"Fir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made for the next night, a stranger having been seen inspecting the river and spying about among the fir-trees at the ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... dear province, the more was Annette effaced from his thoughts; for every thing around him inspired him with the sweetest reminiscences. It was just the beginning of May: each lover, on the first Sunday of that month, planted a young fir, or birch-tree, adorned with flowers, before his fair one's door. Henri thought how many he had fixed before the window of his dear Louise, and how happy he had been on hearing it said, the next ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... that touch'd him he instill'd; And as the colours of all things we see, To our sight's powers communicated be, So to all objects that in compass came Of any sense he had, his senses' flame Flow'd from his parts with force so virtual, It fir'd with sense things mere insensual. Now, with warm baths and odours comforted, When he lay down, he kindly kiss'd his bed, As consecrating it to Hero's right, And vow'd thererafter, that whatever sight ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... the nearer path to the wood. Where the road divides to the ford and the farther pastures; take the latter, then turn to the right, where the old fir-tree rises above the rock. Walk carefully through the bushes at the base of the crag. Near unto a sharp angle of the rock thy path will be stayed by a fallen tree. Grasp this with both hands, and whistle thrice. I know thou canst be trusty and discreet. Yet remember thy life is ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... and, through the leafless boughs, across the undulating lawns, he could see the little Chateau de Maupertuis in the distance. Fearing lest he should be perceived, he concealed himself behind a clump of fir-trees. From there, with the aid of a field-glass, he studied the dark and melancholy front of the manor-house. All the windows were closed and, as it were, barricaded with solid shutters. The house ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... and admired his son accordingly; and when Charles had been expelled from Harrow for some boyish freak in his vengeance against a neighbouring farmer, who had reported to the school authorities the doings of a few beagles upon his land, Charles had cut off the heads of all the trees in a young fir plantation his father was proud of the exploit. When he was rusticated a second time from Trinity, and when the father received an intimation that his son's name had better be taken from the College books, the squire was not so well pleased; ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... a field bakery. Frequently barracks, hospital buildings, and shelters for men and animals have been built into the mountain sides. Here and there simple huts have been erected, made of a few poles and fir twigs. Often they are placed in long rows, which, when their inmates are warming themselves by the fire at night turn the dark mountain road into a romantic night encampment, and everywhere fresh crosses, ornamented at times in a manner suggestive of the work of children, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Christmas had come down—the season of gift-making, and glittering Christmas trees, of BOWLE, STOLLEN, and HONIGKUCHEN. For a fortnight beforehand, the open squares and places were set out with fir-trees of all sizes—their pungent fragrance met one at every turn: the shops were ablaze till late evening, crowded with eagerly seeking purchasers; the streets were impassible for the masses of country people that thronged them. Every one ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... used to camp to enjoy the flowers, the trees, and the birds was on the shore of a glacier lake. Near the lake were eternal snows, rugged gorges, and forests primeval. To its shore, especially in autumn, came many bird callers. I often screened myself in a dense clump of fir trees on the north shore to study the manners of birds which came near. To help attract and detain them, I scattered feed on the shore, and I spent interesting hours and days in my hiding-place enjoying the etiquette of birds at ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... "'The fir tree on the mountain stands, The little cottage at its foot, And Mashenka is there. Her father comes to look for her, He wakens her and coaxes her: ''Eh, Mashenka, come home,'' he cries, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... window of the Queen's bower, and, hastening to his master, told him what he had seen. In terrible wrath the King called for his guards, and, coming upon the lovers unaware, commanded them to slay Gugemar at once. But the knight seized upon a stout rod of fir-wood on which linen was wont to be dried, and faced those who would slay him so boldly that they fell ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... this tree as it bears on the question of the greater variability of our hedgerow trees compared with those under strictly natural conditions. A well-informed writer (10/160. 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1849?, page 822.) states that the Scotch fir presents few varieties in its native Scotch forests; but that it "varies much in figure and foliage, and in the size, shape, and colour of its cones, when several generations have been produced away from its native locality." There is little doubt that the highland and lowland varieties differ ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... the search during the first day, and we passed the night at a newly cleared farm, five miles from home. But cattle-tracks were discovered in dense fir woods near a large brook during the following morning; and after following them for two hours we came upon the whole herd, snugly sheltered in the ox hovel of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... coast to be mere barren ridges of lichen-clad rock, with moss-beds in the hollows. But from the summit of the high ridge, about two miles in from the shore, they had seen with the glass, to the southward, what seemed to be low thickets of stunted evergreen,—fir or spruce. From this Raed argued that fuel might be obtained by a party travelling through the country; and, from that, went on to picture these thickets to abound ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... the river nearly two miles when, coming to a little stream which empties into the larger, I turned in to explore its course. Fir and hemlock of a century's growth met overhead, and formed an archway radiant with frost-work. All was dark within, but I was young and fearless, and as I peered into an unbroken forest that reared itself on the borders of the stream, I laughed with very joyousness: my wild hurrah rang through ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... allow the little folks to fondle and stroke them. On a miniature mountain of artificial rock-work troops of goats and mouflons—a species of mountain sheep—clamber about, as much at home as if in their far-away native mountains. Under a group of fir-trees a lot of reindeer are taking an afternoon nap, lost in dreams of their home in the distant North. Grazing peacefully on the broad meadows are antelopes, gazelles, and all kinds of deer; and yaks from Tartary, llamas ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... so charmingly immortalized by Washington Irving, I left Portland after the convention closed and had a beautiful voyage of nine hours down the river to where it meets the ocean.... After an early morning plunge into the big waves we chartered an auto and sped over the hard sands to the fir-crowned cliffs." ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... briefly, replacing the clean brown rifle on its fir pegs. "No, I don't need nobody, and I don't need Old Sister. I reckon I can deal ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Rappahannock can be bridged! A brigade known to be occupying the town? Well, a hundred and forty guns admirably planted on Stafford Heights will drive out the rebel brigade! The line of hills, bleak and desolate with fir woods?—hares and snow birds are all the life over there! General Lee and Stonewall Jackson? Down the Rappahannock below Moss Neck. At least, undoubtedly, Stonewall Jackson's down there. The balloon people say so. General Lee's got an idea that Port Royal's our point of attack. The mass of ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... portrait of a lady of Bruges, who has given me I Philip's florin. I gave away 3 stivers as a tip; paid 2 stivers for fir cones and I for stone colour; paid 13 stivers to the furrier, 1 stiver for leather; bought two mussels for 2 stivers. In John Gabriel's house I have taken the portrait of an Italian lord, who gave me 2 gold florins. Bought a portmanteau for 2 ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... wrath of God Upon their uncle fell; Yea, fearful fiends did haunt his house, His conscience felt an hell: His barns were fir'd, his goods consum'd, His lands were barren made; His cattle died within the field, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... pitched for Ailill, and the furniture was arranged, both beds and coverings. Fergus Mac Roich in his tent was next to Ailill; Cormac Condlongas Mac Conchobair beside him; Conall Cernach by him; Fiacha Mac Fir-Febe, the son of Conchobar's daughter, by him. Medb, daughter of Eochaid Fedlech, was on Ailill's other side; next to her, Findabair, daughter of Ailill and Medb. That ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... little plantation of young fir-trees at one corner of the garden, intended to grow there for shelter from the north-west wind: the grass was so high amongst them, that the gardener had orders to go and carefully mow it down. He was engaged in the business when ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... he was coming down the village street and saw the blacksmith standing near his cottage looking up at a tall fir-tree which grew there on his ground. "What be looking at?" cried Tark. The blacksmith pointed to a branch, the lowest branch of all, but about forty feet from the ground, and said a chaffinch had his nest in it, about three feet from the trunk, which his little son had set his heart on ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... centuries, with not a green thing to be seen, save now and then a bunch of stunted shrubs that have found a foothold in some sheltered nook in the rocks, and perchance, on some distant hill, a glimpse of struggling spruce or fir trees. It is a fog-ridden, dangerous coast, with never a lighthouse or signal of any kind at any point in its entire length to ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... but that was a Thought that did not long perplex her, and which, almost as soon as born, she turned to her Advantage. She beholds him a Lover, and therefore finds he has a Heart sensible and tender; he had Youth to be fir'd, as well as to inspire; he was far from the loved Object, and totally without Hope; and she reasonably consider'd, that Flame would of itself soon die, that had only Despair to feed on. She beheld her own Charms; and Experience, as well as her Glass, told her, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... kept its promise, and was fair to the end. We drove up this glen, which is Glen Muich, to the loch which terminates it, about six miles off. There stands the Queen's hut, with a few fir-trees about it. It deserves its name—a small Highland cottage, with a room on each side the door and two rooms behind; a little plain wooden furniture and a Kidderminster carpet. There are two or three other wooden cottages about for the ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... strike assuming folly dead; And sense, which temper'd ev'ry thing she said; Judgment, which ev'ry little fault could spy; But candour, which would pass a thousand by: Such finish'd breeding, so polite a taste, Her fancy always for the fashion pass'd; Whilst every social virtue fir'd her breast To help the needy, succour the distrest; A friend to all in misery she stood, And her chief pride was plac'd in doing good. But now, my Muse, the arduous task engage, And shew the charming figure on the stage; Describe her look, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... to understand, but the horror of the pursuit had overwhelmed her. The quiet woods into which they had passed again after leaving Fawkham Green now seemed full of menace; the rough road, with the deep powdery ruts and the grass and fir-needles at the side, no longer seemed a pleasant path leading home, but a treacherous device to lead them deeper into danger. The creatures round them, the rabbits, the pigeons that flapped suddenly ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... fir tree and sung of the joy of Heaven, quite convinced that the man in the hole, who could see neither sky, nor sea, nor meadow, must ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... to rent. If she will not submit to be fastened to the dock, stripped of her rigging, and scrutinized by unwashed artificers, she may spring a leak when riding most proudly on the subject wave. Norway fir nor English oak can resist forever the insidious assaults of the seemingly conquered ocean. The man who clears the barnacles from the keel is more essential than he who hoists the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Anne's field from Colin's. This year, when Jerrold came home, Colin's shelter had been moved up from the field to the Manor garden. In the summer Anne would sleep again in her shelter. The path to her field from the Manor garden lay through three pastures and two strips of fir plantation with a green ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... sight of the heather just bursting into its purple bloom; and M. Choynowski, usually so self-possessed, had been betrayed into the expression of a kindred feeling by the delicious odour of the fir plantations, which served to transport him in imagination to the balm-breathing forests of the North. This sympathy was a new, and a strong bond of union between two spirits but too congenial; and I determined no longer to defer informing the gentleman, in whose ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... branches of the forest. Nor can any lover of nature enter the old piles of Oxford and the English cathedrals, without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw and plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, pine, fir and spruce. ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was knocking. He made a struggle towards consciousness, but relapsed. Then he struggled again. And gradually his surroundings fell into relationship with himself. He knew, and a great pang of fear went through his heart. Somebody was knocking. He could see the heavy, black rags of a fir tree overhead. Then everything went black. Yet he did not believe he had closed his eyes. He had not. Out of the blackness sight slowly emerged again. And someone was knocking. Quickly, he saw the blood-disgfigured face of his Captain, which he hated. And he held himself still with horror. ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... twilight. Silence gathers itself together out of the dark, deepened, not broken, by the hushing of the wind among the beech-leaves, or the startled cluck of a blackbird, or a wood-pigeon's soft murmur, as it dreams in the silver fir. ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... Fruits, particularly Lemons and Oranges, and esculent Herbs, and many Kinds of Roots, such as Horse-Radish, Onions, Leeks, and many others, have been found the most useful Remedies in the Cure of the Scurvy. Decoctions and Infusions of Fir-Tops, of Spruce, and of other Species of the Pine-Tree; and Beer made of these Infusions, by fermenting them with Molasses, are approved Antiscorbutics: and when such Remedies cannot be got, Infusions of the common Bitters, and weak Punch, ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... where we can stop for a rest," and Jet halted in front of a thick clump of fir bushes. "By crawling in there we shall soon be out of sight, and I'll start back for the depot as soon as you think it ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... ledge of rock and earth at the summit of the cliff two tall fir-trees were growing, and out of the top of one of these the bird had flown. The children stood and watched it, with its long tail and sharp contrast of black and white feathers, as it sailed away ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... icicles drooped from the side-irons of his bit. I let him trot to warm his limbs, while for my own part I had too much to think of to give much heed to the cold. To north and south stretched the great plains, mottled over with dark clumps of fir and lighter patches of larch. A few cottages peeped out here and there, but it was only three months since the Grand Army had passed that way, and you know what that meant to a country. The Poles were our friends, it was true, but out of a hundred thousand ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... grows, Itself a grove, gave our first parents clothes; The vine, which, like a blushing new-made bride, Clustering, empurples all the mountain's side; The yew, which, in the place of sculptured stone, Marks out the resting-place of men unknown; The hedge-row elm; the pine, of mountain race; The fir, the Scotch fir, never out of place; The cedar, whose top mates the highest cloud, Whilst his old father Lebanon grows proud 300 Of such a child, and his vast body laid Out many a mile, enjoys the filial shade; The oak, when living, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... of some shrubs on the banks of the Tweed, when his attention was attracted by the cries of wild-fowl, accompanied by a great deal of fluttering and splashing. On looking round, he perceived a large brood of ducks, which had been disturbed by the drifting of a fir branch among them. After circling in the air for a little time, they again ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... example describing a scene in Norway, where she was visiting, as it appeared to her upon some evening in late autumn: "This afternoon I went out to gather cranberries on the edge of the fir-belt below the Stead. Beneath me stretched the great moss-swamp, so wide that I could not discern its borders, and grey as the sea in winter. The wind blew and in the west the sun was setting, a big, red sun which glowed like the copper-covered cathedral dome ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... goodliest of all:—whole-roasted elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses, stuffed with boiled ostriches, condors, cassowaries, turkeys. Also barbacued mastodons and megatheriums, gallantly served up with fir-trees in ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... full speed, and in due time reached the spot. He hurriedly built up a number of stones into a circle, and began to collect dry, twiggy stuff to start the blaze, wishing the while that he could see a fir wood with its ample supply of dead, turpentiny branches. But the twigs were strong and promised to burn well, so he proceeded next to collect the weather-worn fragments of coal, which had from time to time crumbled down from above, rent away by the frost. These were scattered ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... dealings contrary, But if thy parley be for Ethenwald, That base dissembler with his sovereign, 'Twere better leave to speak in his excuse, Than by excusing him gain our ill-will: For I am minded like the salamander-stone That, fir'd with anger, will not in haste be quench'd. Though wax be soft, and apt to receive any impression, Yet will hard metal take no form, except you melt the same. So mean men's minds may move as they think good, But kings' just ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... what long melodious hours! or would they pray, what stations on the pine-clad hills! or would they toil, what terraces to build and plant with corn, what flowers to tend, what cows to milk and pasture, what wood to cut, what fir-cones to gather for the winter fire! or should they yearn for silence, silence from their comrades of the solitude, what whispering galleries of God, where never human voice breaks loudly, but winds and streams and lonely birds disturb the awful stillness! In such ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... were tied together by the ropes of running wind; for these were visiting days— all manner of strangers dropped in upon them from distant walks in life, and they never knew whether the next would be a fir-cone or one of those careless, irresponsible travellers, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... A bishop might almost have preached out of one, or a modrat-sized famly slep in it. Me and Mr. Schwigshhnaps, the currier, sate behind in the rumbill; master aloan in the inside, as grand as a Turk, and rapt up in his fine fir-cloak. Off we sett, bowing gracefly to the crowd; the harniss-bells jinglin, the great white hosses snortin, kickin, and squeelin, and the postilium cracking his wip, as loud as if he'd been ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grudgingly. "The mountings kin be medjured by the eye,—look a-yander." He pointed with the end of his whip at a section of the horizon, visible between the fringed and low-swaying boughs of hemlock and fir as the trail swept closer to the verge of the range, on which was softly painted, as on ivory and with an enameled lustre, two or three great azure domes, with here and there the high white clouds of a clear day nestling ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... savannas warm and sheltered, in which nestle away finely cultivated farms, and from whence arise those rural sounds of flock and herd so grateful to the spirit, and that primitive blast of horn, winding itself into a thousand echoes, the signal of the in-gathering of a household. Cliffs, crowned with fir, overhang the waters; hills, rising hundreds of feet, cast their dense shadows quite across the stream; and even now the "slim canoe" of the Indian may be seen poised below, while some stern relic of the woods looks ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... themselves felt. The poachers were daring beyond belief; and deep was the enmity between the large proprietors and the labourers around them. The oldest men and women, and children scarcely able to walk, were found trespassing day by day in all plantations, with bags, aprons, or pinafores, full of fir-cones, and wood snapped off from the trees, or plucked out of the hedges. There was no end to repairing the fences. There were unpleasant rumours, too, of its being no longer safe to walk singly in ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Mark, who apparently had been looking around more or less since they came ashore, "there are plenty of spruce and hemlock and fir trees close by. We can make our beds like hunters always used to do, away back in Daniel ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... grotto, followed by Porthos. Dawn just tinted with purple and white the waves and plain; through the dim light, melancholy fir-trees waved their tender branches over the pebbles, and long flights of crows were skimming with their black wings the shimmering fields of buckwheat. In a quarter of an hour it would be clear daylight; ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hid there (on the mountain top) in the shadow of the moon. We left there an acorn yet green in its cup, We left also a firchatt upon the great stone hurled by Thor; To a fir branch we tied with a fine whang drawn from a bear we slew The wing feather of an eagle which span towards us, Yet it fell not to the earth, we twain caught it, The one by the quill, the ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... markets, but the qualities of papers and the public demands are so diversified and numerous that this possible objection should not be serious. Ten years ago sulphite manufacturers would not accept consignments of spruce logs if they contained over 5 per cent of fir, while to-day many manufacturers tolerate 50 per cent. Rope papers are found to contain not only jute, but when this raw material is not plentiful, chemical pulp of various kinds. "Linen paper" is often no more than a trade term. Not long ...
— Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material - United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 404 • Lyster H. Dewey and Jason L. Merrill
... also two or three kinds of small amphibious quadrupeds. Hence probably arose the general and absurd beliefs concerning the origin of teal, which some said sprung from the rotten wood of old ships, others from the fruits of a tree, or the gum on fir-trees, whilst others thought they came from a fresh-water shell analogous to that of the oyster ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... of Lars and Klaus were, however, peasants. They worked on their farms, and above their green pastures rose lofty mountains clad in fir-trees, dusky pines, mottled beeches, and silver birches. Klaus and Lars explored together the recesses of these mountains; together they hunted for bears; together they sailed over the blue waters of the fjord, in and out of the swift currents, and on and up into the streams ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the promises of God's mercy to the Israelites on their return from the captivity, tells them, that, among other things, he will plant in the wilderness, for their relief and refreshment, the cedar, the acacia (or, as it is rendered in our common version, the shittah), the fir, and other trees. ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Britains none is more lovely than Cannes. The place is a pure creation of the health-seekers whose gay villas are thrown fancifully about among its sombre fir-woods, though the "Old Town," as it is called nowadays, remains clinging to its original height, street above street leading up to a big bare church of the Renascence period, to fragments of mediaeval walls and a great tower which crowns ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... drowsily on the stones. The neighbours know my habit, and not infrequently some one wanders up to ask what news there is in the last paper I have received, or to make inquiries about the American war. If no one comes I prop my book open with stones touched by the Fir-bolgs, and sleep for hours in the delicious warmth of the sun. The last few days I have almost lived on the round walls, for, by some miscalculation, our turf has come to an end, and the fires are kept up with dried cow-dung—a common fuel on ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... our excited nerves by rapid sallies of wild nonsense. There was the plank from behind which, erected as a barrier across the doorway, he would defend the castle against our united assault, pelting us with fir-cones and sods of earth. This and many a bygone scene thronged on me as I stood there, and the room filled again with the memories of childish mirth. And following close came those of childish terrors. Horrors ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... day was coming, the Christmas eve drew near, The fir-trees they were talking low at midnight cold and clear And this is what the fir-trees said, all in the pale moonlight, "Now which of us shall chosen be to ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... into a more open country, clothed with interlaced manzanita bushes and buck brush and thickets of young balsam fir. Here, said Hank Brown, was good bear country. And a little farther on he pulled up and pointed down to the dust of the trail, where he said a bear had crossed that morning. Jack saw the imprint of what looked like two ill-shaped short ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... impinging upon stout oak; the Doomsmen, hitherto in hiding, were making a diversion, in answer, doubtless, to a signal from their leader. A hundred gray-garbed men showed themselves in the open, coming from the shelter of the fir plantation back of the rickyards; they ran towards the open water gate, exposing themselves recklessly in ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... and Stockholm in June, and were much delighted with the new land they visited. To read in the public square at midnight; to pass through groves of pine and fir with rose-colored cones; to hear the watchman call from the church tower four times toward the four quarters of the heaven, "Ho, watchmen, ho! Twelve the clock hath stricken. God keep our town from fire and brand, and enemy's hand;" to have boys and girls run before to open the gates; to hear ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... formerly belonged to the Count de Regla, whose possessions must have been royal, is thirty leagues in length and seventeen in width—containing in this great space the productions of every climate, from the fir-clad mountains on a level with the volcano of Toluca, to the fertile plains which produce corn and maize; and lower down, to fields of sugar-cane and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... monkey," said Kennedy, throwing a fir-cone at him. "You'll be qualified for the Alpine Club, Miss Home, before the day's over, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... was stationed at port Egmont, it was necessary to try what sustenance the ground could be, by culture, excited to produce. A garden was prepared; but the plants that sprung up withered away in immaturity: some fir seeds were sown; but, though this be the native tree of rugged climates, the young firs, that rose above the ground, died like weaker herbage: the cold continued long, and the ocean ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... evenings that visit us sometimes at the beginning of the year to remind us that spring is not far distant, and to make us forget that the cold March winds are yet in store for us. Gwladys drew the red hood over her head and walked briskly in the direction of the lake, which lay buried in the fir wood behind the house. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... and the foxes would come and eat it. After they got accustomed to come and eat and no harm befell them, they would be unsuspecting. So just before a snowstorm, I'd take a trap and put it this spot. I'd handle it with gloves, and I'd smoke it, and rub fir boughs on it to take away the human smell, and then the snow would come and cover it up, and yet those foxes would know it was a trap and walk all around it. It's a wonderful thing, that sense of smell in animals, if it is a sense ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... Cordova, belted with the skin of the deer, and clasped with gold. And over this was a scarf of yellow satin wrought with green silk, the borders whereof were likewise green. And the green of the caparison of the horse, and of his rider, was as green as the leaves of the fir tree, and the yellow was as yellow as the blossom of the broom. So fierce was the aspect of the knight, that fear seized upon them, and they began to flee. And the knight pursued them. And when the horse breathed forth, ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... already lived and died became a gleaming spirit, and then it too fell in ashes among the ash. Then Young Gerard took a handful of twigs and branches, and began to build upon the ash a castle of many sorts of wood, and the child helped him, laying hazel on his beech and fir upon his oak; and often before their turret was quite reared a spark would catch at the dry fringes of the fir, or the brown oakleaves, and one twig or another would vanish ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... outside in another minute and seated herself in the chair he drew out. The house was small and irregularly built, and a glass roof supported on light pillars stretched along part of the front. A half-moon hung above a ridge of dark fir wood, a tarn gleamed below, and here and there down a shadowy hollow there was a sparkle of running water. On the other side of the dale the moors stretched away, waste and empty, toward the half-seen hills. The loneliness of the prospect ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... into a peculiar slide of oxidized earth traversing two gullies, and the arm of the cross no longer appeared true to the perpendicular. The tall tamaracks began to segregate as the travelers dropped to a lower altitude; and pine and fir, fragrant with spring odor, seemed watching them. The trail at last took an abrupt turn away from the cross-marked mountain, and they ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... near Farnham, in Surrey, a few clumps of old Scotch firs, but no young trees over hundreds of acres. Some portions of the heath had, however, been enclosed a few years before, and these enclosures were crowded with young fir-trees growing too close together for all to live; and these were not sown or planted, nothing having been done to the ground beyond enclosing it so as to keep out cattle. On ascertaining this, Mr. Darwin was so much surprised ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... cast in the same mould," cried the youth; and in fact he was very like his father—like, no doubt, as a noble hunter is like a worn-out hack—as marble is like limestone—as a cedar is like a fir-tree. Both were remarkably tall, had thick hair, dark eyes, and strongly aquiline noses, exactly of the same shape; but the cheerful brightness which irradiated the countenance of the youth had certainly not been inherited from the lute-player, but from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... just referred to, and the extraordinarily numerous silicified trunks of fir-trees at Los Hornos, perhaps at Coquimbo and at two distant points in the valley of Copiapo, indicate that land existed at this period in the neighbourhood. This land, or islands, in the northern part of the district of Copiapo, must ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... an' ran—na gaze-hound fleeter. An' we couldna raise it—me an' Tam, an' Job, an' Gideon o' the Mere, an' Moses Legh o' Wissen Edge, a' strong min and i' our prime. We couldna stir it, till Moses o' Wissen Edge he thoct o' pittin' fir-poles underneath—poles as was sharp an' slim i' thur ends, an' stout an' hard further down. Whin tha poles was weel thrust under we heaved, an' heaved, an' heaved, and got it slanted o' one side, and drawed him out; an' thin it were too late, too late! A' tha brist was ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... ago, in the gloom of deep and silent woods there lived a witch or evil chehah. The Indians called her E-ish-so-oolth. So tall was she that, stalking through the forest, her head would brush the lower branches of the giant fir. ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... mob-cap. The vane on the barn was delicately sifted over, and the top of every picket in the high front-yard fence had a fluffy peak. But it was chiefly in the woods that the rapture and flavor of the time ran riot in making beauty. There every fir branch swayed under a tuft of white, and the brown refuse of the ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... there smiling at himself. He remembered he was young; the funeral curtains rose, and he saw his life shine and broaden and flow out majestically, like a river sunward. The smile still on his lips, he lit a second candle and a third; a fire stood ready built in a chimney, he lit that also; and the fir-cones and the gnarled olive billets were swift to break in flame and to crackle on the hearth, and the room brightened and enlarged about him like his hopes. To and fro, to and fro, he went, his hands lightly clasped, his breath deeply and pleasurably ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the cover of darkness, for he did not wish to be seen. Then he approached cautiously toward the spot where the camp fire crackled and blazed. In the light of the flames dark trunks of oaks and fir trees stood out of the blackness. Then moving forms appeared on the banks and lighted the clans seated around the fire. At first Fleetfoot did not go near enough to see the faces distinctly. But he could tell from the various movements that they ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... plains which stretch stretching towards Archangel and towards Archangel and the shores towards the shores of the White of the White Sea are (48) covered Sea, and covered with immense with immense forests of fir and forests of oak and fir, furnish oak, furnishing at once (54)[40] materials for shipbuilding and inexhaustible materials for supplies of fuel that will for shipbuilding and supplies of fuel. many generations supersede the (54) These ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... good such a woman does. If people would but learn that it takes wits to command as well as to obey, they would get along well enough in these new times of equality. Thank heaven! we country folk shan't be ruined by idleness. When I saw my thatched roof again, among the fir-trees, I felt as solemn as if I were going to prayers. The blue smoke looked like incense. I folded my hands, I ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... at last," breathed Felicity devoutly, as we foregathered for a brief space in the fir wood. "We've nothing more to do now but get dressed. It's really a serious thing to have ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... among the rocks to the spring where snow lay, trodden and filthy, and the big, black salamanders crawled half stupefied in the sun. All his loathing and fear of them kindled again as it always did at sight of them. "Dirty beasts," he muttered, stumping and stumbling among the stunted fir trees; "some day they'll bite some of these damn fools who say they can't bite. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... he saw it, and gathered all the force and nervous impetus in his frame to the trial, as he came rushing downward along the slope of the lane, with his elbows back, and his body straight, as prize-runners run. The wagon, sideways, stretched across—a solid barrier, heaped up with fir boughs brought for firing from the forests; the mules stood abreast, yoked together. The mob following saw too, and gave a hoot and yell of brutal triumph; their prey was in their clutches; the cart barred his progress, and he must double like a fox faced ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... hand on hers. That useful Blue Peter needed no guidance. They were just leaving the road, and entering a long glade that led through a newly-opened fir plantation, a straight ride of a mile and a half or so. The young moon was gleaming cool and clear above the feathering points of ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... the honeysuckle from which it took its name, stood in a large old-fashioned garden, at the edge of a fir plantation, which sheltered it from the northeast wind at the back, and filled the air about it ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... estate, there was a Flobert rifle, the strap of which was ornamented after an entirely new method by cutting out thin layers of the leather and inserting gilt arabesques and figures. For the house in general there were some ingenious arrangements in fir cones and small shells. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... with a horned cap; also, the bust of a figure with the conical cap of the Assyrians: then the head of a figure, with traces of paint yet upon it, crowned with a tiara of rosettes. Here also is a fragment representing a king attended by a strange symbolical winged figure holding the popular fir-cone in his right hand, and in his left a basket, of which the visitor will remark a perfect specimen presently. The examination of these fragments will conduct the visitor to the end of the room, and before turning to examine the contents of the opposite compartments, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... ere sunset: now methinks they talk, Lowly and sweetly as befits the hour, One to another down the grassy walk. Hark the laburnum from his opening flower, This cherry creeper greets in whisper light, While the grim fir, rejoicing in the night, Hoarse mutters to the murmuring sycamore,[39] What shall I deem their converse? would they hail The wild gray light that fronts yon massive cloud, Or the half bow, rising like pillar'd fire? Or are they fighting faintly for desire That with May dawn their leaves may ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... and liking and disliking—and—and— and the other sort of feelings which your ladyship is pleased to speak of; but I may say freely, and without blame, that I like a butterfly better than a bettle, or a trembling aspen better than a grim Scots fir, that never wags a leaf—or that of all the wood, brass, and wire that ever my father's fingers put together, I do hate and detest a certain huge old clock of the German fashion, that rings hours and half hours, and quarters and half quarters, as if it were of such consequence ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the shoulders, and bloody knives in hands, operating on the carcase of the deer, and it was several hours past their usual supper-time before they felt themselves at liberty to sit down on a bed of spruce-fir branches and enjoy the luxury of rest ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... where they are felled, drawn to the rivers upon the snow, and made up into rafts. The Canadian crews erect masts and spread their sails, and by the aid of wind and current, and sometimes by rowing, they boldly guide these acres of fir down the rapids to Quebec, while they animate their labours with the melody of their popular songs. A part ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Locke, then the theory of harmonics, and then many pages of anatomical plates. Then phonetic changes; followed by a chapter on "Grimm's Law," which would give work enough for a lifetime. We next plunge into botany, and have a whole chapter on the "words for fir, oak, and beech," which shows that the author, like our own Mr. Marsh, has studied the literal roots as well as the symbolic. Later, we come to astronomy, whence one of our author's favorite theories conducts us into the Greek mythology, to which two whole lectures are given. Then comes another ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... great severity. The remainder of the costume—short blue or red skirt (the colours distinguishing Protestant and Catholic), gay kerchief, and apron—have all but vanished. As we approach our destination the outlines of the Vosges become more distinct, and the plain is broken by sloping vineyards and fir woods. We see no labourers afield, and, with one exception, no cattle. It is strange how often cattle are cooped up in pastoral regions. The farming here is on the old plan, and milch cows are stabled from January to December, only being taken out to water. Agricultural machinery ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... widow sat sighing On the side of the white chalk bank, Where under the gloomy fir-woods One spot in the ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... confessions and their masses, and the priests encourage these decorous Sabbath gaieties. A place is generally chosen where two or four roads meet, and the dancers come from the scattered farmhouses in every direction. In Ballyfuchsia, they dance on a flat piece of road under some fir-trees and larches, with stretches of mountain covered with yellow gorse or purple heather, and the quiet lakes lying in the distance. A message comes down to us at Ardnagreena—where we commonly spend our Sunday ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... So much for these brave tools. As to this noble piece of wood, it was till this morning the banister to our staircase. Observe what solid, substantial men our ancestors were! What a broad, magnificent piece of oak! This will make a quite different sort of fire from your deal shavings and slips of fir." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... before me went; I sole pursued, List'ning their speech, that to my thoughts convey'd Mysterious lessons of sweet poesy. But soon they ceas'd; for midway of the road A tree we found, with goodly fruitage hung, And pleasant to the smell: and as a fir Upward from bough to bough less ample spreads, So downward this less ample spread, that none. Methinks, aloft may climb. Upon the side, That clos'd our path, a liquid crystal fell From the steep rock, and through the sprays above Stream'd showering. With associate step the bards Drew near the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... that offered to my thoughts, at that time, was to get up into a thick, bushy tree, like a fir, but thorny, which grew near me, and where I resolved to sit all night, and consider the next day what death I should die, for as yet I saw no prospect of life. I walked about a furlong from the shore, to see if I could find any fresh water to drink, which I did, to my great ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the estate of a relation where I had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren heath which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been inclosed twenty-five years previously and planted with Scotch fir. The change in the native vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable, more than is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another: not only the proportional numbers of the heath-plants ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... half-window, half-door—which proved a constant source of grief to me, for whenever I had on a new frock I always tore it on the bolt as I flew through it—into a large garden which sloped down one side of the hill, and was filled with the most delightful old trees, fir and laurel, may, mulberry, hazel, apple, pear, and damson, not to mention currant and gooseberry bushes innumerable, and large strawberry beds spreading down the sunny slopes. There was not a tree there that I ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... visions vanished before something more tangible in the haze of the valley. This was the flutter of a dirty white rag which seemed to come and go among the fir trees. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... was on the other side of it, and the milk and butter had all to be fetched from it, the milk twice a day, whether the sun blazed, or the chilly Scottish drizzle blotted out the hills in a misty haze, or the north wind swept across it, and shook the gaunt fir-trees to and ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... to have noticed them: but oh! his eyes roved wildly to each side of the road for a chance of escape. He saw none. To his right was a precipitous rock; to his left a profound ravine with a torrent below, and the sides scantily clothed with fir-trees and bushes: he was, in fact, near the top of a long rising ground called "La Mauvaise Cote," on account of a murder committed there two hundred ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that instead of the thorn there came up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier there ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... pane among the coloured pieces of the window through which, now and then, the wind blew powdery snow. She put her eyes to it and looked out upon a great bare moorland, white under a cold winter moon. Here and there sprang a fir tree, but for the most part the land stretched away to the horizon, empty as death—and as chill. So close to her eye that she must hold her head back in order to see it, rose a great square tower with stretches of tiled roof, mostly snow-covered, spreading out ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... of the view, however, is the famous hill of Flodden, about a mile to the westward, crowned by a plantation of dark fir trees, and presenting, with the different aspects of the weather, ever-changeful scenery, recalling now the "dark Flodden" and anon the "red Flodden" of the balladists. Across the valley from Ford Castle, and at the foot of this fir-crowned hill, was fought one of the bitterest ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... seat with graceful air she press'd; To different tasks their toil the nymphs address'd: The golden goblets some, and some restored From stains of luxury the polish'd board: These to remove the expiring embers came, While those with unctuous fir foment the flame. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... won by the army were indeed important, but those by the navy were more glorious still. In years before the war British captains laughed at our little navy and called our ships "fir- built things with a bit of striped bunting at their mastheads." These fir- built things now inflicted on the British navy a series of defeats such as it had never before ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... primrose. And still upon his right hand was the great river, flowing down towards the home he had left; now through low meadows, now through upshouldered fields of wheat and oats, now through rocky heights covered with the graceful silver-barked birch, the mountain ash, and the fir. Every time Gibbie, having lost sight of it by some turn of the road or some interposing eminence, caught its gleam afresh, his first feeling was that it was hurrying to the city, where the dead man lay, to tell where Gibbie was. Why ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the next morning, after breakfast, and Helen, who, next to the smell of a fir-wood fire, honestly liked the odour of a good cigar, spying him from her balcony, which was the roof of the veranda, where she was trimming the few remaining chrysanthemums that stood outside the window of her room, ran down the little wooden stair that led from it to the garden, and joined him. ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... and pine-trees here. Suppose I landed you two lads in that lovely gorge, where the water comes down like a veil of silver, and—yes, look, there's a rainbow floating in that mist just above the big fall. Look at the ferns, and perfect shape of that great fir-tree, with its branches drooping right to the ground. You could sleep under its spreading boughs, and find a soft bed of pine-needles; but I don't think it would be possible to climb up the sides of the gorge, and in a ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... building. It was such a sacred edifice as a traveller might have expected to find in El Dorado. The walls were of hewn stone, faced within with cedar which was richly carved with knosps and flowers; the ceiling was of fir-tree. But in every part gold was lavished with the utmost profusion; within and without, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, in short, the whole house is described as overlaid with gold. The finest and purest—that of Parvaim, by some supposed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... woodstack on the path hid deep in undergrowth of laurels and spruce fir, and not seldom in summer I'd smoke a pipe with my back against it; but oftener I'd tramp up and down past it, where it heaved up beside the narrow way. They was always going to pull it down, but there never rose no call for wood and it was let bide ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... when Clarence Weston crawled out of the swamp one evening and sat down on a cedar log before he followed his comrades up the track, though he supposed that supper would shortly be laid out in the sleeping-shanty. The sunlight that flung lurid flecks of color upon the western side of the fir trunks beat upon his dripping face, which, though a little worn and grim just then, was otherwise a pleasant face of the fair English type. In fact, though he had been some years in the country, Englishman was ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... right nor left, met nobody's eye. The rest of the company crowded into the house amidships, and flung themselves down wearily in the grateful dusk, where vivid paintings and mysteries of rude carving writhed on the fir bulkheads. But Heywood, with his dog and the captain and Rudolph, sat in the hot sun, staring down at the ramshackle deck, through the gaps in which rose all the stinks of ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... and lighted by two little windows, which opened into the courtyard. The entire apartment was made of wood. The floor was of unpainted fir boards. The walls were of the same material, painted blue from the floor upwards to about three feet, where the blue was unceremoniously stopped short by a stripe of bright red, above which the somewhat fanciful decorator had laid on a coat of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... and lean with the leaves stripped from its many trees. Occasionally there was a fir, clothed in dark green foliage, but for the most part the branches of the trees were naked, and quivered constantly in the chilly breeze. Even on the outskirts of the wood one could see right into the centre where the black monoliths—they looked black against the snow—reared themselves ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... dog has anything to do with it, Ned; it is a natural law. Now, if a fir tree is in a sheltered place, where the soil is deep and sandy, it grows to a tremendous size; but if the seed falls in a rocky place, where it has to get its roots down cracks to find food, and cling tightly against the cold freezing winds, it keeps down close to the ground, and gets ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... show me about all these things," Billy Button remarked. "To tell the truth I don't know the difference between balsam, fir, spruce, hemlock, larch and some other trees I've heard ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... becomes unutterably wild and desolate. Forest trees are now replaced for miles and miles by low withered scrub and dwarf fir-trees on either side of the river. As we proceed the Lena gradually widens until it resembles a succession of huge lakes, where even our practised drivers have some difficulty in finding the way. The Russian language is now seldom heard, for in the villages a kind of native patois is spoken. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... figure with a serpent's tail and a monstrous head, founded on a Negro type, hollow-cheeked, large-lipped, and wearing a cap made of a serpent's skin, holding a fir-cone ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... feeling in my heart about the school garden that the poet who wrote "The Little Fir Trees" must have had about them. Each stanza winds ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... of the soil in this section of the front, the excessive moisture of this season of the year drained rapidly, leaving exposed an undulating section on which were small forests of fir trees. The nature of the ground made it an easy matter to move troops even in winter. General Joffre took advantage of this fact, and assembled a quarter of a million men against the German lines in Champagne. This caused the German commanders to mass troops just in front of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... the foot of a Balm-of-Gilead fir, on the edge of the swamp, and partially cleared away the snow, revealing a tuft of cranberries, much larger and finer than they ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe |
