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Stem   Listen
verb
Stem  v. t.  
1.
To remove the stem or stems from; as, to stem cherries; to remove the stem and its appendages (ribs and veins) from; as, to stem tobacco leaves.
2.
To ram, as clay, into a blasting hole.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stem" Quotes from Famous Books



... Oxford. A pix of a much plainer description, but without its cover, of the metal called latten, was until recently preserved in the church of Enstone, Oxfordshire: the body of this was of a semi-globular form, supported on an angular stem, with a knob in the midst, and in appearance not unlike a chalice. The monstrance, in which the host was exhibited to the people, and which has been sometimes confounded with the pix[182-*], does not appear to have been introduced into our churches ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... There was the great consecrating, liberating fact! What claim had she to the ordinary human joys? What could the ordinary standards and expectations of life demand from her? Nothing!—nothing that could stem this rush of the heart to the beloved—the forsaken and suffering and overshadowed beloved. Her future?—she held it dross—apart from Oliver. Dear Sir James!—but he must learn to bear it—to admit ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... be got to do at Portsmouth more than anywhere else?' asked Mr Vincent Crummles, melting the sealing-wax on the stem of his pipe in the candle, and rolling it out ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... wheat and barley. Groves of very ancient olive-trees existed in the valley, and we halted beneath the first oak-trees that I had seen in Cyprus. These were wide- spreading, although not high, and I measured the girth of one solid stem—eighteen feet. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... "Olaf, great stem of kings, attend!" he heard a deep voice call; and, looking up, the dreamer seemed to see before him "a great and important man, but of a ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... one of the finest objects in nature. Its stem is tall and slender, without a branch; and at the top are seen from ten to two hundred coco-nuts, each as large as a man's head: over these are the graceful plumes, with their green gloss, and beautiful fronds of the nodding leaves. Nothing can exceed the graceful majesty of these ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... being in some points, or professing to be, an admirer of the author, "We are glad," he says, "that 'The Scarlet Letter' is, after all, little more than an experiment, and need not be regarded as a step necessarily fatal." And in order to save Mr. Hawthorne, and stem the tide of corruption, he is willing to point out his error. Nevertheless, he is somewhat at a loss to know where to puncture the heart of the offence, for "there is a provoking concealment of the author's motive," he confesses, "from the beginning to the end of the story. We wonder what he ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... city, where I determined to spend the winter. The next morning I went out, accompanied by Adolphe, to examine the lions of the place. By accident we got entangled in a crowd, which had collected in one of the principal thoroughfares, to witness a fire. While striving to stem my way through the heaving mass of human forms that hedged us in on every side, I suddenly missed my child. To find him among such a multitude, was, indeed, to look for a needle in a waggon of hay; yet I commenced the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... loose, and swinging out into the stream, came to anchor, and hoisted the signal for sailing. Every thing, it seemed, was on board but the crew; who in a few hours after, came off, one by one, in Whitehall boats, their chests in the bow, and themselves lying back in the stem like lords; and showing very plainly the complacency they felt in keeping the whole ship waiting for ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... Tatum, Lebanon, Ky.: "A nut tree with plenty of root, top cut back one third, promptly set, roots protected, stem wrapped, 4 inches, mulch applied, set either spring or fall, grows for me 99% of the time. Failures are not worth mentioning if the above ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... defiance and apology, and wondering in what manner a man who was used to meerschaums and gold-mounted briars would take the proffer of his worn-out favorite; and he knew, too, that all the others were watching. He placed the stem between his lips, and drew on it once ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... figure on the mountain and read Slade's intentions. Fifty men sprang to their feet and seized their rifles. But the guerrilla moved swiftly along the knife-edge of the ridge, obviously sure of his footing, and before any of them could fire, dropped down behind a little group of cedars. Every stem and bough was cased in a sheath of silver mail, but they hid him well. Dick, with his glasses, could not discern a single outline of the man behind the ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... old maxims, and is the slave of his inveterate party prejudices; he cannot perceive the signs of the times; instead of looking forward he looks back; he learns nothing and forgets nothing; with 'wise saws and modern instances' he would stem the rising tide of revolution. He lives more and more within the circle of his own party, as the world without him becomes stronger. This seems to be the reason why the old order of things makes so poor a figure when confronted with the new, why churches ...
— The Republic • Plato

... Eustace, pointing it out, "when the tide allows it; but when it's high, as it is now, such a roaring and seething scour sets through the channel between the rock and the mainland that no swimmer could stem it; and then I come up here, and look down from above upon it. It's the finest point on all our Cornish coast, this point we stand on. It has the widest view, the purest air, the hardest rock, the highest and most fantastic ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... The brain lies in the skull and the cord extends from the brain down through a tube in the middle of the {30} backbone. Of the brain many parts can be named, but for the present it is enough to divide it into the "brain stem", a continuation of the spinal cord up along the base of the skull cavity, and the two great outgrowths of the brain stem, called "cerebrum" and "cerebellum". The spinal cord and brain stem contain the lower or reflex centers, while the cerebellum, and especially the cerebrum, contain the "higher ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... of an idea the continuity and coincident distinctness of nature; or this,—vegetable life is always striving to be something that it is not; animal life to be itself.[1] Hence, in a plant the parts, as the root, the stem, the branches, leaves, &c. remain after they have each produced or contributed to produce a different status of the whole plant: in an animal nothing of the previous states remains distinct, but is incorporated into, and constitutes progressively, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... seemed to tremble from root to stem, and Rogero remarked that a moisture as of tears trickled down its bark, like that which exudes from a log placed on ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... seems as if nature hesitated whether to produce the mammal from the reptile or from the amphibian, as the mammal bears marks of both in its anatomy, and which was the parent stem is still a question. ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... with its thousands and thousands of twinkling lights, was a sight to be remembered. Even the little 'Sunbeam,' though somewhat overshadowed by the huge 'Bacchante,' displayed with good effect a row of coloured lights from stem to stern. ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... and finery; women, with food, passed constantly between the villages and the panic-stricken town; there were groups on the beach; and one of the schooners had been towed down the bay, and was lying, now, moored stem and stern opposite the great gate. They did nothing whatever active against us. They lay around and watched, as if in pursuance of a plan traced by a superior authority. They were watching for me. But when, by some mischance, they burnt the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... of the Savannah required the researchers to investigate the method of taking register dimensions in 1818. It was found that the customhouse rule then in effect measured length between perpendiculars above the upper deck, from "foreside of the main stem" to the "after side of the sternpost." The beam was measured outside of plank at the widest point in the hull, above the main wales. If a vessel were single-decked, the depth was measured alongside the keelson at main ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle

... field whence my plant had been removed, and I found in it many plants of V. thapsus and lychnitis as well as thirty-three plants intermediate in character between these two species. These thirty-three plants differed much from one another. In the branching of the stem they more closely resembled V. lychnitis than V. thapsus, but in height the latter species. In the shape of their leaves they often closely approached V. lychnitis, but some had leaves extremely woolly on the upper surface and decurrent like ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin

... me as a free gift. What a pipe it was, to be sure! It had a rude brass-wire cover to it, and a little coarse iron chain suspended from the bowl, with an iron splinter attached to loosen up the tobacco and pick your teeth with. The stem looked like the half of a slender walking-stick ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the fragrant stem of the cedar, my hand across my eyes. And in that moment of self-reproach, dread and contempt of the future, I too wished the most worthy and sincere ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris

... gallant stature, This of the rock, that of the flock that skim along the water, Like whistle shriek the blows they strike, as the torrent of the fell, So fierce they gush—the moor flames' rush their ardour symbols well. Clandonuil's[124] root when crown each shoot of sapling, branch, and stem, What forest fair shall e'er compare in stately pride with them? Their gathering might, what legion wight, in rivalry has dared; Or to ravish from their Lion's face a bristle of his beard? What limbs were wrench'd, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... all free souls their fate in shine foresee— Theirs is thy glory's fall! One look below the Almighty gave, Where stream'd the lion-flags of thy proud foe; And near and wider yawn'd the horrent grave. "And who," saith HE, "shall lay mine England low— The stem that blooms with hero-deeds— The rock when man from wrong a refuge needs— The stronghold where the tyrant comes in vain? Who shall bid England vanish from the main? Ne'er be this only Eden freedom knew, Man's stout defence from Power, to Fate consign'd." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... ends were now connected by a permanent bridge of boats. There were thirty-two of these barges, each of them sixty-two feet in length and twelve in breadth, the spaces between each couple being twenty-two feet wide, and all being bound together, stem, stern, and midships, by quadruple hawsers and chains. Each boat was anchored at stem and stern with loose cables. Strong timbers, with cross rafters, were placed upon the boats, upon which heavy frame-work ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... by the chill of night, after the sun shines on them straighten themselves all open on their stem, so my weak virtue became, and such good daring hastened to my heart that I began like one enfranchised:—"O compassionate she who succored! and thou courteous who didst speedily obey the true words that she addressed to thee! Thou by thy words hast so disposed ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... were alone together in this room,—the lamps burned low,—and she.. Niphrata, . . sang to me. Her voice was full, and withal tremulous,—her form, bent to her ebony harp was soft and yielding as an iris stem, her eyes turned upon mine seemed wonderingly to question me as to the worth of love! ... or so I fancied. The worth of love! ... I would have taught it to her then in the rapture of an hour!—but seized with sudden foolish fear she fled, leaving ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... player in the economy, has undertaken limited reforms in recent years to stem excess liquidity, increase enterprise efficiency, and alleviate serious shortages of food, consumer goods, and services, but prioritizing of political control makes extensive reforms unlikely. Living standards for the average Cuban, without access ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... and retirement when she was called to return to her mother, and even had she still been present, little would she have recked that when the jury had, without many moments' delay, returned a verdict of "Not Guilty," the prisoner received a strong, stem reprimand from Sir Edward, to whom he replied with a bow that had in it more ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... else—for he saw it so plainly when he visited their homes—and that was that with all their hard work, from the oldest to the youngest, with all their traffic in human life, stealing the bud along with the broken and severed stem—as a matter of fact, the Acme mills paid out to the people but very little money. Work as they might, they seldom saw anything but an order on a store, for clothes and provisions sold to them at prices that would make a Jew peddler ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... down the road. The reserve artillery is already in position at the north of this line, and uses spherical case with rapidity. Howard and his staff are in the thickest of the fray, endeavoring to stem the tide. As well oppose resistance to ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... text, literally, is, 'The root and the branches:' the root (and stem) denoting the eldest sons, by the recognised queen, succeeding to the throne; and the branches, the other sons by the queen and concubines. The former would grow up directly from the root; and the latter, the chief nobles of ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... date-groves, that they compared the region with the country about Damascus and reckoned it among their four earthly paradises. The propagation of the date-palm was chiefly from seed. In Chaldaea, however, it was increased sometimes from suckers or offshoots thrown up from the stem of the old tree; at other times by a species of cutting, the entire head being struck off with about three feet of stem, notched, and then planted in moist ground. Several varieties of the tree were cultivated; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... snake, under thy very nose I shall revive it.' And then that best of Brahmanas, the illustrious and learned Kasyapa, revived, by his vidya, that tree which had been reduced to a heap of ashes. And first he created the sprout, then he furnished it with two leaves, and then he made the stem, and then the branches, and then the full-grown tree with leaves and all. And Takshaka, seeing the tree revived by the illustrious Kasyapa, said unto him, 'It is not wonderful in thee that thou shouldst destroy my poison or that of any ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... grape-vine, in garden, by roadway, or on hillside, with its vine-stock, branches, blossom, and fruit, tells of the Father's ideal for men, a unity of life with Himself, and with each other. And every bunch of grapes hanging on one stem, with its many in one, tells of that same ideal, the concord of love with the ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... took up the cudgels against him in defence of the opposite principles, so that I was able to keep silent and wonder. He would fain deify passion, he said; and there were two passions which no human agency could stem or curb,—the passion for wealth, and the passion of love. Thereat he looked at me again, with so much eloquence of expression that I had to blush and ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... sneer Hath ofttimes shot chill palsy through the arm 40 Just lifted to achieve its crowning deed, And made the firm-based heart, that would have quailed The rack or fagot, shudder like a leaf Wrinkled with frost, and loose upon its stem, The wicked and the weak, by some dark law, Have a strange power to shut and rivet down Their own horizon round us, to unwing Our heaven-aspiring visions, and to blur With surly clouds the Future's gleaming peaks, Far seen across the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the seed seem smaller than at the coming of Christ. The infant in the manger at Bethlehem is like a mustard-seed—an atom scarcely perceptible in the hand, and lost to view when it falls into the earth. Yet there lay the seed of eternal life—thence sprang the stem on which all the saved of mankind shall grow as branches. Israel was feeble among the nations—a little child writhing in the grasp of imperial Rome; Judea and Galilee, with the heathenish Samaria between, constituted his beat throughout the brief period of his public ministry. The range ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... attainments. For some years he was a professor in a Southern military school. He has held the position of State Geologist of Indiana, and is the son of the celebrated Robert J. Owen, who founded the Communist Society at New Harmony, Indiana. Every sprig, leaf, and stem on the route suggested to Colonel Owen something to talk about, and he proved to be ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... the first part of our task, the first half of the story of the evolution of man in that wider sense in which we understand it here. We must add as the second half—as another and not less important and interesting branch of the science of the evolution of the human stem—phylogeny: this may be described as the science of the evolution of the various animal forms from which the human organism has been developed in the course of countless ages. Everybody now knows of the great scientific activity that was ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... reached the end of the slack there was a jerk that shook the bark from stem to stern. Then came the tug of war. There was no small whaleboat behind it, but a great, 195 ton bark, and this massive bulk the creature actually towed like a steam-tug towing ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... are pruned, bound, and tied in trim forms, and placed in rows, and though destitute of foliage, look so healthy and neat one can not but admire them. In a week or two, as if by magic, thousands of buds are swelling and bursting into leaf on every stem. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... ground, and she is making her way towards it. No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low beneath the water. She sits down on the grassy bank, against the stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool. She has thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gone by, and now at last she is come to see it. She clasps her hands round ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... of the floor was a mimic boat, crowded from stem to stern with little Pilgrim fathers and mothers trying to land on Plymouth Rock, in a high state of excitement and an equally high sea. Pat Higgins was a chieftain commanding a large force of tolerably peaceful Indians on the shore, and Massasoit ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... were made to stem the tide of crime, but it was a woman in Pretoria who devised a plan which would undoubtedly have struck terror to the hearts of many waverers had it been put to practice by the Boer leaders, after she had ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... of some rare exotic. He watches as the two little points of green leaf first spring above the soil. He shifts it from soil to soil, from pot to pot. He watches it, waters it, saves it through thousands of mischiefs and accidents. He counts every leaf, and marks the strengthening of the stem, till at last the blossom bud was fully formed. What curiosity, what eagerness,—what expectation—what longing now to see the mystery unfold in ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... denuded of its branches—close to the mouth of the trap. Next he cut three small pieces of stick in such a form that they made a trigger—something like the figure 4—on which the tree might rest. On the top of this trigger he raised the tree-stem, and on the end of the trigger, which projected into the trap, he stuck a piece of dried fish, so that when the bear should creep under the stem and touch the bait, it would disarrange the trigger, set it off, and the heavy stem would fall on ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... they kept on, staying only to camp on land at night. On the evening of the third day, as they approached a little island, much to their joy they discovered a herd of elk. A hunter who was put on shore wounded one, which immediately took to the water, but being too weak to stem the current it was ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... he was remote from all observation, he pressed into a little copse, and there reclined on the grass, leaning against the stem of a tree. The moon was now hidden from him, but by looking upward he could see its light upon a long, faint cloud, and the blue of the placid sky. His mood was one of ineffable peace. Only thoughts of beautiful ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... banks up the olives at the approach of the cold weather, and he knows, having seen it a thousand times by the edge of the country paths, how in summer this larva issues from the earth from a little round well of its own making; how it climbs a twig or a stem of grass, turns upon its back, climbs out of its skin, drier now than parchment, and becomes the Cigale; a creature of a fresh grass-green colour which is rapidly replaced ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... indeed a perilous climb, but that special providence which guards reckless lads befriended them, as it has thousands of their kind before and since. So, by climbing from one knotted, clinging stem to another, they were presently seated snugly in the ivied niche in the window. It was barred from within by a crumbling shutter, the rusty fastening of which, after some little effort upon the part of the two, gave way, and entering the ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... hours the pursuit continued. Occasionally a group of peasants gathered together and tried to stem the tide, but these were speedily overcome, the long spears bearing them down without their being able to strike a blow at the riders, and at the end of that time the insurgents were scattered over a wide extent of country, all flying for their lives. Hector now ordered trumpets ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... as Mr. Ruskin says, that they began by piercing holes in a wall of the form of a leaf, which developed, in the rose window, into the form of a star inside, and of a flower outside. Look at such aloft there. Then, by introducing mullions and traceries into the lower part of the window, they added stem and bough forms to those flower forms. But the two did not fit. Look at the west window of our choir, and you will see what I mean. The upright mullions break off into bough curves graceful enough: but these are cut short—as I hold, spoiled—by circular and triangular ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... dripping cliffs. You take it for a stonecrop—one of those weeds doomed to obscurity, and safe from being picked because they are so uninviting—and you pass it by incuriously. But about June it puts forth its power, and from the cushion of pale leaves there springs a strong pink stem, which rises upward for a while, and then curves down and breaks into a shower of snow-white blossoms. Far away the splendour gleams, hanging like a plume of ostrich-feathers from the roof of rock, waving to the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... about the main stem of the bush, close to which, upon a forked limb, rested the sparrow's nest, its dark coils reaching downward and its free neck and head waving regularly to and fro, was a monstrous black-snake, and in its jaws fluttered feebly one ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... conifers Sequoia and Taxodium. In all these cases the plants were first recognised by their leaves, and the accuracy of the determination was afterwards confirmed when the fruit, and in some instances both fruit and flower, were found attached to the same stem as the leaves. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... The Roman de la Rose is the Epic of old France. It is a profound book, under the form of levity, a revelation as learned as that of Apuleius, of the Mysteries of Occultism. The Rose of Flamel, that of Jean de Meung, and that of Dante, grew on the same stem. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... fleet rapidly hither and thither in their endless chase round this world. Deep and dark are the leaves, strong and unresisting; but even they have their tender points, and the young shoots are deliciously green and sweet scented. Look at its solid stem—so straight that every maiden passing by sighs as she attempts to imitate its superb carriage, and those very stems are coloured by a wondrous pinky hue oft-times; so pink, in fact, we pause to wonder if it be painted ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... grounds, where the eunuchs were waiting with huge rolls of red silk. These we all commenced to cut into narrow strips about two inches wide and three feet long. When we had cut sufficient Her Majesty took a strip of red silk and another of yellow silk which she tied round the stem of one of the peony trees (in China the peony is considered to be the queen of flowers). Then all the Court ladies, eunuchs and servant girls set to work to decorate every single tree and plant in the grounds with red silk ribbons, in the same manner as Her Majesty ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling

... my sight dwell and feast on the camalote flower amid its floating masses of moist vivid green leaves—the large alamanda-like flower of a purest divine yellow that when plucked sheds its lovely petals, to leave you with nothing but a green stem in your hand. To ride at noon on the hottest days, when the whole earth is a-glitter with illusory water, and see the cattle and horses in thousands, covering the plain at their watering-places; to visit some haunt of large birds at that ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... ranked then and ranks now as among the most expert in any period. The disastrous results of all his courage and ability in the attempt to stand against the deluge of paper money show how powerless are the most skillful masters of finance to stem the tide of fiat money calamity when once it is fairly under headway; and how useless are all enactments which they can devise against the ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... Hartford school were Federalists, of course. Theodore Dwight and Alsop, assisted by Dr. Hopkins, published in the local papers "The Political Greenhouse" and "The Echo,"—an imitation of "The Anti-Jacobin,"—"to check the progress of false taste in writing, and to stem the torrent of Jacobinism in America and the hideous morality of revolutionary madness." It was a place and time when, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... slender hand-vise, with a very powerful grip and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the shape of the handle. Nothing was simpler than, when the key was in the lock, to seize the end of its stem in this vise, through the keyhole, from the outside, and so lock the door. Previously, however, to doing this, I burned a number of papers on Simon's hearth. Suicides almost always burn papers before they destroy themselves. I also emptied some more laudanum ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien

... money." "All right," said the party, and they broke for their rooms to get their guns. I stepped out of the side door, and got under the pilot-house, as it was my favorite hiding place. I could hear every word down stairs, and could whisper to the pilot. Well, they hunted the boat from stem to stern—even took lights and went down into the hold—and finally gave up the chase, as one man said I had jumped overboard. I slipped the pilot $100 in gold, as I had both pockets filled with gold and watches, and ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... have a friend like Chatterton or Burns. And here is a being who certainly has more than talent, at once poet and artist in tendency, if not yet fairly developed,—a woman, too;—and genius grafted on womanhood is like to overgrow it and break its stem, as you may see a grafted fruit-tree spreading over the stock which cannot keep pace ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... Without suggesting cadaverousness, though high-boned and prominent, the cheeks fell away and met in a mouth, thin-lipped and softly strong. It was a face which advertised the dimmest trace of ancient Mongol blood, a reversion, after long centuries of wandering, to the parent stem. This effect was heightened by the delicately aquiline nose with its thin trembling nostrils, and by the general air of eagle wildness which seemed to characterize not only the face but the creature herself. She was, in fact, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... started or stopped quickly, the opening and closing of the throttle valve, i (Fig. 2), is effected by a single pulling movement upon the handle, I, and this draws out the valve horizontally. For this end the lever is pivoted upon the extremity of the valve stem, and ends in a bar engaging with a fork which acts as its fulcrum. This fork is cast in one piece with the plug, J, which closes the opening through which the valve is put in place, as shown in detail in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... essential difference between tree structure and the shaft structure in question; namely, that the marble branches, having no vital connexion with the stem, must be provided with a firm tablet or second foundation whereon to stand. This intermediate plinth or tablet runs along the whole facade at one level, is about eighteen inches thick, and left with little decoration as being meant for hard service. The small ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... touch upon her shoulder Lilly turned, spun, rather, under high tension, to encounter the well-bred hesitancy of an exceedingly slender woman, a very small head set on the stem of a long, gracile neck, something hauntingly familiar in the somewhat heart-shaped face and the far-apart eyes that were considerably younger than the white ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... of peace was lighted and brought to Bent Horn. Solemnly he pointed the stem to the north, the south, the east, and the west. Last of all, he lifted it towards the sun. Then he spoke. "How—how—how," he said slowly. Then in silence he smoked it, but only to take one long whiff, after which he held ...
— Timid Hare • Mary Hazelton Wade

... that I had at last determined to attempt the building of a sea-going boat, I was all impatience to make a beginning; and as I, further, came to the conclusion that the beginning—so far as the framing of the keel, stem, and sternpost was concerned—must be made aboard the wreck, where all the materials were at hand, we lost no time in again removing ourselves, with all necessary goods and chattels, to what remained of the Yorkshire Lass. Here I made a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... then wholly unknown, though now it makes a part of the most elementary instruction in botany.* (* Botany owes to Alexander Braun and Karl Schimper the discovery of this law, by which leaves, however crowded, are so arranged around the stem as to divide the space with mathematical precision, thus giving to each leaf its fair share of ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... are calculated for this exigency, and to prepare the young tradesman to stem the attacks of those fatal customs, which otherwise, if he yields to them, will inevitably send him the way of all the thoughtless tradesmen that ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... lever controlling the power, and instantly the engine responded so fiercely that the launch shivered from stem to stern. It bounded forward like a hound freed from the leash, the bow rising from the impulse, as if it would leap clear of the water, and seemingly shooting over it, like an iceboat driven ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... English ivy. It is, in fact, a small tree, which may attain a height of twenty or thirty feet, and is crowned with a number of large leaves, shaped like those of the sycamore. It bears clusters of small, pale yellow flowers, which contrast beautifully with the dark green foliage. The stem is ringed with the marks of the fallen leaves, very like the stems of the castor-oil plants which are often seen in ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... guard-house, with a rude verandah of bamboos and palm leaves, had been built between two of the immense spurs of the mighty tree, that shot out many yards from the parent stem like wooden buttresses, whilst overhead there was a sort of stage made of planks laid across the lower boughs, supporting a quantity of provisions covered with tarpaulins. The sentries in the back ground with their glancing arms, were seen pacing on their watch; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various

... the roots Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale Of all the good it does. Thou halt not left Thyself without a witness, in the shades, Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak By whose immovable stem I stand and seem Almost annihilated—not a prince, In all that proud old world beyond the deep, E'er wore his crown as loftily as he Wears the green coronal of leaves with which Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... Roxburgh recommends the leaves and young pods as an exquisite spinach; the plant is shy of frost.") The wood is soft, and light in weight and colour. It is by no means a handsome tree. It grows about twenty feet high. Generally two or three are huddled together, as though growing from one stem. Those I saw were nearly all dead. They grow in the little water channels. The ants here, as in nearly the whole of Tropical Australia, build nests from four to six feet high—in some other parts I have known them twenty—to escape, I suppose, from the torrents of rain ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... the laxity of political morals. This is slipping the cable that the ship may swing from her anchorage and drift with the tide; any minnow may float with the current, but it requires a strong fish to stem and progress against the stream. A man, to brave obloquy and public scorn, requires strong moral courage; but when his judgment convinces him that he is right, and when he feels that his intentions are pure, conscientious, and sincere, this may ruffle ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... been truer. I signaled back to Olson: "Let 'er go!" The U-33 trembled from stem to stern as the torpedo shot from its tube. I saw the white wake leap from her bow straight toward the enemy cruiser. A chorus of hoarse yells arose from the deck of our own craft: I saw the officers stand suddenly erect in the boat that was approaching ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of the Guion house it was considered as the beginning of a glorious epoch; but, looking back now, Olivia could see how meager the results had been. Since those days a brilliant American society had sprung up on the English stem, like a mistletoe on an oak; but, while Henry and Charlotta Guion would gladly have struck their roots into that sturdy trunk, they lacked the money essential to parasitic growth. As for Victoria Guion, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... I prepare a pretty capaceous Bolt-head AB, with a small stem about two foot and a half long DC; upon the end of this D I put on a small bended Glass, or brazen syphon DEF (open at D, E and F, but to be closed with cement at F and E, as occasion serves) whose stem F should be about six or eight inches long, but the bore of it not above half ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... and valuable a letter you have most kindly sent me! The case of Baronne Prevost (199/1. See "Variation under Domestication," Edition II., Volume I., page 406. Mr. Rivers had a new French rose with a delicate smooth stem, pale glaucous leaves and striped flesh-coloured flowers; on branches thus characterised there appeared "the famous old rose called 'Baronne Prevost,'" with its stout thorny stem and uniform rich-coloured double flowers.), with its different shoots, foliage, spines, and flowers, will be ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... astonishing invention displayed, and yet an invention of an almost childish kind. There was a clump of pink blooms, such as a child might have amused itself with cutting out of paper; here rose tall spires, with sharp-cut, serrated leaves at the base; but the blue flowers on the stem were curiously lipped and horned, more like strange insects than flowers. And then the stainless freshness and delicacy of the texture, that a touch would soil! These gracious things, uncurling themselves hour by hour, blooming, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... into the thicket, the sunshine seemed really to become green, and the contrast between the bright glow poured on the lawn and the black shadow of the brake made an odd flickering light, in which all the grotesque postures of stem and root began to stir; the wood was alive. The turf beneath him heaved and sank as with the deep swell of the sea. He fell asleep, and lay still on the grass, in the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... rule in Old English, as in Modern English, is, that voiced consonants have a special affinity for other voiced consonants, and voiceless for voiceless. This is the law of Assimilation. Thus when de is added to form the preterit of a verb whose stem ends in a voiceless consonant, the d is unvoiced, or assimilated, to t: settan, to set, sette (but treddan, to tread, has tredde); sl:pan, to sleep, sl:pte; drencan, to drench, drencte; cyssan, to kiss, cyste. See ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... almost seem to be themselves a part of the snow-storm with which they arrive. No matter what they are doing: running along the street before an approaching sleigh; standing on a wayside fence; jumping up from the ground to snatch the stem of a weed, and then setting at work hurriedly to gather the seeds they have shaken down; or, best of all, skimming over the snow in close order, their white breasts catching the sun as they veer this way or that,—whatever ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... of the Happy Land. They now lived almost out of doors, with the dwarf as their faithful attendant and constant companion. The little ones never wearied of his company, he could entertain them in so many different ways. He showed Darby how to make whistles of the hollow bore-tree stem, and a huge kite, with a lion painted on its surface, the Union Jack flying at its head, and an old map of Africa cut into strips to form the tail. Darby considered this a masterpiece, and laid it carefully by until he could display it to his father in its ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... You see that gale blew from the south for about forty-eight hours and got the sea up running north. And then, before the sea had time to subside, the wind chopped round and now blows from due east. And the ship is rolled from side to side by the waves and tossed from stem to stern by the wind. And between the two actions she is regularly twisted, and that is the reason why the sailors call this sort of thing a 'twister.' And this is not the worst of it. This east wind will be sure to blow up a snowstorm. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... to Rufaiel, and begged him to go to the Pasha and obtain relief for them and their families. He said he would think about the matter. So after they had gone, he called the chief jeweller and pipe maker of the city, and ordered them to make a long pipe of exquisite workmanship, with a stem of rosewood carved and inlaid with pearls, a bowl of pure gold set with diamonds, and a mouth-piece of gold and amber. Then he went one day to call on the Pasha, and made him a present of this elegant ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... upon the Volga, had centered in the Northwest near the Baltic, their vigorous branches mingled more or less with other Asiatic races, stretching here and there in the North, South, and East. The Russian Slavs, as the parent stem is called, were distributing themselves along a strip of territory running north and south along the line of the Dnieper; while the terrible Turks, and still more terrible Tatar tribes, hovered chiefly about the Black, the Caspian, and the Sea of Azof. No dream ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... his slow way, holding his pipe three inches from his face while he eyed Peppajee quizzically. "Don't pay to have any truck with 'em while you feel that way about it." He smoothed down his snow-white beard with his free hand, pushed the pipe-stem between his teeth, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... which, growing in sandy places, contains in its leaves an ample supply of fresh water, is to be found here. It resembles the banana or plantain, in its broad leaves, springing immediately from the stem, but attains a much greater height, and is altogether very striking and singular ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... close as he could to Villaret's flagship, the Montagne (120). Bowen brought her so close round the Frenchman's stern that the tricolour ensign flapped against her shrouds, and as she passed she raked her gigantic enemy from stern to stem with her larboard broadside to such effect that the Montagne lost 300 killed and wounded before she could make reply. Six British ships broke through the line and engaged to leeward; the others remained to windward, the captains perhaps ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... one's back upon; set at naught, slap in the face, slam the door in one's face. be at cross purposes; play at cross purposes; counterwork^, countermine; thwart, overthwart^; work against, undermine. stem, breast, encounter; stem the tide, breast the tide, stem the current, stem the flood; buffet the waves; beat up against, make head against; grapple with; kick against the pricks &c (resist) 719; contend &c 720; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... tightly closed, her features rigid, but the nervous twitching of her fingers as she bent the green stem back and forth, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... some of the beautiful golden apples, which he ate for his supper. At midnight the wind began to rise and a rustling sound was heard at the foot of the tree. The youth looked down and beheld a long thick serpent beginning to crawl up the tree. It wound itself round the stem and gradually got higher and higher. It stretched its huge head, in which the eyes glittered fiercely, among the branches, searching for the nest in which the little children lay. They trembled with terror when they saw the hideous creature and ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... doubtless it was to see Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. 530 Here lay two sister twins in infancy; There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep; Within, two lovers linked innocently In their loose locks which over both did creep Like ivy from one stem;—and there lay calm 535 Old age with snow-bright ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... on a spray of gardenia, which had dropped from the bouquet of some predecessor. To prevent herself from falling downstairs, she caught hold of the stem of a brazen chandelier fixed in the balustrade. It saved her, but she gave her arm a most painful wrench, and leant limp and white against the railing of the stairs. Lady Helen turned at Agnes's exclamation, but before she could ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... made just large enough to receive it. The soap dish and the brush tray were also placed in sockets cut to receive them in the marble slab, which formed the upper part of the wash stand. The looking glass was round, and was screwed to the wall by means of a stem and a ball or socket joint, in such a manner that it could be set in any position required, according to the height of the observer, and yet it could not by any possibility fall from its place. There were very few pegs or pins for hanging clothes upon, because, when ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott

... to make of Flossy at first, and Briton used to roll it all round the deck with his big nose; but Flossy rather liked this. But one day, when Briton tried to lift it up by the tail, it struck him a slap with its flipper that could be heard from stem to stern. ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables

... showing that at this place was once a native town. Whenever land is cleared along here, this tree springs up all over the ground. It grows very rapidly, and has great leaves something like a sycamore leaf, only much larger. These leaves growing in a cluster at the top of the straight stem give an umbrella-like appearance to the affair; so the natives call them and an umbrella by the same name, but whether they think the umbrella is like the tree or the tree is like the umbrella, I ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... a massive chair, the fingers of his right hand lightly touching those of his left, listening attentively. Richard Seaton strode up and down the room before his friend, his unruly brown hair on end, speaking savagely between teeth clenched upon the stem of his reeking, battered briar, brandishing ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... The stem of the tree rose over seventy feet before throwing out a single branch. It was smooth, moreover, offering neither knot nor excrescence for a foothold. For all this Saloo could have climbed it, had he been in proper strength and condition. But he was not so. He was still weak from the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... most serious and interesting talk of his own place in the history of the past twelve months. He described his efforts to avert the war, how he had carried the effort to the point of rupture with his party, then came the Maine incident, and, finally, a declaration of war over all efforts to stem the tide. Then he spoke of Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philippines, related at some length the correspondence he had had with the Paris Commission, how he had been gradually made to feel in his struggling for the right ground that first Luzon and finally all the Philippines must be kept. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... with affright the encreasing disorder. For a moment she thought that she could stem the torrent, and that Raymond could be induced to hear reason from her.—Vain hope! The moment of her influence was passed. He listened with haughtiness, replied disdainfully; and, if in truth, she succeeded in awakening his conscience, the sole effect was that he ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... shore, but her bow had been turned into the very eye of the sea, and one could almost feel the tension of her steel muscles as she seemed to spring to the encounter. The billows that split themselves in quick succession on her sharp stem burst into shooting geysers three hundred ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... of the empire were not far distant, requested their new sovereign, that they might be permitted to hazard the passage of the river. With the assistance of his wisest officers, Jovian endeavored to check their rashness; by representing, that if they possessed sufficient skill and vigor to stem the torrent of a deep and rapid stream, they would only deliver themselves naked and defenceless to the Barbarians, who had occupied the opposite banks, Yielding at length to their clamorous importunities, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... his pocket a worn leather case, which he opened, disclosing a small, browned clay bowl of the kind workmen use; and, fitting it with a red stem, he filled it with a dark and sinister tobacco from a pouch. "Always my pipe for me," he said, and applied a match, inhaling the smoke as other men inhale the light smoke of cigarettes. "Ha, it is good! It is wicked for the insides, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... 1918 great changes took place in the personnel of the army in Palestine. The early success of the great German offensive in France had caused the "S.O.S." to be sent out for other and more men to stem the tide of advance, and all the other British fronts were denuded of white troops, in whose place, so far as Palestine was concerned, came Indians, many of whom had only a few months' service to their credit. The infantry of the 52nd Lowland Division, who apparently had not done sufficient ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... curiosity with a view of the icy mass into which we were penetrated. I waited, indeed, until the crew were come aft again from looking, and my friend crept timidly at my shoulder; but when we reached the stem, there was one of the hands, a little soberer than his fellows, sprawled over the bulwarks, and staring with all his eyes into the green lift of the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... shores of Crete on a Greek schooner which was engaged in conveying from Canea to Candia a detachment of British recruits much the worse for rum. But that voyage on the Chutututch will linger longest in my memory. From stem to stern she was packed with yellow, half-naked, perspiring humanity—Siamese, Laos, Burmans, Annamites, Cambodians, Malays, Chinese—journeying, God knows why, to ports whose very names I had never before heard. They lay so thick beneath the awnings that ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... Beheld I sad the Saviour's tree 25 Until I heard that words it uttered; The best of woods gan speak these words: "'Twas long ago (I remember it still) That I was hewn at end of a grove, Stripped from off my stem; strong foes laid hold of me there, 30 Wrought for themselves a show, bade felons raise me up; Men bore me on their shoulders, till on a mount they set me; Fiends many fixed me there. Then saw I mankind's Lord Hasten with mickle might, for He would sty[4] upon me. There durst ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous

... new one? It's a fair sickener to think of all the diseases there are—measles and softenin' of the brain, and 'eaving stummicks and what not. What made you do it? That's what I want to know." He was getting angry. He pointed the stem of his pipe at us accusingly. His small eyes shone. "It's fair sickening," he muttered. "I've never took to doctors, ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... thing was motherhood and the maternal side of the family,—mother, daughter, granddaughter, that was the fixed stem continuing with certainty. Father, son, grandson, were only the leaves, which existed only until the autumnal wind of death tore them away, to hurl them into the abyss of oblivion. In that epoch no one said, 'I am the son of such a father and the grandson of such a grandfather,' but 'I am ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... spade, the rake, and all that—love flowers nevertheless. For such these plants are more than a relief. Observe my Oncidium. It stands in a pot, but this is only for convenience—a receptacle filled with moss. The long stem feathered with great blossoms springs from a bare slab of wood. No mould nor peat surrounds it; there is absolutely nothing save the roots that twine round their support, and the wire that sustains it in the air. It asks no attention beyond ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... too, for the matter of that, were greatly interested in the elegant steam yacht, and they took great pleasure in visiting every part of the vessel from bow to stem. Captain Barforth did all in his power to make all on board the Rainbow feel at home and whenever the boys visited the engine room they were met with a ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer

... theory of their origin is agreeable to what we are told of the rustic manners of the early Romans, and it is in some degree countenanced by the fashion in which many of the ancient candelabra are made. Sometimes the stem is represented as throwing out buds; sometimes it is a stick, the side branches of which have been roughly lopped, leaving projections where they grew; sometimes it is in the likeness of a reed or cane, the stalk ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... ship called Ellidi, which pulled fifteen oars on either board; it ran up high stem and stern, and was strong-built like an ocean-going ship, and its ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous

... fork with one hand to stoop for a head of timothy that had escaped the scythe, and he put the stem of it between his teeth, where it moved up and down, and whipped fantastically about as he talked, before he answered, "You ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... stripped of their leaves; the long grass was bowed to the earth; the waters were whirled in eddies out of the little rivulets; birds, leaving their nests to seek shelter in the crevices of the rocks, unable to stem the driving air, flapped their wings and fell upon the earth; the frightened animals of the plain, almost suffocated by the impetuosity of the wind, sought safety and found destruction; some of the largest trees were torn up by the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... blew the exclamation out around his pipe-stem with a gush of smoke. "A few fanatics hate us, and a few merchants who lost money when we replaced this primitive barter economy of theirs, but nine-tenths of them have benefited enormously from ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... more minute detail than the Greek prototypes. Friezes and bands were commonly ornamented with the foliated scroll or rinceau (aconvenient French term for which we have no equivalent). This motive was as characteristic of Roman art as the anthemion was of the Greek. It consists of a continuous stem throwing out alternately on either side branches which curl into spirals and are richly adorned with rosettes, acanthus-leaves, scrolls, tendrils, and blossoms. In the best examples the detail was modelled ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... the water off the sage leaves she had been brewing in a tin basin, carefully fished out a stem or two, and made Ward drink every bitter drop. Then she covered him to the eyes and hardened her heart against his discomfort, while she kept the handkerchief cool on his head and between times swept the floor with a carefully dampened broom and wiped the dust off things ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... to fear, it was a sensation he knew not; but prudence was much more requisite in this instance than any especial degree of courage. As is always the case on board a man-of-war, especially when lying in port, where the escape to the shore is easy, sentinels were placed at stem, stern and waist of the English ship, at all hours, pacing their allotted round of the deck, and keeping watchful guard over every avenue of exit ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... it lizard, crocodile, alligator, or tortoise, lays its body on the ground when not actually carrying it. And these have each four fat legs. Contrast the flamingo, which, having only two, and those like willow wands, tucks up one of them and sleeps poised high on the other, like a tulip on its stem. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... transmitted from one generation to another, renewed and invigorated by interbreeding. Finally, at the last stage of its growth, it springs out of the ground and develops magnificently, blooming the same as ever, and producing the same fruit as on the original stem. Modern cultivation and French gardening have pruned away but very few of its branches and blunted a few of its thorns: its original texture, inmost substance, and spontaneous development have not changed. The soil of France and of Europe, however, broken up by revolutionary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... into a berth at the foot of Wall-street, and knotted our old ship, stem and stern, to the pier. But that knotting of her, was the unknotting of the bonds of the sailors, among whom, it is a maxim, that the ship once fast to the wharf, they are free. So with a rush and a shout, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... of a Christian, printed in London in 1623, and measuring 4-3/4 by 2-3/4 inches, is ornamented with a single flower spray, with buds and leaves. The flower is a double rose with curving stem, one large half-opened bud and one smaller, and a few leaves, all worked in tent-stitch. The spray rises from a small bed of grass, out of which grows a small blue flower. In the upper right-hand corner is a small blue cloud. The same design is on both sides. The back is divided into ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport

... before sunrise the next morning, in order to take advantage of the flood tide, which waits for no man. Our preparations for the cruise were made the previous evening. In the way of eatables and drinkables, we had stored in the stem of the Dolphin a generous bag of hard-tack (for the chowder), a piece of pork to fry the cunners in, three gigantic apple-pies (bought at Pettingil's), half a dozen lemons, and a keg of spring-water—the last-named article we slung ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... spreaders grumbling," answered Mr. Best. Then he went into his home and Levi trundled the wheelbarrow to a building with a tar-pitched, penthouse roof, which stuck out from the side of the mill, like a fungus on a tree stem. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... double key—a long, slender stem, with a key at each end—one about the size which opens an ordinary room door; the other as small, almost, as ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... too, held meetings, and formed agricultural protection societies in every part of the United Kingdom. It was, in truth, evident to every man that a change was coming; and while the mass hailed the prospect with delight, the great landowners, witli some exceptions, stretched every nerve to stem the onward progress of free-trade principles. The hopes of the one party, and the fears of the other, were heightened by the quarrel with America concerning the Oregon territory. It was thought by all that the abolition ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... going together over the ship, Captain," said the senior partner; and the three men started to view the perfections of the Nan-Shan from stem to stern, and from her keelson to the trucks of ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... law, until it removes God far away, and creation seems to move on without His interference, has been the cause:—in other cases philanthropic pity, musing on the sad catastrophes which daily occur, when the happiness and lives of innocent human beings are for ever destroyed by the stem unyielding action of nature's laws, leading the heart to doubt God's nearness, and the fact of a special Providence:—in other cases again, the study of the human mind in history, and the perception of the manner in which the gradual growth of knowledge seems to lessen the region of the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... finest quality. Full 14-karat gold filled, 20 year case, fitted with Elgin or Waltham gilded works; full jeweled top plate, and all modern improvements; hunting cases; stem wind and stem set. An elegant and reliable time-keeper at a low price. Guaranteed for 20 ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... accustomed to the pervading silence, Domini began to hear the tiny sounds that broke it. They came from the trees and plants. The airs were always astir, helping the soft designs of Nature, loosening a leaf from its stem and bearing it to the sand, striking a berry from its place and causing it to drop at Domini's feet, giving a faded geranium petal the courage to leave its more vivid companions and resign itself to the loss of the place it could no longer fill with beauty. Very delicate was ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... the form of a bow, so that in working, the branches of the young tree may not be injured. The mode of working the transplanter is as follows: the cylinder is placed on the ground with the tree in the center of the cylinder. This can be done by allowing the stem of the young tree to pass through the slot in the cylinder. Then, by means of the cross handle, the cylinder is turned and pressed into the soil until the upper end is level with the surface of the ground. Then, by lifting ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs

... of the month came a rain—a cold, bitter, driving storm that raged for three days and started a drift that the cattlemen could not stop. Arrayed in tarpaulins the cowboys went forth, suffering, cursing, laboring heroically to stem the tide. The cattle retreated steadily before the storm—no human agency could halt them. On the second day Norton came into the Circle Bar ranchhouse, wet, disgusted, but ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... quicken the work which was going on within her; he was one of those rare men who can be, even in such a case, content to wait. He would as soon have thought of digging up a seed to see whether he could not quicken its slow development of root and stem as of interfering in any way with Erica. He came and went, taught her Greek, and always, day after day, week after week, month after month, however much pressed by his parish work, however harassed by private troubles, he came to her with the genial sympathy, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... on our way called to see an enormous wych-elm tree in Sharpham Park, the branches of which were said to cover a quarter of an acre of ground. It was certainly an enormous tree, much the largest we had seen of that variety, for the stem was about sixteen feet in girth and the leading branches about eighty feet long and nine feet in circumference. The Hall stood on an eminence overlooking the river, with great woods surrounding it, and the windings of the river from this point looked like a number of meres ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... seeks to stem illegal migration of tens of thousands of North Koreans escaping famine, economic privation, and political oppression; North Korea and China dispute the sovereignty of certain islands in Yalu and Tumen rivers and a section ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... objective - to stem the progressive encroachment on and loss of wetlands now and in the future, recognizing the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands and their economic, cultural, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... Commons owe That wisdom which their actions show, Their principles from ours springs, Taught, ere the deel himself could dream on't, That of their illustrious house a stem on't, Should rise the best ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... anxious to stem the tide of his reproaches that she scarce knew what she was saying, "which appeals to the soft side of every woman's heart, high or low, rich or poor, civilized or ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... among those who were taken into service at the commencement of the season, as being perfectly free from disease. I think it most important that the Home Government should do all in their power by enforcing the provisions of the Passengers' Act, and by causing these facts to be widely circulated, to stem this ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... came to where a beaten track wound into the woods, and, taking this, they doubled back upon their previous course, and began to ascend the wooded slope of the mountains. In a little while the path grew very straight and steep, and the knight was forced to dismount and leave his horse tied to a tree-stem. They knew they were on the right track: for they could see the marks of pointed shoes in the soft clay and mingled with them the cloven footprints of the pigs. Presently the path became still more abrupt, and they knew by the ending of the cloven foot-prints that the thieves were ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats

... serious tone. "I will tell thee the history of this Muck, and then I am sure thou wilt ridicule him no more. But first, thou shalt receive thy allowance." The allowance was five-and-twenty lashes, which he took care to count only too honestly. He thereupon took a long pipe-stem, unscrewed the amber mouthpiece, and beat me more severely than he had ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... not in my time seen any one advanced by fortune to any extraordinary condition who has not presently had genealogical titles added to him, new and unknown to his father, and who has not been inoculated into some illustrious stem by good luck; and the obscurest families are the most apt for falsification. How many gentlemen have we in France who by their own account are of royal extraction? more, I think, than who will confess they are not. Was it not a pleasant passage of a friend of mine? There ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... past three o'clock, and as, with the rising tide, the gale swelled once more to its former violence, the remnants of the barque fast yielded to the resistless waves. The cabin went by the board, the after-parts broke up, and the stem settled out of sight. Soon, too, the forecastle was filled with water, and the helpless little band were driven to the deck, where they clustered round the foremast. Presently, even this frail support was loosened from the hull, and rose ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... information of such of our Country men as might pass these Streights. At 7 o'Clock a light breeze sprung up at South-South-East, with which we got under sail. At 1 A.M. Anchor'd again, having not wind to stem the Current which we found to run 3 Knotts; at 2 o'Clock we weighed again, but, finding that we lost ground, we were obliged to Anchor in 18 fathoms, the Island Pulo Morack, which lies close under the Shore 3 Miles ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... river there, Long glittering pearly fingers flash Upon the warm bright air: Why, 'tis the heavenly palm, The Christian tree, Whose budding is a psalm Of natural piety: Soft silver notches up the smooth green stem— Ah, Spring must follow them, It ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... family; and he saw a lady seated near the rudder-head, who might be the owner of the name. He looked about the deck,—what of it could be seen,—though most of it was covered by the house, extended nearly from stem to stern, as on the Guardian-Mother. Everything was as neat and trim as though she had been a man-of-war. He could see two twelve-pounders on the side where he was; and he concluded there were two more ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... leaders, but they have influence and are using it. The old-style Negro politicians are no match for them, and the crowd of office-holders are rather bewildered. Strong measures are needed. Educated men of earnestness and ability might stem the tide. And I believe I know one such man. He spoke at a big meeting last night at the Metropolitan church. His ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Thurston's arrival, a rose had been placed upon the carpet, close to Josephine's feet; and during a pause in the conversation, while apparently in an abstracted mood, she leaned forward, took it up by the stem, and began slowly to pick it to pieces, scattering the leaves all ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... the architecture with the work of Nature, and bestow upon it those circumstances of colour and form which are universally beloved by the eye of man. So far as this is done, to the extinction of the true characters of the architecture, it is picturesque, and the artist who looks to the stem of the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar, is carrying out in more daring freedom the debased sculptor's choice of the hair instead of the countenance. But so far as it can be rendered consistent with the inherent character, the picturesque ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... scene of intense excitement ensued. The Old Gray, on observing them, pricked up his ears, and seemed only half inclined to follow, but a sharp application of the spur reminded him of his duty, and I was presently riding within ten yards of the stem of the largest, and sent a bullet through her back. The Old Grey shied considerably and became very unmanageable, and on one occasion, in consequence, the rhinoceros, finding herself hemmed in by a bend in a watercourse, turned round to charge, I ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... the man who has the power and skill To stem the torrent of a woman's will? For if she will, she will, you may depend on 't; And if she won't, she won't; so there 's ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... within the envelope. Beneath the hull and extending the full length of the latter was a passage which not only served as a corridor for communication between the cars, but also to receive a weight attached to a cable worked by a winch. By the movement of this weight the bow or stem of the vessel could be tilted to assist ascent ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... slipped over the side I set fire to the train, and, before I had time to jump into the boat, the vessel was in a blaze from stem to stern. The Vulcan was the last vessel fired. She was, at the time, within her own length of a French twenty-four. What had become of her gallant commander and crew I could not discover. The French launches were after me. My people pulled away with all their might. It was, indeed, a matter ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Americans had begun their fire, the Japanese shells had made a few enormous holes in the unprotected starboard side of the Connecticut, behind the stem and just above the armored belt, and through these the water poured in and flooded all the inner chambers. As the armored gratings above the hatchways leading below had also been destroyed or had not yet been closed, several compartments in the ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... lower and lower like some dark flower on a slender stem. From out of the veil of her mazy hair came a voice, soft with ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... bounded by a ravine about sixty feet of perpendicular depth, at the bottom of which flowed a torrent. This was an excellent spot for a camp, as no guards were necessary upon the side thus protected. Bordering the ravine were a number of fine trees covered with a thorny stem creeper, with leaves much resembling those of a species of yam. These were at once pronounced by Ibrahimawa to be a perfect god-send, and after a few minutes' grubbing he produced a basketful of fine-looking yams. In an instant this display of food attracted a crowd of hungry people, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... name implies, it is a palm, and one of the most nobly-graceful of that family, which have been so aptly styled by Linnaeus the princes of the vegetable kingdom. Its straight and rather slender-looking stem, not more than a foot in diameter, rises, without a leaf, to the height of from 90 to 100 feet, and at the summit is superbly crowned with a drooping plume, consisting of about a score of magnificent leaves, of a broadly-oval form. These leaves, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... which took her in town to see exhibitions of Brabazon or Steer—the woods were fairyland. The high slender oak of the middle wood, the spreading oak that lived on its borders, the tall columnar beech feathering into the sky, its grey stem shining as though by some magic property in the beautiful forest twilight—the gleams and the shadows, the sounds and scents of the woodland world—she could talk or write about these things as poetically, and ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... boat, her stern piled high with wicker crab-pots, came round the northern headland and entered the little bay. The elderly fisherman who was rowing rested on his oars and sat contemplating the crab-pots in the stem. A younger man, clad in a jersey and sea boots, was busy coiling down something in the bows. "How about this spot," he said presently, looking up over his shoulder, "for the first one?" The rower fumbled about inside his tattered ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie



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