"Tuft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a plain nest in the open field, without so much as a bush or thistle or tuft of grass to protect it or mark its site; you may step upon it, or the cattle may tread it into the ground. But the danger from this source, I presume, the bird considers less than that from another. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... man who had spoken removing his hat. Curly locks of dark hair, with now a sprinkle of silver in them, fell upon his brows. He had large brown eyes, a mouth firm and well modelled, a nose slightly aquiline, and wore a small, dark imperial—a mere tuft under his lip. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... the last one had nearly caught up with the others, for the velvet pat of his bare feet in the deep dust was slowing. Their eager chatter softened and softened, until it blended with the sounds of night that verge on silence, the fall of a leaf, the up-springing of a trodden tuft of grass, the sleepy twitter of a dreaming bird, and the shrilling of locusts patiently turning a creaking wheel. I heard the thump of hoofs and buggy wheels booming in the covered bridge, and a shudder came upon me that ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... sweeping over bulwark and bank. The low-stemmed alders that rose on islet and mound seemed shorn of half their trunks in the tide; here and there an elastic branch bent to the current, and rose and bent again; and now a tuft of withered heath came floating down, and now a soiled wreath of foam. How vividly the past rose up before me!—boyish day-dreams forgotten for twenty years,—the fossils of an early formation of mind, produced at a period when the atmosphere of feeling was ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... replied Dr. Ferguson, "are endowed by nature with a wonderful instinct in finding their way. Where a European would be at a loss, they never hesitate for a moment. An insignificant fragment of rock, a pebble, a tuft of grass, a different shade of color in the sand, suffice to guide them with accuracy. During the night they go by the polar star. They never travel more than two miles per hour, and always rest during the noonday heat. You may judge ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... assurance, and secondly his pronounced Jewish cast of features. With an ulster and a few tall hats on his head he would have made a perfect "old clo'" man. An oldish man this, with grizzled beard brought to a point, and in the end a tuft of a rat's tall was twisted, others similarly adorning the ends of his moustache. His hair was done in a round lump at the back, held in place by a sort of net of string. His hair in front had been either pulled out or shaved off, giving him a very fine forehead. His nose and lips were ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... it under my feet the whole day, till I had reduced it to dust; this dust I strewed in the aperture of my window, making use of the loosened night-table to stand upon, I tied splinters from my bedstead together, with the ravelled yarn of an old stocking, and to this I affixed a tuft of my hair. I worked a large hole under the middle grating, which could not be seen when standing on the ground, and through this I pushed my dust with the tool I had prepared in the outer window, then, waiting till the wind should happen to rise, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... tempered. "The dress of the men consists of a piece of cloth, about fifteen feet long, passed between the legs, and fastened round the loins, with the ends hanging before and behind; the head-dress is composed of bark cloth, dyed bright yellow, and stuck up in front, so as to resemble a tuft of feathers. The arms and legs are often ornamented with rings of silver, brass, or shell; and necklaces are worn, made of human teeth, or those of bears or dogs, or of white beads, in such numberless strings as to conceal the throat. A sword on one side, a knife and small betel-basket on ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... nearly to his chin. There was the old Day-kau-ray, the most noble, dignified, and venerable of his own, or indeed of any tribe. His fine Roman countenance, rendered still more striking by his bald head, with one solitary tuft of long silvery hair neatly tied and falling back on his shoulders; his perfectly neat, appropriate dress, almost without ornament, and his courteous demeanor, never laid aside under any circumstances, all combined to give ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... directly caused by unknown external agencies. But in breeds, characterized by an extra limb or claw, as in certain fowls and dogs; by an extra joint in the vertebrae; by the loss of a part, as the tail; by the substitution of a tuft of feathers for a comb in certain poultry; and in a multitude of other cases, we can hardly attribute these peculiarities directly to external influences, but indirectly to the laws of embryonic growth and of reproduction. ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... art my only love for all my life." Then holding the gift above her head, the groom said: "I love thee; therefore I take thee for my wife, and this is the present with which I buy thee," and then he handed the present to her parents. Upon his head he wore a tuft of feathers, and in his hand a bow, emblematic of authority and protection. The bride held in one hand a green twig of the laurel-tree, and in the other an ear of corn—the twig indicated she would preserve her fame ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... functionary is a short, thin personage, with a tuft of hair hanging over his forehead, sharp eyes, a long, thin nose, and thin lips always closed; in fact, a perfect type of the ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... heart out; you'd always get what you wanted somehow, and you wouldn't wait for it either; and I'm just the same. I'm not built for giving up, and enduring, and sacrificing. I'm naturally just a tuft of thistle-down, Mark; but living beside Waitstill all these years I've grown ashamed to be so light, blowing about hither and thither. I kept looking at her and borrowing some of her strength, just enough to make me worthy to be ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ordained that the maid-servants who came to find situations should bring their badge of office with them to the fair. They came with their brooms and mops, just as a carter would tie a piece of whipcord to his coat, and a shepherd's hat would be decorated with a tuft of wool. Time was when the labouring man was never happy unless he changed his abode from year to year. He would get tired of one master and one village, and be off to Cirencester mop, where he was pretty sure to get a fresh ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... annual herb with stems radiating in all directions from a centre. The plant is fixed to the soil by a tuft of fibrous roots all springing from the bases of the stems. In addition to this crown of fibrous roots, there may be roots at the nodes of some of the prostrate branches. The stems and branches are short at first, and leaves ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... a square plot of ground enclosed with lattice work, is erected a wooden cross, painted black. Neither marble, nor stone, nor letters, indicate his name. Two pots of roses, and a tuft of violets, alone marked the spot, which is carefully weeded. There is something more affecting in all this simplicity, something, in my mind, that goes more directly home to the heart, than in the most splendid monument or the most studied eulogium. As we came ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... turned southward, stepping daintily, the "bell," or tuft of coarse hair beneath his chin, swinging to his pace. Occasionally a cottontail leaped from his path and paused to stare, big ears alert and nose twitching sensitively; or a red squirrel, that saucy mischief-maker ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... lose. The man had already gone down twice; he was coming up for the second time. Frank took his coat in one hand, and, leaning over the edge of the quarry at the risk of falling in himself, he caught hold of a tuft of grass with the other hand, and awaited the drowning ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... yon tuft of hazel trees, 25 That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perched in ecstacies, Yet seeming still to hover; There! where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings 30 Shadows and sunny glimmerings, That cover him ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... helmet, with its dark tuft of waving plumes, all in readiness to put upon his head. And now there happened about as wonderful an incident as anything that I have yet told you. The instant before the helmet was put on, there stood Perseus, a beautiful young man, with golden ringlets and rosy cheeks, the crooked ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... at the tiny tuft of hair which had sprouted on that bare wrist. She was thinking abruptly, unhappily, about that chignon she had bought yesterday. They had let her buy that for eight dollars when with this stuff she ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... Albinos. All have a short black mane, a dark streak upon the back; and their tail, which so particularly distinguishes them from horses, is covered with short hair, except at the tip, which is adorned with a tuft, generally dark in color. Their peculiar cry or bray, is produced by two small cavities in their windpipes; their hoofs are, in Damascus, made into rings, which the lower classes wear under their armpits, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... where they stood Jacky stopped and thrusting his hand into a tuft of long grass pulled out a short blue flower with a very thick stem. "Saw him spark from the top of the tree," said Jacky with a grin. "This fellow stand with him head in the air but him foot in the water. Suppose no water he die a good deal quick." Then taking George's hand he made him press the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... He wore what was presumably a light waterproof, perhaps through having come off the sea; but it was held at the throat by one button, and hung, sleeves and all, more like a cloak than a coat. He rested one bony hand on a black stick; under the shadow of his broad hat his black hair hung down in a tuft or two. His face, which was swarthy, but rather handsome in itself, wore something that may have been a slightly embarrassed smile, but had too much the appearance of ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... on a black horse, with a pale face and a tuft to his chin, came riding up to the carriage; and I knew by a little start that Lady Fanny gave, and by her instantly looking round the other way, that ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Villiers, her daughter, etc. When royal people arrive everybody rises and remains standing while they stand, and if they approach you or look at you, you must perform the lowest of "curtsies." The courtesy made to royalty is very like the one I was taught to make when a little girl at Miss Tuft's school in Plymouth. One sinks down instead of stepping back in dancing-school fashion. After dinner the Duchess was pleased to stand until the gentlemen rejoined us; of course, we must all stand. . . . The next day ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... the brother and sister turned to the right of the first little ravine they had entered, just where a large boulder crowned with a tuft of ferns marked the spot, and toiled up a very rough and steep rising. Winthrop's help was needed here to enable Winnie to keep footing at all, much more to make her way to the top. There were steep descents of ground, spread with dead pine ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... all, for at every ten or twenty paces was a dense tuft of willow bushes, growing for the most part upon the higher knolls where it was dry and sunny, their roots heaped round with drift wood, from the decay of which had shot up a dense tangled growth of cat-briers. In these the birds were lying, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... him Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: "Aim your arrows, Hiawatha, At the head of Megissogwon, Strike the tuft of hair upon it, At their roots the long black tresses; There alone can he ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... crookedly over the arm of the bench in that weary movement which the first moment of death brings to man, before its chill severity comes. The sun was already low, bathing the mute figure in ruddy light, a gentle zephyr stirred a gray tuft of hair on the pale temple, and the big fly flew back again with a buzz past the white nose, motionless now. Round about, the ripe fruit fell heavily upon the turf, making the whir of the field-crickets cease for a moment. But yonder under the pear-tree sat Billy, looking ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... dozing on the great mud-and-brushwood dam of which he had been engineer-in-chief, when Baree came out softly on a high bank thirty or forty feet away. So noiseless had Baree been that none of the beavers had seen or heard him. He squatted himself flat on his belly, hidden behind a tuft of grass, and with eager interest watched every movement. Beaver Tooth was rousing himself. He stood on his short legs for a moment; then he tilted himself up on his broad, flat tail like a soldier at attention, and with a sudden whistle dived into ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... eyes of a man viewing it from behind, the nut-brown hair was a wonder and a mystery. Under the black beaver hat, surmounted by its tuft of black feathers, the long locks, braided and twisted and coiled like the rushes of a basket, composed a rare, if somewhat barbaric, example of ingenious art. One could understand such weavings and coilings being wrought to last intact for a year, or even a calendar month; but that they should ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... World. The skull-caps of plaited and blackened palm leaf, though common in the interior, are here rare; an imitation is produced by tressing the hair longitudinally from occiput to sinciput, making the head a system of ridges, divided by scalp-lines, and a fan-shaped tuft of scarlet-stained palm frond surmounts the poll. I noticed a fashion of crinal ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the Mayor cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting up at the Trump of Doom's ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... wiped the mud from it with a tuft of dried grass, and, carrying it in her hand, went forward. She was on the track now, and here and there prints of small feet in the earth guided her. She called "Tommy! Isaphine! Belinda!" but no answer came. They were either hidden cleverly, or else they had wandered ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... her eyes to the royal box, where sat a stout, middle-aged man, with a dull, good-humored face, a star and ribbon on his breast, and by his side a woman, ample and motherly, with an ugly tuft of feathers on her head, and a diamond tiara, which lit up her heavy Dutch features like a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... can be traced by the simple swelling of the turf. Sumachs and Cornel-bushes have usurped the place of the exotic shrubbery in the old garden; and the only ancient companions of the Poplars, now remaining, are here and there a straggling Lilac or Currant-bush, a tuft of Houseleek, and perhaps, under the shelter of some dilapidated wall, the White Star of Bethlehem is seen meekly glowing in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... in some of the recorded cases of perforations, carpenter bees have been mistaken for humble bees. The heads of all our Northern humble bees are rather narrow, retreating from the antennae toward the sides, and with a more or less dense tuft of hair between the antennae. The abdomen, as well as the thorax, is always quite densely covered with hair, which may be black or yellowish or in bands of either color. With possibly one or two exceptions, the only species I have seen doing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... you have the piercing sight that I had at your age; does it not appear to you that at the left-hand side of that tuft of osiers the leaves no ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... weigh four hundred pounds." Franco grabbed a tuft of the rough hair. The wub gasped. Its eyes opened, small and moist. Then its ...
— Beyond Lies the Wub • Philip Kindred Dick
... he came abreast of a garden door under a tuft of chestnuts, it was suddenly drawn back, and he could see inside, upon a garden path, the figure of a butcher's boy with his tray upon his arm. He had hardly recognized the fact before he was some steps beyond upon the other side. But the fellow had had time to observe him; he ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... build; and with what a freedom! All the lovely forms of the universe set before him, whence to choose, and all the lovely lines that bound their substance or guide their motion; and of all these lines,—and there are myriads of myriads in every bank of grass and every tuft of forest; and groups of them divinely harmonized, in the bell of every flower, and in every several member of bird and beast,—of all these lines, for the principal forms of the most important members of architecture, I have used but Three! What, therefore, must be the infinity of the treasure ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... like the Pak-Choei, is an annual plant, originally from China. The leaves are of an oval form, rounded at the ends, somewhat blistered on the surface; and, at the centre, are collected together into a long and rather compact tuft, or head. The plant, when well grown and ready for use, has somewhat the appearance of a head of Cos Lettuce, and will weigh six or seven pounds; though, in its native country, it is said to reach a weight ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... Blyth has observed with caged and wild birds, it is at first black and does not become red until the bird is at least a year old, at which age the sexes resemble each other in all respects. Both sexes of the wild turkey are ultimately furnished with a tuft of bristles on the breast, but in two-year-old birds the tuft is about four inches long in the male and hardly apparent in the female; when, however, the latter has reached her fourth year, it is from four to five inches in length. (31. On Ardetta, Translation of Cuvier's 'Regne ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... which the clang of the band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his sharp ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... a start, and, as she did so, was aware of a scent about her, not strong, but deliciously clean and fragrant. It came from a tuft of wild thyme on which her palm had been pressing while ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... year or two, Alice, deceived by the man's air and manners, and hoping to secure education for her son, had married, and the effect had been that, while Harold was provoked into fierce insubordination, Eustace became imbued with a tuft-hunting spirit, a great contrast to what might have been ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and in his hair is one white tuft, which he has braided with scarlet thread," interposed Charles, panting and twitching in ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in meadows, and over a wide range, the slender, straight shoots of PALE SPIKED LOBELIA (L. spicata) bloom early and throughout the summer months, the inflorescence itself sometimes reaching a height of two feet. At the base of the plant there is usually a tuft of broadly oblong leaves; those higher up narrow first into spoon-shaped, then into pointed, bracts, along the thick and gradually lengthened spike of scattered bloom. The flowers are oft en pale enough to be called white. Like their relatives, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... instantly and firmly upon her wrist. In a moment she drew back with the flower in her hand, to find his cigarette smouldering on a tuft of moss. He set his foot upon it without explanation and ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... oriole matters came, as come it must, and not long after the war-dance that has been described. The season was advanced and nesting time already begun. In fact, it was ended in several families; mocking-birds were about ready to fly, young chipping sparrows peeped from every tuft of grass, baby bluebirds were trying their wings at their doors, the yellow-throated warbler was stuffing her youngsters on the next tree, and the late kingbirds had nearly finished their nests. Whether a pitched battle at last ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... He belonged to an age wherein it was held better to be a gentleman than the object of a cheap and evanescent notoriety—and he was at once the despair and the dread of newspaper interviewers, enterprising publishers, and tuft-hunters. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... ask him what reward he would like to receive for this service, and the answer was promptly made that a crown of pure gold on the head would be acceptable. The Jewish monarch smiled grimly as he granted the request, whereupon immediately each bird found his poll decorated with a tuft of pure golden feathers, and mightily pleased with their new magnificence were the conceited hoopoes. But alas! the news was quickly spread abroad that there were to be seen strange birds with plumes of real ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... here been deemed impossible; pine seeds planted in the lax hold of these sands had hitherto been unable even to take root, against the unbroken sweep of the winds. M. Bremontier, after many experiments, conceived the idea of planting with the pine seeds the seeds of the common broom, whose hardy tuft should protect the tiny sapling until it could stand by itself. The result surpassed hope; pine forests, protecting in their turn, have sprung up and endured throughout the Landes; they have broken forever the power of the wind-storms; ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... "Riquet of the Tuft," the following symbols are used to represent special characters: [e] the letter "e" with superior macron [a] the letter "a" ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... bearing a large trumpet- shaped blossom of a rich scarlet. The sassafras is a beautiful shrub, and I cannot imagine why it has not been naturalized in England, for it has every appearance of being extremely hardy. The leaves grow in tufts, and every tuft contains leaves of five or six different forms. The fruit is singularly beautiful; it resembles in form a small acorn, and is jet black; the cup and stem looking as if they were made of red coral. The graceful and fantastic grapevine is a feature of ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... sixty-five, and subject to gout, he was still strong and upright. He had still the old duskened features, dark, piercing eyes, and penthouse brows, but the long and pendulous Chinaman moustaches had shrunk till they scarcely covered his mouth. The "devil's jaw" could boast only a small tuft of hair. There were wrinkles in "the angel's forehead." If meddlesome Time had also furrowed his cheeks, nevertheless the most conspicuous mark there was still the scar of that great gash received in the ding-dong fight at Berbera. His ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... striking scenes in the island, it is the termination of the Undercliff, and of a character the very reverse of Shanklin; for all here is terrific grandeur—without a green spray or scarcely a tuft of verdure to soften its savage aspect. It differs also from that sylvan spot, in being much more lofty, abrupt, and irregular: though it does not penetrate the land so far. Both have their respective admirers: this for its awful sublimity—that ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... near to the castle, and taking advantage of every inequality in the ground, of every bush and tuft of high grass, worked up close to the moat, and then opened a heavy fire with their bows against the men-at-arms on the battlements, and prevented their using the machines against the main force now advancing to the attack upon ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... mostly derived from her imagination, aided by a school geography, the ground was fairly honeycombed with entrances to the abodes of these reptiles, and I fully expected to find them festooning trees, bushes, and fences, lying in wait within every tuft of grass, and in fact making my life ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... strolling. Snick'er, to laugh in a half-suppressed manner. 4. Crest, a tuft growing on an animal's head. 5. Di-vine'ly, in a supreme degree. 6. Mor'al, the practical lesson which anything is fitted ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... correspondent does not notice the golden oats; but doubtless he recollects the anecdote of the horse mistaking a lady's hat with a tuft of oats for a moving manger stocked with his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... her actions that she had a fawn near there; and so, while she was leading Landy away from it, we set about hunting it up. In a few minutes, I came across the little slender-legged beauty, snugly curled up under a tuft of grass. As I came upon him, he dashed out of cover with a shrill, plaintive little "baa-baa, baa-baa," and, as fawns always do in such cases, began running in a ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... is meet for naught but dalliance. Boccaccio hath a story of a priest that did beguile a maid into his cell, then knelt him in a corner to pray for grace to be rightly thankful for this tender maidenhead ye Lord had sent him; but ye abbot, spying through ye key-hole, did see a tuft of brownish hair with fair white flesh about it, wherefore when ye priest's prayer was done, his chance was gone, forasmuch as ye little maid had but ye one cunt, and that was ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... and foxes and a pair of big, tuft-eared, wild-eyed lynxes living about the lake, and these all came creeping up one after another, under the cover of the thickets, to stare in amazement at the alien little one so tenderly mothered by the great cow moose. They had ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of Europe and North of Africa, also at Teneriffe. The leaves are oblong linear, about half an inch long (sometimes an inch long when cultivated), with revolute edges and clothed with hoary tomentum on both surfaces; the spike is tetragonal, compact, with a tuft of purple leaves at the top; the calyces are ovate and slightly shorter than the tube of the corolla. The whole plant has a strong aromatic and agreeable flavor. There is a variety of this species (L. macrostachya) native of Corsica, Sicily, and Naples, which has broader ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... 10-per-cent solution of borax. The prints may be allowed to remain in this last solution until they are finished. A good final washing completes the process. This washing must be thorough and a sponge or a tuft of cotton used to clean the surface ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... growth of dried grasses, old mulliens, and stunted, scattered brush barely six inches high. There seemed hardly cover enough to hide a man, and yet the dozen were as completely swallowed up as though they had plunged beneath the waters of the sea. Only occasionally the top of a grass tuft or a greasewood shivered. It became the duty of Alfred and his companion to shoot suddenly and accurately at these motions. This was necessary in order to discourage the steady concealed advance of the dozen, who, when they had approached to within ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... truculent-looking party that ever asked for the contributions of the charitable. One, who seemed to be their leader, was a fierce, grizzled, red-nosed fellow, wearing a rusty morion, in which, for want of a feather, a tuft of heather was stuck; he wore a long cloak, as rusty-looking as his helmet; and that he carried a sword was plain enough, for the well-worn scabbard had found a very convenient hole in the cloak, through which ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... Their fishing-nets, though coarse, answered their purpose. They were often eighty fathoms in length. Harpoons, made of cane, were used to catch fish, and fish-hooks of mother-of-pearl. One used for trawling had a white tuft of dog's or hog's hair attached to it, to look like the tail of a fish. The fishermen watched for the birds which always follow a shoal of bonetas, and seldom returned without a prize. Both sexes were expert swimmers, and would dash out through the fiercest ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... peculiar kind of diet, it will be expressed in the lineaments of his face. How much the constant use of oatmeal could produce such an effect, was plainly visible in the countenances of McGibbet and his lady-love. Both had an unmistakable equine cast; McGibbet, wild, scraggy, and scrubby, with a tuft on his poll that would not have been out of place between the ears of a plough-horse, stared at us, just as such an animal would naturally over the top of a fence; while his gentle mate, who had more of the amiable draught-horse in her aspect, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... and deaf," thought the boy. "Yes, very deaf." He paused. The first stage in his task was accomplished. Shivering and naked, one absurd tuft of blossom and leaves at the tip—the murdered tree now stood in the moonlight, imploring the coup de grace which should ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of poets, if thy glass Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass, Let this slight token of the debt I owe Outlive for thee December's frozen day, And, like the arbutus budding under snow, Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May When he who gives it shall have gone the way Where faith shall see ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... producing the most preposterously comical effect imaginable; a stiffly-starched ruff, immensely broad, encircles his neck, upon which his head seems to be set, like that of John the Baptist on the charger; a large felt hat, turned up at one side, and ornamented with a huge tuft of red and yellow feathers, is stuck jauntily on his head, and a short cloak of the same colour, fastened round his neck and thrown back from his shoulders, floats behind him. He wears an enormous sword, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... then he carries a weapon which he is supposed to use. The Minister of the Republic carries a weapon for ornament only. In quadruped life, it reminds me of a poodle closely shaved all over, except a little tuft at the end of his tail, the sword and the tuft recalling to mind the fact that the respective possessors have been ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Oregon and Washington Territories, and in the neighborhood of the great lakes, and inhabits the regions as far [Page 220] north as the Arctic Sea. Its color is yellowish brown. The fur is thicker in winter than summer, and on the neck of the animal the hair is very coarse and hangs in an immense tuft of over a foot in length. The flesh is most excellent food and is much esteemed by trappers. The habits of the moose are in most respects identical with the deer, already described, and like them they form "yards" ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Conyngham. Two miles to the east, a cloud of smoke from factories and steam vessels overhangs the busy town and port of Drogheda. On the Meath side of the Boyne, the ground, still all corn, grass, flowers, and foliage, rises with a gentle swell to an eminence surmounted by a conspicuous tuft of ash trees which overshades the ruined church and desolate ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... right, for I went back, in spite of their protest, and peeped into the nest, and found four gleaming white eggs studding the bottom like pearls. Alas! when I visited the place two weeks later, the little domicile had been raided, the half-decayed walls having been broken down. A tuft of gray hair hanging to a splinter proved the invader to have been a predatory animal of some kind, probably a cat. The birds were nowhere to be seen—unless a pair chirping in the woods on the other side of the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... painted the picture of a bony mule eating a tuft of hay. That picture sold in Petersburg, Russia, for fifteen thousand dollars, while the original mule sold for one dollar and thirty cents. If the painting of Schriner made in the price of that mule, a difference of fourteen thousand, nine hundred, ninety-eight dollars and ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... bees mostly) lay in masses dead on the snow; they had ventured too high, or the wind had borne them thither, but to breathe their last in these cold regions. A threatening cloud hung over the Wetterhorn, like a fine, black tuft of wool. It lowered itself slowly, heavily, with that which lay concealed within it, and this was the "Foehn,"[A] powerful in its strength when it broke loose. The impression of the entire journey, the night quarters above and then the road beyond, the deep rocky chasms, where the water forced ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... "racial equality," only is entitled to reference in these pages for the purpose of according it the contempt due it. That the whites of the country have not a complete monopoly of those unpleasing creatures known as "tuft hunters" and "social climbers," is no doubt true, but that the Negro, as represented by intelligence and race pride, ever worries over it; cares a rap for ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... change in the features of the country between Berber and the capital since my former visit. The rich soil on the banks of the river, which had a few years since been highly cultivated, was abandoned. Now and then a tuft of neglected date-palms might be seen, but the river's banks, formerly verdant with heavy crops, had become a wilderness. Villages once crowded had entirely disappeared; the population was gone. Irrigation had ceased. The night, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... latter was fastened by broad leather straps, one of which passed around the neck of the oxen, and the other, fastened to the first, passed under their belly. Their high withers, their broad dewlaps, their clean limbs, their small hoofs, shining like agate, their tails with the tuft carefully combed, showed that they were thorough-bred and that hard field-work had never deformed them. They exhibited the majestic placidity of Apis, the sacred bull, when it receives ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... frequently cut their hair short, not appearing to take any pride in it; the women encourage theirs to a considerable length, and I have known many instances of its reaching the ground. The men are beardless and have chins so remarkably smooth that, were it not for the priests displaying a little tuft, we should be apt to conclude that nature had refused them this token of manhood. It is the same in respect to other parts of the body with both sexes; and this particular attention to their persons they esteem a point of delicacy, and the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of determining this fact is to pull out the center leaves of each pineapple that is chosen. As shown in Fig. 16, grasp the pineapple with one hand and then with the other pull out, one at a time, several of the center leaves of the tuft at the top. If the fruit is ripe a sharp jerk will usually remove each leaf readily, but the harder the leaves pull, the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... notched at the edge with a pair of largo membraneous stipules at their base. When growing, this plant throws out two kinds of shoots—one called runners, which lie prostrate on the ground, and end in a tuft of leaves—these root into the soil, and then form new plants—and another growing nearly upright, and bearing at the end a tuft of flowers which produce the fruit. The calyx, which is flat, green, and hairy, is divided into ten parts, called ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... bravest soldiers. Our manliest—our boys—our hardy darlings; no picture gives them. Likely, the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds, thousands,) crawls aside to some bush-clump, or ferny tuft, on receiving his death-shot—there sheltering a little while, soaking roots, grass and soil, with red blood—the battle advances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by—and there, haply with pain and suffering ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... wear. Lilies-of-the-valley for you, pink tulips for you, Mrs. Evan,—they will soon close, and look like pointed rosebuds,—yellow daffies to match my gown, and you must choose for the two men I do not know. I'll take a tuft of these primroses for Mr. Bradford, and play they grew wild. We always joked him about these flowers at college until 'The Primrose' came to be his nickname ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the twentieth of September, two alcatrazes came near the ship about two hours before noon, and soon afterwards a third. On this day likewise they took a bird resembling a heron, of a black colour, with a white tuft on its head, and having webbed feet like a duck. Abundance of weeds were seen floating in the sea, and one small fish was taken. About evening three land birds settled on the rigging of the ship and began to sing. These flew away at day-break, which was considered a strong indication ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... they reached the great Black Rock, which rose up, grim and forbidding, from a wide, desolate plain. The bee sank down humming cheerfully, at the base, the thrush perched himself on a projecting ridge, and the glowworm hid himself behind a tuft of withered grass. ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... sides. The cones are distinctly marked as one looks down upon them; and it is remarkable that from the summit the eye takes in the whole crater, and notes all its contents, diminished, of course, by their great distance. Not a tree, shrub, nor even a tuft of grass obstructs the view. The natives have no traditions of Haleakala in activity. There are signs of several lava flows, and one in particular is clearly much more recent than ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... sufferings were particularly severe on the day of the young people's first visit. The former Fraeulein, now Frau, Frederike presented him, once more addressing him as 'lieber Herr Jacob,' to her husband, who was all splendour from top to toe; his eyes, his black hair brushed up into a tuft, his forehead and his teeth, and his coat buttons, and the chain on his waistcoat, everything, down to the boots on his rather large, turned-out feet, shone brilliantly. Pasinkov pressed Herr Kniftus's hand, and wished him (and the wish was sincere, that I am certain) complete and enduring happiness. ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... looked at her—I see her now, as though it were yesterday, though it is nearly twenty years ago. She wore the dark costume of our Breton women, with the usual white head-dress, and she was seated on a large tuft of broom in blossom, which she ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... tuft of hair. The pileus is two to three inches broad, fleshy, then tough, coriaceous; plane, then funnel-shaped, or dimidiate; even; smooth; almost flesh color, varying to reddish-livid, sometimes ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... covered with long downy hairs, which render the fruits very light and readily carried by the wind. The name bulrush is more correctly applied to Scirpus lacustris, a member of a different family (Cyperaceae), a common plant in wet places, with tall spongy, usually leafless stems, bearing a tuft of many-flowered spikelets. The stems are used for matting, &c. The bulrush of Scripture, associated with the hiding of Moses, was the Papyrus (q.v.), also a member of the order Cyperaceae, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... downward among the heather, her face propped on her hands. Close beneath her eyes was an exquisite tuft of pink bell-heather intergrown with bunchberries. And while a whole vague series of thoughts and memories passed through her mind she was still vividly conscious of the pink bells, the small bright leaves. Sensation in her was exceptionally keen, whether ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... out, and her voice was a bellow that frightened even herself. She saw her father and her sisters, went near them, and suffered them to pat her back, and heard them admire her beauty. Her father reached her a tuft of grass, and she licked the outstretched hand. She longed to make herself known to him, and would have uttered her wish; but, alas! words were wanting. At length she bethought herself of writing, and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... out the food, she thought well to make her own meal, for she went a few steps farther on, and, sitting down on the grass with her back to the paling, began to eat. A large tuft of weeds grew midway between him and her. Truly we can foresee consequences but a very little way in our dealings with a fellow-creature, and this man, as he stood munching his bread, uncertain how to proceed in winning favour from the bold beauty, was hardly pleased ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... (fig. 18, c, d.) In the usual arrangement of the spines on the segments of the three posterior pair of cirri, there are (figs. 26, 27) from three to six pair of long spines on the anterior face, with generally some minute spines (occasionally forming a tuft) intermediate between them: on the dorsal surface, in the uppermost part of each segment, there is a tuft of short spines generally mingled with some longer, finer ones: on the inner side of each segment, ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... tall, very lean, with a pale, long face, and a tuft of dark hair on his chin. He has long, smooth hair parted in the middle and falling on each side of his face. He is dressed either in a long, dark overcoat ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of a continental city; where new life had awaited her, still in connexion with the misshapen scholar: a new life, but feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude market-place of the Puritan, settlement, with all the townspeople assembled, and levelling their stern regards at Hester Prynne—yes, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Mongol language among themselves. They dress like the Russians, or very nearly so, the most distinguishing feature being a sort of skull cap like that worn by the Chinese. Their hair is cut like a prize fighter's, excepting a little tuft on the crown. Out of doors they wore the Russian cap over their Mohammedan one—unconsciously symbolizing their ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... impatient surface. Both ends of the island are as much alike as its sides are dissimilar. They taper off almost to a distinct bladepoint of rock, in which a mere doll's flagstaff of a pine-tree grows; then comes a small detached rock, with a small evergreen on it, then a still smaller rock, with a tuft of grass, then a line of partially submerged stones, and so out to the deep yet ever-bubbling water. This island might seem, just the size for two, and there were two on it on a certain July morning at five o'clock. One of these was a lady who lay at full length and fast asleep upon a most unique ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... riding alone upon the trail, a line of fire several rods long was creeping up out of a grassy hollow to the hilltop beyond, whence it would go racing away to the east and the north, growing bigger and harder to fight with every grass tuft it fed on. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower |
