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Sapling   Listen
noun
sapling  n.  A young tree.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sapling" Quotes from Famous Books



... on upward, catching a sapling here, a limb there, pulling herself over hard bits of going. Once she turned and fired a chance shot in the direction of the howling. Far away came the roar of one of the mountain lions; and the pack of red wolves became suddenly and magically silent. Kathlyn made ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... no longer put curbing hands on his fierce longing. The flames from his chariot still lingered in reflected glories on sea and hill and sky. The very leaves of the budding trees of spring were outlined in gold. And through the dim wood walked Daphne, erect and lithe and living as a sapling in the early spring. ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... came perfectly clear, over to the right scarcely a hundred yards. A little arroyo of quaking aspens lay between him and the one who called. He dismounted, tied his horse to a sapling, and pushed through the growth of young trees. Emerging from these, he climbed the brow of the hill and looked ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... wand have been transferred from the heart of the elk back into its breech, he bounded from his position in close imitation of the elk, but with better success. The trees! he hoped and prayed, as he fairly flew over the ground with the bears hot in chase, for one quick grasp at a sturdy sapling. By good fortune, or special Providence, his hope, or prayer, was answered. Grasping a lower limb he swung his body up into the first tier of branches just as passing Bruin brushed against one of his legs. Bears climb trees and Kit Carson was not ignorant of the fact. Instantly drawing his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... thy star declineth, Thy name is gone, thy rights invaded, And hopelessly the strong oak pineth, Where the tall sapling faded; The mountain eagle idly cowers Beside his slaughtered young, Our sons must bow to other powers, Must learn a stranger tongue. Pride, valour, freedom, treasures that have been, Do they all slumber in ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... rasping and crackling of branches, I reached the bushes which I had seen so far below me. Through them I broke my way, down a slope beyond, and deep into another patch of underwood, where, striking a sapling, my barrel flew to pieces. From amid a heap of staves and hoops I crawled out, my body aching in every inch of it, but my heart singing loudly with joy and my spirit high within me, for I knew how great was ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the side of the tote-road and, slipping the halters over the bridles, tied them to a stout sapling and made his way ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... is an arrant rogue! He is nor boy nor man, sapling nor tree. And long hath he outgrown his mother's rod, Nor ever hath he felt his father's whip. Ungoverned is he as a yearling colt, That's never known the bridle or the whip. We ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... that he wanted it. That had been the strongest thing in his look. She felt herself picking her way along a very narrow path, one step over either edge of which would plunge her chasms deep. Now she snatched at a frail sapling to save herself. The fact that Kerr knew her stone didn't prove it belonged to the Crew Idol. And if it didn't—if it wasn't the crown of the heathen god, then her whole dreadful supposition fell to pieces. ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... turban, from beneath which her dark eyes flashed with uncommon lustre. Her long and tangled black hair fell in elf-locks from the folds of this singular head-gear. Her attitude was that of a sibyl in frenzy, and she stretched out in her right hand a sapling bough which seemed ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... out, began to beat them in a pretty manner, and the people taking to flight, the fool drove out of the town to his own village, whilst the sapling drubbed all soundly, and went in pursuit of them. Emelian, on reaching his ...
— Emelian the Fool - a tale • Thomas J. Wise

... wriggling beetle is eaten as daintily as caviare at the king's table. It is only when its confidence in you is abused, and you pass too near the nest, that might easily be mistaken for a robin's, just above your head in a sapling, that the wood thrush so far forgets itself as to become excited. Pit, pit, pit, sharply reiterated, is called out at you with a strident quality in the tone that is painful evidence of the fearful anxiety your ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... passed large numbers of natives; marked small gum sapling MK roughly; made for heavy creek that joins another at Strzelecki's Creek, and camped at a water called Tacdurrie, a small water about two miles from Gooneborrow in the main creek. Distance travelled today about twenty-seven and ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay

... fellow carried a long sapling to the end of which he had made fast a long butcher-knife. One of the gunmen said to me that he hoped there would be "a lively chunk of a fight" although he and his friend had only one charge of powder apiece. These two were young men, and like many of their generation ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'is, that in some branches of our family we may live again in the old country. Do not frown, Micawber! I do not now refer to my own family, but to our children's children. However vigorous the sapling,' said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, 'I cannot forget the parent-tree; and when our race attains to eminence and fortune, I own I should wish that fortune to flow ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... still cushioned with untrodden snow. A stone wall on one hand—in better keeping and condition than the boundary monuments of the outlying fields—bespoke protection and exclusiveness. Half-way up the lane the rider checked his speed, and, dismounting, tied his horse to a wayside sapling. This done, he went cautiously forward toward the end of the lane, and a farm-house from whose gable window a light twinkled through the deepening night. Suddenly he stopped, hesitated, and uttered an impatient ejaculation. The light ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... lights from the plane factory. In fact, there was no plane factory. In the half-light of the sky, he saw that the plant was gone. No men were left. There was only barren earth, with a tiny, limp sapling in the middle ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey

... there, the open space had just been planted with forest-trees, and that some of the taller plants rose half-way to my knee. Human lifetimes, as now measured, are not intended to witness both the seed-times and the harvests of forests,—both the planting of the sapling, and the felling of the huge tree into which it has grown; and so the incident impressed me strongly. It reminded me of the sage Shalum in Addison's antediluvian tale, who became wealthy by the sale of his great trees, two centuries after he had planted them. I pursued my walk, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... not easily forget the picture he made. His handsome face was flushed with excitement, his beautiful eyes were ablaze with light; he sat his horse erect as a young sapling. A handsomer or finer ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... must make them. I shall look out a sapling shaped to my purpose and trim it with my knife. For the cord of my bow I will have leather ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... a place (marked by a sapling with a little flag attached to it) at some short distance from the cottage. She glided along by his side, with subtle undulations of movement which appeared to complete the exasperation of Perry. He waited ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... little less than locomotive speed, shot across the strip of sidewalk, caught its right forewheel against a sapling, swung heavily broadside to the drive, and turned completely over as it shot down the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... before them lay the young lawyer quite unconscious, with his riderless steed nipping the young leaves of the underbrush. He was evidently stunned by a fall, although across his face was a livid welt which might have been caused by collision with the small elastic limb of a sapling, or a blow from a riding-whip; happily the last idea was only in Peter's mind. As they lifted him up he came slowly to consciousness. He was bewildered and dazed at first, but as he began to speak the color came back freshly to his face. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... cooking to permit the nutritive material to be dissolved by the digestive juices. Then, too, in old vegetables, there is more starch and the cellulose is harder and tougher, just as an old tree is much harder than a sapling. This, then, accounts for the fact that rapid cooking is needed for some vegetables and slow cooking for others, the method and the time of cooking depending on the presence and the consistency of the cellulose that occurs in ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... walked on, she might call me back. I looked about in haste for a hiding-place. The bushes near me appeared as if I might get behind them: I pushed through, saw a little path, which I followed, turned round the base of a hillock, and found two rocks, upon which I raised myself with the help of a sapling. Then, carefully parting the branches, I saw this," waving her small hand that I might see it, but still not looking at me. "The sun was just setting; away down in yonder field the sorrel was as fire in its rays; a catbird ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... a goldfinch is singing to his mate, whose nest is in a sapling not far away. His jet black wings fold over his yellow back, shaping it into a pointed shield of gold. He is so happy and so fond that he can not bear long to remain out of her sight. Now he sings a tender serenade, then his joy rises to ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... can estimate the loss the world sustains in its ignorance of the trees of the Talmud? What a sapling in comparison with this giant cedar of Lebanon must the far-famed Mammoth tree have been which was lately cut down in California, and was the largest known to ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... Dangler's prosy platitudes, which some deemed wit—Horner, par exemple—sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the "gushing" order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane "yes's" and lisping "no's" having an opportunity of being "weighed in the balance," and consequently, in my opinion, "found wanting." All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls seemed to ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... up, he observed that both the shafts of his gig were broken, and that they were held together by withes, formed from the bark of a hickory sapling. Our traveler observed further that he was plainly clad, that his knee buckles were loosened, and that something like negligence pervaded his dress. Conceiving him to be one of the honest yeomanry of our land, the courtesies of strangers passed between them, and they entered ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... acorns. It flies by partly closing its wings, darting suddenly down, then up again, and repeating these movements for some time. It mates about the end of February. The nest, composed of dry rootlets laid very closely in rings, is usually found in an oak sapling about ten feet from the ground. The inside diameter is five inches, and depth one and three-fourths inches. It is like ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... was a strip of carpet laid out near the fire upon which a small figure, clad only in an undershirt and a pair of faded red trunks, was busily engaged in wrapping its legs round the back of its neck. The cause of Clarissa's unhappiness was also apparent; for chained to a sapling nearby, rolling its great head foolishly from side to ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... thing, what with another, we turned back: but War- cliff's brother, a tall man, had felled two of those felons with an oak sapling which he had torn from the thicket; but he had not slain them, and by now they were just awakening from their swoon, and were sitting up looking round them with fierce rolling eyes, expecting the stroke, for Raven of Longscree was standing ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... direct blast cut down Nevada's speed one-half. She made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a pinon sapling, and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building loomed before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well-remembered canon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbor, art, was darkened and silent. ...
— Options • O. Henry

... made of bound sapling-bundles we took our way into the centre of the marsh. Here all was quiet and sombre; the marsh-world seemed to be lamenting over some ancient wrong. At times a rat would sneak out of the grass, slink across our path and disappear in the water, again; ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... claim my right in you, most hardly won, Of chaste fidelity upon the chaste: Hold me and hold by me, lest both should fall (O in high escalade high companion!) Even in the breach of Heaven's assaulted wall. Like to a wind-sown sapling grow I from The clift, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul, - Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome By all its clouds incumbent: O be true To your soul, dearest, as my life to you! For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot Of ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... have happened to save him. An indefinite prolongation of the situation is unthinkable. Wherefore things happened in this wise: Foster's hat fell off, and while the bear was investigating it the man gained a few yards and time enough to climb a stout sapling, growing upon the brink of a cleft in the country rock about a dozen feet wide and twice as deep. The tree was as thick as a man's leg at the base and very tall. Foster climbed well out of reach ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... which Henry now passed were yet wet, and every time he touched a bough or a sapling showers of little drops fell upon him. The patch of forest was dense and the trees large. The trees also grew straight upward, and Henry concluded at once that he would find a little distance ahead a ridge that sheltered ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... gosling: I think I shall have something to do with you. Come, you're a young foolish sapling, and must be bowed as I would ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... Andreitch, and pressed her lips to Glafira's hand also, entrusting to her, Glafira, her only son. Thus ended its earthly career a kind and gentle being, torn, God alone knows why, from its native soil and immediately flung aside, like an uprooted sapling, with its roots to the sun; it faded away, it vanished, without a trace, that being, and no one mentioned it. Those who grieved for Malanya Sergyeevna were her maid and Piotr Andreitch. The old man missed her silent presence. "Forgive—farewell, my patient one!" ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... balsam. But he found himself in somewhat of a difficulty. The white fir grew to a much larger tree than the Balm-of-Gilead he had known in the East, and the lower branches were tough. So he chopped down a young tree near, scarcely more than a sapling. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... would give her back teeth to look like Joyce. I never seen the like. Head up, back as straight as a pine sapling, eyes shining and hair like—like mist with sunlight in it. Gaston has taught her to speak like he does. You know he always kept his language up-to-date and stylish? Well, she's caught the trick now. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... woods. They were tired now and it was quite dark under the trees and they made slow progress. Once Clint tripped over a fallen branch and measured his length and once Amy ran head-on into a sapling and declared irately, as he rubbed his nose, that he would come back the next day with an axe and settle matters. At last, after a silence of many minutes: "We're doing it, I'll bet ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... determined to mark the spot, and walking to a thrifty ash sapling, I cut out of it three large chips, and ran off. I soon reached the river; soon crossed it, and threw myself deep into the cane-brakes, imitating the tracks of an Indian with my feet, so that no chance might be left for those from ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... looked doubtfully at the swaying sapling and wished he had gone to hear that preacher after all. It would never do to say he was afraid. The other fellow had done it so quickly. And it was no use to argue with Austin that his legs were shorter, his body more compact and so much easier to hold his balance. The idea of cowardice ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... a little way, and the Count and his companion were in the heart of the woods, the old sailor pointed out a slender young birch sapling, pulled up his horse, took out one of his pistols, and the bullet was lodged in the heart of the tree, ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac

... impulse—the impulse of Spring is in my feet; india-rubber seems to have come into the soles of my feet, and I would see London. It is delightful to walk across Temple Gardens, to stop—pigeons are sweeping down from the roofs—to call a hansom, and to notice, as one passes, the sapling behind St. Clement's Danes. The quality of the green is exquisite on the smoke-black wall. London can be seen better on Sundays than on week-days; lying back in a hansom, one is alone with London. London is beautiful in that narrow street, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... intellectual history of China.[6] The thoughts of men were turned toward deep and acute inquiry into the nature and use of things in general. This thinking resulted in a literature which to-day is the basis of the opinions of the educated men in all Chinese Asia. Instead of a sapling we now have a mighty tree. The chief of the Chinese writers, the Calvin of Asiatic orthodoxy, who may be said to have wrought Confucianism into a developed philosophy, and who may be called the greatest teacher of the mind, of modern China, Korea and Japan, is Chu Hi, who reverently ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... for the pleasures of long ago In youth's sweet halcyon time; When better beloved than the thoroughfare By multitudes trod were the woodlands, where Was never a path that I did not know, Nor thrifty sapling I dared ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... the earth's loosened mould The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives; Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold, The ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... an inward flame That shed its halo 'round her, Helen stood; Her fair hands folded like a lily's leaves Weighed down by happy dews of summer eves. Upon her cheek the color went and came As sunlight flickers o'er a bed of bloom; And, like some slim young sapling of the wood, Her slender form leaned slightly; and her hair Fell 'round her loosely, in long curling strands All unconfined, and as by loving hands Tossed into bright confusion. Standing there, Her starry eyes uplifted, she ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... decided to go home, having found nothing we cared to study. Just as we were taking leave of the spot I heard, nearly at my back, a gentle scolding cry, and glancing around, my eyes fell upon two small birds running down the trunk of a walnut sapling. A few inches above the ground one of the pair disappeared, and the other, still scolding, flew away. I hastened to the spot—and there I ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... sank low on the heaving back with his face buried in the flying mane. The rough bough rasped him rudely, but never shook his spirit nor his grip. Rearing, plunging and struggling, Pommers broke through the sapling grove and was out on the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to come here in thy madness to take my life! Hast thou not sense enough left to understand thou art but a sapling in my hands? What shall I do by thee? Shall I crush thee like a worm beneath my feet, or shall I let thee live ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... fast; The sons are older than the sires; Ere yet the tree to earth is cast, The sapling falls before the blast; Life's ashes keep their covered fires,— Its ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... in most instances conducted in companies. Deer and moose were sometimes caged by surrounding them, or trapped; but the gun was chiefly relied upon in their pursuit. There were various methods for catching the smaller animals. One of the sports of boyhood was to spring the rabbits or hares. A sapling, or young tree, was bent down and fastened to a stick slid into notches cut in trees, on each side of the path of the animal. The rabbit is wont to race through the woods at great speed, and along established tracks, which, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... false; I dare, like you, but cannot act; There is no force in this enervate arm. Blasted I was ere born—curse on my stars!— Got by some dotard in his pithless years, And sent a withered sapling to the world. Yet I have brain, and there is my revenge; Therefore I say again, these eyes have seen Thy blood at court, bright as a summer's morn, When all the heaven is streaked with dappled fires. And flecked with blushes like a rifled maid; Nay, by the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... the bounty of God, for which I shall be ever grateful—to have spent days in primeval forests, as grand, and far stranger and far richer than that of Lebanon and its cedars; amid trees beside which the hugest tree in Britain would be but as a sapling; gorgeous too with flowers, rich with fruits, timbers, precious gums, and all the yet unknown wealth of a tropic wilderness. And as I looked up, awestruck and bewildered, at those minsters not made by hands, I found the words of Scripture rising again and again unawares ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... alarmingly near his head and then cut leaves from a sapling beyond him. The young lieutenant halted the troop instantly, and Sergeant Whitley pointed to a house ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... him—i.e., educate him, discipline him. Whom did you say? A child. Take him early, in the morning of life, before bad habits, indolent habits, vicious habits are formed. It is easy to bend the sapling, but difficult to bend the grown tree. You said train a child, did you? Yes. But how? Why, in the way in which he ought to go—i.e., in some useful employment—in the exercise of good moral affections—pious duties towards God, and benevolent actions towards his parents, brothers, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... natural love of liberty, which we are even more apt to display in the grounds of other people than in those which we cultivate ourselves. Sometimes, to his inexpressible and fierce satisfaction, Mr. Stirn fell upon a knot of boys pelting the swans; sometimes he missed a young sapling, and found it in felonious hands, converted into a walking-stick: sometimes he caught a hulking fellow scrambling up the ha-ha! to gather a nosegay for his sweetheart from one of poor Mrs. Hazeldean's pet parterres; not unfrequently, indeed, when all the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... and quiltings. Dey'd have a big supper and a big dance at night. Us children would play ring plays, play with home-made rag dolls, or we'd take big leaves and pin 'em together wid thorns and make hats and dresses. We'd ride saplings, too. All of us would pull a sapling down and one would climb up in it near de top and git a good hold on it, and dey would turn it loose. It took a purty good holding to stay wid it, I can ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various

... unlikely to happen), I might conquer in this long struggle yet—I might—good God! what might I not do? But the thought is a brief madness; let me see things with sane eyes. Ruin will come, lay her axe to my fortune's roots, and hew them down. I shall snatch a sapling, I shall cross the sea, and plant it in American woods. Louis will go with me. Will none but Louis go? I cannot tell—I have no ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... climbing; it would have distressed Daisy if she had not been so intent upon his object; but as it was she strained her little head back to look at him, where he picked his way along at a precipitous height above her, sometimes holding to a bramble or sapling, and sometimes depending on his own good footing and muscular agility. In this way of progress, while making good his passage from one place to another, the Captain's foot in leaping struck upon a loosely poised stone or fragment of rock. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner

... moved here with the deep mellow note of the blackbird, poured out from beneath some low stunted bush; nor thrilled with the wild warblings of the thrush, perched on the top of some tall sapling; nor charmed with the blithe carol of the lark as we proceed early afield; none of our birds at all rivalling these divine songsters in realising the poetical idea of the "music of the grove;" while "parrots' chattering" must supply the place ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various

... grooved columnar bark, in the knot scars where branches had been discarded to send the main trunk towering above its fellows for light and air, in the wood rings, where a branch had broken and fallen away in the struggle. Why, this noble fellow had been a straggling sapling a thousand years before the birth of Christ! Before Darius led his conquering hosts from realm to realm, or ever Caesar knew life, or Christopher Columbus framed mast and spar to discover America, this sun-crowned monarch had ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... of cord he found in his pocket he made a trap—a noose suspended from a bent sapling—and caught a rabbit. This kept him in food for two days, then setting it again he broke the cord, and driven by hunger went forth, revolver in hand. He saw fresh deer tracks, and was lucky enough to find his ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... clearing those four acres, where the haystacks are now standing, till every tree and sapling that had grown there was down. We thought then the worst was over; but how little we knew of clearing land! Dad was never tired of calculating and telling us how much the crop would fetch if the ground could only ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... sloping, being bent into still greater inclination, the angle at which the two parts meet remains the same; or if the strain be put in the opposite direction, the bough will break long before it loses its angle. You will find it difficult to bend the angles out of the youngest sapling, if they be marked; and absolutely impossible, with a strong bough. You may break it, but you will not destroy its angles. And if you watch a tree in the wildest storm, you will find that though all its boughs are bending, none lose their character but the utmost shoots ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... hours later. The electric light—Billabong had its own plant for lighting—had been extended to the loft, and gleamed down on a perfect bower of green—bracken and coral ferns, the tender foliage of young sapling tops, Christmas bush, clematis and tall reeds from the lagoon—the latter gathered by Jim and Wally during their morning bathe. Rough steps had been improvised to lead from outside up to the main door of the loft, over which still dangled from ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... new stems, till at length a solitary tree becomes the parent of an extensive grove, appropriately characterized by the bard as "a pillared shade high overarched." And as they are thus continually increasing, seeming meanwhile almost exempt from the general law of decay, a tiny sapling borne to the spot in an infant's hand may come in time to cover thousands of feet of soil. Such a specimen is the noted Cubber Burr, growing on a picturesque little island in the river Nerbudda, near Baroach, in the province of Guzerat. This wonderful tree, named ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... occurred to him. He grasped one of the piston-like legs and sank his teeth into it. Yelling, Leitchman dragged him and sought to get free. Down he tumbled, also, tripped in his efforts. Simon grabbed at his hair, wound it around the trunk of a small sapling, and ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... hissed through the air just above her head, and stuck fast in the bark of a sapling. Noie sprang forward and plucked it out. It was a little reed, feathered with grasses, and having a sharp ivory point, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... Lyveden was grasping the slender trunk of a sapling which grew three feet to an inch from the new edge of the bluff. As he was, arm and all, at full length, it follows that from the breast-bone downwards the whole of him was over the cliff. Valerie was altogether in mid-air. She was directly suspended, with her back flat against ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... Jemmy Coates, a severe man. Because I could not learn his way of hilling corn, he flogged me naked with a severe whip, made of a very tough sapling; this lapped round me at each stroke; the point of it at last entered my belly and broke off, leaving an inch and a half outside. I was not aware of it until, on going to work again, it hurt my inside very much, when, on looking ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy

... above her denser. Soon there was no more grass, neither any moss; nothing but mast and the leaves of many autumns. Keeping always down the slope, and a little in advance of the sun, by mid-day she had run clear of the beech forest into places where there grew hornbeams, with one or two sapling oaks. There was tall bracken here, and dewy grass again for her feet. She rested herself, sat deep in shade listening to the murmur of bees in the sunlight and the gentle complaining of wood- pigeons in the tree-tops far toward the blue. She lay down luxuriously in the fern, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... of the fresh earth came up in his face. Now and then a gust of cold wind, sweet with unseen blossoms, smote him powerfully, bending his slender body before it like a sapling. A bird flashed past him with a blue dazzle of wings, and Jerome stopped and looked after it. It lit on the fence in front of the house, and shone there in the sunlight like a blue precious stone. The boy gazed at it, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... that a very valued friend of his in England should possess something from Ohio, had cut down a small sapling, which, when divested of its branches and otherwise trimmed, made a very formidable-looking bludgeon or cudgel, nearly four feet long. This being too lengthy for my trunks was tied to my umbrella, and on this day in the cars excited no little curiosity, several persons ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... which I shall be happy to carry away with me, that the Democracy, in the language of your own glorious Webster, "still lives"; lives, not as his great spirit did, when it hung 'twixt life and death, like a star upon the horizon's verge, but lives like the germ that is shooting upward; like the sapling that is growing to a mighty tree, and I trust it may redeem Massachusetts to her glorious place in the Union, when she led the van of the defenders of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... turn of the river a large flat meadow spreads out before one, and here the daffodils indeed 'dance' in their myriads. Just beyond is the bridge below Dunsford, and here are several tiny islands, each about large enough to hold a sapling and a tangle of overflowing green that trails into the water; and rushing by on each side, after falling over a little weir, the river dashes itself into a line of foam and races on under ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... south of the same lot there was a tract of mixed wood, sapling pines, maples, a few beeches, and farther down, nearer the brook, white ash and great yellow birches, with swamp maples, osier and alder. Here among the beeches, maples and pines, we at times heard a Theresa-bird. Theodora chanced to know something of this ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... was far among the ancient trees: There was no road, nor any wood-man's path, But the thick umbrage, checking the wild growth Of weed sapling, on the soft green turf Beneath the branches of itself had made A track which brought us to a slip of lawn, And a small bed of water ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... flew toward the spot, her heart beating wildly; she drew near, started back and caught at a young sapling for support; yes, there lay a motionless form among the fallen branches, that of a man, a gentleman, as she discerned by what she could see of his clothing; her heart told ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... returned MacGregor, in a low tone that growled like distant thunder—"like a boy, who thinks the auld gnarled oak can be twisted as easily as the young sapling. Can I forget that I have been branded as an outlaw—stigmatised as a traitor—a price set on my head as if I had been a wolf—my family treated as the dam and cubs of the hill-fox, whom all may torment, vilify, degrade, and insult—the very name which came to me from a long and ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Baltimore in January, made a good foundation for procedure. Judge Wandell pondered, and then Mr. Hummell pushed his side energetically, using tons of cold sarcasm and barrels of withering scorn. It was the sapling shielding the blasted oak, one of the youngest, and certainly the smallest counselor thundering forth in behalf of ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... height behind. But the breath of the woods was now a matter of small moment, for Silk and Satin and Nigger loafing at the sunny end of the stable pricked up their ears at her approach, and she knew that Roaring Bill was home again. She tied her horse to a sapling and drew nearer. The cabin ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... have told the strong red flame to be that of the shell-bark hickory—the best firewood—though dry sticks of some lighter wood had been used to kindle it. On each side of the fire a forked stick was stuck into the ground, with the forks at the top; and on these rested a fresh cut sapling, placed horizontally to serve as a crane. A two-gallon camp-kettle of sheet-iron was suspended upon it and over the fire, and the water in the kettle was just beginning to boil. Other utensils were strewed around. There was a frying-pan, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... growths and small Show them to men akin - Combatants all! Sycamore shoulders oak, Bines the slim sapling yoke, Ivy-spun halters choke Elms stout ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... throws, the line suddenly straightened, moved slowly backward at first, then swept rapidly round and round, or darted off in sharp short angles, with downward and forward plunges so quick and powerful as to make the stout sapling pole sway and bend, like a whipstock, in the steadying hands of the hunter. For four or five minutes he made no attempt to draw in his prize, but let the fish have full play to the length of its ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... old tree That sheltered in ages past The earth's noblest men and women From the fury of the blast, See that your sapling is rooted, And no borer at its base, And its boughs both strong and spreading, To ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... such words was almost like repeating a familiar lesson,—how often she had heard them on her father's lips,—and Sir Basil listened, while he looked at the golden head, at the white hand stretched out now and then to put aside a branch or sapling—listened with an amazement half baffled and wholly admiring. He had never heard a girl talk like that. He had heard such words before, often, of course, but they had never sounded like this; they seemed fresh, and sparkling with a heavenly dew, spoken so quietly, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... the base of a tree, the snow had been recently trampled and a fire smouldered. It was Spurling's first camp. Granger, having unharnessed and fed his huskies, taking his axe from his girdle, cut down a sapling fir and roused the dying embers to a blaze. The flames shot up, and, climbing the bark of the tree, crackled among the branches overhead. Unpacking his tallow he melted it in a cup. Before it was all drunk, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... a howly terror to whittle, an' he gets a Blue Baitche sapling 'bout three inches thick an' starts a-whittlin" long slivers, but laves them on the sthick at wan end till thayer all round ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... spears Have fenced him for three hundred years, While fell around his green compeers - Yon lonely thorn, would he could tell The changes of his parent dell, Since he, so grey and stubborn now, Waved in each breeze a sapling bough: Would he could tell how deep the shade A thousand mingled branches made; How broad the shadows of the oak, How clung the rowan to the rock, And through the foliage showed his head, With narrow ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... was confined to the cave he kept thinking about the rabbit he had seen and how he might catch one. Finally, he determined to make a spear. He broke down a thin, young sapling, stripped off its branches and in one end fastened a sharp stone. He then went to bed, for he wanted to be up early for his first ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison

... at Valley Forge, the owner of the house occupied by the General, a Quaker, strolled up the creek, and when not far from his mill, heard a solemn voice. He walked quietly in the direction of it and saw Washington's horse tied to a sapling. In a thicket near by was the chief, upon his knees in prayer, his cheeks ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... maple, is virgin timber. These trees have reached maturity; many are dead at the tops; all of them should have been cut long ago. They make too dense a shade for the seedlings to survive. Look at that bunch of sapling maples. See how they reach up, trying to get to the light. They haven't a branch low down and the tops are thin. Yet maple is one of our hardiest trees. Growth has been suppressed. Do you notice there are no small oaks or hickories just here? They ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... and hastened to the woods as I had been bidden. I looked in every direction for a tall, slender tree that would answer the purpose; and every time I stopped to examine a young tree, a taller and straighter sapling caught my ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various

... unintended and indirect. I was driving with him through the hammock, and we passed a bit of swamp. "There are some pretty flowers," he exclaimed; "I think I must get them." At the word he jumped out of the gig, bade me do the same, hitched his horse, a half-broken stallion, to a sapling, and plunged into the thicket. I strolled elsewhere; and by and by he came back, a bunch of common blue iris in one hand, and his shoes and stockings in the other. "They are very pretty," he explained (he spoke of the flowers), "and it is early for them." After that I ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... bar is bad, but a substitute that will work can be made if you have some strong string and a stout pocket knife. Cut two sections of a springy sapling, and bind them securely to the front fork, one on either side, and sufficiently long to reach just above the broken bar. Next tie securely a stout stick of proper length to the broken bar, and tie to this the end of the uprights. If properly done, this ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... at her quietly. If she had heard the bad news, why had she not gone away? The Baroness began to feel uncomfortable. She almost quailed before the pale girl of seventeen, slender as a birch sapling in her light frock. ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... Cross-Roads raiders, clad as "White-Caps," broke into the farmhouse one night, looted it, tore the old man from his bed, and compelling his wife, who was tenderly devoted to him, to watch, they lashed him with sapling shoots till he was near to death. A little yellow cur, that had followed his master on his wanderings, was found licking the old man's wounds, and they deluged the dog with kerosene and then threw the poor animal upon a bonfire they had made, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... bricks of which it is built being of that colour; though between them, at certain intervals, are placed others of a light red tinge, so that the tower is beautifully variegated. With respect to size, standing beside the giant witch of Seville, the Tangerine Djmah would show like a ten-year sapling in the vicinity of the cedar of Lebanon, whose trunk the tempests of five hundred years have worn. And yet I will assert that the towers in other respects are one and the same, and that the same mind and the same design are manifested in both; ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... shape ravisheth, if face to face she did appear, * And if she turn, for severance from her she slayeth sheer. Sun-like, full-moon-like, sapling-like, unto her character * Estrangement no wise appertains nor cruelty austere. Under the bosom of her shift the garths of Eden are * And the full-moon revolveth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... growing hickory. Eben Dudley, with all his sleight in butchering, and in setting forth the excellence of his meats, could not have left an animal hanging from the branch of a sapling, with greater knowledge of his craft. Thou seest, but a single meal is missing from the carcass, and that ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... effect is produced, it is because in some way there is a gain in completeness. On this condition everything is welcome,—without it, nothing. Thus, a broken, weedy bank is more picturesque than the velvet slope,—the decayed oak than the symmetry of the sapling,—the squalid shanty by the railroad, with its base of dirt, its windows stuffed with old hats, and the red shirts dependent from its eaves, than the neatest brick cottage. They strike a richer accord, while the others drone on a single note. Moonlight is always picturesque, because ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... different periods, with centuries between their growth, the latter exhibit every variety of age and form, from the decaying patriarchs of the forest, which have survived the blasts of some hundred years, to the infant sapling, which is only beginning to shoot under the shelter of a projecting rock or stem. Nor is the difference less remarkable in the room which is severally afforded for growth, in the artificial plantations and in the wilds of nature. The larches or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... for something with which to aid his chum. Nothing was at hand, but not far off he saw a small sapling growing. He made towards it, and by a supreme effort pulled the sapling up by the roots. Then he ran back and threw the top of the little tree towards ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill

... clear water Joe could see the cunning trap which had caused the death of Bill, and insured the captivity of himself and his brother. The crafty savages had trimmed a six-inch sapling and anchored it under the water. They weighted the heavy end, leaving the other pointing upstream. To this last had been tied the grapevine. When the drifting raft reached the sapling, the Indians concealed in the willows pulled hard ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... me, for Chagoo began to pull his rope with both paws, while Wanahon undertook the task of digging up by the roots the sapling to which I had ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... cocoa-nut sapling springs up with a beautiful curve like you see yonder, all alike, and no matter how the wind blows they keep to it, bending down and springing up again as if they were made of whalebone. They get it badly though when there is a hurricane; scarcely anything ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... the pole." He cut a white birch sapling, and swept off its twigs and leaves, then he tied the bunches together, and slung them over the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... me now, I soon will lead him where more light appears; When buds the sapling, doth the gardener know That flowers and fruit will deck the ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... the bridle as he said these words, Mr. Saunders led the pony down to the side of the road where grew a clump of high bushes, and, with some trouble, cut off a long, stout sapling. Ellen looked in every direction while he was doing this, despairing, as she looked, of aid from any quarter of the broad, quiet, open country. Oh, for wings! But she could not leave the Brownie ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... poor fellow, you are not more likely to catch one of those creatures than I am," he said. "We must try what we can do in some other way. We need not starve in the midst of abundance, that's very certain." He looked about carefully on every side for a young sapling or a tree of some flexible character of which he might form a bow, but he was too ignorant of their nature ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... he was going away, crying, he looked back over his shoulder at me, without a word of anger; and he walked up against a sapling, and staggered—and I laughed!—Great ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... no answer, but clung to the sapling, feeling as though she were going to die herself, and faintly hoping that she might do so. Her eyes wandered vaguely from the face of the messenger of evil, first up to the sky, then down to the cropped ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... one year to the vegetable world: he has his spring, his summer, his autumn, and winter,—but only ONCE. But the giant oaks round him go through a revolving series of verdure and youth, and the green of the centenarian is as vivid in the beams of May as that of the sapling by its side. "Mine shall be your spring, but not your winter!" ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... with such constant use the boy's strength was daily increasing until he was becoming a veritable young giant? With no small satisfaction he beheld the muscles of his arms tighten and stand out; and when he swung his axe and brought down a sturdy sapling it was with a glow of pleasure that he heard it crash to the ground. Certainly there were compensations in hard work! Moreover was not every French boy who was too young to serve in the army being a man at home? He was but doing what all his friends were. Nevertheless ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett

... feudal Scotch castle, they languished in the Buckinghamshire Eden—a freestone palace set among the woods that overhang the valley of the Thames. No breezes that blow could waft strength or vitality to those feeble lungs. At thirty the Duchess of Dovedale had lost all her babies, save one frail sapling, a girl of two years old, who promised to have a somewhat better constitution than her perished brothers and sisters. On this small paragon the Duchess concentrated her cares and hopes. She gave up hunting—much to the disgust of that Nimrod, her husband—in order ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... waited for them in Shakopee. McLeod's boat came along and they took that as they could not get their cart mended well. I could make about twenty miles a day walking with my oxen. I stayed one night in the big woods at Belle Plaine. The wolves were very thick, "so I hung my food on a sapling and leaned it against a tree. When I got to the crossing at Traverse, it was dark. I hollered. I could hear someone say, 'That must be Ellison.' Then they came over for me. The Hopkins' and Huggins' had the mission station there then. It did seem good ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... when a sharp, wild cry, as of some small animal in pain, struck his ear. Pushing away the brush at the left, he saw the cause—a little dark furry creature hanging to a sapling, as it seemed; and at his appearance the struggles to escape were redoubled, and the weakly cries of fear became more piteous. Arthur perceived that to the top of the sapling was fastened a steel snaptrap, clasping a forepaw in its cruel teeth, and that each convulsive effort to get free ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... Aim'd at the helm, his lance err'd; but Geraint's, A little in the late encounter strain'd, Struck thro' the bulky bandit's corselet home, And then brake short, and down his enemy roll'd, And there lay still; as he that tells the tale Saw once a great piece of a promontory, That had a sapling growing on it, slide From the long shore-cliff's windy walls to the beach, And there lie still, and yet the sapling grew: So lay the man transfixt. His craven pair Of comrades making slowlier at the Prince, When now they saw their bulwark fallen, stood; On whom ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... the sapling redwood, and brought it down with two blows of his axe. The girl seated herself beside him, helped him strip the trunk, their hands constantly touching, the man once or twice delaying her for one ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... of an island in the slough, and a sapling stood on it close to the side of that log, which was now entirely under water. I know'd further, that the water was about eight or ten feet deep under the log, and I judged it to be three feet deep over it. After ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... the first lesson cooked in the most correct style: a forked stick, with the fork uppermost, was driven into the ground near the glowing heap of wood ashes; then a long sapling was leant through the fork, with one end well over the coals; a doubled string, with the turkey hanging from it, looped over this end; the turkey turned round and round until the string was twisted to its utmost, and finally string and turkey ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... the party descended. Now and then one of the lads slipped, but there was always a rock or a sapling at hand which they could grasp to steady themselves and ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster

... hand that was raised against him. After a suitable number of flourishes and gesticulations that promised much more than he could perform, the Raven let the tomahawk quit his hand. The weapon whirled through the air with the usual evolutions, cut a chip from the sapling to which the prisoner was bound within a few inches of his cheek, and stuck in a large oak that grew several yards behind him. This was decidedly a bad effort, and a common sneer proclaimed as much, to the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... I clim' the fence, and slid down that sapling in the yard, there she laid on the porch on her shuck-bed a-shaking with the ager. And, Carats, she was a-looking right straight at me—yes, she was; so ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller

... sapling, springing out, began to beat them in a pretty manner, and the people taking to flight, the fool drove out of the town to his own village, whilst the sapling drubbed all soundly, and went in pursuit of them. Emelian, ...
— Emelian the Fool - a tale • Thomas J. Wise

... necessary to cut a small sapling about a foot or two in length. Its diameter should allow it to fit snugly inside the guard in front of the trigger, without springing the hammer. Its other end should now be supported by a very slight crotch, as shown in our illustration. Another sapling should next be procured, its length ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... Slasher gaffs - Spurs for cocks, with cutting edges. Slibovitz - A Bohemian schnapps. Slumgoozlin' - Slum or sham guzzling, humbug. Slumgullion - A Mississippi term for a legislator. So mit,(Ger.) - Thus with. Solidaten,(Ger. Soldaten) - Soldiers. Sonntag,(Ger.) - Sunday. Soplin - A sapling, young tree. Sottelet,(Ger. Gesattelt) - Saddled. Sound upon the goose - Bartlett, in his Dictionary of Americanisms, states that this phrase originated in the Kansas troubles, and signified true ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... the deepening dawn, giving an occasional "gee up, Rhody!" to the mare, and following the track of the harrow with much the same concentration of purpose as that displayed by his four-footed friend. He was strong for his years, lithe as a sapling, and as fearless of elemental changes, and as he walked meditatively across the bare field he might have suggested to an onlooker the possible production of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... shepherd we chanced to meet With a water bag, billy, and dog complete; He came too close to a knocked up steer, Who up a sapling made him clear. ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson

... that suffers more from crows and squirrels and other enemies than the wood-thrush. It builds as openly and unsuspiciously as if it thought the whole world as honest as itself. Its favorite place is the fork of a sapling, eight or ten feet from the ground, where it falls an easy prey to every nest-robber that comes prowling through the woods and groves. It is not a bird that skulks and hides, like the cat-bird, the brown-thrasher, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... light tap on the shoulder. Judge of my astonishment when Meg Merrillies stood before me, clad in the same wild gipsy garb in which she had warned the Laird of Ellangowan on Ellangowan's height! In her shriveled hand it would seem she held the very sapling which for the last time she had plucked from the bonny woods which had so long waved above her bit shealing, until driven thence by the timorous and weak-minded laird. With this she again touched me, and in a half inviting, half commanding ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... I told you: Only my son I feared; For I doubt the sapling courage That goes without the beard. But now in vain is the torture, Fire shall never avail; Here dies in my bosom The secret ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Beard's Town, where they were soon after put to death in the most shocking and cruel manner. Little Beard, in this, as in all other scenes of cruelty that happened at his town, was master of ceremonies, and principal actor. Poor Boyd was stripped of his clothing, and then tied to a sapling, where the Indians menaced his life by throwing their tomahawks at the tree, directly over his head, brandishing their scalping knives around him in the most frightful manner, and accompanying their ceremonies ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... walls, Holaf chopped a thirty-foot sapling, which we carried to the wall. A young Zerv swarmed up the pole, let down a rope to help the ascent of the others. I climbed the rough pole after him. I hadn't the athletic ability of these Zervs who seemed to like to climb ropes hand over hand. So over and down into the silent city we went, ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... a pebble into the bark of the tree. This is supposed to give them complete mastery over the child's life; if the tree is cut down, the child will die. After a birth the Maoris used to bury the navel-string in a sacred place and plant a young sapling over it. As the tree grew, it was a tohu oranga or sign of life for the child; if it flourished, the child would prosper; if it withered and died, the parents augured the worst for the little one. In some parts of Fiji the navel-string of a male infant is planted together with a coco-nut ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... bear the agony. And then, while we counted out the last seconds of the half, came a snap like that of a whip's lash, and the bowl of Richter's pipe lay smouldering on the grass. The noble had cut the stem as clean as it were sapling twig, and there stood Richter with the piece still clenched in his teeth, his eyes ablaze, and his cheek running blood. He pushed the surgeon away when he came forward with his needles. The Count was smiling as he put up his sword, his friends crowding around ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... shoes he wore, pitched them after his cap and coat, and leaped into the water. The current tugged hard at the end of the island, and Bessie and the uprooted sapling were being carried out farther and farther ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... of Cain, I seem to hear you ask, are men to dance, When all men are musicians. Tell me that, I hear you saying, and I'll tell you the name Of Samson's mother. But why shroud yourself Before the coffin comes? For all you know, The tree that is to fall for your last house Is now a sapling. You may have to wait So long as to be sorry; though I doubt it, For you are not at home in your new Eden Where chilly whispers of a likely frost Accumulate already in the air. I think a touch of ermine, Hamilton, Would be for you in your autumnal mood A pleasant ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... other side I had not seen a feather of any kind, or heard a note. Now the golden trillide-de of the wood thrush sounded through the silent woods. While looking for a fish-pole about half way down the mountain, I saw a thrush's nest in a little sapling about ten feet ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... nails," said Albert, "but I think I could gnaw down a good-sized sapling. Hold me, Dick, or I'll be devouring a ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... suffering sweetens the world in which they live, as a rose shut within a dull and prosy book imparts to its pages a fragrance born of summer and heaven; but such lives are the exception. The true destiny of the sons and daughters of earth is to grow within the garden of life as a sapling rather than as a sickly weed, developing timber rather than pith, and yielding finally to death, the sharp-axed old woodman, as the tree falls, to pass onward to new opportunities of power and service. The tree does not decay where it stands, nor does it often fall ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... aloofness of that wily bird. He was, strange to relate, some little distance from Bazelhurst territory, an actual if not a confident trespasser upon Shaw's domain. His horse, however, was tethered to a sapling on the safe side of the log, comfortably browsing on Bazelhurst grass. Randolph Shaw, an unseen observer, was considerably mystified by the actions of his ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... sharply with the pistols in his hands. Instantly the wood enveloped his phantom foes; a bracken or two nodded, a hazel sapling swung back and forward more freely than the wind accounted for. And at the same time there rose on the afternoon the wail of a wild fowl high up on the hill, answered in a sharp and querulous too-responsive note of the same ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... sheets for a starlit bed; I've traded my meat for a crust of bread; I've changed my book for a sapling cane, And I'm off to the end of the ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... nearly full grown. Jacopo was now in his element; he cut the pig open, eviscerated it, carried it down to the edge of the water, washed it, tied the legs together, and with his sword cut down a sapling ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... there an airthquake agitatin' this solitude?" he asked, steadying himself against a sapling, "or am I standing ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis



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