"Overgrown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ruin of Holland had long been one of the favourite projects of Louis the Fourteenth. The Dutch, however, resisted his overgrown power, as their ancestors had formerly defied that of Philip the Second of Spain. In order to carry his plans into execution, Louis found it necessary to detach England from the interests of Holland. This was matter of some difficulty, for an alliance with France against Holland was so ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Port-Royal; the island was neglected by succeeding adventurers, and his labors were suffered to fall into ruin. Time had already laid his withering finger upon the walls, and left his mouldering image amid the fair creations of the youthful world. Fragments, overgrown with moss and lichen, strewed the ground; the creeping ivy wreathed its garlands around the broken walls, and lofty trees had struck their roots deep into the foundations, and threw the shadow of their branches ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... which is marked by a tablet. And everywhere and at every turn are the beautiful views, commanding Bagnoli, Camaldoli, Ischia, Baia and Procida, Capri, Nisida and the Neapolitan waters. The hill slopes are overgrown with myrtles and orange trees and roses. Here and there a defile is filled with ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... clearer record of their once highly civilized occupancy? The carved pillars, ornamental fragments of temples, and stone slabs skillfully wrought, which are scattered through the jungle, and in some instances overgrown by dense forests, attest both material greatness and far-reaching antiquity. It would seem as though nature had tried to cover up the many wrinkles of age with blooming vegetation. There are no legends even extant relating ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... The church is about one hundred feet in length and twenty-four in breadth; the steeple, which stands between the nave and the chancel, rests on four high and slender pointed arches. The principal entrance is by a handsome pointed doorway, luxuriantly overgrown with ivy, through which is seen the great eastern window. The intermediate space, as indeed every part of the ruined edifice, is filled with tombs, the greater number distinguished only by a slight elevation from the mold around them; but some containing inscriptions to direct the stranger where ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... lead through hills and levels lone, Green fields, and woodlands overgrown, And where deep ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... returning from the town, were wending their way across the plain—lank overgrown girls with long thin legs and overhanging mops of hair like deck-swabs. They were a favourite butt of my men, who chaffed them in the humorous Eastern manner, with remarks that were, I am afraid, more coarse than witty. Kachins are not virtuous. Their customs preclude such a possibility. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... exhaustion, the eastern sky began to grow gray. The coming day lit up the desert wanly, as if it had been a leaden sea. But with the uprising of the sun the familiar glaring white of the alkali blazed out once more. They had left the pinnacled hills and were now traveling over undulating country overgrown with rough brush. It was a sad, drab color, and smelled pungently where the ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... cows, which have been living in deep retirement all summer, teaching their ungainly calves the sounds and smells and lessons of the woods, travel much less; their hoofs, in consequence, are generally long and pointed and overgrown. ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... described as a male and female: for the former was one of those long-limbed, knock-kneed, shambling, bony people, to whom it is difficult to assign any precise age,—looking as they do, when they are yet boys, like undergrown men, and when they are almost men, like overgrown boys. The woman was young, but of a robust and hardy make, as she need have been to bear the weight of the heavy bundle which was strapped to her back. Her companion was not encumbered with much luggage, as there merely dangled from a stick which he carried over his shoulder, a small ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... this want of appreciation of the romantic spot where she had dreamed away more than one happy summer noontide, while the Wendover children played hide-and-seek in the overgrown ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... very close to the sea and are mostly fir or larch. I could see a few trees further inland of a lighter green, but could not make out to what species they belonged. Between the woods and the sea there are sands loosely overgrown with that spiky grass that covers sand-hills, and at the extremity of two of the valleys a marsh formed by a freshwater spring. The place is frequented by birds, mostly pigeons, and a good many waterfowl ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... travellers. Plunging with it across the down he came to a hedgeless road that entered a park or chase, which flourished in all its original wildness. Tufts of rushes and brakes of fern rose from the hollows, and the road was in places half overgrown with green, as if it had not been tended for many years; so much so that, where shaded by trees, he found some difficulty in keeping it. Though he had noticed the remains of a deer-fence further back no deer were ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the heart is hypertrophied, the lungs do not overlap it to the same extent as when it is of its ordinary size. In the latter state, the elastic cushion of the lung muffles the heart's impulse. In the former state, the lung is pushed aside by the overgrown heart, the strong muscular walls of which strike forcibly against the ribs ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... was the patient determination which the creative effort demanded. But here, too, the crops at last overflowed, while the intelligent felling of a part of the purchased woods resulted in a large profit, and gave Mathieu an idea of cultivating some of the spacious clearings hitherto overgrown with brambles. ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... risk, you will say, in saving us; so let us not extol that instance of his intrepidity. But fancy to yourself, gentle reader, the hideous mouth of an old coal-pit, that had not been worked for time immemorial, overgrown with thorns, and briers, and brackens, but still visible from a small mount above it, for some yards down its throat—the very throat of death and perdition. But can you fancy also the childish and superstitious ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... shrubs looked as though they had known no gardener's care for years. The door itself did not even appear to be for purposes of ingress and egress, and the post-boy had to search among the boughs and foliage with which the place was overgrown before he could find the bell. When found, it sounded with a hoarse, rusty, jangling noise, as though angry at being disturbed in so unusual ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... burial-ground, without exciting those of a more unpleasing description. Having been very little used for many years, the few hillocks which rise above the level plain are covered with the same short velvet turf. The monuments, of which there are not above seven or eight, are half sunk in the ground, and overgrown with moss. No newly-erected tomb disturbs the sober serenity of our reflections by reminding us of recent calamity, and no rank-springing grass forces upon our imagination the recollection, that it owes its dark luxuriance to the foul and festering remnants of mortality which ferment ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in 1839 destroyed the greater part of the city. It was finally abandoned in 1860, when king Mindon occupied Mandalay, 5 or 6 m. farther north. Amarapura was laid out on much the same plan as Ava. The ruins of the city wall, now overgrown with jungle, show it to have been a square with a side of about three-quarters of a mile in length. At each corner stood a solid brick pagoda about 100 ft. high. The most remarkable edifice was a celebrated ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Glegg. Maggie had thrown her bonnet off very carelessly, and, coming in with her hair rough as well as out of curl, rushed at once to Lucy. The contrast between the two cousins was like the contrast between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed: everything about her ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... full of winter water and lingering leaf; the lofty downs like sea cliffs, appearing through great white masses of curling vapour. And all the episodes of that day—the great ox fences which his horse flew, going like a bird from field to field; the awkward stile, the various brooks,—that one overgrown with scrub which his horse had refused—thrilled him. And when the day was done, as he rode through the gathering night, inquiring out the way down many a deep and wooded lane, happiness sang within him, and like a pure animal he enjoyed the ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... grove now, on a terrace with a perspective of ruined garden, whence the battered faces of ancient statues peeped out, yellow-white from behind overgrown rose bushes and heliotrope. The chateau was before them, the windows still reflecting the sunlight; but this borrowed glitter was all the brightness it had. Once beautiful, the old battlemented house had an air of proud desolation, as if scorning pity, since it could ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... of old, ruined brick wall, facing West—part of an ancient garden—beautiful in colour and overgrown with ivy. Great trees all about it; and the wide stretches of a park, where rabbits played in the long evenings, extending from it on all sides. A holly hedge and ha-ha prevented trespass; but those invited there found in this quiet sun-trap many headstones, bearing names and dates ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... both sets on Monday, didn't answer in any one particular to any of these requisitions. But a spirit of overgrown compromise crept in, making a sufficient number of reasons why no one of them could be complied with an equivalent of compliance itself. Only in respect of certain racks and tortures for the doctor was Mrs. Iggulden induced to lend herself to dangerous innovation. "I can't have ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... The order here would be: 'for some vicious mole of nature in them, as by their o'er-growth, in their birth—wherein they are not guilty, since nature cannot choose his origin (or parentage)—their o'ergrowth of (their being overgrown or possessed ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it and pass on superior. The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold is there only by sufferance,—by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... with Lora, trouble, sickness, death, Were busy with the residue of peace, When years and care had weaken'd her regrets, Veil'd the sad recollection of past days, And overgrown the softness of her mind, As the close-creeping ivy hides and rusts The smooth and silver surface of the beech. An orphan and a widow—she became Decisive, watchful, prudent, nay severe To wilful disobedience or neglect; Though generous where she perceiv'd desert. ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... find on listening to Callista's conversation, that she has a very lax conception even of common objects, and an equally lax memory of events. It seems of no consequence to her whether she shall say that a stone is overgrown with moss or with lichen, that a building is of sandstone or of granite, that Meliboeus once forgot to put on his cravat or that he always appears without it; that everybody says so, or that one stock-broker's wife said so yesterday; that Philemon praised Euphemia up ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... be sown or planted, but those that bloom are not disregarded; while yet it is only through some stately door that admission is gained, and no chance foot is free to stray in. But here it was altogether different. That stage of neglect was long past. The place was ragged, dirty, overgrown. There was between the picture I have drawn and this reality, all the painful difference between stately and beautiful matronhood, and the old age that, no longer capable of ministering to its own decencies, has grown ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... a little dell where there was short green grass by the brookside and steep banks overgrown with brambles on either hand. Tom knew the place, and declared that we were within thirty miles of the station. A giant oak had blown down across the water, and, cutting out a few branches of this, we spread our blankets under it on the turf. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... womanhood's dower of command over all poor mortals of the opposite sex—her manner with Octavius showed him that; and Alice when he saw her last, now nearly six months ago, would have given any one the impression of something still unfledged—a tall, slim, overgrown girl of sixteen, and somewhat spoiled. This was indeed only natural, for her immediate world of father, aunt, and relations had circled ever since her birth in the orbit of her charming wilfulness. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Commissioners on the site of an old clergy house, of which all traces had been ruthlessly effaced. The front garden lying before it was a tangle of old and for the most part ugly trees; elms from which heavy, decayed branches had recently fallen; acacias choked by the ivy which had overgrown them; and a crowded thicket of thorns and hazels, mingled with three or four large and vigorous though very ancient yews, which seemed to have drunk up for themselves all that life from the soil which should have gone ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shingle roof overgrown with moss—a quaint little porch and two numerously paned windows on each side. On top of the porch a sign-board—done by Slivers in the early days, and looking like it—bore the legend 'Slivers, mining agent.' The door ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... follow in pursuit, partly as the hour was now very late, partly that they might satiate themselves with the booty. But on the morning of June 7 the cavalry appeared, who, learning of the defeat, pursued the fugitives until they entered a region that was rocky and overgrown with thickets, where most of them perished—some from hunger, and many from the cruelty of the Negrillos of the mountains. Then, as the alcaldes-mayor of Bay and Bulacan attacked them with their troops, hardly a Sangley could escape who did not perish either ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... 'They must all know how to do nothing in the modern way—by discussing the rights of women and the novel of lust, and the divorces past and prospective, by playing at bridge and benevolence. How absurd it all is! I'm not going to be an overgrown child any longer.' ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... community, but to select any individual from the same as an object of arbitrary and unmeasured imposition,—and, in the second case, enabling the same governor, on the same arbitrary principles, to determine whose property should be considered as overgrown, and to reduce ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the province, yet no manure is provided for improving the soil. No trials of a different grain are made. No grass seeds are sown in the old fields for enriching the pastures, so that either shrubs and bushes again spring up in them, or they are overgrown with a kind of coarse grass, grateful or nourishing to no animal. Like farmers often moving from place to place, the principal study with the planters is the art of making the largest profit for the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... beneath the sand. Far and near sprang up close and almost impenetrable thickets of cactus, whose sharp and pointed needle-shoots defied the passage of any thing more bulky than land-crabs and lizards. One or two narrow pathways had been cut out here and there, but they were overgrown again by the stubborn, hardy vegetation; and only with the risk of losing one's trowsers, and having one's legs cut in gashes, could a human being struggle ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... very grand river after all," remarked Dave, when they came in sight of the stream. "It looks more like a great big overgrown creek ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... - In the court of Mrs. Sadler's, the great house in the close in Salisbury, the pitched causeway lay neglected in the late troubles, and not weeded: so at lengthe it became overgrown and lost: and I remember about 1656, goeing to pave it, they found,.... inches deep, a good pavement to ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... that it was the storeroom key. But I could not take it by force. And so defiantly she faced me, so valiant was every line of her slight figure, that I was ashamed of my impulse to push her aside and take it. I loved her with every inch of my overgrown body, and I did the thing she knew I would do. I bowed and left the cabin. But I had no intention of losing the key. I could not take it by force, but she knew as well as I did what finding it there in Turner's room meant. Turner had locked me in. But I must be able to prove it—my wits ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... high-flavored, but, unlike the apple, it is also mild and delicious. It has the true rustic sweetness and piquancy. What it lacks in size, when compared with the garden berry, it makes up in intensity. It is never dropsical or overgrown, but firm-fleshed and hardy. Its great enemies are the plow, gypsum, and the horse-rake. It dislikes a limestone soil, but seems to prefer the detritus of the stratified rock. Where the sugar maple abounds, I have always found plenty of wild strawberries. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... position, so at least some English statesmen of that time, fatally for their favour with the new monarch, were known to have thought. 'To proceed by process,' to check by gradual constitutional measures that overgrown and monstrous power in the state, was the project which these statesmen had most at heart. But that was a movement which required a firm and enlightened popular support. Charters and statutes were dead letters till that could ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... near Kuessnacht, sloping down from behind, with rocks on either side. The travellers are visible upon the heights, before they appear on the stage. Rocks all round the stage. Upon one of the foremost a projecting cliff overgrown ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and arms in Europe; and her hair seemed to lose its wonderful lustre; and her skin, upon which Mrs. Burton had banked so much, became colorless and opaque and a little blotched around the chin. And she was so nervous and overgrown that she would throw you a whole fit of hysterics during piano lessons; and she prayed so long night and morning that her bony knees developed callouses; and when she didn't have a cold in her head she was getting ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... led past the palace into the country. Murphy and Trimmer sauntered along a placid river, overgrown with lily pads, swarming with large ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... the river, was perfectly sweet. From this bend the highest point of D'Urban's group bore 151 degrees (from north). About one half of the way which we had come today lay across plains, the last portion we crossed containing several hollows, thickly overgrown with the Polygonum junceum. Between these low parts the ground was rather more elevated than usual, especially where D'Urban's group bore 163 degrees (from north). The undulations were probably connected with that ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... observed them and kept right on about our business, whatever that may have been. A few hundred yards farther brought us to a plantation bordering our road upon the right. The fields, as was the Southern fashion at that period of the war, were uncultivated and overgrown with brambles. A large white house stood at some little distance from the road; we saw women and children and a few negroes there. On our left ran the thin forest, pervious to cavalry. Directly ahead an ascent in the road formed a crest beyond which ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... being intended by nature for a man of huge proportions, was already provided with the full-grown foot to meet that end. Consequently, his fashion of traveling over the loose, board floors, we usually see in backwoods cabins, was of that horse-like kind peculiar to overgrown boys, and against which quiet old ladies are wont to protest as more in keeping with barns and bridges than with human dwellings. And now that she was a nurse, his mother must needs protest against the habit in question more ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... flight, they might find it again by Reichelstorf. Nor was there any castle nor stronghold anywhere nigh; the great building with walls and moats which stood on the south side of the King's pool was but the peaceful cloister of the Augustine Sisters of Pillenreuth. All about the water lay marsh-ground overgrown with leafless bushes, rushes, tall grasses, and reeds. It was verily a right dismal ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... consist in making a loud noise and in emitting vile odors. A member of Congress pours out a flood of denunciatory words in the utmost rhetorical confusion, and seems to suppose that he has dismayed his opponent because he has made a tremendous noise. He is only an overgrown boy, who, like some other boys, imagines that he is very heroic when he shakes his head, and pouts his lip, and clinches his fist, and "calls names" in a shrill and rasping tone. Other members, who ought to know better, pretend to regard his performances as worthy of applause, ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... higher and more rocky. Many of the trees here were very large, straight, and branching only near the top. It appeared to me that they would be highly useful as timber, and so regretted being unable to procure specimens, on account of their great height. With the exception of a low sandy portion, overgrown with shrubs and small trees, the remainder of the island is quite free from underwood. Two small clumps of coconut-trees, loaded with fruit, were found on the eastern side of the island, within reach of the spray, in a place where they might have originated ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... dry, like a wreck on a sand-bank. Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously, there was some attempt to build a town at Greenton; but it apparently failed, if eleven cellars choked up with debris and overgrown with burdocks are any indication of failure. The farm, however, was a good farm, as things go in New Hampshire, and Tobias Sewell, the son-in-law, could afford to snap his fingers at the traveling public if they came near ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... village, and just beyond an island. She had told him of a hedge of yew-trees, and a white dovecote almost at the water's edge. He came to the island, and let his boat slide into the backwater. It was all overgrown with willow-trees and alders, dark even in this early morning radiance, and marvellously still. There was no room to row; he took the boathook and tried to punt, but the green water was too deep and entangled with great roots, so that he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... habitually accompanied Roger's departure to the meet, and the boyish unreasonableness of it—seeing that the well-trained servants invariably had everything in readiness for him—rather appealed to her. He was like a big, overgrown school-boy returning to school and greatly concerned as to whether his cricket-bat and tuck-box were safely ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... temporal fitness of things, Miss Lee began to find life at the Pier quite supportable. "There's not much to do here," she declared, with her customary candor, "and the hotels—all ugly and all in a row—make it look like an overgrown charitable institution; and most of the people, I must say, are such a dismal lot that they might very well be the patients out for an airing. But, on the whole, I've been in several worse places, Uncle Hutchinson; and if only you'd take me to a hop now and then, instead of sitting every evening ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... he did not get away. Menzel, as we saw, lasted in free activity till 1757; and was then put under lock and key. Was not hanged; sat prisoner for twenty-seven years after; overgrown with hair, legs and arms chained together, heavy iron bar uniting both ankles; diet bread-and-water;—for the rest, healthy; and died, not very miserable it is said, in 1784. Shocking traitors, Weingarten ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... dressed in a green hunting-frock and cap with a green plume shading his forehead, a double-barreled carbine in his hand, with a tomahawk and hunting-knife sheathed in his belt, which was the favorite dress of a hunter when rambling through the green, overgrown forests of the Valley of the Mohawk, to prevent being noticed by wild game ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... mutton, having hair instead of wool, and great tails like those of Syria. We gave a knife for a sheep, and even got some for less value. We saw various wild beasts, as antilopes, red and fallow deer, and other large beasts, which we knew not, with a great number of overgrown monkies or baboons. Mr Lancaster killed an antilope as large as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... specified had not been able to hinder his approach and being far more afraid than before, because he had come with a larger army, carried away all their most valued possessions into the most woody and overgrown portions of the neighboring country. After they had put them in safety by cutting down the surrounding wood and piling more upon it row after row until the whole looked like an entrenched camp, they proceeded to annoy Roman foraging parties. Indeed, in one battle after being defeated ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... gaiety which she had missed; and also to be told that Mrs. Gibson had changed her mind about giving her the gown, and thought now that she should reserve it for Cynthia, if only it was long enough; but Cynthia was so tall—quite overgrown, in fact. The chances seemed equally balanced as to whether Molly might not have the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at a glance that his forebodings were too true. Scarfe had changed somewhat since we saw him at Bolsover fifteen months ago. He was older and better-looking and wore a trim black moustache. His dress was in the best Oxford style; and in his easy, confident carriage there remained no trace of the overgrown schoolboy. His mother, a delicate-looking widow lady, returned Mrs Rimbolt's greeting with the eagerness of an old friend, and introduced her son with ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... he should make, since they would have a tendency to weaken court influence. He could only, however, make an offer, and if it was rejected the people must effect their own salvation. All the grievances of the nation, he observed, arose from the overgrown influence of the crown, and this influence was the creature of the prodigality of the commons. The operation of this influence, he said, was not confined to the superior orders of the state; it had insinuated itself into every section of the community. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... generally attributed to the cave man, but this is an error. (See cave man, later.) His timidity is not physical but mental, and is referable by the Freud theory to his early youth, when he was taught that big, overgrown boys did not tease kittens, but put them in their pockets and carried them home. Has the kitten obsession still. Is six months getting up enough courage to squeeze a five-and-a-half hand, and then crushes it ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the tents of the encampment, a remarkably excavated part of the main range was discovered, which appeared likely to prove available as a pass. Upon examination, the gap was found to be rugged and broken, partially blocked with fallen masses of rocks, and overgrown by scrub and jungle. Beyond these impediments, which could soon be removed, the gap now known as Cunningham's Gap was apparently available as affording a descent to the lower coast lands. Relinquishing any further attempts ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... lot. They had to go out the area gate into the street to reach it. It was nothing unusual in the way of vacant lots. One large poplar tree, the relic of the old forest which had once flourished there, twinkled in one corner; for the rest, it was overgrown with coarse weeds and a few dusty flowers. The Townsends stood just inside the rude board fence which divided the lot from the street and stared with wonder and horror, for Cordelia had told the truth. They all saw what she had ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... clothed the bank with their beautiful luxuriance. The fruit-trees, neglected for these ten years past, no longer bear a crop, and their suckers have formed a thicket. The espaliers are like a copse. The paths, once graveled, are overgrown with purslane; but, to be accurate there is no ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... Rhodopis went into the garden—the same into which we led our readers during the lifetime of Amasis-and found Bartja and Sappho in an arbor overgrown with vines. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... slope from the forehead. Perched on this nose of land was an inconspicuous little house. As the surrounding land was too steep for habitation, this house stood by itself, the slope for many yards on either side being overgrown with bushes and undergrowths, while a considerable stand of pines grew at one side. The fenced-in yard of this house was large, and by an ingenious system of curves a roadway had been built from the public thoroughfare up to the ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... the rush-cart and the morris-dancers," cried Alizon, rushing joyously to the window, which, being left partly open, admitted the scent of the woodbine and eglantine by which it was overgrown, as well as the humming sound of the bees by ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Something that may sweeten gladness In the very gall of sadness— The dull loneness, the black shade, That these hanging vaults have made The strange music of the waves Beating on these hollow caves, This black den which rocks emboss, Overgrown with eldest moss, The rude portals that give light More to terror than delight, This my chamber of neglect Walled about with disrespect; From all these and this dull air A fit object for despair, She hath taught me by her might To ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... sweetly-sad songs of the good-humoured peasant girls would have soothed the ear, mingled with the jingle of the bells of the homeing kine, and the joyous barking of the dogs bounding on in front of their masters. Now everything is dumb. The fields for the most part lie fallow and overgrown by weeds and thistles, never seen before. In other places the green wheat crop, choked by tares, has already been mown down. Means of communication have everywhere been interrupted by the sanitary cordons. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... was happy in the wet hillside, that was overgrown and obscure with bushes and flowers. He wanted to touch them all, to saturate himself with the touch of them all. He took off his clothes, and sat down naked among the primroses, moving his feet softly among the primroses, his legs, his knees, his arms right up to the arm-pits, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... as neglected and overgrown had become orderly. The little beds cut in the turf were neat in their Winter bareness, despite a few dead leaves which had fluttered on to them. Her eyes fell on a pair of gardening gloves and a trowel lying on the grass by one of the beds. From the open mouth of a brown paper bag ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... slammed the door of the senescent truck with vehement lack of affection. "I cut lots a devilgrass, lady, but I won't tie into this overgrown stuff at that price. You got no right to expect it. I know what's fair and it's not reasonable to count on me cutting this like it was an ordinary lawn. You ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... muscular and grave as a statue, stands on the further side. Is this really a bacchanal? Yes, for there is the paunchy Silenus, there are the fauns, there the vat and vine-wreaths and drinking-horns. And yet it cannot be a bacchanal. Compare with it one of Rubens's orgies, where the overgrown, rubicund men and women and fauns tumble about in tumultuous, riotous intoxication: that is a bacchanal; they have been drinking, those magnificent brutes, there is wine firing their blood and weighing ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... thinking," said my wife. "My flower borders are all in confusion, and my petunia mounds so completely overgrown, that nobody would dream what they ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... could see little, for it was covered by a thick growth of dark curly hair, beard, moustache and whiskers, all overgrown and ill-tended, and as he came with a somewhat slow and ungainly walk along the platform, the lad stationed at the gate to collect tickets grinned amusedly and called to one of the ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... The avenue, overgrown with grass, would have been difficult to find, but for deep old cart-ruts which still marked the way. But soon, fallen trees, and lopped branches, dragged many a rood and then left there, made it difficult to pass. And ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... walk led through what had evidently once been a cultivated country, for it was level and had but few trees upon it. At present, however, it was overgrown with weeds. ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... considerable labor had been expended in bridging over ravines, corduroying marshy places, and cutting through the trunks of great fallen trees. Only a few of them showed much use of late years, being obstructed by logs and overgrown with bushes. But, poor as were these native roads, I was always very glad to find them, and correspondingly sorry when I could follow them no longer, for beyond progress was exceedingly difficult; fallen trees from one to eight feet in diameter, in all stages of decay, thickly ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... fifteen, and presently forgot that he had a wife and child, drifted away, and agreed in 1659 to a division of goods; but his carelessness and egoism were without a touch of malignity, those of an overgrown child rather than ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... to a water-hole, in a small creek, which had been supplied by the late rains; we also passed several fine scrub creeks, but they were dry. About ten miles from the wells another deep scrub creek was found, on the right hand of the river, full of water. Its bed was overgrown with reeds, and full of pebbles of concretions of limestone, and curious trunks of fossil trees, and on its banks a loose sandstone cropped out. Here we found the skull of a native, the first time that we had seen the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... having entrenched themselves here on the eve of the engagement with de Levis. A stone wall with an elegant railing divided the property from the main road, near which was a graceful little nestled summer house, overgrown with creepers and vines; through an avenue with flowery borders, between lines of lofty vases, filled with blooming plants, the visitor reached the house, which occupied the centre of a garden of four acres. Above the door, at the summit of a flight of ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... raising revenue, but to afford advantages to favored classes at the expense of a large majority of their fellow-citizens. Those employed in agriculture, mechanical pursuits, commerce, and navigation were compelled to contribute from their substance to swell the profits and overgrown wealth of the comparatively few who had invested their capital in manufactures. The taxes were not levied in proportion to the value of the articles upon which they were imposed, but, widely departing from this just rule, the lighter taxes were in many cases levied upon articles of luxury and high ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... curved in a wide sweep toward the southwest, his attention was arrested by an old house that lay nestled in the bend as in an encircling arm. The colour had once been red, but was now faded by many suns and washed thin by innumerable rains. A rampart of loose stones, overgrown with brambles and broken in places as if for the passage of cattle, enclosed the premises, and the typical well of the country lifted its curving pole in the front yard only a few feet from the roadway. Two women were seated on the worn stone slab in the opening that served for a gate, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... basalt to the sandstone before the creek could be passed. Continuing an average south course, at 10.10 a.m. came to the Victoria River; the whole channel did not exceed 150 yards in breadth, of which only twenty to fifty were now occupied by water, and the rest by dry rocks and gravel, overgrown by bushes. With great difficulty we followed the river upwards, and were compelled to follow up a tributary creek for about a mile, and then encamped. Near this camp I saw the crested pigeon of Western Australia for the first time ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... wide, with spreading verandas all overgrown by roses and woodbine, and commanding on all sides a wide view of the rolling alfalfa-fields, was a most bewitching place for a young couple to spend the first few months of their married life. So Jack and I were naturally much delighted when Aunt Agnes ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... only an episode, one of many; but the others are fading away, or already buried in dead memories under the sod. It was a quaint, picturesque old place, stretching back from the white limestone road that bordered the little port, its overgrown garden surrounded by an ancient stockade ten feet in height, with a massive, slow-swinging gate in front, defended by loopholes. This stockade bulged out in some places and leaned in at others; but the veteran posts, each a tree sharpened to ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... lineal measure, it appears from the figures that the area of Egdon down to the present day has but little diminished. "Turbaria Bruaria"—the right of cutting heath-turf—occurs in charters relating to the district. "Overgrown with heth and mosse," says Leland of the same dark ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... promise of every good thing. The walk through the woods to Black Rock House was a joy, very slightly alleviated by the poor condition of the trees under which Peter passed. It was primeval forest even here, with valuable trees stunted and poor ones vastly overgrown according to nature's law which provides for the survival of the fittest. This was the law too, which was to be applied to Peter. Would he grow straight and true in this foreign soil or gnarled and misshapen like the cedars ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... is the row of unswathed mummies that follow. Here, in each coffin over which we bend, there is a face which stares at us—or else closes its eyes in order that it may not see us; and meagre shoulders and lean arms, and hands with overgrown nails that protrude from miserable rags. And each royal mummy that our lantern lights reserves for us a fresh surprise and the shudder of a different fear—they resemble one another so little. Some of them seem to laugh, showing ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... it, crowned by a fortress which showed in the distance its chiselled outlines against the evening sky. An hour's marching across the country brought them close to the dismantled castle. The moonbeams depicted every grey stone overgrown with moss and ivy, and the rank weeds choking the apertures which once ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... There must have been a nursery there at one time, for there were still several ordered rows of small trees to be seen. There were traces of flower cultivation as well, for several trailing vines and overgrown bushes showed where shrubs had been grown which do not usually grow without man's assistance. Immediately back of the old elder tree Muller found several fine examples of rare flowers, or rather he found the shrubs which his experienced eye recognised ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... an old place, outstripped by towns of ten years' existence, as it has neither a port nor a river. There was an agricultural show, and monster pumpkins and overgrown cabbages were displayed to admiring crowds, under the shadow of ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... know stretch seas unknown, Blue and bright-colored for our dim and green; Beyond the lands we see, stretch lands unseen With many-tinted tangle overgrown; And icebound seas there are like seas of stone, Serenely stormless as death lies serene; And lifeless tracks of sand, which intervene Betwixt the lands where living flowers are blown. This dead and living world befits our case Who live and die: we live in wearied hope, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... cypresses showed above the encircling wall. At the sound of the approaching carriage, the great doors had swung open. The porter, an old man with a flowing white beard, bowed gravely and gave them admittance. Through the cloisters, between the columns of which they caught glimpses of an overgrown garden, they advanced towards the main building, from whose unadorned, grey, and prison-like exterior an unpleasantly cool air was wafted. Olivo pulled the bellrope; the answering sound was high-pitched, and died away in a moment. A veiled nun silently appeared, and ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... come, she met it bravely, shaking his hand and speaking to him as if nothing had ever happened, and while he was wondering how he ever could have fancied her, she, too, was mentally styling herself "a fool," for having liked "such a pussy, overgrown thing!" Dearly did Miss Nancy love excitement, and during the days that Mrs. Nichols was packing up, she was busy helping her to stow away the "crockery," which the old lady declared should go, particularly the ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... temples and tea-houses, I am coming by degrees to the goal of our pilgrimage—two old stones, mouldering away in a rank, overgrown graveyard hard by, an old old burying-ground, forgotten by all save those who love to dig out the tales of the past. The key is kept by a ghoulish old dame, almost as time-worn and mildewed as the tomb over which she watches. Obedient to our ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... to. Hello, there! you, sir—you big fellow—you hulk of a cock—what business have you here? This is a quarrel among the ladies, sirrah, who are mothers, and it is for their young ones—on behalf of their children—they are showing fight; and you, sir, you overgrown glutton, are stuffing yourself, like many another 'foul bird' before you, with the public property. Shame, you little vulture! Don't you see they fly away when they have gotten' an allowance, and give it to their starving ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... problems and obstacles, never people. Any human raised outside of the political traditions that the race inherited from its bloodstained childhood would be as friendly and ready for friendship as I am toward these beings. I could never hurt these pleasant, overgrown bunnies and squirrels. ...
— The Carnivore • G. A. Morris
... way back through the low, overgrown cavity of the runnel. When he was midway he heard a step coming across the heath, brushing through the "gall"[8] bushes, splashing through the shallow pools. A foot heavily booted crashed through the half-concealed tunnel, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... genuine old Osmanli. He is a branch of the ethnographical tree that will not flourish in European atmosphere: though the same exuberance of vigour that first sent forth the mighty shoot from central Asia, has prevailed to pass through the feeble defences of the West. It is as an overgrown weakling that he exists in our quarter of the world. His eyes are without fire, his manners without the stamp of originality. He succumbs beneath the presence of the Frank,—the hated and despised, and yet the feared and the envied. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... slavery gave the death blow to open vice, overgrown and emboldened as it had become. Immediate emancipation, instead of lifting the flood-gates, was the only power strong enough to shut them down! It restored the proper restraints upon vice, and supplied the incentives to virtue. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... landed, concealed the canoe, and ate a frugal meal of bread and dried meat. This detained them but a short time, and they then started forth upon the trail which led along the river not far from the shore. They swung rapidly on their way, up hill and down, leaping small brooks, and crossing swamps overgrown with a tangle of alders, rank grass, and succulent weeds. Small game was plentiful. Rabbits scurried across the trail, and partridges rose and whirred among the trees. But the travellers never paused in their onward march. Although they had been on the way since early morning, they ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... be a dramatic impersonator. It sounded much more exciting than sitting primly looking on beneath the eyes of the teaching staff; but Dreda had made a careful selection of Susan, Nancy, Barbara, and two lanky, overgrown third form sisters, Molly and Florry Reece, and sturdily refused to add to their number. Norah West in especial was much injured at being passed over, for she cherished a schoolgirl's adoration for the quiet ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to Hilda's lot to undertake the Frenchman. They had been great friends once, and she was quite ready to renew the pleasant relationship. She led her guest to the prettiest part of the garden—the old overgrown footpath around ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... overgrown wilderness of vegetation, for the one gardener, realising the impossibility of doing the work of the six who would have been required to keep the place in order, resigned himself to doing nothing at all, or as little as was compatible with the weekly drawing of ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... costs you four francs. Paris consumes 8,000 quintals of meal daily, which expenditure alone amounts to 1,200 millions per annum." Seven months later, when a bag of flour brings 13,000 francs, the same expenditure reaches 546 millions per month.—Under the ancient regime, Paris, although overgrown, continued to be an useful organism; if it absorbed much, it elaborated more; its productiveness compensated for what it consumed, and, every year, instead of exhausting the public treasury it poured 77 millions into it. The new regime ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... much to be done here of one sort of thing and another. That was certain. As she gazed through the small panes of her large windows, she found herself overlooking part of a wilderness of garden, which revealed itself through an arch in an overgrown laurel hedge. She had glimpses of unkempt grass paths and unclipped topiary work which had lost its original form. Among a tangle of weeds rose the heads of clumps of daffodils, stirred by a passing wind of spring. In the park beyond a cuckoo ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a stalk. Both are to be found in open spaces, bush-grown fields, and airy, sunny spots. It is worth a hot and dusty June walk to get into one of those nooks. You can spend days and not exhaust the study which one little triangular bit of overgrown pasture affords,—spend them, not as a naturalist in close, patient study, because to such a one a square yard of moss is as exhaustless as the forests of Guiana to a Waterton, but as a nemophilist, taking simple delight in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... her way into the cherry-tree copse, and followed a tiny, overgrown path to a sunshiny corner beyond. She had not been there since last summer; the little path was getting almost impassable. When she emerged from the cherry trees, somewhat rumpled and pulled about in hair and attire, but attended, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... should think, if you're going to wear them in the house as well as out." It was against Mr. Evringham's principles to smile before breakfast, at all events at any one except Essex Maid; but the large, shiny overshoes that looked like overgrown beetles, and Jewel's optimistic determination to make him happy, even offset his ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... after Dolly had been a fortnight at Upcombe, the Compsons gave a picnic in the wild Combe undercliff. 'Tis a broken wall of chalk, tumbled picturesquely about in huge shattered masses, and deliciously overgrown with ferns and blackthorn and golden clusters of close-creeping rock-rose. Mazy paths thread tangled labyrinths of fallen rock, or wind round tall clumps of holly-bush and bramble. They lighted their fire ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... sand dunes, overgrown with coarse grass, in the direction of the sounds of the axe. The sand was loose and their feet sank ankle deep in it, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... "Look at that overgrown red tumbleweed!" exclaimed Jack. "I never saw anything like that before. Jump on the pony, Ollie, and catch the varmint and bring ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... to him who first hears the bells of yonder church,' said he. I placed my ear to the ground at once, and my brother treacherously cut off my head with the sword. My body, left unburied, became a great mountain, which is now overgrown with forests. As for my head, it is full of a life and strength proof against all dangers, and has remained here ever since to frighten all who attempt to take away the sword. Now, prince, I beg of you, use the sword to cut off the beard of my wicked brother; kill him, and ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... frequently afflict neighboring countries, not tied together by the same government, which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence likewise they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... a rolling plain, densely overgrown with small wood, with one or two streams running through it; with water obtainable at from fifteen to thirty feet every where, and perfectly healthy. Mr. Landis took possession in August, 1861, and at once began to develop the land ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... Lecoq, were senseless fools, pursuing a fantom. These ideas flashed rapidly through the young detective's brain. But he had no time for reflection. The boy who had been summoned now made his appearance, and proved to be a big overgrown lad with frank, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... now, dear heart, We shall not care at all. It will not matter then a whit, The honey or the gall. The summer days that we have known Will all forgotten be and flown; The garden will be overgrown Where now ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... to make a sketch of the scene, while Mahood and I wandered on up the hill toward the old Russian batteries. They are several in number, situated along the crest of the ridge which divides the inner from the outer bay, and command the approaches to the town from the west. They are now almost overgrown with grass and flowers, and only the form of the embrasures distinguishes them from shapeless mounds of earth. It would be thought that the remote situation and inhospitable climate of Kamchatka would have secured to its inhabitants an immunity from the desolating ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... was another who had seen the pouch and recognized it, who did advance with Achmet Zek, hovering above him, as silent and as sure as death itself, and as the Arab, finding a little spot less overgrown with bushes than he had yet encountered, prepared to gloat his eyes upon the contents of the pouch, Tarzan paused directly above him, intent upon ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
