"Prickly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beside the railroad had been burnt over; it was a smudge prickly with charred stalks of weeds. Beyond the undeviating barbed-wire fences were clumps of golden rod. Only this thin hedge shut them off from the plains-shorn wheat-lands of autumn, a hundred acres to a field, prickly and gray near-by but in the blurred distance like ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... herself had planned it; a charming spot, sheltered to the north by a range from the scorching north wind; and in addition there was a grove of magnificent gum-trees, just far enough apart to have allowed them to grow to their greatest perfection, while dotted here and there were other trees with prickly leaves and pyramidal growth, their lower boughs touching the ground, every one a perfect specimen that it would have been ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... Magician's daughter cried: "Put your fingers, since I have none, into my hair, take my comb and throw it down." So Nix Naught Nothing did as he was bid, and, lo and behold! out of every one of the comb-prongs there sprang up a prickly briar, which grew so fast that the Magician found himself in the middle of a thorn hedge! You may guess how angry and scratched he was before he tore his way out. So Nix Naught Nothing and his sweetheart had time for a good start; but the Magician's daughter could not run fast because ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... lulling endearments upon their toes. When Stedman describes himself as killing thirty-eight mosquitoes at one stroke, we must perhaps pardon something to the spirit of martyrdom. But when we add to these the other woes of his catalogue,—prickly-heat, ring-worm, putrid-fever, "the growling of Colonel Fougeaud, dry, sandy savannas, unfordable marshes, burning hot days, cold and damp nights, heavy rains, and short allowance,"—we can hardly wonder that three captains died in a month, and that in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... kindly neighbor-folk that called the young ones in, Down fragrant yellow-tapered paths that thread the prickly whin; The hot, sweet smell of oaten-cake, the kettle purring soft, The dear-remembered Irish speech— they ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... light with the burning candles; and I found myself glancing behind me, constantly, and then all 'round the room. It was nervy work waiting for that thing to come. Then, suddenly, I was aware of a little, cold wind sweeping over me, coming from behind. I gave one great nerve-thrill, and a prickly feeling went all over the back of my head. Then I hove myself 'round with a sort of stiff jerk, and stared straight against that queer wind. It seemed to come from the corner of the room to the left of the bed—the place where both times I had found ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... then. My poor boy, how the prickly heat has marked your forehead! Have you ever tried sulphate of copper ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... prairie. We entered it, and galloping up, in a moment were surrounded by the bleak sand-hills. Half of their steep sides were bare; the rest were scantily clothed with clumps of grass, and various uncouth plants, conspicuous among which appeared the reptile-like prickly pear. They were gashed with numberless ravines; and as the sky had suddenly darkened, and a cold gusty wind arisen, the strange shrubs and the dreary hills looked doubly wild and desolate. But Henry's face was all eagerness. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... lips,... and to go out in April and see them suddenly abloom is as though the lips of the Sphinx should part and utter solemn words. A bunch of white flowers at the tip of the obelisk, flowers springing white and wonderful out of this dead, gaunt, prickly thing—is not that Nature's consummate miracle, a symbol of resurrection more profound than the lily ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... mountains large flocks of alpacas were grazing, and lower down herds of cattle and sheep, while near the plain were patches of wheat, barley, and potatoes, which in turn were succeeded by fields of maize, apple and peach trees, and prickly-pears. At the foot were fields of sugar-cane, oranges, citron, pine-apples, cacao, and many other tropical fruits; while in the deeper ravines cotton was grown in abundance for the wants of the population. Here, in fact, were all varieties of climate, from the perpetual snow on the summits ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... seem to meet together without the intervention of a noon. The clear yellow sunlight had tempted forth Miss Aldclyffe herself, who was at this same time taking a walk in the direction of the village. As Springrove lingered he heard behind the plantation a woman's dress brushing along amid the prickly husks and leaves which had fallen into the path from the boughs of the chestnut trees. In another minute she stood ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... the landward side of the train, as it reeled and squealed along its tortuous course, were gray and gold Sicilian villages perched high against the hills or drowsing among fields of artichoke and sumac and prickly pear. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... landed on a shelly beach, and burned a grassy area to destroy sand-fleas. This done, some built a large camp-fire, while others spread blankets upon the ground. I drew the faithful sharer of my long voyage near a thicket of prickly-pears, and slept beside it for the last time, never thinking or dreaming that one year later I should approach the mouth of the Suwanee from the west, after a long voyage of twenty-five hundred miles from the bead of the Ohio River, ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... worse than all the prickly points That enter'd in his skin, His nag was running off the while The thorns were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... streams of San Salvador and Santa Gertrudis, and these only contain water in the rainy season. Neither of them had running water when we passed them. The chaparral commences within forty or fifty miles of the Rio Grande. This is poor, rocky, and sandy; covered with prickly-pear, thistles, and almost every sticking thing, constituting a thick and perfectly impenetrable undergrowth. For any useful or agricultural purpose, the country is not worth ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... novel missiles flung from so great a height, acted like miniature bombshells, exploding with a loud report as they touched the deck, and flying into myriad fragments. Not even the most rage-intoxicated Malay could withstand the shock. The noise, the prickly splinters of glass, peppering their half-naked bodies like a charge of small shot, altered their blind fury to dismay and panic. With screams of affright they rushed to the sides of the junk. But the men left ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... some great inner sea of light and fire in the man. The voice, if he speak to you, is of similar physiognomy: clear, melodious and sonorous; all tones are in it, from that of ingenuous inquiry, graceful sociality, light-flowing banter (rather prickly for most part), up to definite word of command, up to desolating word of rebuke and reprobation; a voice "the clearest and most agreeable in conversation I ever heard," says witty Dr. Moore. [Moore, View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland and Germany (London, 1779), ii. 246.] "He speaks ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... it, and it was loose and came away in his hand without any cutting. He tried another. That too was loose. He took off his jacket and threw it over his hands to protect them, and seizing an armful of furze pulled, and fell back, a great bundle of the prickly stuff on top of him. True was pulling like mad at the chain. Edred scrambled up; the furze he had pulled away disclosed a hole, and True was disappearing down it. Edred saw, as the dog dragged him close to the ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... could well prepare one for a first view of Gloom Cottage. Its location in a hollow which had gradually filled itself up with trees and some kind of prickly brush, its deeply stained walls, once picturesque enough in their grouping but too deeply hidden now amid rotting boughs to produce any other effect than that of shrouded desolation, the sough of these same boughs as they rapped a devil's ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... wends its way between a field where the ripe wheat sways in the breeze and a line of elm-trees growing on the edge of a ditch. Poppies gleamed here and there amongst the wheat; the ditch was edged with flowers, brambles, nettles, sweet-brier, long prickly stems, broad shining leaves, blackberries and purple digitalis, all of which mingled their colours and various foliage and uneven branches, and crossed their shadows on the grey dust like the meshes ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... centre a small solitary kopje rose. Alone it lay there, a heap of round ironstones piled one upon another, as over some giant's grave. Here and there a few tufts of grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its stones, and on the very summit a clump of prickly-pears lifted their thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on their broad fleshy leaves. At the foot of the kopje lay the homestead. First, the stone-walled sheep kraals and Kaffer huts; beyond them the dwelling-house—a square, red-brick building ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... the national custom to eat rusks with 'muisjes' on on these occasions, and these little sweets are manufactured of two kinds. The sugar coating is smooth when the child is a girl, and rough and prickly like a chestnut burr when the child is a boy; and when one goes to buy 'muisjes' at a confectioner's he is always asked whether boys' or girls' 'muisjes' are required. Hundreds-and-thousands, the well-known decoration on buns ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... dog, was beginning little by little to wilt and droop. Upon him was already advancing the stage of self-revelation, next in order, in the paroxysm of which he several times attempted to kiss Yarchenko's hand. His lids had become red; around the shaven, prickly lips had deepened the tearful wrinkles that gave him an appearance of weeping; and it could be heard by his voice that his nose and throat were already ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... to-morrow, or of the officer whose portrait, in the silver frame, occupied the post of honour in her picture gallery? Who could tell? Unsympathetic school-girls do not know all the secrets of a teacher's life. Perhaps Miss Gibbs, like the familiar chestnut burr, hid a silver lining under her prickly exterior. She slept so peacefully—it was a shame to disturb her. Schoolgirls are ruthless beings ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... waggoner, with a look of extreme scorn, exclaimed, 'Help thee, lad, does not thee know 'tis a common thistle? Didst thee not know that a thistle would prick thee?' continued he, laughing at the face I made when I touched the prickly leaves; 'why my horse Dobbin has more sense by half! he is not like ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... objects to this derivation of Zayton, that the place was never called Tseut'ung absolutely, but T'seu-t'ung-ching, "city of prickly T'ung-trees"; and this not as a name, but as a polite literary epithet, somewhat like "City of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... soothing preparation to use at night is made of one ounce of glycerine, half an ounce of rosemary (fluid), and twenty drops of carbolic acid. This is excellent for any irritation of the skin, and also for prickly heat. The face must always be well washed with water and pure soap before applying any of these preparations. If the skin is oily, bathe with diluted camphor (a teaspoonful to a pint of water), but it is injurious ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... and fetch to the persons he loved, mashed into premature jam in his small fist; exciting turtles with variegated carapaces, and heads and feet that went in and out; occasional newts from the plashy places; and in autumn, hatfuls of walnuts. There were chestnuts, too, upon whose prickly hulls the preoccupied children would sometimes inadvertently plump themselves. Our father was a great tree-climber, and he was also fond of playing the role of magician. "Hide your eyes!" he would say, and the next moment, from being there beside us on the moss, we would hear his voice descending ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... which are fifteen feet high. They touch the ceiling of the room. Around them I have arranged a perfect hedge or breast-work of smaller plants of the same family, growing in large boxes. Nothing could penetrate through this prickly wall; and I have united the boxes by hooks and staples on the inside. There is, however, one which a strong man can move aside; and through the opening thus formed he can crawl to the center of the barricade, and, having replaced the hooks, it would be almost impossible to reach ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... a rough part of the country. Steep hills were everywhere, the valleys were narrow, the roads were more like ditches. Thick underbrush, prickly bushes and tall grasses grew in many places. A number of men were set to work making roads, so that the wagons with the army supplies could push on. It was the wet season, and rain fell every day. Sometimes ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... doorway and watched the angular, stoop-shouldered figure go down the hall; there was something so slinking, so furtively deadly in the burglar's motions that Bat felt a prickly sensation run up ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... wears the soft-soled moccasin, while his brother of the plains covers the bottoms of his footwear with rawhide, because of the cactus and prickly-pear, most likely. ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... isis, clusters of pure tuft-coral, prickly fungi, and anemones formed a brilliant garden of flowers, decked with their collarettes of blue tentacles, sea-stars studding the sandy bottom. It was a real grief to me to crush under my feet the brilliant specimens of molluscs which strewed the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... several years' experience in the south told me that one year is not like another. In spite of the general supposition to the contrary the climate of Borneo is quite pleasant, and probably less unhealthful than most equatorial regions, particularly in the central part where malaria is rare and prickly heat does ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... reformatory, and a lunatic asylum; and on the left is the "Necropolis," where London, in the black and sandy soil, deposits the myriads of its dead. All around, the ground is olive-coloured with unblossomed heath, bright and golden here and there with the flowerets of the prickly gorse. Dense and dismal plantations of black-looking Scotch firs are enlivened at intervals by the delicate and tender green spikelets of a sprouting larch. On we rush for miles through this sombre region, through dank morasses, and past dark and gloomy pools, from one of which a heron rises majestically. ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... The prickly sweat came to his forehead. Four horsemen were issuing from the gate of the castle above. He must come to a decision. His fingers trembled as if they were a pickpocket's ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... lake for nearly its whole length. Loch Vennachar lies between hills of comparatively gentle declivity, pastured by flocks, and tufted with patches of the prickly gorse and coarse ferns. On its north bank lies Lanrick Mead, a little grassy level where Scott makes the tribe of Clan Alpine assemble at the command of Roderick Dhu. At a little distance from Vennachar lies ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... it!" I shouted. Then, shrinking from the hysterical loudness of my own voice, I lowered my tone. "Something that looks human has occupied some of those prickly, six-foot shells. I saw arms—and a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... A warm, prickly sensation about the forehead was Steve's silent comment on this reflection. He took a step forward and stopped again. He was conscious of tremors about the region of the spine. The thought crossed his mind at that moment that burglars ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... instance, any of the cacti not in flower. Their masses are heavy and simple, their growth slow, their various parts jointed on one to another, as if they were buckled or pinned together instead of growing out of each other, (note the singular imposition in many of them, the prickly pear for instance, of the fruit upon the body of the plant, so that it looks like a swelling or disease,) and often farther opposed by harsh truncation of line as in the cactus truncatophylla. All these circumstances so concur to deprive the plant of vital ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... everywhere else, tends to self-indulgence, since one extreme produces another. In one part of India, therefore, devotees are swinging on hooks in honor of Siva, hanging themselves by the feet, head downwards, over a fire, rolling on a bed of prickly thorns, jumping on a couch filled with sharp knives, boring holes in their tongues, and sticking their bodies full of pins and needles, or perhaps holding the arms over the head till they stiffen in that position. Meantime ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... a touch of prickly heat and is thirsty," I thought, nor was I mistaken, for, on arriving at the edge of the fountain, the tramp knelt down and drank copiously, making a moaning sound as he gulped the water, which was very peculiar and unpleasant to hear. When he had satisfied his thirst, he sat himself upon the marble ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... of Latmos! shepherd bands! Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks: Whether descended from beneath the rocks That overtop your mountains; whether come From vallies where the pipe is never dumb; 200 Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge, Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn: Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare The scrip, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... three hundred of the former, besides a number of sea-trout, were dragged out at one haul of the seine, the 15th of May. These flat-fish are firm, and of a good flavour, studded upon the back with round prickly knobs, like turbot, and streaked with dark-brown lines, running from the head toward the tail. About the end of May the first herring season begins. They approach in great shoals, but do not remain long on the coast. They had entirely left the bay before we sailed out of it the first time, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... did not all fall in gloomy and prickly places in these days. His perennial faculty for enjoyment never deserted him even in his darkest hours. His big red automobile, acquired on the crest of Semple and West's prosperity, was constantly to be seen bowling down the street of an early-vernal afternoon, or dancing down far country ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... if you call his Ikons images, And damns your soul to Hell—no purgatory, if you please! About Procession of the Ghost he's prickly as a burr, But he believes, as we all ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... her marriage and the bad blood between himself and his brother, that she should feel nervous. He was sorry for her, and wondered, not for the first time, whether it would not be possible, now he himself was less green and prickly, and had settled into a scheme of life that need not, ill-feeling apart, exclude Archelaus, to become better friends or at least more tolerant of each other. He suggested his idea to Phoebe, though characteristically he did ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... a dream in which he imagined that he laid himself down upon a heap of dry herbs, among which there were many prickly ones that gave him great uneasiness, and that he afterwards reposed himself on a soft bed of roses from which there sprung a serpent that wounded him to the heart with its sharp and venomed tongue. "Alas," said he, "I have long lain on these dry and prickly herbs, I ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... that there is any other rock in all the world from which the places and monuments of so complex and deep a fragment of the history of its ages can be visible as from this piece of crag with its blue and prickly weeds. For you have thus beneath you at once the birthplaces of Virgil and of Livy—the homes of Dante and Petrarch, and the source of the most sweet and pathetic inspiration to your own Shakespeare—the spot where the civilization of the Gothic kingdoms was founded on the throne of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of California says the state is magnificent but thin. He declares it is as though it were painted on a Brobdingnagian piece of gilt paper, and he who dampens his finger and thrusts it through finds an alkali valley on the other side, the lonely prickly pear, and a heap of ashes from a deserted camp-fire. He says the citizens of this state lack the richness of an aesthetic and religious tradition. He says there is no substitute for time. But even these things make for coincidence. This apparent thinness California has in common with the routine ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Murray and another man were one day in the beginning of May strolling through one of his pasture-fields. His companion was a thin, hard-visaged little fellow, with a triangular face, and dry bristly hair, very much the color of, and nearly as prickly as, a withered furze bush; both, indeed, were congenial spirits, for it is only necessary to say, that he of the furze bush was another of those charital and generous individuals whose great delight consisted, like his friend Murray, in watching the seasons, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... sybarite. A leg hung over the edge very white and lifeless. An arm stuck straight out with a dark palm turned up, and thick fingers half closed. Two light snores, that did not synchronise, quarrelled in funny dialogue. Singleton stripped again—the old man suffered much from prickly heat—stood cooling his back in the doorway, with his arms crossed on his bare and adorned chest. His head touched the beam of the deck above. The nigger, half undressed, was busy casting adrift the lashing of his box, and ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... an electric-arc bath there is obtained an action upon the skin, the patient experiences a pleasant and slightly prickly sensation. There is produced, even from a short exposure, upon the skin of some patients a slight erythema, while with others there is but little such effect even from long exposures. The face assumes a normal rosy coloring and an appearance of refreshment ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... the Chase we see at once. In whatever direction we look across the common there is a perfect blaze of gold—the blossoms of the prickly Gorse or Furze. Spring is the time to see its mass of golden yellow blossoms best; but I do not think there is a week, or even a day, in the whole year when some of the flowers are not out. Did you ever hear the saying, ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... equalling any in the world. The produce of the islands includes tamarinds, olives, oranges, lemons, limes, citrons, pomegranates, pine-apples, figs, sapodillas, bananas, sour-sops, melons, yams, potatoes, gourds, cucumbers, pepper, cassava, prickly pears, sugar-cane, ginger, coffee, indigo, Guinea corn and pease. Tobacco and cascarilla bark also flourish; and cotton is indigenous and was woven into cloth by the aborigines. But although oranges, pine-apples and some other ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... trees, the most important are the lentisk (Pistachia lentiscus), the bay, the arbutus (A. andrachne), the cypress, the oleander, the myrtle, the juniper, the barberry, the styrax (S. officinalis), the rhododendron, the bramble, the caper plant, the small-leaved holly, the prickly pear, the honeysuckle, and the jasmine. Myrtle and rhododendron grow luxuriantly on the flanks of Bargylus, and are more plentiful than any other shrubs in that region.[233] Eastern Lebanon has abundant scrub of juniper and barberry;[234] while ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... and a half's start his track lay through a country covered with prickly pear. We knew that with a bare foot he could make little progress. We could see, however by the long jumps he was taking, that he was making excellent time. Soon the trail became spotted with ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... there is one remarkable exception, where the pools worn in a hard limestone are filled with what seem at first sight beds of china-asters, of all loveliest colours—primrose, sea-green, dove, purple, crimson, pink, ash-grey. They are all prickly sea-eggs (presumably the Echinus lividus, which is found in similar places in the west of Ireland), each buried for life in a cup-shaped hole which he has excavated in the rock, and shut in by an overhanging lip of living lime—seemingly a Nullipore coralline. What they do there, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... parsley and ill-smelling garlic. Here it was calm and peaceful as in some village church. Tall willows bent dreamily over the stream; the steep, green banks were bathed in sunlight; tall burdocks flourished amid the nettles, and prickly thistles became entangled in the lace trimming of Lida's dress. One huge plant powdered her ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... and beds of strawberry leaves until the moss upon which they rest look like velvet with floss needlework. We polish the chestnuts till they appear as if carved of rosewood. We strip thistles of their prickly coat, and use the down for pillows. The milk-weed, as it ripens its silken-winged seeds, serves us for many beautiful purposes. We tint the pebbles of a brook till they compare with Florentine mosaics. We wreathe and festoon every bare old bowlder and every niche made barren ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... While the feet of the soldiers grew hotter, sweat ran through their hair under their helmets, and their knapsacks could burn no more in contact with their shoulders, but seemed instead to give off a cold, prickly sensation. ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... I felt prickly all over, and there was a damp patch on the pillow, which was soon explained by a heavy drop of moisture falling on ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... thicket, he would certainly have supposed that some old dame with a school was hidden away there, or at the least an anxious Mamma with a family of unruly children. But if this somebody had gone into the thicket, bobbing his head to avoid the prickly, wreath-like branches, he would have found on the other side only one person, little Lota Bird, playing all alone with her dolls. "Lady Bird" Nursey called Lota, because when, six years before, Papa fetched her home from China, she wore a speckled frock of orange-red and black, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... hero. And for most people it is painful not to regard a great man as also a great hero; hence all the efforts to explain away the moral characteristics deducible from The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, and to prove that Whistler, beneath a prickly surface, was saturated through and through with the quintessence of the Sermon ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... vanished as I drew near: some obstacle had intervened between me and it. I put out my hand to feel the dark mass before me: I discriminated the rough stones of a low wall—above it, something like palisades, and within, a high and prickly hedge. I groped on. Again a whitish object gleamed before me: it was a gate—a wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On each side stood a sable ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... destroyers protecting the flank chose this inopportune moment to cast her attention and her searchlight. Each time it caught him in its brilliant glare on the sky-line, Mac crashed down into the nearest shrub, prickly holly, arbutus or stunted oak, and cursed lowly to himself till the beam lifted. Progressing spasmodically when the beam was directed elsewhere, they reached the outpost, then stumbled wearily back along the beach, ate and bathed and turned in for a ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... flat, ugly fenced field where a cow and a horse grazed, and a place immediately about the house covered with thick grass and shaded by maple trees. There were some shrubs too, behind which one could hide if necessary, but they were prickly, uncomfortable to nestle against, and the unmown grass absorbed an immense quantity of dew. In imagination, however, the Baby wandered on pastoral slopes and in classic shades. At first he paid his visits at night when the family were ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... dignitary in all this heat," Amos said, unenviously. "What are they doing now?" he enquired, and both boys parted the prickly pine needles to look ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... Cold in the hills. Rapid evaporation. Mountain-roads. Real del Monte. Guns and pistols. Regla. The father-confessor in Mexico. Morals of servitude. Cornish miners. Dram-drinking. Salt-trade. The Indian market. Indian Conservatism. Sardines. Account-keeping. The great Barranca. Tropical fruits. Prickly pears. Their use. The "Water-Throat." Silver-works. Volcano of Jorullo. Cascade of Regla. "Eyes of Water." Fires. The Hill of Knives. Obsidian implements. Obsidian mines. The Stone-age. The loadstone-mountain of Mexico. Unequal Civilization of the Aztecs. Silver and commerce ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... flat roofed. As we drew nigh we see the tall minaret of a mosque, the great convent buildings and the neat houses of the village looking out of gardens of figs and olives with white doves playing about the roofs; there wuz great hedges of prickly pears and white orange blossoms and scarlet pomgranites ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... thousand yards of the place the instinct which so often interferes to keep our heads from betraying us made me pull up. There was not a sound except the far-away bang of guns and rifles. Near to the kopje there was a garden surrounded by low trees and a hedge of prickly pear. The sun setting behind us slanted into it and made it appear as a charming, peaceful shelter from the dust and noise of the battle. I was still debating with myself as to whether I should go on a little farther when I heard behind ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... rugged mountains, and patches of wheat and Indian corn peeping amidst masses of granite rock and tangled brushwood. The vine and the olive grew wild on every side; while the orange and the arbutus, loading the air with perfume, were mingled with prickly pear-trees and variegated hollies. We followed no regular track, but cantered along over hill and valley, through forest and prairie, now in long file through some tall field of waving corn, now in open order upon some level plain,—our Portuguese guide riding a little ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... slightly poisonous, to others not. I couldn't help putting in a few buckeyes on account of the big buds in early spring. You will like the colour if you are fond of pink and yellow in combination, and the red-brown nuts in grayish-yellow, prickly hulls, and the leaf clusters are beautiful, but you must use care. I put in witch hazel for variety, and I like its appearance; it's mighty good medicine, too; so is spice brush, and it has leaves that colour brightly, and red berries. These selections were all made for a purpose. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... sponge, sat Lord Cuttle-fish, playing on three musical instruments at once. His great warty speckled head, six feet high, like a huge bag upside down, was bent forward to read the notes of his music book by the light of a wax candle, which was stuck in the feelers of a prickly lobster, and patiently held. Of his six pulpy arms one long one ran down like the trunk of an elephant, fingering along the pages of a music book. Two others were used to play the guitar, one to grasp the handle ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... shelter afforded by the belt of furze bushes was artificially improved by an inclosure of upright stakes, interwoven with boughs of the same prickly vegetation, and within the inclosure lay a renowned Marlbury-Down breeding flock of ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... us strike again into the interior, saying we were near their camp which is called in their language Berkelet. But the short distance of the Moors was found very long by the females and the children, on account of the downs of sand which we had to ascend and descend every instant, also of prickly shrubs over which we were frequently obliged to walk. Those who were barefooted, felt most severely at this time the want of their shoes. I myself lost among the bushes various shreds of my dress, and my feet and legs were ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... said Roberts; "we're a very humorous lot, we British—very amusing indeed, but best at a distance, for we're rather prickly, and easily induced to make use of our knives. ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... chieftains of my tribe? Where are Old Weasel Asleep and Orlando the Hie Jacet Promoter? Where are Prickly Ash Berry and The Avenging Wart? Where are The Roman-nosed ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... too much water the party now found themselves straitened for want of it, and the journey, too, began to tell upon the horses. Thick scrubs of eucalyptus brush, overrun with creepers and prickly acacia bushes, soon helped to bar the way, and when they at last reached the point of a range, which they named Peel Range, Oxley reluctantly abandoned his idea of making for the coast in a south-west direction, and ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... near enough for them to leap down: when they let go their hands, they fell softly to the earth. They quickly jumped up, and proceeded as rapidly as the strength of the Princess and the unknown way would allow them through the thickets, underwood, and plains studded with prickly plants, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... tax the mental faculties in imagining what may have been the equivalent to brushes and combs with which the prehistoric woman of thousands of years ago brushed and combed her tangled tresses. She was ingenious enough to break off and trim sharp prickly thorns, and to use them as pins to fasten her scanty home-made garments, no doubt; and she would probably find in Nature's supply what served her when making her toilet, and viewing herself in clear pool or stream. Artists have pictured such toilets, ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... of coral reefs. On trying to pass a channel through one of these reefs we were grounded, and all had to get out into the water, which in this shallow strait had been so heated by the sun as to be disagreeably warm, and drag our vessel a considerable distance among weeds and sponges, corals and prickly corallines. It was late at night when we reached the little village harbour, and we were all pretty well knocked up by hard work, and having had nothing but very brackish water to drink all day-the best we could find at ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... followed the strong and able-bodied, who took ashore with them spars, tackles, and spare sails, with which to rig up temporary tents; and soon the greensward was dotted with busy men, who, in the intervals of their labour, drank coconuts or eagerly devoured bananas, prickly pears, guavas, soursops, grapes, mangoes, and the various other fruits with which the island abounded. By and by, when a certain large tent had been erected beneath the shade of a giant ceiba tree, a boat put off from the shore to the ship, and presently returned bearing nine wounded men—the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... all enclosures and stone fences now, and was fairly on the desolate brown moors; through the withered last year's ling and fern, through the prickly gorse, he tramped, crushing down the tender shoots of this year's growth, and heedless of the startled plover's cry, goaded by the furies. His only relief from thought, from the remembrance of Sylvia's looks and words, was ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... appeared that the pear was not waiting to drop—when, on the contrary, the pear had pointedly removed itself from the hand of the plucker, and seemed, if one may vary the metaphor, to have turned into a prickly pear. Eugene still believed that Claudia loved him; but he saw that she was stung by his apparent neglect, and perhaps still more by the idea that in his view he had only to ask at any time in order to have. When ladies gather ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... tree-trunks and bark-rings; All modesties of mountain-fawns That leap to covert from wild lawns, And tremble if the day but dawns; All sparklings of small beady eyes Of birds, and sidelong glances wise Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; All piquancies of prickly burs, And smoothnesses of downs and furs Of eiders and of minevers; All limpid honeys that do lie At stamen-bases, nor deny The humming-birds' fine roguery, Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the mountain side is a chestnut wood. Did you ever see a chestnut tree? In the spring its branches are covered with bunches of creamy flowers, like long tassels. All the hot summer these are turning into sweet nuts, wrapped safely in large, prickly, green balls. 4. But when the frost of autumn comes, these prickly balls turn brown, and crack open. Then you may see inside one, two, three, and even four, sweet, brown nuts. 5. When her father says, one night at supper time, "I think there will be a frost tonight," Jeannette ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... work of no slight difficulty, and even danger. Occasionally plunging to the knees in a deep bog, then wading to the girth in a hillock of sand and prickly bent grass (the Arundo arenaria, so plentiful on these coasts), the horses were scarcely able to keep their footing—yet were they still urged on. Every step was expected to bring them ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the upper end, and spiny along the sides. This plant, named guamara, bears spikes of yellow fruits which are pointed at the upper end, but in color, size, texture, structure and taste reminded us of podophyllum, though it leaves a prickly sensation in the mouth, much like that produced by fresh pineapples. There were also many trees bearing little limes or lemons, of which we gathered abundance for making lemonade. At two o'clock our man pointed out a ranch-house ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... English cemetery; I am glad to say it is almost uninhabited. If there is an English dead settlement there ought to be a live one, I reasoned, unless those who are buried here date from Peninsular battles. The first part of the road to Blanche's Castle is level, and bordered with thick growths of prickly pear; there is a view of the sea, and of the Guadalate, spanned by a metal bridge—a Menai on a small scale. Farther on, as we get to a district called La Piedad, the country is diversified by swampy flats at one side and sandy hills at the other. Blanche's Castle was a commonplace ruin, a ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... herb, a prickly plant which sprawled low in the shadow of the trees. Its root was black, and it had a milk- white flower; the Gods called it Moly, and no mortal strength could avail to pull it from the soil; but as Odysseus ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... seeds of the banian fig into crevices of the ramparts, and its insidious roots push their way and grow and grow into great tortuous snakes, embracing the massive blocks of basalt, heaving them up and holding them up, so that they cannot fall. Then prickly shrubs and thorny trees follow, fighting for every inch of ground, but quite unable to eject the gently persistent custard-apple, descended doubtless from seeds which the garrison dropped as they ate the luscious fruit, on account of which the Portuguese introduced the tree ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... prickly hot. The girls in that neighborhood were held in esteem, and there was that in ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... projecting end of a fallen cross. Between showed no vestige of an opening; dark, impervious, formidable as a fortress wall, the tunal met the eye. Ferne, attacking it with his sword, thrust aside a heavy curtain of broad-leaved vine, came upon a network of thorn and spike and prickly leaf, hewed this away, to find behind it a like barrier. Evidently the man had lied!—to what purpose Sir Mortimer Ferne would presently make it his business to discover.... There overtook him a sudden revulsion of feeling, depression of spirit, cold and sick distaste of the place. ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... sense of smell was outraged by innumerable nuisances, when we set foot within the filthy and miserable town. After winding through some narrow dusty lanes, hemmed in by high walls of sun-baked bricks, that had fallen in gaps in several places, exposing gardens of prickly pears and date palms, we at length arrived at a large open place, that, if possible, smelt more strongly than the landing spot. Around this square, which was full of holes where the mud had been excavated for brickmaking, were the better class of houses; this was the Belgravia of ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... gave chase. The Gauls, sighting the A.P.M. brassard, promptly dumped the hut and dived through a wire fence. Sherlock hitched his horse to a post and followed afoot, snorting fire and brimstone. They led him at a smart trot over four acres of boggy plough, through a brambly plantation, two prickly hedges and a richly-perfumed drain and went to ground inextricably in some mine buildings. He returned, blown, battered and baffled, to the starting-point, to find that some third party had in the meantime removed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... with Sister Bridget I learnt the whole history of her convent life. She was forced to take the veil by her family, much against her will, for she even then felt the prickly sensation of desire, making her cunt throb at the idea of coition with the male sex. She quickly found a friend with similar desires, but more experience, who first taught her all the art of tribadism, and then confessed to having connection with the youngest father confessor. ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... cedar is apt to be confused with the low juniper (Juniperus communis) which grows in open fields all over the world. The latter, however, is generally of a low form with a flat top. Its leaves are pointed and prickly, never scale-like, and they are whitish above and green below. Its bark shreds and its fruit is a small round berry of ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... Barrow's Island; in one or two places was growing a stunted kind of wood, sufficient for fuel for a small-sized ship; but there was no sign of water. The wallaby, which were very numerous, must have got their supply of moisture from the copious dews. They were found lying very close in the wiry prickly grass, allowing us to kick them out, when they went off at speed, affording excellent sport, quite equal to any rabbit shooting; among three guns we managed, in a couple of hours, to bag nearly twenty. It was quite a new kind of wallaby, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... buffalo-grass, prickly pears, and sagebrush stretched before us to the north and east; and on the west the filmy blue contour of the Highwoods Mountains lifted like sun-smitten thunder clouds in the July swelter. One squinting far look, however, told you that these were not rain clouds. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... side-stream were very striking. It was so narrow that sometimes the vegetation on both sides was forced into the canoes, and the "atap" (palm-thatched) roof of my canoe came in for severe treatment as it brushed against prickly pandanus and thorny rattans. ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... through the Metropolis they felt their ears growing hot and red. Beneath the chilly stare of the populace they experienced all the sensations of a man who has come to a strange dinner-party in a tweed suit when everybody else has dressed. They felt warm and prickly. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... which seemed but slowly-moving specks in the distance, drew nearer the Holy City to worship or to profit. At the foot of a near-by hill a flock of goats, with herdsmen keeping close watch, were browsing among the prickly pears, feeding their last before being driven into the Temple stalls as sacrificial beasts. On another road a company of Arabs was putting up its mean and ragged tents and just beyond some Galilean peasants were building booths. ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock |
