"Twig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still in the woods until my thought was as a tree, and the squirrels would take me for a tree and run over me. Then there would come a strange stir, and the creeping of my flesh along my spine until the Forest seemed about to speak ... and suddenly a twig would snap or a jay squawk, and I would be I again, and the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... grotesque of reptiles. With protruding and telescopic eyes, that move at will in the most opposite directions, with an ungainly head, a cold, dry, strange-looking skin, and a prehensile tail, the creature slowly steals along a branch or twig, scarcely distinguishable from the substance along which it moves, and scarcely seeming to move at all, until it has come within reach of its prey. Then suddenly, with a motion rapid as that of the most agile bird, the long cylindrical and readily ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... tie it up, thou understandest not how it is to be repaired. The essieu is left on the spot, as the load is too heavy for the horses. Thy courage has evaporated. Thou beginnest to run. The heaven is cloudless. Thou art thirsty; the enemy is behind thee; a trembling seizes thee; a twig of thorny acacia worries thee; thou thrustest it aside; the horse is scratched, till at length ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... are incorporated with the Malayan. The Portuguese too have furnished them with several terms, chiefly for such ideas as they have acquired since the period of European discoveries to the eastward. They write on paper, using ink of their own composition, with pens made of the twig of the anau tree. I could never discover that the Malays had any original written characters peculiar to themselves before they acquired those now in use; but it is possible that such might have been lost, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... telephone service, the government officials looked upon it with jealous eyes, and usually snatched it away. The telephone thus became a part of the telegraph, which is a part of the post office, which is a part of the government. It is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction—a mere twig of bureaucracy. Under such conditions the telephone could not prosper. The wonder ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... Halcyone carried a twig of freshly sprouting oak which she had brought from the tree, having broken it off in her ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... draw aside the curtain to look in, while the other stood ready with his spear to transfix the person who they might expect would attempt to spring out if he had not been killed. Now I thought I must fire. I took aim at the older Indian. In doing so the barrel of my rifle touched a twig. The younger savage in a moment detected the sound; he turned round full on me. His quick eye caught sight of my rifle as I instantly brought it to bear on him. He uttered an exclamation of astonishment. ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... headwall by sharp switchbacks till it reached the easier declivity below, passed a gushing spring where a tin dipper hung on a twig proclaiming unseen passers, and presently picked up the bed of a tumbling brook. It was when I reached this brook that I was aware of Spring coming up the slope. I could see ahead, and to either side, a considerable distance through the open woods, and, lo! the ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... one to see a little commotion in the water, half hidden by the near branches, as of some tiny swimmer struggling to reach the shore. Rushing to its rescue in the canoe, I found a yellow-rumped warbler, quite exhausted, clinging to a twig that hung down into the water. I brought the drenched and helpless thing to camp, and, putting it into a basket, hung it up to dry. An hour or two afterward I heard it fluttering in its prison, and cautiously ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... skipping back and forth between a rough tea-table set near the fire and an open cupboard-door in the wall. She was carrying dishes to the table, and now and then stopping to stir something good-smelling which hung over the fire in a pewter pot, with a strong bent twig for a handle. ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... since then. We picked our way up through the woods on the side of the ridge, using our compass, because we couldn't see far ahead. It was getting dark and the woods were awful still. Every time a twig cracked under us it seemed to make a loud noise. There were crickets chirping too. It kind of reminded me of Temple Camp after supper. We kept straight west because we knew that was where the tree was. I guess we all got sort of ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... me, was meant as a mark of civility and attention, and was not on a subject in which you felt any personal interest." A more prudent letter than that, I defy any man in Lord Cochrane's situation to write. A guilty man catches at any twig, but Lord Cochrane does not answer this gentleman at first, and when pressed by a second letter, he tells him the reason; it is unsafe you and I should meet, I cannot trust you, I am surrounded by scoundrels who are attempting to ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... summer day is closed—the sun is set: Well they have done their office, those bright hours, The latest of whose train goes softly out In the red west. The green blade of the ground Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the young twig Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun; Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown And withered; seeds have fallen upon the soil, From bursting cells, and in their graves await Their resurrection. Insects from the pools Have filled the air awhile with humming wings, That now ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... the gipsies, resided in a sort of hut made of the branches of trees: the verger stooped, but did not stoop low enough, as he entered this temporary palace; and, whilst his body was almost bent double, his peruke was caught upon a twig. From this awkward situation he was relieved by the consort of the king; and he now beheld, by the light of some embers, the person of his gipsy majesty, to whose sublime appearance this dim light was so favourable that it struck a secret awe into our wise man's soul; and, forgetting ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... continued, dropping anemones over her mother's hands, one by one;—"that is what Mr. Raleigh calls them. When may I see the snow? You shall wrap me in eider, that I may be like all the boughs and branches. How buoyant the earth must be, when every twig becomes a feather!" And she moved toward Mr. Raleigh, singing, "Oh, would I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... thy window-ledge, and when summer is over 't will be white as snow. Leave it in a snowbank, or in a cellar under wet moss, and 't will turn again to rose-color. This I have seen. In the winter nights the Frost King hangs his ice-diamonds on every twig and rope and eave, and when they shine in the red sunrise they look like these crystals. And I have seen all the sky from the zenith to the horizon at midnight full of leaping rose-red flames above such a world of ice. 'Tis very beautiful ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... glittering outlines, or clustered about and overhung with fantasies of ice and snow. Behind, the deep-blue sky itself seems to glitter too. The frozen floods glitter in the meadows, and every little twig on the bare trees. There is no color in the earth, but the atmosphere of the river valley clothes distant hills and trees and hedges with ultramarine vapor. Towards evening the mist climbs, faintly veiling the tall groves of elms and the piled masses of the city itself. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... hills, kept a look out across the gullies from which Greenhow attempted to ambuscade him. Day by day the man would vary the method of approach until almost within rifle range, and then the wind would change or there would be the click of gravel underfoot, or the scrape of a twig on stiff overalls, and suddenly the long oval ears would slope forward, the angular lines flow into grace and motion and the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... leapt to another tree, and they stole on after him through the hushed wood, guided by his grey flashes in the dimness. Here and there, in a break of the snow, they trod on a bed of wet leaves that gave out a breath of hidden life, or a hemlock twig dashed its spicy scent into their faces. As they grew used to the twilight their eyes began to distinguish countless delicate gradations of tint: cold mottlings of grey-black boles against the snow, wet russets of drifted beech-leaves, a distant network of mauve twigs melting into the woodland ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... of the whistle, I soon saw my trusty adherent spanning the chasm like a Colossus, one foot on one bank, the other on the opposite—each of which appeared to me to be resting, so to say, on nothing—tugging away at a long twig that grew on the brink of the precipice, and exceedingly likely to resolve the inquiry as to the source of the Loddon, by plumping souse into the fountain-head. I, of course, called out to warn him; and he equally, of ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... not produce the series of movements all by itself, but, as was explained in speaking of tendencies in general, cooeperates with sensory stimuli in producing them. Clearly enough, the nest-building bird, {111} picking up a twig, is reacting to that twig. He does not peck at random, as if driven by a mere blind impulsion to peck. He reacts to twigs, to the crotch in the tree, to the half-built nest. Only, he would not react to these stimuli unless the nesting fit were on him. The nest-building ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... hear,' from Telson)—further amendment: 'Instead of "nobler" say "more idiotic."' You see it can easily be worked, and when we've done with 'nobler' we can start on the 'is' and amend it to 'are,' do you twig? There'll have to be a division over each. I say it'll be ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... an immense interest in it," she said, as she snipped some dried leaves off a twig of geranium ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... have now and then kept their hold upon life. While sitting one evening under the trees by the roadside, my attention was called to the unusual conduct of half a dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An elderly man was moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turned upward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that the shank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certain spot, the twig would ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... hundred feet in diameter, and full a hundred and thirty feet high. It had no appearance of a tree, for neither trunk nor branches were visible. It seemed a mountain of whitish-green scales, fringed with long silvery moss, that hung like innumerable beards from every bough and twig. Nothing could better convey the idea of immense and incalculable age than the hoary beard and venerable appearance of this monarch of the woods. Spanish moss of a silvery grey covered the whole mass ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... my foot is cut on a sharp blade of grass, and my dress is caught on an amaranth twig. Wait for me while I ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, Where the strawberry runs red, With white star-flower overhead; Cumbered by dry twig and cone, Shredded husks of seedlings flown, Mine of mole and spotted flint: Of dire wizardry no hint, Save mayhap the print that shows Hasty outward-tripping toes, Heels to terror on the mould. These, the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a twig, but wise men dread a bandit,"— Which I know was very clever; but I didn't ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... caribou track in the hard earth. It was scarcely distinguishable, and I had to look very closely to make it out. Then he showed me other signs that I could make nothing of at all—a freshly turned pebble or broken twig. These, he said, were fresh deer signs. A caribou had passed toward the larger lake that ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... name for the genus is catchfly, it is usually the ant that is glued to the viscid parts, for the fly that moves through the air alights directly on the flower it is too short-lipped to suck. An ant catching its feet on the miniature lime-twig, at first raises one foot after another and draws it through its mouth, hoping to rid it of the sticky stuff, but only with the result of gluing up its head and other parts of the body. In ten minutes all the pathetic struggles are ended. Let no one guilty of torturing flies to death ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Not a twig of the bare trees was stirring. The earth lay quiet in the grip of the frost king; a faint pink light still lingered in the western sky. She looked at the rustic seat and the table beneath the lime trees. How amazingly long ago the day seemed when ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... they put forth their gnarled arms and grapple with the blast, when the lightning cleaves the inky sky with forked flame and the earth rocks neath the thunder's angry roar. When the dark clouds roll muttering unto the East and the evening sun hangs every leaf and twig and blade of grass with jewels brighter than e'er gleamed in Golconda's mines; when the mock-birds renew their melody and every flower seems drunken with its own incense, I look upon the irisate glory that seems to belt the ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... little flycatcher chose a small twig under one of the boughs of the apple tree, where it perched for hours, darting out when a fly or other insect buzzed by; but always returning to the little twig as if it were home. In the shade of the thick-leaved ...
— The Little Brown Hen Hears the Song of the Nightingale & The Golden Harvest • Jasmine Stone Van Dresser
... an English squire to please his loving dame, Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same; And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found, 'T was filled with candle spiced and hot, and handed ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... dislike for the visionary ideas of that sect, even he came but seldom to our house. His daughter Patience was a great favourite with my mother; and for that matter I did not dislike the child, and would oftentimes pluck her an apple from our trees or cut a whistle for her out of a twig of elder wood. ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... crawl as he drew near, for the bullets whistled through the trees, cutting off leaf and twig, and searching the jungle, as it were, for the enemy, who seemed all around him; for, go which way he would, there was always ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... one of them; it is one of Aunt Prue's favorite sayings: 'The Christian should be like a little bird, which sits on its twig and sings, and lets ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... his snoring, which kept them awake, Thor thrice dealt him fearful blows with his hammer. These strokes, instead of annihilating the monster, merely evoked sleepy comments to the effect that a leaf, a bit of bark, or a twig from a bird's nest overhead had fallen upon his face. Early on the morrow, Skrymir left Thor and his companions, pointing out the shortest road to Utgard-loki's castle, which was built of great ice blocks, with huge glittering icicles as pillars. The gods, slipping between the bars of ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... doubt of his death. A passionless manner of renewing his addresses seemed no longer out of place in Lord Uplandtowers. Barbara did not love him, but hers was essentially one of those sweet-pea or with-wind natures which require a twig of stouter fibre than its own to hang upon and bloom. Now, too, she was older, and admitted to herself that a man whose ancestor had run scores of Saracens through and through in fighting for the site of the Holy Sepulchre was a more desirable husband, socially considered, ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... Jack, darlint; d'ye twig the two gossoons wagging a handkerchief at us? Holy smoke! I belave they've got a motor boat half under water, and do be havin' an accident of some sort. How now, Commodore, do we be after ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... fell was marked from the moment when it fluttered a good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... head and a little sprig of jasmine that bloomed in the wood, near the spot where he was buried, and carried them home with her. As soon as she was in her room, she took the largest flower-pot she could find, and in this she placed the head of the dead man, covered it up with earth, and planted the twig ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... and push, is not worth $100 a month for nine months in the year. To such a person the people of that neighborhood intrust their dearest and priceless possessions—their own children. If we remember that, as the twig is bent the tree is inclined, there need be no hesitation about the value of efficient teaching during the plastic period of childhood. In fact, it may easily be maintained that the salary should be even higher than this. But, if this ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... to prepare his baccalaureate, and his father, becoming alarmed at his increasing moodiness and mysticism, endeavored to infuse into him the tastes and habits of a man of the world by introducing him into the society of his equals in the town where he lived; but the twig was already bent, and the young man yielded with bad grace to the change of regime; the amusements they offered were either wearisome or repugnant to him. He would wander aimlessly through the salons ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a sudden madness seemed to have possessed the world. The deck danced before him. He was bumped; he was battered; he was hurled to and fro—a twig ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... "Zisca's Oak" (under shade of which, his mother, taken suddenly on the harvest-field, had borne Zisca): a weird object, gate of Heaven and of Orcus to the superstitious populations about. At midnight on the Hallow-Eve, dark smiths would repair thither, to cut a twig of the Zisca Oak: twig of it put, at the right moment, under your stithy, insures good luck, lends pith to arm and heart, which is already good luck. So that a Bishop of those parts, being of some culture, had to cut it down, above a hundred years ago,—and build some Chapel in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Adam blissfully unaware of the existence of Eve, asserted himself in Rupert. He picked up his cap and stick without a word, and turned towards the door. There, however, he was confronted by Mrs. Carteret, tugging at a line of chairs attached to a plank, like a very small bird with a very large twig. To refuse the aid that she immediately demanded was impossible, and even before the future back row of the sixpennies had been towed to its moorings, he realised that hateful as it would be to stay and join in these ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... a horse, a twig broken from the branch of a tree, and some fresh leaves of sassafras laurel lying upon the ground, showed clearly the place where Don Rafael ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... his way, rejoicing in his newly acquired power, which he hastened to put to the test. He could scarce believe his eyes when he found that a twig of an oak, which he plucked from the branch, became gold in his hand. He took up a stone—it changed to gold. He touched a sod—it did the same. He took an apple from the tree—you would have thought he had robbed the garden of the Hesperides. His joy knew ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... garden at Thornton Chase was perfect in its artificiality. It sloped down towards Richmond Park in a series of stately terraces with box-hedge borders trimmed so evenly that not a twig or leaf offended against the canons of symmetry. They were groomed like a racehorse. Centred in a square of barbered lawn was a fountain where Neptune drove his chariot of sea-horses. The Apollo Belvedere, the Capitoline Venus, ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... Lang is hardly accurate in speaking of the 'resurrection' of this superstition in our own country. It has, in fact, never died, and there is scarcely a part of the country where a 'diviner' has not tried his—or her, for it is often a woman—skill with the 'twig' from time to time. These attempts have seldom been known beyond the immediate locality and the limited circle of those interested in them, and it is only of late years, since folklore became more of a scientific and general study, that the incidents ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... Indian, and that he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... with fog that one could scarcely see a cow's length across a field. Every blade, twig, bracken-frond, and hoof-print carried water, and the air was filled with the noise of rushing ditches and field-drains, all delivering to the brook below. A week's November rain on water-logged land had gorged her to full flood, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... season of family gatherings, merrymakings, and plum-pudding; and this, King Frost had hardened by his patent adamantine process, so that it might not cause any inconvenience to foot passengers or lose its virgin freshness; while, at the same time, he decked and bedizened each separate twig and branch of the poor, leafless, skeleton trees with rare festal jewels and ear-drops of glittering icicles; besides weaving fantastic devices of goblin castles and airy, feathery foliage on the window panes, fairy armies ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... five brave sons (such is polygamy, That she spawns warriors by the score, where none Are prosecuted for that false crime bigamy), He never would believe the city won While Courage clung but to a single twig.—Am I Describing Priam's, Peleus', or Jove's son? Neither—but a good, plain, old, temperate man, Who fought with his five children in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... me and happiness with her soft and hypocritical ways!" said Ellen, snapping off the leaves of a twig near her, and looking upon the retreating figures of her sister and cousin, who were going up the avenue. Then turning to a point where she could see in the distance the dim form of Henry Moore, she took the seat that her cousin had vacated, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... the under disk is of a whitish green only; two ranked, obtusely pointed, Soft and flexable. this tree affords but little rosin. the Cone is remarkably Small, not larger than the end of a mans thumb Soft, flexable and of an oval form, produced at the end of a Small twig. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... blood started from my fingers, and with one eye over my shoulder for savages, I watched at the same time, and sent a bullet whistling whenever I saw a limb or a twig move; for I kept a gun always at hand, and an Indian appearing then within range would have been taken as a declaration of war. As it was, however, my own blood was all that was spilt—and from the trifling accident of sometimes breaking the flesh against a cleat or a pin which came ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... little leaf was heard to sigh and cry, as leaves often do when a gentle wind is about. And the twig said: "What is the matter, little leaf?" And the leaf said: "The wind just told me that one day it would pull me off and throw me down to die on ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... Sanchez pacing the sands, his lips muttering curses. I dared not move, scarcely indeed to breathe, so closely did he skirt my covert. To venture forth would mean certain discovery; nor could I hope to steal away through the bushes, where any twig might snap beneath my foot. What could I do? How could I bring warning to those sleeping victims? This heartless discussion of robbery and murder left me cold with horror, yet helpless to lift a hand. I had ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... of his hole and plunged to dive or started to swim, or whether he came swimming noiselessly round the bend and was about to enter the burrow, it made no difference; he was certain to pass over and throw the gin. The instant the teeth struck him he gave a jump which lifted the trap off the twig platform, and it immediately sank in the deep water and soon drowned him; for the water-rat, though continually diving, can only stay a short time under water. It proved a fatal contrivance, chiefly, as ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... at the sound, 320 From underneath an aged oak, That slanted from the islet rock, A damsel guider of its way, A little skiff shot to the bay, That round the promontory steep 325 Led its deep line in graceful sweep, Eddying, in almost viewless wave, The weeping willow-twig to lave, And kiss, with whispering sound and slow, The beach of pebbles bright as snow. 330 The boat had touched the silver strand, Just as the Hunter left his stand, And stood concealed amid the brake, To view this Lady of the Lake. The maiden paused, as if again 335 She thought ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... busy that moment whittling a willow-twig he had just cut. Max, the second best archer, shot ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of hoops and dolls, she had found sufficient music in her soul for the whole of a charming opera. She was a prodigy. Had it not been for death, who came to seize her at sixteen like her sister, the greatest musician of the eighteenth century would, perhaps, have been a woman. But the twig, scarcely green, snapped at the moment when the poor bird commenced her song. Gretry had Lucile married at the solicitation of his friends. 'Marry her, marry her,' they incessantly repeated; 'if Love has the start of Death, Lucile is safe.' Lucile suffered herself ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... 10, or double the usual price, for a second wife, owing to the risk of her death being caused by the machinations of the first wife's spirit. When a corpse has been buried or burnt the mourners each take a twig of mango and beat about in the grass to start a grasshopper. Having captured one they wrap it in a piece of new cloth, and coming home place it beside the family god. This they call bringing back the life of the soul, and consider that the ceremony procures ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... himself descending the hill of fortune with an acquired gravitation, strove to catch at every twig, in order to stop or retard his descent. He now regretted the opportunities he had neglected, of marrying one of several women of moderate fortune, who had made advances to him in the zenith of his reputation; and endeavoured, by forcing ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... sometimes attacked by the twig girdler[24] (Fig. 11). This beetle lays eggs in the twigs, which are girdled so as to stop the flow of sap that would normally prevent hatching. The girdled twigs usually become detached from the trees and as a result the nut-bearing wood ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... somniferous school of literature. The profound depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose sleep, ordinarily, is as light, as fitful, and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself, that he stirred not in his chair, when old Roger Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... paper citing many different causes of rupture of the tympanic membrane, mentions the following: A blow in sparring; violent sneezing; blowing the nose; forcible dilatation of the Eustachian canal; a thorn or twig of a tree accidentally thrust into the head; picking the ear with a toothpick. In time of battle soldiers sometimes have their tympanums ruptured by the concussion caused by the firing of cannon. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... done, such a night as this. A regular south-westerly gale, accompanied by a stinging, cutting rain, which made it almost impossible to look to windward. Earth and sky seemed mixed together, and each twig and bough sent a separate plaint upon the gale, indignant at seeing their fresh-acquired honours torn from them and scattered before ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... after, as Rosy lay up in a tree, waiting for the sun to rise, she heard a great buzzing close by, and saw a fly caught in a cobweb that went from one twig to another. The big spider was trying to spin him all up, and the poor fly was struggling to get away before his ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... twig, father, that strikes against your hat on the way home; that is what I should like you ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... threshing-floor is dry. Dew is the symbol of divine grace, of the silently formed moisture which, coming from no apparent source, freshens by night the wilted plants, and hangs in myriad drops, that twinkle into green and gold as the early sunshine strikes them, on the humblest twig. That grace is plainly not a natural product nor to be accounted for by environment. The dew of the Spirit, which God and God only, can give, can freshen our worn and drooping souls, can give joy in sorrow, can keep us from being touched ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... next. I do not ignore it. But I do say this—That a different principle attaches to investigation in this spiritual field from investigation in any other. If a man baits a line for fish, the fish will come, even if he declares there are no such things as fishes. If a man limes a twig for birds, the birds will be caught, even if he thinks it superstitious to believe in birds at all. But a man cannot bait a line for souls. A man cannot lime a twig to catch gods. All wise schools have agreed that this latter capture depends to some extent ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... the industrial classes'—an absurd and shallow system which has been urged by quacks and dabblers in world-bettering, and which has been exhausted without avail in England—the system dear to single-sided Gradgrinds and illiterate men who grasp a twig here and there without knowing of the existence of the trunk and roots. It lays down a perfectly scientific and universal basis, believing that the most insignificant industry, to be perfectly understood and pursued, must proceed from a knowledge of the great principles of science ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... that was a dreadful journey! Every time a twig snapped, Whitefoot's heart seemed to jump right up in his throat. Every time he saw a moving shadow, and the branches of the trees moving in the wind were constantly making moving shadows on the snow, he ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... the compass, as he could still determine them by the sunset light, with a large printed W to indicate the west! This boyish contrivance particularly pleased him. If he had only had a pole, a stick, or even a twig, on which to tie his handkerchief and erect it above the clump of mesquite as a signal to the searchers in case they should be overcome by fatigue or sleep, he would have been happy. But the plain was barren of ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... introduce into his landscapes. The above illustration, may perhaps give a slight idea of his artistic skill as a modeller. I specially refer to this, which he called "The Family Tree," as he required each member of his family to assist in its production. We each made a twig or small branch, which he cleverly fixed into its place as a part of the whole. The model tree in question was constructed of wire slightly twisted together, so as to form the main body of a branch. It ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... or, knowing, he may not care enough to put forth the tremendous effort necessary to break these habits and build up the opposite. From the standpoint of conduct this non-moral period is the most important one in the life of the child. In it the twig is bent. To urge that a child cannot understand and therefore should be excused for all sorts of conduct simply evades the issue. He is forming habits—that cannot be prevented; the question is, Are those habits in line with the demands of social efficiency ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... to see what they were, and brought me a twig to which clung balls of snow white down. I held it up to show my wife, for I knew the sight would please her still more than ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... drowsily from mazy thicket where sullen shadow thinned, little by little, until behind leaf and twig was a glimmer of light that waxed ever brighter. And presently amid this growing brightness was soft stir and twitter, sleepy chirpings changed to notes of wistful sweetness, a plaintive calling ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... a cautious stalking through the woods, silent as an Indian, stealthy of foot, with eyes that glanced sharply in all directions. Once a twig snapped under foot, and after that he remained motionless through a long moment, shrinking against the trunk of a tree and scanning the forest anxiously in all directions. At length he ventured out again, ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... pressed on it with his foot and put his whole weight on it, just as he had seen his father do to the other tree,—snap went the tree like a twig, and Salar tumbled head over heels and went rolling over ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... beside a tiny fire, toasting bread on the end of a beech twig. He held the twig in one hand and an open book in the other. He looked up without changing his position when the tramp came charging down ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... the stranger raise his own bow. Nor did he seem to take aim but let the arrow fly. And the arrow carried the twig and leaf with it to ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... will put chains on my thoughts. But shall I not sing you a tune you may dance to? I will make you a song for an August night, when the moon rocks her way up and down the cradle of the sky, and you shall rock on earth like any apple on the twig. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... those of Trebula equally keen after Vedius Molo, but all Vedians are eager to shield Molo and to help catch and convict Annius Largus, and all Satronians conversely doing all they can to shield Largus and get Molo. Oh, I twig! Moreover I realize that all Vedians regard the abduction of Greia as not so much a hot-headed folly of Largus as a Satronian retort to the abduction of Xantha; and conversely, all Satronians regard it as merely an insufficient counter to Xantha's abduction. Oh, I comprehend ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... "Ne'er a blessed twig, to save his soul; and there's the madness written on him;" Stephen roared as loud as any of them. "And me to see him riding in the ring there, and knowing what the gentleman had sworn to do if he came across the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his masters say, and got a big future. Handsome little rogue, too. He's none of your ordinary boys. He's a twig from the cedar-top." ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... not sleep in the tower: that would have been inconvenient in Maulfry's view. They had a little outhouse not ten paces from it, and slept there. Thither went Isoult, jumping at every snapt twig; the door yielded easily, but which bed should she try? Nanno, she knew, snored, for Vincent had once made her laugh by recounting his troubles under the spell of it. Well, the left-hand bed was undoubtedly ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... whole the "passive resistance" of the democrats seems to me only a seasonable expression for what is usually called fear. Yesterday I dined with the King. The Queen was amiable in the English fashion. The enclosed twig of erica I picked from her sewing-table, and send it to keep you from being jealous. * ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... bushes," he said. "Be careful, Hans, not to break a twig, as you go. We can climb that tree. There are plants, with stems like cords, winding round it. The top is so thick and bushy that I don't think ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... the whirling log representation. After it is finished, feathers are stuck in the ground around it, and sacred meal is scattered on parts by some of the assisting singers. Others scatter the meal promiscuously; one of the maskers uses a spruce twig and medicine shell, applying meal to every figure and object in the painting. Then the medicine-men all gather up portions of the sacred meal, putting it in their medicine pouches. The patient soon enters and takes his seat in the centre of the painting. The usual incantations ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... wenches will, Nor hast thou pleasure to be crosse in talke: But thou with mildnesse entertain'st thy wooers, With gentle conference, soft, and affable. Why does the world report that Kate doth limpe? Oh sland'rous world: Kate like the hazle twig Is straight, and slender, and as browne in hue As hazle nuts, and sweeter then the kernels: Oh let me see thee ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Holt—seems to be only just out of pin feather, is rather afraid of hopping off the twig; and needs sundry lessons in clerical flying before he will make much headway. He is good-looking, but not eloquent; precise in his shaving, but short of fire and originality; smart in features, but bad in his reading; has a very neat moustache, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... watch; it was six o'clock, and thus wanted two hours to daybreak. Hurriedly I left the inn and went out again. A rimy frost had come upon every twig and bush and tree, and in the light of the moon the ice crystals sparkled as though the spirits had scattered myriads of precious stones everywhere. But I thought not of this. I made my way toward the spot from which I thought I had heard the sound come, and then listened intently. ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... across the little park to the wood beyond. He did not feel the wind of his running on his bare skin. He did not feel the hunger that had made him so unable to bear the lash. On and on he ran, fancying ever he heard the cruel Angus behind him. If a dry twig snapped, he thought it was the crack of the whip; and a small wind that rose suddenly in the top of a pine, seemed the hiss with which it was about to descend upon him. He ran and ran, but still there seemed nothing between him and his persecutors. He felt ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... whenever Lenore's hair caught its rays, it shone like gold. The proud eye, the delicate mouth, the slender limbs of the noble girl took his fancy prisoner. She laughed, and showed her little white teeth—he was enraptured; she broke off a twig, and struck the shrubs with it as she passed—it seemed to him that they bent before her in homage ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... votes; Mr. Lincoln's majority was only about 6,700; and of the total vote of 2,401,000 in the great States of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, if less than three per cent. had been cast on the other side, Lincoln would have been defeated and the Union destroyed. A twig may change the trajectory of a cannon ball; a letter "l" misplaced, may have saved ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... varieties of the elm, namely, the broad-leafed, lime-leafed, and twisted elm, in which latter the fibres of the wood are twisted. Even with the heterophyllous hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), which bears on each twig leaves of two shapes, "several plants raised from seed all retained "the same peculiarity." (10/155. 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1841 page 687.) I will add only one other remarkable case of variation in foliage, namely, the occurrence of two sub- varieties ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... note that an irregular oval was traced in its center, with a crooked, wavering cross at one end. Then as he bent closer to the light a twig snapped treacherously behind him and a crushing blow upon his ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant |
