"Orchid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to do with the wars of the Mulberry Hills and the Dry Docks. We must to Rooney's, where, on the most blighted dead branch of the tree of life, a little pale orchid ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... up his escort of Gurkhas from their station in the foot-hills: and so on through Kashmir, where spring had already flung her bridal veil over the orchards, and retreating snow-wreaths had left the hills carpeted with a mosaic of colour,—primula, iris, orchid, and groundlings innumerable: over the Zoji-la Pass, into the shadeless, fantastic desolation of Ladak; and on, across stark desert and soundless snow-fields, to Leh, the terminus of all caravans from India and Central Asia. Here Lenox had spent two days ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... keen-eyed doctor,[44] glanced quickly through the trees and occasionally turned aside to pick some strange orchid and to slip it into his collecting case. The other strode steadily along with that curious, "resolute forward tread" of his.[45] He was David Livingstone. Behind them came a string of African bearers carrying in bundles on their ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... one reason, you made such an appeal to me at first sight. You were as plucky and generous as any Bohemian, though I could see you were a delicate, inexperienced girl, brought up under glass like the orchid you look—and are. I'm used to making up my mind in a hurry—I've had to—so it didn't take me many minutes to realize that if I could get you to link up with me, I should have the ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... his arms under the false pretence of being a quiet leaf, upon which they may light in safety for rest and refreshment. Yet another abandoned member of the same family, relying boldly upon the resources of tropical nature, gets itself up as a complete orchid, the head and fangs being moulded in the exact image of the beautiful blossom, and the arms folding treacherously around the unhappy insect which ventures to seek for ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... mind. He had become converted to Ogden, and the New-Yorker, on his side, found pleasant and refreshing this democracy of Governors and cow-punchers. Jode received us at the signal-service office, and began to show us his instruments with the careful pride of an orchid-collector. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... of springs; others with geological preferences may spend a night on the top of the distant hill which offers outcroppings of interest; the embryo botanists cannot do better than to take a bog trot for the rare orchid, anomalous pitcher plant, or glistening sun dew; lovers of the deep shade may paddle to the inlet of the creek and there enjoy a side trip on the fragrant carpet of hemlock and pine needles; thus it will be found that by anticipating the probable findings in which the ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... the instant he loosed his grip, Corliss carried the canoe up in a mad rush, Frona clinging on and helping from behind. The rainbow-wall curled up like a scroll, and in the convolutions of the scroll, like a bee in the many folds of a magnificent orchid, Tommy disappeared. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Wesley Elliot had not chosen to examine the secret movements of his own mind. Baldly speaking, he had cherished a fleeting fancy for Fanny Dodge, a sort of love in idleness, which comes to a man like the delicate, floating seeds of the parasite orchid, capable indeed of exquisite blossoming; but deadly to the tree upon which it fastens. He had resolved to free himself. It was a sensible resolve. He was glad he had made up his mind to it before it was too late. Upon the ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... millionaire, made more obnoxious by the newer European importation, happily a plant not true to the American soil. We strangers too often see but the cut flowers, showy, glaring, to-day; jaded, gone to-morrow. We do not see the cultured orchid or the natural wild flowers of America, for the simple reason we do not look for them in seeing that wonderful country ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... personally with the evil one may be mentioned the henbane, which is known in Germany as the "devil's eye," a name applied to the stich-wort in Wales. A species of ground moss is also styled in Germany the "devil's claws;" one of the orchid tribe is "Satan's hand;" the lady's fingers is "devil's claws," and the plantain is "devil's head." Similarly the house-leek has been designated the "devil's beard," and a Norfolk name for the stinkhorn ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... seen a few of 'em turn on the tears for what they could get out of it, but she seemed to be crying just for the pure enjoyment of it. She touched my leaves like she loved 'em, and she bent down her head and kissed each one of 'em. I guess I'm about the toughest specimen of a peripatetic orchid on earth, but I tell you it made me feel sort of queer. Home never was like that to me before. Generally I used to get chewed by poodles and have shirt-waists hung on me to dry, and get watered with coffee grounds and peroxide ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... where, in her slim fairness, Mary was like a pale lily, among all the tulip women, and poppy women, and orchid women, and night-shade women of the ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... on the way back in the Gem with the girls and Mr. Stonington, told his story. He had prepared the luncheon, and, seeing the girls going out on the little neck of land to gather flowers, he recalled seeing some blooms, of the orchid variety, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... was it that your hands (that never took mine) your hands that I could see drift over the orchid heads so carefully, your hands, so fragile, sure to lift so gently, the fragile flower stuff— ah, ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... housekeeper's room at Monkland there lived a magpie who had once sought shelter in an orchid-house from some pursuer. As soon as they thought him wedded to civilization, they had let him go, to see whether he would come back. For hours he had sat up in a high tree, and at last come down again to his cage; whereupon, fearing lest the rooks should attack him when he next took this ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... microscopic animal must be fetched from her ample bed on the horse's back, and displayed proudly. Her master, a very large dark man, stuck the dog into the breast of his coat, whence her miniature head protruded like a peculiar orchid. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of hanging garlands of flowers from one end of the table to the other, on the branches of great candelabras, and also that of placing in front of each guest, among the group of wine glasses, a slender opalescent Murano vase with a single orchid ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... ride over the hills brought us to a wood of oaks, with their branches fringed with the long grey Spanish moss, and a profusion of epiphytes clinging to their bark, some splendidly in flower, showing the fantastic shapes and brilliant colours one sees in English orchid-houses. Cactuses of many species complete the picture of the vegetation in this beautiful spot. This is at the top of the barranca. Then imagine a valley a mile or two in width, with sides almost perpendicular and capped with basaltic pillars, and at the ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... delectable odors. The jewel-weed with all its beauty has none that my sense can perceive. But that of Chelone glabra, as modest and withdrawn as the flower itself, seems hardly to belong in the swamp for all the beauty of the place. It should rather be that of some delicately nurtured plant, some rare orchid of sheltered conservatories, it is so delicate ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of lavender is desired. It is effectively combined with violets, or lilies-of-the-valley and maidenhair fern. The petals are made of satin ribbon one and one-quarter inches wide and of the peculiar pinkish lavender orchid shade. There are five petals in all—each calls for seven inches of ribbon. If possible, three of the petals should be one or two shades darker than ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... Loschek, who had dressed with a heavy heart, was easily the most beautiful of the women that night. Her color was high with excitement and anger, her eyes flashed, her splendid shoulders gleamed over the blue and orchid shades of her gown. A little court paid tribute to her beauty, and bowed the deeper and flattered the more as she openly scorned and flouted them. She caught once a flicker of admiration in Karl's ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Patty emerged from the orchid house at four o'clock, her arms filled with an unprecedented collection for Conny's book. The big yellow four-in-hand coach was standing outside the stable being washed. She examined ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... say, if he has been dwelling on the mental image of this bird, he will recognize one at a distance more quickly than he would otherwise have done. Such a simple mental operation as the recognition of one of the less common flowers, say a particular orchid, will vary in duration according as we have or have not been recently forming an image of this flower. The obvious explanation of this is that the mental image of an object bears a very close resemblance to the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... scampered through the woods and crossed his path, to find alders, and blossoming dog-wood, the mountain brake, and his childhood's friend the mullen stalk. Even to this day when he came upon an orchid, or a wild rose, with its small pink petals (smaller in this red sterile soil than in his native country), or when a humming bird in its shining plumage came to sip honey from the flowers, or when in the still woods he heard the liquid notes of a hermit ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... either side of the church, and when the carriage containing the bride drove up, the surge forward to see her was as fierce as though she had been a defaulting bank-president being taken to prison. The police had to intervene. The interior, fern and orchid swathed, very dimly lighted by rich purple stained glass and aristocratic dripping wax candles instead of the more convenient electric imitations, was murmurous with the wonderful throbbing notes of a great organ and with the discreet low tones of the invited guests as they speculated about ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... estimates of life. The perception of its loveliness is impersonal and leaves the line between the aesthetic and the sensuous clearly marked. Beneath a straighter sun the line is blurred and sometimes vanishes: no orchid-musk, no azure and distant hill, no tinted bay but accosts the senses, confusing one with another, mingling all the emotions in a single cup, persuading man that he knows good from evil as little as though he lived ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... have got!" he said, looking at them admiringly, as Nan sorted the flowers in her lap; and at this unlucky moment they were discovered by Mr. Mayne, who was bringing Lady Fitzroy to see a favorite orchid. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... of the flowers was missing, a little one of a fairy pink and shape, and almost immediately she heard footsteps on the grass and saw a man approaching with the orchid in his hand. She recognized the man she had seen riding the black horse on the day she arrived in Radstowe and her heart fluttered. This was romance, this, she had time to think excitedly, must be preordained. But ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... the best light situations in the house and a little water, to keep up the vitality sufficient to produce the secretions necessary to carry them safely through the dull days of winter. Look over all growing plants, and see that they do not suffer for want of water. Look to every Orchid, even the smallest growing on blocks or in baskets, they all require attention. Repot or surface dress any that require it. A favourable day to be chosen to wash the lights for the more free admission ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... a very uncongenial place. Thank God, no Babylon is so Babylonish but that a Church of God may be found planted in it. No circumstances are so unfavourable to the creation and development of the religious life but that the religious life may grow there. An orchid will find footing upon a bit of stick, because it draws nourishment from the atmosphere; and they who are fed by influx of the Divine Spirit may be planted anywhere, and yet flourish in the courts of our God. So 'the church that is in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... satisfactory for such a purpose. So he traveled to Germany and found the house where lived the famous glass-maker; and it was while waiting alone in the parlor that he saw on a shelf a vase containing what seemed to be a very beautiful fresh orchid." ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... over, to my great surprise, I found myself alone with the girl Marcia. I have no very distinct notion of the means by which she accomplished this feat, remembering only hazily that we all ambled over to the conservatory, where a particular variety of orchid seemed to interest the girl. And there we were, I explaining and she listening, the others off somewhere near the entrance to the gymnasium, where I heard Lloyd's voice in bored monotone. I was quite sure in a moment that she hadn't managed ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... always the snob (somewhere he defends the snob in an essay): rich food ("half-mourning" [artichoke hearts and truffles], "filet of reindeer," a cygnet in its plumage bearing an orchid in its beak, "heron's eggs whipped with wine into an amber foam," "mashed grasshoppers baked in saffron"), rich clothes, rich people interest him. There is no poverty in his books. His creatures do not toil. They cut coupons off bonds. Sometimes ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... character, spiritually minded, but selfish; loving humanity when it is spelled with a capital, but knowing nothing of the individual. The flower of holiness in her heart was like the haughty orchid that blooms in the hothouse, untouched by wind or cold, beautiful to behold but comforting ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... likes orchid, and dad buys it, so I guess that's her sachet. Good-night again, girls, and to-morrow we go hunting our wood-nymph; and, girls," with a premonitory perk of her shapely head, "be sure to lock your window because it is right off the porch roof, and with Aunt Audrey away, we can't be sure ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... belongs to the orchid family, and is the only member which possesses any economical value. It is a graceful climber and has a ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... notoriety. Not now, perhaps, but later when she had developed into a woman and knew her own power. Paris loved all things strange, and gave homage to the woman who was among her fellows as the orchid among flowers. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... long room's boundary shadow. There was about her a sense of white and gray with a knot of pale colour in her hat and an orchid on her white coat. Mrs. Hastings, taking no more account of her presence than she had of St. George's, tilted back her head and looked at the primroses in the window as closely as at anything, and absently ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... through a severe trial; replaces an unsound joint with a fresh link of gut, and finally produces out of his hat a "hook"—he will not call it a fly—of his own dressing. It is a particolored father-long-legs, a thing which only some frantic specimen of orchid ever seriously approached, a creature whose wings were two strips of the fringe of a peacock's tail, whose legs descended from blue jay through red to brown, and terminated in a pair of pink trailers two inches long. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... soul was, her flesh was all girlhood in one flower of lithe stem, leaf, petal, sepal, and perfume. There was nothing of the opiate poppy, the ominous orchid, or even that velvet voluptuary, the rose. She was like a great pink, sweet, shy, fragrant, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the jug orchid—a veritable jug, lid and all. Raising the lid you would find the jug half filled with water. Sometimes in the tangle up above, between two trees, you would see a thing like a bird come to ruin. Orchids grew here as in a hothouse. All the trees—the few there were—had a spectral and miserable ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... afternoon that Paul met Grexon Hay. Turning the corner of the street leading to his Bloomsbury attic, the author was tapped on the shoulder by a resplendent Bond Street being. That is, the said being wore a perfectly-fitting frock-coat, a silk hat, trousers with the regulation fold back and front, an orchid buttonhole, grey gloves, boots that glittered, and carried a gold-topped cane. The fact that Paul wheeled without wincing showed that he was not yet in debt. Your Grub Street old-time author would have leaped his own length at the ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... shining silk hat of the newest fashion, an orange-wood walking-stick, and a pair of gray suede gloves. An evening paper lay between his feet, open, as though it had been read, and in his buttonhole there was a single mauve orchid of exquisite beauty and delicacy. The body was quite alone in the compartment, and there was not a scrap ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Lady of Chateaubriant. The irregular pentagon formed by the chateau is possibly somewhat modified from the original plan of 1320, and of the seven towers which flanked its gates and walls in the beginning six have weathered the storms of the times through which they have passed. Its orchid-shaped machicolations have also survived, and even to-day they are noticeably beautiful. The new tower is a fine cylindrical keep, dating from the fourteenth century, and over the entrance this ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... you not tell when a warning is for your own good? Go back to London! Start tonight! Get away from this place at all costs! Hush, my brother is coming! Not a word of what I have said. Would you mind getting that orchid for me among the mare's-tails yonder? We are very rich in orchids on the moor, though, of course, you are rather late to see the beauties ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... fingers crushed the orchid which she was pinning to the bosom of her gown. Her intent gaze met the mask of Shirley's ingenuous smile, reading in his telltale eyes a message which needed no court interpreter! Quickly she turned to her mirror to put the finishing touches to her ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the love, the more difficult its culture.—True, An orchid may life on air. Yes; but how torrid and ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... of the radicalism which was hers by right of inheritance and training, she had not been attracted by any of them. A certain basic sense of balance had enabled her to see these things were but vain gropings in the dark; that they might flower successfully in abnormal individual cases—orchid growths—but that each was doomed to failure as a universal solution. For mankind in bulk is normal, and its safety lies in a continuance of normality. Ages had evolved the marriage relation as it existed; ages ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... than that; he's a blooming orchid," said Diogenes, with intense enthusiasm. "I think I'll get my X-ray lantern and see ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... purchase, because their color chanced to strike his fancy, could add two or three handsome ties. They strolled along Kearney Street and Post Street, and Susan selected an enormous bunch of violets at Podesta and Baldocchi's, declining the unwholesome-looking orchid that was Peter's choice. They bought a camera, which was left that a neat "P.W.C." might be stamped upon it, and went into Shreve's, a place always fascinating to Susan, to leave Mr. Coleman's watch ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... shape of gardening papers and catalogues which came in his way was eagerly read, and to this source he owed his first interest in the fascinating orchid. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... should watch and study us. Many of us spend our lives loving other women, but we have skill. Being part women, we know how to approach women. We are not blundering and crude. Men want a certain thing from you. It is delicate and easy to kill. Love is the most sensitive thing in the world. It's like an orchid. Men try to pluck orchids with ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... kindly gentleness is but a fancy vain! Thy charms that they can match the olea or orchid, but thoughts inane! While an actor will, envious lot! with fortune's smiles be born, A youth of noble birth will, strange to say, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... heat found him many miles upon an unfamiliar road, and, heedless of lurking enemies in the undergrowth, he flung himself down in the shade of a mighty orchid-laden tree, while the puzzled but equable ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... o'clock Durnovo appeared at the Gordons' house. He had managed to borrow a dress-suit, and wore an orchid in his buttonhole. It was probably the first time that Jocelyn had seen him in this garb of civilisation, which is at the same time the most becoming and the most trying variety of costume left to sensible men in these days. A dress-suit finds a man ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... We walked to the orchid-house, we went through it, and she explained all its beauties, its singularities, and its rarities. When we came out again, I asked myself: "Is she in the habit of doing all this to chance visitors? Would she treat a Brown or a Robinson in the ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... from a leaf-clasped stem, this orchid attracts us by its flaunted beauty and decorative form from tip to root, not less than the aesthetic little bees for which its adornment and mechanism are so marvellously adapted. Doubtless the heavy, oily odor is an additional ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... aren't you nowadays And what's the news you carry—if you know? And tell me where you're off for—Montreal? Me? I'm not off for anywhere at all. Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways Half looking for the orchid Calypso." ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... and fragrant with the smell of freshly-watered earth, and a rather fierce-looking gardener paused in his work to exhibit this or that particular plant in which he took a special interest. But the pride of the rectory was the orchid-house, and insensibly ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... says Melles, "exists within the mind of every one. Sometimes its existence is unrealized, but it is there. It is there to be developed and brought forth, like the culture of that obstinate but beautiful flower, the orchid. To allow it to remain dormant is to place one's self in obscurity, to trample on one's ambition, to smother one's faculties. To develop it is to individualize all that is best within you, and give it to the world. It is by ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... her some questions once in the Sunday class, and her ideas about God and the way people ought to live are beautiful. She has been to see me several times, and she always brings me a lovely flower of some kind—a rose or lily, and once the sweetest orchid; only one at a time, but always such a beauty. I love to look at it when she is gone, and it almost seems as if she had left part of ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Mitford was to those of her day who knew her; a thousand lovely personalities pass away every year and in a little while are no more remembered than the bright-plumaged bird that falls in the tropical forest, or the vanished orchid bloom of which some one has said that the angels in heaven can look on no more beautiful thing. Leaving all that, let us ask what remains to us of another generation of ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... about the country looking for new plants. He and Mr. Koch went to the top of the mountain of Poe near Lundu. It was so cold six thousand feet above the level of the sea, that they had to supply the natives who went with them with blankets. At the very top of the mountain they found a new orchid growing on the ground, a bright yellow flower, with streaks of magenta colour inside. Dr. Little picked some of the blossoms, and dug up one hundred roots, two of which he gave me; but they will not live in my garden, they want mountain air. He also gave me ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... must stoop under the interlacing lower branches, dead and brittle, and creep over the soft brown carpet of fallen needles, dry and slippery, in order to reach a little open glade, moist with springs, where the red wood-lily and the purple-fringed orchid grew,—the high steep rock that jutted out from the woods about half-way up the slope of the Dome, as if to make a narrow view-point of surprise where two people could stand close together and look down upon the broad valley and the blue hills beyond,—the old hemlock, with its big, bent ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... is to the garden what the Orchid is to the greenhouse. Its colors are of the richest—blue, purple, violet, yellow, white, and gray. It blooms in great profusion, for weeks during the early part of summer. It is a magnificent flower. It will be found most effective when grouped, but it can be scattered about the border in such ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... year. Another lake dweller that comes down to the ploughed lands is the red columbine (C. truncata). It requires no encouragement other than shade, but grows too rank in the summer heats and loses its wildwood grace. A common enough orchid in these parts is the false lady's slipper (Epipactis gigantea), one that springs up by any water where there is sufficient growth of other sorts to give it countenance. It seems to thrive best in an atmosphere ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... paths among the rhododendra and through the private gate into the woods where the bluebells and common orchid were in profusion. Never before had I tasted so completely the fine sense of privilege and ownership. And all this has to end, I told myself, all ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... not seeing her at all. His eyes looked beyond, across the fragile, lily-petals, through the solid black wall, at a vision he saw in the world. Dong-Yung bent her head to sniff the familiar sweet springtime orchid hanging from the jade stud ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... with brickbat and refuse; and miles of iron railing, and acres of gaunt and genteel streets not veiled enough in fog; a metaphorical beyond the garden walls, in which a certain number of us graduate for the ownership of sooty shrubberies and clammy orchid houses. And we poor latter-day mortals have become so deadly accustomed to the routine of useless work and wasteful play, that a writer must needs cross all the t's and dot all the i's of his conviction (held also by other sentimentalists and cranks called Carlyle, Ruskin, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... an ardent love of beauty had characterized this girl, whose covetous gaze wandered from a gorgeous scarlet and gold orchid nodding in dreams of its habitat, in some vanilla scented Brazilian jungle, to a bed of vivid green moss, where skilful hands had grouped great drooping sprays of waxen begonias, coral, faint pink, and ivory, all powdered with gold dust like that which ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... "People tell me I am a most fascinating invalid. I look like a creamy orchid. And what luck to have a chum so disinterested as you where a lot of nice men are concerned! What have I done to deserve it? Because you ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Fern and Cystoptiris or Bladder Fern, with at least three kinds of moss complete the list of "Flowerless Plants." Three little clumps of Violets are sending out new leaves. There are a few leaves of Partridge-berry vine, a yellow Oxalis, an Orchid called Rattlesnake-Plantain, having lovely velvety leaves veined with white, a few sprigs of Mouse-ear Chickweed, and, last of all, a leaf of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit plant, the corm of which was doubtless hidden among the roots of the Ferns. So, while the cold winds are blowing, snow is yet on ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... doubt have acted in other parts of the world, and have prevented such an extraordinary development of nectary as has been produced by favourable conditions in Madagascar only, and in one single species of Orchid. I may here mention that some of the large Sphinx moths of the tropics have probosces nearly as long as the nectary of Angraecum sesquipedale. I have carefully measured the proboscis of a specimen of Macrosila cluentius from South America, in the collection of the British Museum, and find it to ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... that of a wingless Mantis in India, which is so formed and coloured as to resemble a pink orchis or some other fantastic flower. The whole insect is of a bright pink colour, the large and oval abdomen looking like the labellum of an orchid. On each side, the two posterior legs have immensely dilated and flattened thighs which represent the petals of a flower, while the neck and forelegs imitate the upper sepal and column of an orchid. The insect rests motionless, in this symmetrical attitude, among bright green foliage, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... if seen through a tunnel, there was a patch of light, and soon after the party emerged into an opening of a few acres in extent, where the sun had full power, and the growth of orchid and flowering tree lit up the scene with glowing colour. Here they heard the cries of birds, and were just in time to catch sight of the metallic green, gold, and purple of half a dozen peacocks before they hurried out of ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... perforce duly manifest itself from time to time. Beatrice realized that Trudy felt a greater joy and satisfaction in displaying this not-paid-for cheap machine—having sat up half the night to make the shirred curtains—than Beatrice ever could feel in her tapestry-lined, orchid-adorned limousine. So she began to envy Trudy just as Trudy envied her. Trudy had done nothing but struggle to be able to live, as she termed it; Beatrice had ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... quick glance around, and was a trifle upset by seeing Mr. Marrin coming straight toward her. He came with his easy, tripping stride, self-satisfied, red-faced, tastefully dressed, an orchid in ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... with prickles and stained all over with blotches as of spilt poison, . . thick brown stems glistening with slimy moisture and coiled up like the sleeping bodies of snakes, . . masses of purple and blue fungi, . . and blossoms seemingly of the orchid species, some like fleshy tongues, others like the waxen yellow fingers of a dead hand, protruded spectrally through the matted foliage,—while all manner of strange, overpowering odors increased the swooning oppressiveness of the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... bacteria with the microscopically small blood corpuscles in the blood stream of a diseased animal. Yes, by the miracles of the camera we may trace the life of nature even in forms which no human observation really finds in the outer world. Out there it may take weeks for the orchid to bud and blossom and fade; in the picture the process passes before us in a few seconds. We see how the caterpillar spins its cocoon and how it breaks it and how the butterfly unfolds its wings; and all which needed days ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... but well wooded. The old trees, of course, remained intact; but the gardens of the first house, being rambling and old-fashioned, had been done away with, to make room for others on a larger and more imposing scale; and vineries and pineries, orchid-houses, and hot-houses of every description arose rapidly all over the site of the old bowling-green and the wilderness, half kitchen garden, half rosary, that had served to content the former owners of Shadonake, now all lying dead ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... said. "You don't understand. Potlatch is a wonderful day for children, a glorious introduction to the science of economics. The boys light Roman candles, shooting crimson and orchid and brass-flamed astonishers into the clouds. A soft fog of snow makes fuzzy smears of the pinwheels, of the children racing, sparklers in both hands, across the frozen lawn. Dad lights the strings of cannon-crackers—at ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... her. It was ridiculous. It was monstrous. She was not strong enough. It would be throwing her life away, as surely as to transplant a tender orchid to that burning sage-brush country. But in the end she said: "Well, Bee, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... be vurst! to be vurst! Dat is you English top and toe! Do I vas hunt de orchid to be vurst discoverer? Not mooch. I hunt him for money. Do I cross de Channel in my machine to be vurst? Nein, nein. I cross him for de tousand pounds. And you I vould not take, no, not for de oder tousand pound. Bah! You vas not at all von vonder-child; you vas ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... The lower, which is the direct route from Gavarnie to Luz, we abstained from taking, preferring the upper road to the right, which leads past fields resplendent with flowers (among which the "bee" orchid is noticeable), ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... fields we know, in the Lands of Dream, lies the Valley of the Yann where the mighty river of that name, rising in the Hills of Hap, idleing its way by massive dream-evoking amethyst cliffs, orchid-laden forests, and ancient mysterious cities, comes to the Gates of Yann and passes ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... which glass has for the missile of the juvenile thrower, the orchid-house, on the opposite side of the path from the pear-tree, drew the errant stone to its ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Edward was cruising up the Hudson with a yachting party one Saturday afternoon, the sight of Jay Gould's mansion, upon approaching Irvington, awakened the desire of the women on board to see his wonderful orchid collection. Edward explained his previous association with the financier and offered to recall himself to him, if the party wished to take the chance of recognition. A note was written to Mr. Gould, and sent ashore, and the answer came back that they ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... seen her so handsome; the nearness of her beauty intoxicated him; her voice was indolent, provocative. She was superbly dressed in white, and on her rounded breast nodded his favor, a splendid corsage of orchid and lily-of-the-valley. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... as the rich; and the summer exhibition always took place under the trees of a fragment of the old Forest, which still survived at about five miles from Hiltonbury. The day was a county holiday. The delicate orchid and the crowned pine were there, with the hairy gooseberry, the cabbage and potato, and the homely cottage-garden nosegay from many a woodland hamlet. The young ladies competed in collections of dried flowers for a prize botany book; and the subscriptions were so arranged that on this festival ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... frightened demons: with despair Competing branches pushed for air. Green conquerors from overhead Bestrode the bodies of their dead; The Caesars of the silvan field, Unused to fail, foredoomed to yield: For in the groins of branches, lo! The cancers of the orchid grow. Silent as in the listed ring Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling, Dumb as by yellow Hooghly's side The suffocating captives died: So hushed the woodland warfare goes Unceasing; and the silent foes Grapple and smother, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their petals. This lie they dispose so cunningly that real flies, thinking the honey is being already plundered, pass them without molesting them. Watching intently and keeping very still, methought I heard this orchid speaking to the offspring which she felt within her, though I saw them not. "My children," she exclaimed, "I must soon leave you; think upon the fly, my loved ones, for this is truth; cling to this great thought in your passage through life, for it is the ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... feelings. Killings and stealing were a business to him, and he had the most efficient spying system on any planet. It was well known unofficially that he kept an underground factory busy extracting a drug from the stamen of the swamp-orchid. The drug was labeled "Venus-snow," and Relegar found it highly profitable to trade it to the fish in the Sea-Swamp on the southwest and to the semi-aquatic people in the great Gallium Bogs to the southeast—some called them ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... then, side by side, and six feet apart, that they dived straight under the over-curl even then disintegrating to chaos and falling. Like insects disappearing into the convolutions of some gorgeous gigantic orchid, so they disappeared, as beard and crest and spray and jewels, in many tons, crashed and thundered down just where they had disappeared the moment before, but where ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... worshippers that cover the floor, lighted candle in hand, rocking themselves ecstatically and droning and chanting. A weird scene, in truth. And the coachman was quite right in his surmise as to the difference in temperature. It is hot down here, damply hot, as in an orchid-house. But the aroma cannot be described as a floral emanation: it is the bouquet, rather, of thirteen centuries of unwashed and perspiring pilgrims. "TERRIBILIS EST LOCUS ISTE," says an inscription ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... series of mental gymnastics—occupying the space of a few seconds—it came to him with a shock that here was a new specimen of the species. At the same time he comprehended that she was as pure and lovely as the white orchid of Borneo and that she did not carry that ridiculous shield called false modesty. He could talk to her as frankly as he could to a man, that she would not take offence at anything so long as it was in the form of explanation. On the other ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... was extracted from a plant which Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny respectively name. The last calls it the Phycos thalassion. This was not a sea-weed, but a lichen—probably the same from which the orchid purple of modern art is prepared. See Birdwood, "Indian Arts," i. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... ravines formed by the draining off of the rains. Ants and beetles bustled along them, pressing up hill and down to some mysterious goal. Above them a cunning red spider was tying a blade of grass to an orchid leaf, the pillars it had chosen for its future web; and when the wind shook the leaves and the sun pierced through to this spot, I saw the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to the minute Nigel in the Palm Court received Bertha Kellynch dressed in black, Madeline in white, and Rupert Denison with a little mauve orchid in his buttonhole. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... she loves either of you," protested the orchid, "because I am the last flower my ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... in evening dress. She was a brunette, young and very attractive. The line of head, throat, and shoulder was perfect. The delicate, disdainful poise and the gay provocation in the dark, slanting eyes were enough to tell that she was no novice in the game of sex. He judged her an expensive orchid produced in the civilization of our twentieth-century hothouse. Across the bottom of the picture was scrawled an inscription in a fashionably angular hand. Lane moved closer to read it. The words were, "Always, Phyllis." Probably this was the young woman to whom, if rumor were ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... pantomime. A tragic war in South Africa, that wrecked many thousand homes, impoverished two whole lands, and brought death and disablement to fifty thousand men, was presented as a quite comical quarrel between a violent queer being named Chamberlain, with an eyeglass, an orchid, and a short temper, and "old Kroojer," an obstinate and very cunning old man in a shocking bad hat. The conflict was carried through in a mood sometimes of brutish irritability and sometimes of lax slovenliness, the merry ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... orchid glow and tinted richness Mrs. Rambaud's simple gray silk, the collar of which came almost to her ears, was disturbing—almost reproving—but Mrs. Rambaud's ladylike courtesy and generosity made everything all right. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... women in picturesque evening toilettes. One of them was a frizzy haired soubrette and the other a blonde. Both were conspicuously pretty. The fair girl wore a snow white orchid, splashed with deepest crimson, pinned at her breast. Her companion, who lounged in the near corner, her cloak negligently cast about her and one rounded shoulder against the window, was reading a letter; and Harborne, who found himself not a foot removed from ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... point to believe that the oak, the cedar, the pine and the palm are all the progeny of one ancient seed and that this seed was also the ancestor of wheat and corn, potato and tomato, onion and sugar beet, rose and violet, orchid and daisy, mountain flower and magnolia? Is it not more rational to believe in God and explain the varieties of life in terms of divine power than to waste our lives in ridiculous attempts to explain the unexplainable? There is no mortification in admitting ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... perished at a very early age. Again, it is well known that with many plants the ovarium may be fully developed, though pollen be wholly excluded. And lastly, Mr. Smith, the late Curator at Kew (as I hear through Dr. Hooker), observed the singular fact with an orchid, the Bonatea speciosa, the development of the ovarium could be effected by mechanical irritation of the stigma. Nevertheless, from the number of the pollen-grains expended "in the satiation of the ovarium and pistil,"—from the generality of the formation of the ovarium and seed-coats in sterile ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... his shoulders, and said to his nephew, "Your aunt must feel that I give her diamonds from love and not from vanity, as she never lets me have the pleasure of seeing them." The sole ornament of Adriana was an orchid, which had arrived that morning from Hainault, and she had presented its fellow ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... great acting in England? We can remember it in our own time, in Irving, who was a man of individual genius. In him it was the expression of a romantic temperament, really Cornish, that is, Celtic, which had been cultivated like a rare plant, in a hothouse. Irving was an incomparable orchid, a thing beautiful, lonely, and not quite normal. We have one actress now living, an exception to every rule, in whom a rare and wandering genius comes and goes: I mean, of course, Mrs. Patrick Campbell. She enchants us, from time to time, with divine or magical improvisations. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... sold for as little as two-pence each at a recent sale, and alarmed growers are clamouring for the immediate appointment of an Orchid Controller. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... a violet, a sunflower and an orchid and what perfume you are sure to find in each, by the same method. All are flowers and all belong to the same species, just as all human beings belong to the same species. But their respective size, shape and structure tell you in ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... and began to turn the leaves of the newspaper file. Raymer took it as his dismissal and went to the desk to get the orchid book. When he looked in again on his way to the street, Miss Grierson had gone, leaving the file of the Pioneer Press open on the reading desk. Almost involuntarily he glanced at the first-page headings, thrilling to a little ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the three pathways doth float the Yue Hui scented breeze! The radiant moon in the whole hall shines on the gold orchid!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... beside her with his coat-collar turned up. Her ample form with the small round head on the top looked like a short-funnelled locomotive engine, and he like the driver on the foot-plate. The perfidious things had said they were going to consult over the orchid. Did orchids grow on the lawn? It was news to Miss ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... orchid she was wearing and tried to pin it on his coat. "I am afraid," said Von Barwig, "that it is healed up!" ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... out of sight) occupied you so completely. I can best describe the attention she provoked by saying that she struck you above all things as a felicitous FINAL product—after the fashion of some plant or some fruit, some waxen orchid or some perfect peach. She was clearly the result of a process of calculation, a process patiently educative, a pressure exerted, and all artfully, so that she ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... their time merely to kill it, in imitation of those born to idleness and to no necessity of making an exertion, may be ornamental, but having no root in any established privilege to sustain them, they will soon wither away in this atmosphere, as a flower would which should set up to be an orchid when it does not belong to the orchid family. It is required here that those who are emancipated from the daily grind should vindicate their right to their position not only by setting an example of self-culture, but by contributing ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
