biting laws,— The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds,— Which for this fourteen years we have let sleep, Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave, That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers, Having bound up the threat'ning twigs of birch, Only to stick it in their children's sight For terror, not to use, in time the rod Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees, Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; And liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... scow, cockleshell, wherry, coble^, punt, cog, kedge, lerret^; eight oar, four oar, pair oar; randan^; outrigger; float, raft, pontoon; prame^; iceboat, ice canoe, ice yacht. catamaran, hydroplane, hovercraft, coracle, gondola, carvel^, caravel; felucca, caique^, canoe, birch bark canoe, dugout canoe; galley, galleyfoist^; bilander^, dogger^, hooker, howker^; argosy, carack^; galliass^, galleon; polacca^, polacre^, tartane^, junk, lorcha^, praam^, proa^, prahu^, saick^, sampan, xebec, dhow; dahabeah^; nuggah^; kayak, keel boat [U.S.], log canoe, pirogue; quadrireme^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... I'm daring a rampageous river that runs the devil knows where; My hand is athrill on the paddle, the birch-bark bounds like a bird. Hark to the rumble of rapids! Here in my morris chair Eager and tense I'm straining — isn't it most absurd? Now in the churn and the lather, foam that hisses and stings, Leap I, keyed for the struggle, fury and fume and roar; Rocks are spitting like ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... in all, fairly carved a farm out of the big forest that covered the cold rocky hills. Giant work it was for them in such heavy timber—pine, hemlock, maple, beech and birch—the clearing of a single acre being a man's work for a year. The place where the maples were thickest was reserved for a sugar grove, and from it was made all of the sweet material they needed, and some besides. Economy of the very strictest kind had to be used in every direction. Main strength ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... brook, that you can ford all the year round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer heats, when you want it most; or, at best, it is a fussy little tormenting river, that won't and can't sail a sloop. What are you going to do about it? You are going to wind up your lead and line, shoulder your birch canoe, as the old sea-kings used, and thrid the deep forests, and scale the purple hills, till you come to water again, when you will unroll your lead and line for another essay. Is that fickleness? What else can you do? Must you launch your bark on the unquiet stream, against whose pebbly bottom ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... John Birch, the farmer who had sheltered him, was so fearful of punishment, that he hanged himself, in a few days' time, and even before he was apprehended. But nothing was done to Grace Howe, of Bridgeball, who had been Wade's greatest comforter; neither was anything done to us; although Eliza had added ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... traditionary habitat, it is not there. Round and round we pace, hoping and despairing, till a faint, most delicate odor, indescribably suggestive of woodland freshness, catches the roused sense; or else one silvery star peeps out from under an upturned birch-leaf. Then down on hands and knees; tear up brush to right and left, the brown skeletons of the withered foliage. The ground is white with stars. Some are touched with delicate pink, some creamy white,—but all breathing out the evanescent secret of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... from time immemorial, till the fatal deluge of the fire-water burst upon the red men, and swept their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott, and his followers, came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their long beards in the spring. The richest goblet, then, was of birch-bark. Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here, out of the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm, and laid it on the brow of the first town-born child. For many years it was the watering-place, ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The green-birch fire snapped merrily in the range. The draft sang in the flue. Outside, a soft, feathery snow was falling, for winter came early in the uplands of Vermont this past year. To Cora McBride, however, the winter meant only hardship. Within another week she must go into town and secure ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... youth where I spent my best years, or at least the years of most enjoyment. It was then a wild moor, with some natural beauty, a picturesque den leading from the house to the noble river, wooded with native birch and scrubby oak, with some tall larches and magnificent horse-chestnuts, and even a few immemorial Spanish chestnuts planted by the old Peterboroughs, now all gone. Along that river bank were some of the broadest haughs with which I am acquainted, and some of the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... their usefulness as implements of persuasion, being now employed exclusively as foot-gear. The lissom birch thrives ungarnered in the thicket, where grace and gentleness supply the whilom vigor of its sway. The unyielding barrel-stave, that formerly occupied a place of honor and convenience in the household, is now relegated, a harmless thing, to a forgotten corner of the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... make you feel fit. First thing you do when you shake out of your blankets is jump in an' have a swim. Gee, it's great to swim when the morning mist is still on the water an' the sun just strikes the tops of the birch trees. Ever smelt bacon cooking? I mean out in the woods, in a frying pan over some sticks of pine and beech wood.... Some great old smell, isn't it?... And after you've paddled all day, an' feel tired and ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... o'ertaken in his track, With stolen chattels on his back, Will hung his head in fear and shame, And to the awful presence came—— A great, green, bashful simpleton, The butt of all good-natured fun. With smile suppressed, and birch upraised, The thunderer faltered—"I'm amazed That you, my biggest pupil, should Be guilty of an act so rude! Before the whole set school to boot—— What evil genius put you to't?" "'Twas she herself, sir," sobbed the lad; "I did not mean to be so bad; But when Susannah ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... world, in which men and women of genius can be raised, and that is all. It is with man as it is with vegetation. In the valley you find the oak and elm tossing their branches defiantly to the storm, and as you advance up the mountain side the hemlock, the pine, the birch, the spruce, the fir, and finally you come to little dwarfed trees, that look like other trees seen through a telescope reversed—every limb twisted as through pain—getting a scanty subsistence from the miserly crevices of the rocks. You go on ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... hardly equaled anywhere. There are pines in endless variety—from the Sierra and from the seashore, from New England, France, Norway, and Japan. There flourish the cedar, spruce, hemlock, oak, beech, birch, and maple. There in peace and plenty are the sequoia, the bamboo, and the deodar. Eucalypts pierce the sky and Japanese dwarfs ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... in plowing corn, raked hay, wielded the shovel and the hoe, and chopped wood. At six years old he began to go to school—the typical district school. "The first date," he once said, "I remember inscribing upon my writing-book was 1818." The ferule, or the birch-rod, was in those days the assistant schoolmaster, and young Barnum made its acquaintance. He was, however, an apt and ready scholar, particularly excelling in mathematics. One night, when he was ten years old, he was called ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... the advance of the Irish reserve, whose heavy and sustained fire compelled the Knight of Ardenvohr to forego his advantage, and content himself with repulsing the enemy. The Marquis of Montrose, in the meanwhile, availing himself of some scattered birch trees, as well as of the smoke produced by the close fire of the Irish musketry, which concealed the operation, called upon Dalgetty to follow him with the horse, and wheeling round so as to gain the right flank and even the rear of the enemy, he commanded his six trumpets ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... and flourished through its long generation, had fallen beneath the weight of years, been buried in green moss, and nourished the roots of others as gigantic. Hark! A light paddle dips into the lake, a birch canoe glides around the point, and an Indian chief has passed, painted and feather-crested, armed with a bow of hickory, a stone tomahawk, and flint-headed arrows. But the ripple had hardly vanished from the water, when a white flag caught the breeze, over a castle ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... nothing of those movements of peoples, in the course of which a given art was brought from one part of the world to another. Hence, when we find the art duly installed in a particular place, and utilizing the local product, the bamboo in the south, let us say, or the birch in the north, as it naturally does, we easily slip into the error of supposing that the local products of themselves called the art into existence. Similar needs, we say, have generated similar expedients. No doubt there is some truth in this principle; but I doubt if, on the whole, history tends ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... of white soap, cut small, dissolved in four pints of water, rather hot, in a large basin; make the solution into a lather, by beating it with birch rods, or wires. Introduce the feathers, and rub well with the hands for five or six minutes. After this soaping, wash in clean water, as hot as the hand ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... attended them at least twice a year—but they were sufficiently exotic to make him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met two days before, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... graceful White-Birch tree, With bark so light, so tough and tight That Indians wrought Canoes we're taught, ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... wigwam, a description of the manner and stages of its construction may be interesting. Poles, twelve or fourteen feet long, are placed in the ground, these meeting at the top, and leaving an opening through which the smoke may escape. Over the poles are placed nets, made of flags, or birch bark, and, sometimes, the skins ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... man could always put down when he liked. Sir James had no idea that he should ever like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose cleverness he delighted. Why not? A man's mind—what there is of it—has always the advantage of being masculine,—as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,—and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality. Sir James might not have originated this estimate; but a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gunk or starch in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... river. The houses on the other shore, each surrounded with its patch of cleared land, were sadly distant from one another. Behind the clearings, and on either side of them to the river's bank, it was always forest: a dark green background of cypress against which a lonely birch tree stood out here and there, its bole naked and white as the column of a ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... have gone; a happy journey and welcome back again! Titmouse and blackcap and a hedge-sparrow or so live now alone in the bush and undergrowth: tuitui! All is so curiously changed—the dwarf birch bleeds redly against the grey stones, a harebell here and there shows among the heather, swaying and whispering a little song: sh! But high above all hovers an eagle with outstretched neck, on his way to the ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... and after that, for an hour or more, something lived for him in the glow of the fire which Olaf kept burning. It was the memory of Mary Standish, her quiet, beautiful eyes gazing at him, her pale face taking form in the lacy wisps of birch-smoke. His mind pictured her in the flame-glow as she had listened to him that day in Skagway, when he had told her of this fight that was ahead. And it pleased him to think she would have made this same fight for Alaska ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... Assyria is furnished by the magnificent bronze gates of Balawat, now in The British Museum. See Birch and Pinches, The Bronze Ornaments of the Palace ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... somewhere about eleven o'clock. The night was intensely still, without a zephyr stirring among the trees, and of that wavering darkness caused by a half-clouded moon. On the black and green water close to the bank rocked a light birch-bark canoe, a ticklish craft, which a puff might overturn. The young man who had urged the necessity for silence was groping round it, fumbling with the sharp bow, in which he fixed a short pole or "jack-staff," with some object—at present no ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... Quebec last Thursday, and went by railway to Riviere de Loup. There I had a fall, and hurt my ribs. Next day I drove over the, new, Temiscouata road to the Lake, and thence took a birch bark canoe and two men and paddled down the Lake, and down the river Madawasca to Little Falls, where I arrived in a drenching storm of rain at one o'clock in the morning—having had 'perils by water.' ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... think of another way to accomplish his purpose. None presented itself; so with glowing words he appealed to their nobler selves, telling them all the great need of the travelers who were obliged to pass that way. First he appealed to a fine birch which bordered ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils from tree to tree, and spread a kind ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... larger than some boxes he had seen. It was about eight feet long by six in width, and the ceiling was so low that, even kneeling, his head touched it. His match burned out, and he lighted another. This time he saw a candle stuck in a bit of split birch that projected from the wall. He crept to it and lighted it. For a moment he looked about him, and again he blessed Fingers. The little scow was prepared for a voyage. Two narrow bunks were built at the far end, one so close above the other that Kent grinned as he thought of squeezing ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... feet on the ground, he hitched the horse to the trunk of a little birch and waved his ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... at a farm house, some miles north of the town, got a job on the woodpile, and astonished the farmer by the amount of birch he could saw in an hour. He took his pay in the shape of a bountiful dinner, and—after half an hour's smoke and talk with the farmer, to whom he gave a few pamphlets from the store in his knapsack—said ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... 77 years, of 32 East Street, Holborn, who died on Wednesday last. Alice Mathieson stated that she was landlady of the house where deceased lived. Witness last saw her alive on the previous Monday. She lived quite alone. Mr. Francis Birch, relieving officer for the Holborn district, stated that deceased had occupied the room in question for thirty-five years. When witness was called, on the 1st, he found the old woman in a terrible state, and the ambulance and coachman had to be disinfected ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... jewelled lamps in great black galleries, Garlanded with beauty, and burning all the night; All the doors were shadowy with orpin and St. John's wort, Long fennel, green birch, and lilies ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... brilliance of the eye was each separate pupil. Four spots of down on either of his two cheeks: a blue spot, a purple spot, a green spot, a yellow spot. Fifty strands of bright-yellow hair from one ear to the other, like to a comb of birch twigs or like to a brooch of pale gold in the face of the sun. A clear, white, shorn spot was upon him, as if a cow had licked it. A [10]fair, laced[10] green[a] mantle about him; a silver pin therein [11]over his white breast, so that the eyes of men could not look ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... their rights, wrestled lovingly with their errors, mediated in their quarrels, and was idolized by them as was no other of his race. Pokanoket, Massasoit and Canonicus were his hosts and guardians during the winter and spring; and in summer he descended the river in a birch-bark canoe to the site of the present city of Providence, so named by him in recognition of the Divine mercies; and there he pitched his tent beside the spring, hoping to make the place "a shelter for persons ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the winter," said the old goblin, "and also about the fir and the birch-trees, and the ghost stories, and of the tingling frost. You shall tell your tales, for no one over there can do it so well; and we will sit in the stone rooms, where the pine logs are burning, and drink mead out of the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... other, and leave little space between them and its banks. The Morumbidgee itself, with an increased breadth, averaging from seventy to eighty yards, presents a still, deep sheet of water to the view, over which the casuarina bends with all the grace of the willow, or the birch, but with more sombre foliage. To the west, a high line of flooded-gum trees extending from the river to the base of the hills which form the west side of the valley before noticed, hides the near elevations, and thus shuts in the whole space. ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... it," he said, "that with such wide knowledge of things new as well as old; and such general information as you possess, you aren't even up to the name of a play, and that you've come out with such a whole string of words. Why, the real name of the play is: 'Carrying a birch and begging for punishment'". ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... from laburnum trees, And clothed the lilac, the birch and broom; I've wakened the sound of humming-bees, And decked all nature ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... coniferae, especially of the Lawsoniania and the Douglassi— the latter being one of the finest accessions to our list of conifers. It is graceful in form, and perfectly hardy. I also interspersed with these several birch-trees, whose slender and graceful habit of growth forms so fine a contrast to the dense foliage of the conifers. To thus paint, as it were, with trees, is a high source of pleasure in gardening. Among my various enjoyments this has ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... in endless beauty, unblighted by the chilling blasts of northern climates. In these vallies, the oak, the ash, and the beech, exhibit the peculiar magnificence of forest scenery, while, on the neighbouring hills, the birch waves its airy foliage round the dark masses of rock which terminate the view. Nothing can be conceived more striking than the scenery which this variety of rock and wood produce in every part of this romantic forest. At times you pass through an unbroken mass of aged timber, surrounded by the native ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... is wild and rugged. It is a lofty eminence covered with huge boulders of sandstone, between which rise birch trees and oaks, their foliage already yellowed by autumn. These tall trees stand out from the background of red light, which the sun has left in the west, resembling the reflection of a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... silver Trent, The whispering birch by every zephyr bent, The woody island, and the naked mead, The lowly hut half hid in groves of reed, The rural wicket, and the rural stile, And frequent interspersed, the woodman's pile. Above, below, where'er I turn my eyes, Rocks, waters, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... out of the tent. In the open ground, on the way to a solitary birch-tree, we could see a group of soldiers.... Sara pointed ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... there were families by four or five. Some of them who had finished their houses earlier than the rest, had already commenced gathering their provisions for the winter. These consisted of the leaves and soft twigs of several species of trees—such as willow, birch, and mulberry—and we saw collections of these floating in the water in front of ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Him who made earth and heaven: but they found nothing which they thought would suit the blessed St. Boniface, save that they stayed a little at the place which is called Ruohen-bah, 'the rough brook,' to see if it would suit; but it would not. So they went back to their birch huts to fast and pray ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... arranged, Piskaret drew a long breath, grasped his war-club, and stealthily pushing aside the loose birch-bark door-flap of the nearest lodge, peeped inside. By the ember light he saw that every Iroquois, man and woman, was fast asleep, under furs, on spruce boughs around ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... but from it I got an idea, and soon I had half the tribe at work building me great meat caches. And of all they hunted I got the lion's share and stored it away. Nor was Moosu idle. He made himself a pack of cards from birch bark, and taught Neewak the way to play seven-up. He also inveigled the father of Tukeliketa into the game. And one day he married the maiden, and the next day he moved into the shaman's house, which was ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... Professor Dawkins concludes that the nearest approach at the present day to the Post-Pliocene climate of Western Europe is to be found in the climate of the great Siberian plains which stretch from the Altai Mountains to the Frozen Sea. "Covered by impenetrable forests, for the most part of Birch, Poplar, Larch, and Pines, and low creeping dwarf Cedars, they present every gradation in climate from the temperate to that in which the cold is too severe to admit of the growth of trees, which decrease in size as the traveller advances ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... main frame and cross supports are numbered and matched, I to IIII, and at the feed end they are numbered V to VIII but were mis-matched in the original assembly. Further rigidity is achieved by means of hand-forged lag screws. The arch of the frame is birch and the arch arm maple. The 14-inch doffer roller is made of chestnut.[17] The iron shafts are square and turned down at the bearings. The worker rollers are fitted with sprockets and turned by a hand-forged chain. The comb plate, stamped ...
— The Scholfield Wool-Carding Machines • Grace L. Rogers
... confidence of his Indian guides that the French would not dare to detain him was justified. Next day Hendry paddled on up the river and advanced more than twenty miles, camping at night by "the largest Birch trees I ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... Sarah. Bernouilli. Berthelot. Berwick (Duke of). Berwickshire. Berwick-upon-Tweed. Beryllium. Besancon. Bessemer, Sir Henry. Bet and Betting. Betrothal. Beyle. Bezique. Bhagalpur. Bible Christians. Bichromates and Chromates. Bidder. Bigamy. Bijapur. Bikanir. Bilaspur. Bilbao. Billiards. Binomial. Birch. Birkenhead. Birmingham. Birney, James G. Biron, Armand de Gontaut. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... mushroom; and the colour, when you can see it for dust, a cold, sombre, grayish green. One olive is as like another as one mop-stick is like another. The tree has no picturesqueness, no variety. It is not high enough to be grand, and not irregular enough to be graceful. Put it beside the birch, the beech, the elm, or the oak, and you will see the poetry of the forest, and its poorest ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... Pfingsten, Pentecost, is celebrated as a summer festival. In Northern Germany house doors are wreathed with birch twigs, while young birch trees are placed upright on the ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... "whizz" of his reel, the rush of a brown mountain stream with its fringe of silver birch and stunted alder, the white side of a leaping salmon, and the gasp of that noble fish towed deftly into the shallows at last, afforded him a natural and unmixed pleasure. He loved the heather dearly, the wild hillside, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, bass-wood, maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these mortals blended their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-like picturesqueness; a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance. Here reigned the dashing and all-fusing spirit ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... storm that was upon them might last for days—they set about preparing a shelter. With a little search, whooping to each other lest they stray away, they found a big dry stub that some gale had snapped off a few feet above the snow. While Mooka scurried about, collecting birch bark and armfuls of dry branches, Noel took off his snow-shoes and began with one of them to shovel away the snow in a semicircle around the base of the stub. In a short half-hour he had a deep hole ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... cherry, ash and other trees. It is made by steeping it in a strong solution of saltpetre and cutting it in small pieces. It is also called German tinder. Thome says that Boletus laricis and Polyporus fomentarius yield the "amadou" of commerce. Then, again, the birch Polyporus, P. betulinus, is used for razor strops. We need not say anything on the uses of fungi as articles of food. This subject has been exhausted by many able mycologists, and, excepting the mere mention of some mushrooms that are edible, the authors have ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... soft and indistinct lay in the valley and on the hills. Summer lingered in the garden but on the ridge the nights were cool and in the swamplands, Hughie said, already the maples were coloring with a hint of colder weather. Here and there on birch and poplar ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... disappeared from view behind a clump of birch trees. Then leaving the highway he walked slowly along the trail ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... accompanied the silence. Not a leaf moved on the bushes of those far-swelling fields or on the hill that hid their summit; the air was like the moonlight, so fragrantly cool with the odors of the damp fern and birch. The straight, supple figure of Girard still stood in the roadway, bareheaded, with that powerful effect which he had, even here, of absorbing all ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... singing and hardly breathed, they stood so still. They looked at St. Nicholas with big, big eyes. In one hand St. Nicholas carried two large packages; in the other, a birch rod. ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Brunt was at home. Ellen wanted to become acquainted with them, as well as with the little flowers that grew at their feet; and he tried to teach her how to know each separate kind by the bark, and leaf, and manner of growth. The pine and hemlock and fir were easily learnt; the white birch too; beyond those at first she was perpetually confounding one with another. Mr. Van Brunt had to go over and over his instructions; never weary, always vastly amused. Pleasant lessons these were! Ellen thought so, and Mr. Van Brunt ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... The birch-bark canoe, made by the Indians of the northern rivers and lakes, is really a work of art. It is a model of lightness, and when we consider its frailty, and then the way in which it can be managed in the most turbulent currents, our admiration is divided ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... birch-bark torches roar in the gloom, And the trees crowd up in a quiet startled ring So lone is the land that in this lonely room Never before has ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... clean; the coffee-pot was simmering on the stove; a Black-forest clock ticked in the corner; on some hanging shelves stood two painted China figures, a few cups, and about a dozen books; and behind the little looking-glass on the wall there was a fly-flap, and a birch rod carefully bound round with red ribbon. It was the first comfortable room that they had ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... generally have black heads and legs, and their fine grey fur is interspersed with numerous black and white long hairs. They breed perfectly true, and have long been kept in warrens. When they escape and cross with common rabbits, the product, as I hear from Mr. Wyrley Birch, of Wretham Hall, is not a mixture of the two colours, but about half take after the one parent, and the other half after the other parent. Secondly, chinchillas or tame silver-greys (I will use the former name) have short, paler, mouse or slate-coloured ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... this testimony in their favor, the girls proceeded to deposit the body in a shell, ingeniously, and not inelegantly, fabricated of the bark of the birch; after which they lowered it into its dark and final abode. The ceremony of covering the remains, and concealing the marks of the fresh earth, by leaves and other natural and customary objects, was conducted with the same simple and silent ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... be kept from a week to a fortnight, by the following process. Cover them with water, and wash them clean with a birch broom. Then lay them with the deep or concave part of the shell undermost, and sprinkle each of them well with salt and Indian meal. Fill up the tub with cold water. Repeat this every day; first pouring off the liquid of ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... half a bow-shot from the house on that side (i.e. due north thereof) was a little hazel-brake, and round about it the trees were smaller of kind than the oaks and chestnuts he had passed through before, being mostly of birch and quicken-beam and young ash, with small wood betwixt them; so now he passed through the thicket, and, coming to the edge thereof, beheld the Lady and the King's Son walking together hand in hand, full ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... day low clouds and slanting rain Have swept the woods and dimmed the plain. Wet winds have swayed the birch and oak, And caught and swirled away the smoke, But, all day long, the wooden clock Went ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... through the landscape in long curves. From the south bow window in the hotel, the mother and daughter followed its course through tangled underwood and birch forest; sometimes it disappeared, and then shone out again, and at last became fully visible. There was a great deal of traffic going on, the hum of it reached ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... to the frozen solitude long after all other birds have retired from the desolate scenery. Their food consists of the tender shoots of pines, the seeds of plants, the berries of the arbutus and bilberry, the buds of the birch and alder, the buds of the heather, leaves, and grain. The nest is very simply constructed, consisting of dried grasses placed upon the ground and ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... to speak of Agnes Anne's. But I resolved that I should keep a bright look-out and make the little villains behave. For at an early age our Eden Valley boys were just savages, ready to mock and rend any one of themselves who was a little better dressed, who wore boots instead of clogs with birch-wood soles, or dared to speak without battering the King's English out ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... large. His literary success led to political preferment, and he entered the diplomatic service as Secretary to the French Embassy at Naples in 1823. That same year he was married at Geneva to an English lady, Marianne Birch. His second volume of poetry now appeared, the Nouvelles Meditations. He was transferred to Florence in 1824. In 1825 he published his continuation of Byron, Le Dernier Chant du Pelerinage de Childe Harold. A passage in this poem gave ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the forest. I know that first you climb a rough, rather narrow road up from the river, that the trees close about you very gradually, that there is a little church with a green turret and a fine view of the Nestor, and that there a broad solemn avenue of silver birch leads you forward, gently and without any sinister omens. Then again the forest clears and there are fields of corn and, built amongst the thin scattering of trees, the village of N——. It was here, on passing the first houses of the village, that I felt the heat to be almost unbearable; it seemed ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... we had made ourselves secure, but the heat was not oppressive, and the general character of the plateau, both in its temperature and in its vegetation, was almost temperate. The beech, the oak, and even the birch were to be found among the tangle of trees which girt us in. One huge gingko tree, topping all the others, shot its great limbs and maidenhair foliage over the fort which we had constructed. In its shade we continued our discussion, while Lord John, who had quickly taken command ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarled roots, they draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on which the sun so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore, and almost as early as the alder or the birch—the GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a banner. You could then see only the low windows of the dwelling—for eaves, roof, and chimneys all disappeared—and then, when you stood beneath, was not the sound of the bees like the very sound ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... "our pleasant times in Scotland? Ah, it is a restful place, your Highland home, with the beautiful purple hills rolling away in the distance, and the glorious moors covered with fragrant heather, and the gurgling of the river that runs between birch and fir and willow, making music all day long for those who have the ears to listen, and the hearts to understand the pretty love tune it sings! You know Frenchmen always have more or less sympathy with the Scotch—some ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli |
