"Acorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his wit and his reason, Sat him under an oak in a hot summer season. On the oak grew an acorn or two, it is said: On the ground grew a pumpkin as big as ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... how the biggest things of life grow out of the tiniest ones. There is the old simile of the acorn and the oak, for instance. But oaks take a long time to grow, and everybody concerned in oak culture is calmly expecting them to do it. Imagine an acorn exploding to let out an oak huge enough to shadow ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... trees of Elysium had the same varied fruitage, and the reason in both cases is perhaps the fact that when the cultivated apple took the place of acorns and nuts as a food staple, words signifying "nut" or "acorn" were transferred to the apple. A myth of trees on which all these fruits grew might then easily arise. Another Irish bile was a yew described in a poem as "a firm strong god," while such phrases in this poem as "word-pure man," "judgment of origin," "spell of knowledge," ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... protests against, and that experience weeps over. Because the education of boys has met with tolerable success, hitherto,—but only tolerable it must be confessed,—in developing them into men, there are those who would make girls grow into women by the same process. Because a gardener has nursed an acorn till it grew into an oak, they would have him cradle a grape in the same soil and way, and make it a vine. Identical education, or identical co-education, of the sexes defrauds one sex or the other, or perhaps both. It defies the ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... that takes the highest finish. The structure of Herrick's verse, like that of Blake, is simple to the verge of innocence. Such rhythmic intricacies as those of Shelley, Tennyson, and Swinburne he never dreamed of. But his manner has this perfection: it fits his matter as the cup of the acorn fits its meat. ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... trees, where the bees make it. The wax is worth sixteen or twenty reals an arroba, and a jar of honey one real. I saw a tree which had many honeycombs hanging on the branches. The mountains are fuller of wild boars than are the commons of Espana of swine and cattle in acorn time. One of those swine, if it is fat, is worth two reals, but only one if not fat; and a deer is worth the same sum. There are almost no fruits of Espana. There are melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, and radishes of the country, and quantities of cabbages and lettuce. There are many ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... very long. There are at the present time in use in Mediterranean countries twenty-five crop-yielding trees other than the ordinary orchard fruits. I am told that they have oak trees there which yield an acorn that is better than the chestnut. A pig will fill himself with acorns on the one hillside and with figs on the next hillside and then lie down and get fat. We are too industrious, we wait on the pig; I want the pig to wait ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... coming and going with loud bluster, screaming as if each had a lump of melting sludge in his throat, and taking good care to improve every opportunity afforded by the darkness and confusion of the storm to steal from the acorn stores of the woodpeckers. One of the golden eagles made an impressive picture as he stood bolt upright on the top of a tall pine-stump, braving the storm, with his back to the wind and a tuft of snow piled on his broad shoulders, a monument of passive endurance. Thus every storm-bound ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... nature shows that it must be to the end of improvement and upward growth, the increase in real virtue, in knowledge, and in wisdom. Nature is a silent preacher which holds forth upon week-days as on Sabbaths. We see the acorn grow into the oak, the egg into the bird, the maggot into the butterfly. Shall we doubt, then, that the human soul, the most precious of all things, is also upon the upward path? And how can the soul progress save through the cultivation of virtue and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... blossom. These things all happen, of course, according to eternal law of inward development; they are not altered by any force from without, because nothing is without: the sun that makes the daisy to blossom is just that amount of sun that it absorbs into itself, and so with the acorn or the pine-cone. These latter, however, do not produce any bright immediate blossom, though they ultimately change the face of all that spot of earth by the spread of their roots ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... us! Tinman practicing in his Court suit before the chiwal-glass! And that good fellow, the carpenter, Crickledon, who has lived with the sea fronting him all his life, and has never been in a boat, and he confesses he has only once gone inland, and has never seen an acorn!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this morning going down the path with her acorn basket," said Granpa Tobackyworm as he blew a few rings of smoke in the air. "Perhaps she has gone to the Katydid grocery store to buy something," Granpa Tobackyworm added as he bounced up and down on his ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... of men about town, gentlemen highly "posted up" on dogs, and who could talk hoss and dog equal to a Lord Bentick, or Hiram Woodruff, or "Acorn," or Col. Bill Porter, of the "Spirit," were congregated in a famous resort, a place known as Hollahan's. A dog-fight that afternoon, under the "Linden trees," in front of the "State House," gave ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... an infinity of properties, a variety of forms, constitute the various families and classes into which botanists have distributed plants: it is thus we see the cedar and the hyssop develop their growth; the one rises to the clouds, the other creep humbly on the earth. Thus, by degrees, from an acorn springs the majestic oak, accumulating, with time, its numerous branches, and overshadowing us with its foliage. Thus, a grain of corn, after having drawn its own nourishment from the juices of the earth, serves, in its turn, for the nourishment of man, into whose system it conveys the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... varieties of oak would naturally suggest the introduction of the cork-tree and the species which produces the valonia, which forms an important article of trade, and is largely used in England by the tanner. This cup of the acorn of the Quercus aegilops is extremely rich in tannin, and ranges in price from 20 to 30 pounds sterling per ton delivered in an English port. It is exported largely from the Levant, and there can be little doubt that its introduction to Cyprus ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... with its strange system of water-works, pumping the sap up through pipes and mains; we see the chemical laboratory in the branches mixing flavor for the orange in one bough, mixing the juices of the pineapple in another; we behold the tree as a mother making each infant acorn ready against the long winter, rolling it in swaths soft and warm as wool blankets, wrapping it around with garments impervious to the rain, and finally slipping the infant acorn into a sleeping bag, like those ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... because within his man's heart was still the heart of his childhood. The great oak of the forest year by year takes on its encircling layer of wood, but the layers of a century still enclose the heart of a sprig that burst forth upon a spring morning from its mother acorn. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... this cause that the French Huguenots, driven out of France by the French king, came to South Carolina. The most notable cause that induced the planting of the thirteen original colonies here in North America was religious persecution in the Old World. And as the oak grows out of the acorn, so out of these colonies has grown this nation of which ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... my love with an A, because he's Agreeable. I hate him because he's Avaricious. He took me to the Sign of the Acorn, And treated me with Apples. His name's Andrew, ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... breaking the chains of her intellectual bondage to China and India, and the end is not yet. My purpose has been, not to take a snap-shot photograph, but to paint a picture of the past. Seen in a lightning-flash, even a tempest-shaken tree appears motionless. A study of the same organism from acorn to seed-bearing oak, reveals not a phase but a life. It is something like this—"to the era of Meiji" (A.D. 1868-1894) which I have essayed. Hence I am perfectly willing to accept, in advance, the verdict of smart inventors who are all ready to patent a brand-new religion ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... hack into the roots of things, They are so much intertwisted with the earth; So that the branch a goodly verdure flings, I reck not if an acorn gave it birth. To trace all actions to their secret springs Would make indeed some melancholy mirth; But this is not at present my concern, And I ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... sterilize the water, or distil and aerate it; it must be pure and soft. Better still: drink toast- or rice-water; kefyr, four days old; koumiss; lactic-acid water; zoolak; egg lemonade; sterilized milk with one third lime-water; whortleberry wine; acorn cocoa; unfermented grape-juice. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... gathered nearer. The spell was broken. That strange and mysterious look vanished from Lady Sue's face; she turned away from the speakers and idly plucked a few bunches of acorn from an overhanging oak. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... a little girl,—when long talks banished turkeys and apples and sliding,—when new books or sleigh-rides crowded out the old games,—when the two days of John's yearly visit were half-spent in the leafless, sunny woods, gathering mosses and acorn-cups, delicate fern leaves, and clusters of fire-moss, and red winter-green berries, for the pretty frames and baskets Lizzy's skilful fingers fabricated,—when he shook hands at coming and going, instead of kissing her;—but it seemed just the same, somehow. Dear me! those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... view on't Might well have warm'd old Saturn; that I thought her As chaste as unsunn'd snow. O, all the devils! This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,—was't not?— Or less,—at first?—perchance he spoke not, but, Like a full-acorn'd boar, a German one, Cried "O!" and mounted; found no opposition But what he look'd for should oppose and she Should from encounter guard. Could I find out The woman's part in me! For there's no motion That tends to vice in man, but I affirm It is the woman's part; be it lying, note it, ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... head Our table-cloth we spread; A grain of rye, or wheat, Is manchet, which we eat; Pearly drops of dew we drink In acorn cups ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... throat sparkling with angry fire, to warn me off from a Missouri-currant whose honey he was sipping. And many a time he has driven me out of a flower-bed. This summer, by the way, a pair of these winged emeralds fastened their mossy acorn-cup upon a bough of the same elm which the orioles had enlivened the year before. We watched all their proceedings from the window through an opera-glass, and saw their two nestlings grow from black needles with a tuft of down at the lower end, till they whirled away on their first short experimental ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... up in Farmer Acorn's apple tree to steal apples, and the limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by the farmer's great dog, and then languish on a sickbed for weeks, and repent and become ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cover suffices, with a bed of sand and diet to their taste. They are very small, scarcely larger than a cherry-stone. Their shape is extremely curious. The body is dumpy, tapering to an acorn-shaped posterior; the legs are very long, resembling those of the spider when outspread; the hinder legs are disproportionately long and curved, being thus excellently adapted to enlace and press ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... tree There was of swine a huge company, That grunted as they crunched the mast: For that was ripe, and fell full fast. Then they trotted away, for the wind grew high: 5 One acorn they left, and no more might you spy. Next came a Raven, that liked not such folly: He belonged, they did say, to the witch Melancholy! Blacker was he than blackest jet, Flew low in the rain, and his feathers not wet. 10 He picked up the acorn and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the pheasants, I gets them mostly about acorn-time; they comes out of the plantations then. I keeps clear of the plantations, because, besides the men a-watching, they have got dogs chained up, and alarm-guns as goes off if you steps on the spring; and some have got a string stretched along as you be pretty sure ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... pepperidge tall, Where the birds and the squirrels tirelessly call, Where in autumn the flowers of the gentian blue Look up with their eyes so dark and true, Up into the hazy sky, Dreaming away as the red leaves drop, And the acorn falls from its deep brown cup, And the yellow ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his acorn helmet on; It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down; The corslet plate that guarded his breast Was once the wild bee's golden vest; His cloak, of a thousand mingled dyes, Was formed of the wings of butterflies; His shield was the shell of a lady-bug green, Studs of gold on ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... its native mead, The golden acorn lay; And watch with care the bursting seed, And guard the tender spray; England will bless us for the deed, In some ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... years have flown since she dwelt upon earth. The acorn which was shed in the forest has grown into a lusty oak, while trees at that time in their pride have fallen and decayed away. Dead!—yes, she has passed from all memory save mine, where she will ever dwell. Generations of men have gone down to the grave since her ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... adherent, and is often the direct cause of irritability, nervousness, crying, and too frequent urination. It should be closely examined by both physician and nurse and when the foreskin does not readily slip back over the acorn-like head of the organ, circumcision is advised early in the second week. This simple operation will start the child out on his career with at least one moral handicap removed and one desirable possibility established—that of being able ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... might have been as happy as the days were long, had thrown away all their joy in a foolish quarrel. They never met without saying disagreeable things to each other, and scolded each other so dreadfully that all their little fairy followers, for fear, would creep into acorn cups ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... an oaken sprout A goodly acorn grew; But winds from heaven shook the acorn out, And ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... fruit as ever swung To grace a tree so firm and strong. Indeed, it was a great mistake, As this discovery teaches, That I myself did not partake His counsels whom my curate preaches. All things had then in order come; This Acorn, for example, Not bigger than my thumb, Had not disgraced a tree so ample. The more I think, the more I wonder To see outraged proportion's laws, And that without the slightest cause; God surely made an awkward blunder." With such reflections proudly fraught, Our sage grew tired of mighty ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... holes of delved loam, Or lop with hooked knives from off high trees The boughs of yester-year. What sun and rains To them had given, what earth of own accord Created then, was boon enough to glad Their simple hearts. Mid acorn-laden oaks Would they refresh their bodies for the nonce; And the wild berries of the arbute-tree, Which now thou seest to ripen purple-red In winter time, the old telluric soil Would bear then more abundant and more big. And many coarse foods, too, in long ago The blooming freshness of the rank ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... which stands about every kampong, supplies the natives with their great luxury—an acorn, known as the betel-nut, which, when crushed and mixed with lime leaves, takes the place of our chewing tobacco. In fact, the bright-red juice seen oozing from the corners of a Malay's mouth is as much a part of himself as is his sarong or kris. Betel-nut ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... up river the low hills are covered with acorn-bearing oak scrub, a favourite cover both for pheasants, which feed on the acorns, as well as deer. This scrub, although very trying to walk through, is not high enough to prevent pointers working freely, and many a good bag have I ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... Brandeis had bought a large bill of Christmas fancy-goods—celluloid toilette sets, leather collar boxes, velvet glove cases. Among the lot was a photograph album in the shape of a huge acorn done in lightning-struck plush. It was a hideous thing, and expensive. It stood on a brass stand, and its leaves were edged in gilt, and its color was a nauseous green and blue, and it was altogether the sort of thing to grace the chill and funereal best room in a Wisconsin farmhouse. Ferdinand ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... draw a material, yet supersensible, picture of these human beings in the very beginning of the earth's evolution, we must imagine a psychic ovoid, or egg, contained within the circumference of the earth, and enclosed on its lower surface, as an acorn is by its cup. The substance of the cup, however, consists solely of heat or fire. The process of being enveloped by heat not only causes the kindling of life in the human being, but a change appears simultaneously in the astral body. In this body becomes incorporated the first germ ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... their way into the scrap heap of the old-metal dealer. Some of the racks intended for the storage of pipes and not for baking them were exceedingly decorative, the ornamental sides terminating with acorn knobs ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... wait to be asked twice. He lifted the barrel of wine as if it had been a little glass, and emptied it down his throat. He lifted the barrel of beer as if it had been an acorn, and emptied it after the wine. Then he lifted the barrel of mead as if it had been a very small pea, and swallowed every drop of mead that was in it. And after that he began stamping about and breaking ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... ignorance would seem no teaching at all, or even bad teaching. How many things are there in the world in which the wisest of us can ill descry the hand of God! Who not knowing could read the lily in its bulb, the great oak in the pebble-like acorn? God's beginnings do not look like his endings, but they are like; the oak is in the acorn, though we cannot see it. The ranting preacher, uttering huge untruths, may yet wake vital verities in chaotic minds—convey to a heart ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... morning, but not until the sun had already run nearly half his course, for he never dared to leave his timber observatory before, le pauvre diable dropped down from his perch like an acorn—and, marching off with weary steps, and scarcely a hope that ere another night fell he should gain the shelter of some cottage, he dragged himself along. On he rolled from side to side, torn with the thorns and bitten by the gnats that swarmed ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... my lord,' said Quickeye. 'I have found her already. A hundred miles from here there is a forest. In the middle of the forest, an old oak, and on the top of the oak, an acorn. This acorn is the princess. If Long will take me on his shoulders, we shall soon bring her back.' And sure enough, in less time than it takes to walk round a cottage, they had returned from the forest, and Long presented the acorn ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... can easily escape almost any enemy, except the weasel, which is not easily outwitted. His nursery and living-room is quite pretentious, but his lateral storeroom is a marvel! He is a miser indeed, and stores up every acorn and nut he can find, even many times more than he can ever eat. His variety of food is almost unending—he loves buckwheat, beaked nuts, pecans, various kinds of grass seeds, and Indian corn. In carrying ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... in avulsing segments of the vein by means of Babcock's stylet, which consists of a flexible steel rod, 30 inches in length, with acorn-shaped terminals. The instrument is passed along the lumen of the segment to be dealt with, and a ligature applied around the vein above the bulbous end of the stylet enables nearly the whole length of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... for the folk that ask it in God's name, not for one's kindred, or for another more vile. The flesh of mortals is so soft that a good beginning suffices not below from the springing of the oak to the forming of the acorn. Peter began without gold and without silver, and I with prayers and with fasting, and Francis in humility his convent; and if thou lookest at the source of each, and then lookest again whither it has run, thou wilt see dark made of ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... withholds the loved boy: Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: And now they never meet in grove, or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But they do square; that all their elves, for fear, Creep into acorn cups, and hide ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... satisfaction should he made—We turned our thoughts to find out the chief persons concerned; (for a man will sometimes employ another to commit a crime he does not chuse to be guilty of himself) —We found the Acorn Whistler was the chief contriver and promoter of the mischief—We agreed that he was the man that ought to suffer—Some of his relations, who are here present, then said he deserved death, and voted for it—Accordingly he was put to death—He was a very great warrior, and had many friends and relations ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... interrupt with their story before the other had finished his. So the time simply flew until it came to dessert, and there were speeches and toasts, and Octavia and I as the guests of honour each received a present of a box of bonbons like a huge acorn; but when we opened them, out of mine there jumped a darling little real squirrel, quite tame and gentle, and coddled up in my neck and was too attractive, so I purred to it of course and caressed it, for the rest of the time; and Mr. Dick said it was not fair ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... this a cup," declares Mr. Grebby, grinning broadly as Eleanor hands him his tea. "It's more like an acorn!" He takes half a dozen slices of bread and butter ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... heard in this district, quite as often as it is in country woodlands. One day in the spring I saw six all screeching and yelling together up and down a hedge near the road. Now in October they are plentiful. One flew across overhead with an acorn in its beak, and perched in an elm beside the highway. He pecked at the acorn on the bough, then glanced down, saw me, and fled, dropping the acorn, which fell tap tap from branch to branch ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... ever rectifies the mistakes of mankind. The value of the discoveries of all these great men has long since been acknowledged by the world; and the day will and must surely arrive, when the little acorn of Truth, planted by Hahnemann, which has already taken deep root, and is lifting high its vigorous stem, shall tower far above all other giants of the medical forest, and its wide-spreading branches cast their beneficent shadows over ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... is not sentenced. And if he is sentenced, where will he serve his time? Will he be going ayont seas to be sold in the tobacco plantations or off in a ship to Botany Bay? I tell you the keel is not laid, and the mast is not out of the acorn that will carry away Stair Garland. And as to hanging him—faith, they will need all their forces back from the wars before they could do siccan a thing ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... strength of the fable is when it deals with the shut pool in which certain unfortunate raindrops are imprisoned among slugs and snails, and in the company of an old toad. The sodden contentment of the fallen acorn is strangely significant; and it is astonishing how unpleasantly we are startled by the appearance of her horrible ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as in Maples in the spring; and apparently their bright tints, now that most other Oaks are withered, are connected with this phenomenon. They are full of life. It has a pleasantly astringent, acorn-like taste, this strong Oak-wine, as I find on tapping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... pliant whalebone, And his arrow a white-pine stick; Such a life as his archery practice Led the cats and each wretched chick! Our tea-sets were bits of dishes That mother had thrown away, With chincapin saucers and acorn-cups; And our dolls slept on moss and hay. With a May-apple leaf for a parasol We played 'Lady-come-to-see,' Polly's house was the kitchen door-step, And ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... ever suspected Mr. Meadow Mouse of stealing—no indeed! Striped Chipmunk would have gone his way and thought no more about it, had it not happened that there was a hole in the bag and from it something dropped at his feet. Striped Chipmunk picked it up and it wasn't a potato. It was a fat acorn. Striped Chipmunk said nothing but ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... into exercise. So of the other senses, and their related mental faculties. With a glorified body, then, truly it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but the thought itself is rapture, that our souls at present may be as disproportioned to their future expansion, as the acorn is to the oak of a century's growth, which is infolded now, and dormant, in ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... in changeful autumn, When the leaves are turning brown, From a tall oak's topmost branches Fell a little acorn down. ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... a great change was wrought in the appearance of the old log house. The roof, which had been humped in the middle like the back of a lean, acorn-hunting hog, was straightened and reshingled; the yard was enclosed with a neat fence; and the stack chimney which had leaned off from the house as if it would fall, was shoved back and held in place with strong iron bands. And the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the queer-shaped, jumped-together, lack-lustre-looking vehicle, with a turnover seat behind, now in charge of a pepper-and-salt attired youth, with a shabby hat, looped up by a thin silver cord to an acorn on the crown, and baggy Berlin gloves—'and I'll just see what there is in the way of stabling; and if I think it will do, then I'll give a boy sixpence or a shilling to come over to Leather, here,' jerking his ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... us all? But this may seem a subtle evasion rather than a frank answer. Let us rather say that idealism is one of the necessary modes of man's faith, brings in the future, and assumes the reality of that which shall be actual; that the reality it owns is that of the rose in the bud, the oak in the acorn, the planet in its fiery mist. I believe that ideal character in its perfection is potentially in every man who is born into the world. We forecast the future in other parts of life; why should we not ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... said of the dream that the stone which was despised by the architect has become the corner-stone. The acorn of the dream, of the ephemeral and inconsiderable product of our soul, dates from the earliest times. Before that, men saw in the dream a prophecy for the future, a warning spirit, a comforter, a messenger of the gods. Now we join forces with it in order to explore ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... chicks were much stronger on their feet. They no longer had to go around an acorn; they could even scramble over pine-cones, and on the little tags that marked the places for their wings, were now to be seen ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... do—given happiness, and cheered those who came across my path. It is not much to do,' it continued meekly, 'not great and glorious deeds at which the world stands amazed; but it was all I could do, and was the work He meant for me—we must not despise the day of small things. The acorn is very small, yet look at the oak. A gentle word, a bright smile, is not hard to bestow, but oh, the blessing they can be to hearts pining perhaps ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... there? It's a oak. Look; from a little acorn like this it grew. See, this is a acorn, and in the start that tree wasn't no bigger than this ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of cotton cloth, leaving one arm bare, but some wear inner vests or shirts of silk or cotton. All go bareheaded, except the priests, who have a kind of caps of two spans long on their heads, with a knob on the top about the size of an acorn, all sparkling with gold. They delight in ear-rings, but have neither rings nor bracelets. The complexion of the natives inclines towards fair, as the air is more temperate than at Calicut. In their tillage and reaping there ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... distinct specimens of the cucumber-shaped product. From the centre of its large broad leaves, which gather at the top, when it has reached the height of twelve or fifteen feet there springs forth a large purple bud ten inches long, shaped like a huge acorn, though more pointed. This cone hangs suspended from a strong stem, upon which a leaf unfolds, displaying a cluster of young fruit. As soon as these are large enough to support the heat of the sun and the chill of the rain, this sheltering leaf drops off, and another unfolds, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... me! woe's me! The acorn's not yet Fallen from the tree, That's to grow the wood, That's to make the cradle, That's to rock the bairn, That's to grow to the man, That's to lay ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... squirrel high up somewhere in the branches of an oak, recalled him to his wits. Down came spiralling a few bits of bark and acorn-shell, quite in ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... or thereabouts acorns were planted in "Acorn Patch Enclosure" in the Forest; and in 1800 trees marked A and B were taken from this place and planted opposite the "Speech House." Two, marked D and F, were drawn out of Acorn Patch in 1807 and planted near the Speech House fence. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... an acorn on the tree top, Then was I an eagle cock; Now that you are a withered old block, Still I ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... his age; he smiled and said: "The rose that sleeps upon yon valley's breast, Just born to-day, is not as young as I; The moss-robed oak of twice a thousand storms — An acorn cradled ages long ago — Is old, in sooth, but not as old as I." It was his way — he always answered thus, But when he did ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... sech feats as trivial. An American, too, by merely growlin' towards this Mexican, would make him quit out like a jack rabbit. "As I observes prior, courage is frequent the froots of what a gent don't know. Take grizzly b'ars. Back fifty years, when them squirrel rifles is preevalent; when a acorn shell holds a charge of powder, an' bullets runs as light an' little as sixty-four to the pound, why son! you-all could shoot up a grizzly till sundown an' hardly gain his disdain. It's a fluke if you downs one. That sport who can show a set of grizzly b'ar claws, them times, has fame. They're as ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... goodness—then it is much more correct to say that we must interpret the less developed by the more developed. If you wish to trace the growth of the oak-tree from its earliest beginnings to maturity, then study the acorn and the soil; but if you wish to know what the capacity and the function of the acorn are, then you must interpret the less developed by the more developed, you must see what an oak is like when it spreads its branches ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... the plow-handle, and mounted the panel of the fence next to the one on which Bushie was sitting, and squared himself for the confab, which the little master opened thus; "Burl, just look at them crows up there on the dead limb of that big acorn-tree; ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... to spring from acorn beginnings. Helen smiled, and Troy fell. Roast pork, and I doubt not then and there the apple sauce, became a national institution because a small ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... oak-tree, There was of swine a huge company; That grunted as they crunch'd the mast, For that was ripe and fell full fast. Then they trotted away for the wind grew high, One acorn they left and no ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a branch to show me the berry. It was like an acorn with the cup taken off in shape, and of a reddish-brown colour. These berries are harvested ordinarily at the beginning of the dry monsoon, i.e. in April or May. As the coolies are paid in proportion to the amount they gather, the whole crop is first of all measured. It is then put into a pulping-machine, ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds. What else have the Hindoos, the Persians, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... and the country was a prey to every misfortune. 'Evil was the state of Ireland during his reign; fruitless her corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; and fruitless her rivers; her cattle without milk; her fruit without plenty, for there used to be but one acorn on the oak.' ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... have analogies illustrating this fact. It is said that in every acorn rests and exists, in miniature, the form of the future oak. And, some go so far as to say that the oak is the "ultimate cause" of the acorn—that the idea of the oak caused the acorn to be at all. In the same way, the "idea" of the man must ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... literature.' O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! The total English literature—not the tottle only, but the tottle of the whole, like an oak and the masts of some great amiral, that once slept in an acorn—absolutely lying hid in an eighteen-penny pamphlet! And what, now, might this pamphlet be about? Was it about the curing of bacon, or the sublimer art of sowing moonshine broadcast? It was, says Pope, if you must know ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... a nut or a fir-cone. Why, it's just the same noise as you hear in the country at home when they drop an acorn." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... nobility is revealed by its insatiable hungers, its surpassing dignity is declared by its endless wants, its inability to live by bread alone. "As by the seed we conjecture what plant will arise, and know by the acorn what tree will grow forth, or by the eagle's egg what kind of bird; so do we by the powers of the soul upon earth, know what kind of Being, Person, and Glory will be in the Heavens, where its latent powers shall be turned into Act, its inclinations shall be ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... of the plant would describe the fruit bud as follows: In form resembling an acorn though more pointed at the top; in some species, of a dark brown in others of a light brown color, containing two cells filled with seeds similar in shape to the fruit bud, but not rugose as described by some botanists. Some writers state that each cell ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... ways of grass and flower and all things are not to be expressed. Seeds by the hundred million float with absolute indifference on the air. The oak has a hundred thousand more leaves than necessary, and never hides a single acorn. Nothing utilitarian—everything on a scale of splendid waste. Such noble, broadcast, open-armed waste is delicious to behold. Never was there such a lying proverb as 'Enough is as good as a feast.' Give me the feast; give me squandered millions of seeds, luxurious carpets of petals, green mountains ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... An acorn has in itself the potentiality not of one oak-tree alone, but of a forest of oak-trees, to the thousandth generation, and indeed of oak-trees without end. There is no sort of law of "conservation" here. It is not as if something were passed ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... laddie? touch a grain of rye if ye dare! Shell these dry bains; and if so be ye're starving, eat as many as ye can boil in an acorn-cup." ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... extended plain, with herbage green: Shade to the place was wanting; hither came The heaven-born poet; seated him, and touch'd His sounding strings, and straight a shade approach'd. Nor wanted there Chaoenian trees; nor groves Of poplars; nor the acorn's spacious leaves: The linden soft, the beech, the virgin bay, The brittle hazle, and spear-forming ash; The knotless fir; ilex with fruit low-bow'd; The genial plane; the maple various stain'd; Stream-loving willow; and the watery lote; Box of perpetual green; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... pieces of coral from all parts of the world, a New Zealand paddle on the wall, opposite to a couple of Australian spears. Hanks of sea-weed hung from nails. There was a caulking hammer that had been fished up from the bottom of some dock, all covered with acorn barnacles, and an old bottle incrusted with oyster-shells, the glass having begun to imitate the iridescent lining of the oyster. Under the side-table was a giant oyster from off the coast of Java. Over the chimney-glass the snout of a sword-fish. A cannon-ball—a thirty-two pounder—rested ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... where my congratulations come in. All at home send you their best greetings, kisses, and embraces. The old gentleman is as sound as an acorn, or as a ripe apple freshly plucked from the tree. Don't be in the least concerned on his account; your uncle feels remarkably well. But your aunt is sick, very sick, and to all appearance ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... the acorn, cocoanut and chestnut, are very rich in starch, and these should be classified as starchy foods. Very few foods contain as high per cent of starch as the dry chestnut. In southern Europe chestnuts are made into flour, and this is made into bread or cakes. ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... so touches some of us as a thing with "makings" in it, a thing with untold potentialities in it, a thing which may come in the future to God only knows what. Talk of the caterpillar which is to develop into the butterfly or the acorn which shall one day be a mighty oak. Why, these miracles are but child's play compared with the miracles potentially wrapped up in this poor little self. No wildest fairy tale can suggest the wonder ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... a mushroom's head, Our table cloth we spread; A grain of rye or wheat Is manchet, which we eat; Pearly drops of dew we drink, In acorn cups, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... we'll let down and shoot a cow," he said. "I was looking in the freezer-locker; the fresh meat's getting a little low. Or a wild pig, if we find a good stand of oak trees. I could enjoy what you'd do with some acorn-fed pork. Finished?" he asked Loudons. "Take over, then; I'll go back ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... all your plots for bravery? You always meant to seek your fortune—not bide here like an acorn for ever." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... find again the tree which bore the yellow flowers; as it certainly was rare, being the only one of the description seen throughout the journey. Now however the flowers had given place to young fruit which were of the size of an acorn, and grew on a ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... explain the mysteries of biology and astronomy. Observation and classification do not necessarily imply elucidation. The miracle of the foetus taking human shape and soul, or of the oak rising out of the acorn and the brown earth is to me as baffling as the materialization of a spirit. The marvels of the cell-life and the daily chemistry which maintain the body charm my attention as much as the mysterious clouds of light with which spirits are wont ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... a long-tusked boar of the forest, this snow-white, sawed-off, pug-nose little porker of mine—ages and ages ago. But he still remembers the smell of the forest leaves; he still knows the taste of the acorn-mast; he is still wild pig somewhere deep ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... have preferred it, myself," agreed Mrs. Denton. "I remember when I was a very little girl my mother longing for a tree upon the lawn underneath which she could sit. I found an acorn and planted it just in the right spot. I thought I would surprise her. I happened to be in the neighbourhood last summer, and I walked over. There was such a nice old lady sitting under it, knitting stockings. So you see it ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... the eggs that one is to proceed from, and to consider them of the greatest value. They construct particular cells where they are to be deposited.—The figure of a royal cell only begun, very much resembles a cup, or, more correctly speaking, the cup that has lost its acorn." ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... the eyes, then to the rest of the features, afterwards to the limbs and extremities. Evidently the artist's conception left much outside of it, to be added by way of label or explanation. In the trees, the care is to give the well-known fruit, the acorn or the apple, not the character of the tree; for what is wanted is only an indication what tree is meant. The only tie between man and the material world is the use he makes of it, elaborating and turning it into something it was not. Hence the trim orderliness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Lo, as the acorn to the oak, As well-heads to the river's height, As to the chicken the moist yolk, As to high noon the day's first white— Such is the baby to the man. There, straddling one red arm and leg, Lay my last work, in length a span, Half hatched, and conscious of the egg. A creditable ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... OF REBIRTHS which teaches that each spirit is an integral part of God, that it enfolds all divine possibilities as the acorn enfolds the oak; that by means of many existences in an earthy body of gradually improving texture its latent powers are being slowly unfolded and become available as dynamic energy; that none can be lost but that all will ultimately attain to perfection and reunion with God, each bringing ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... "And I saw it was an acorn, not the seed of one of those weak plants that spring up overnight and wither at noon. Yes, you will win." He laughed gayly, rolled his eyes and kissed his fingers. "And then you can afford to take a little holiday, and fall in love. Love! Ah, it is a joyous ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... to suggest. In the sculpture of an oak-tree, introduced above an Adoration of the Magi on the tomb of the Doge Marco Dolfino (fourteenth century), the sculptor has been content with a few leaves, a single acorn, and a bird; while, on the other hand, Millais' willow-tree with the robin, in the background of his "Ophelia," or the foreground of Hunt's "Two Gentlemen of Verona," carries the appeal to the imagination into particulars so multiplied and minute, that the work nearly reaches ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... deserted Roman road called Long-Ash Lane; leaving which as soon as she reached it she dipped down a hill by a transverse lane into the small town or village of Evershead, being now about halfway over the distance. She made a halt here, and breakfasted a second time, heartily enough—not at the Sow-and-Acorn, for she avoided inns, but at ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... containing the large antique German stove, built up with ornamental tiles cast in relief, with stories from bible history of saints, and arabesque. Beside it is a bronze receptacle for water, shaped like a huge acorn, the tap having a grotesque head, and the spigot being a small seated figure; this was gently turned when wanted, and a thin stream of water trickled over the hands into the basin beneath; an embroidered napkin ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... balking Genius. Only death Can silence it, or hinder. While there's breath Or sense of feeling, it will spurn the sod, And lift itself to glory, and to God. The acorn sprouted—weeds nor flowers can choke The certain growth of ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... is an acorn which is sown under the floor. From it springs an oak which grows to the skies. The old man of the story climbs up it in search of acorns, and reaches heaven. There he finds a hand-mill and a cock with a golden comb, both of which he carries off. The mill grinds pies and pancakes, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... commonwealth had grown out of a petty feudal organism, like an oak from an acorn in a crevice, gnarled and distorted, though wide-spreading and vigorous. It seemed perilous to deal radically with such a polity, and an almost timid conservatism on the part of its guardians in such an age of tempests ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... how cocoanuts and bananas grew in the jungle, and the little pig told about how he liked sour milk and things like that. And, after a while, they managed to find some berries for Mappo to eat, as he did not like the acorn nuts. ...
— Mappo, the Merry Monkey • Richard Barnum
... is the new-born plant scarce seen Amid the soft encircling green, Where yonder budding acorn rears, Just o'er the waving grass, its tender head: Slow pass along the train of years, And on the growing plant, their dews and showers they shed. Anon it rears aloft its giant form, And spreads its broad-brown arms to meet ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But they do square; that all their elves for fear Creep into acorn cups, ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... was a little brown Field Mouse; and one day he was out in the fields to see what he could find. He was running along in the grass, poking his nose into everything and looking with his two eyes all about, when he saw a smooth, shiny acorn, lying in the grass. It was such a fine shiny little acorn that he thought he would take it home with him; so he put out his paw to touch it, but the little acorn rolled away from him. He ran after it, but it kept rolling on, just ahead of him, till it came to a place ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... mannered. Polly talked over her school and brought out her needlework, which was to be the bottom of a white frock. It would be only two yards round and she had almost a yard worked. Then she was making a sampler, with an oak and acorn vine around it, and it was to have four different ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... this Forest, written about the year 1802, {87} in which he says: "Nothing in it can grow self-sown, for the deer bark all the young trees. Vast droves of hogs are allowed to go into the woods in the autumn, and if any fortunate acorn escapes their search, and takes root, then flocks of sheep are allowed to go into the Forest, and they bite off the tender shoot." He speaks of "a set of people called Forest free miners, who consider themselves as having a right to dig for coal in any part they please," adding that "trees ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... order that they might wholly forget their native country." But here is something more than the indifference of the Lotus-eaters; these eaters and drinkers at once become swine as to "their heads, voices and hair," and eat the acorn and the fruit of cornel-tree, "like wallowing pigs." Yet their mind ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... bees make four different kinds of cells. There are first the "royal cells" which are exceptional and are of acorn shape. Then there are the large cells in which the male bees are reared, and in which provisions are stored when the flowers furnish forth of their abundance. Then there are the little cells which may be called the "cradles of the working bees," which are also employed as ordinary store-rooms. These ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the grain of corn, The acorn on the hill, Each for some separate end is born In season fit, and still Each must in strength arise to work ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the country, and the huge boa-constrictor; that innumerable mighty operations in nature have their origin in small beginnings; that the narrow rivulet goes on gathering strength till it becomes the Great Cataract; that the minute plague-spot generated the virulent disease; that the acorn produces the oak; that the impaired seed failed to produce goodly fruit; that a small drop of leaven affected a huge mass. Lessons on the fecundity of little things had indeed grown into commonplace ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... kingdom, securing the same homologous structures in all classes and orders; so these fundamental ideas in human nature constitute its sameness and unity, under all the varying conditions of life and society. The acorn must produce an oak, and nothing else. The grain of wheat must always produce its kind. The offspring of man must always bear his image, and always exhibit the same fundamental characteristics, not only in his corporeal nature, but also in his ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... high as 100 feet and attain massive dimensions. The seeds of the white oaks are light brown acorns, which are highly relished by birds and animals. Many southern farmers range their hogs in white oak forests so that the porkers can live on the acorn crop. ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... they went around and found that four of the snares had each a snow-white rabbit hanging by the neck. As he was handling these, Quonab felt a lump I on the hind leg of one. He carefully cut it open and turned out a curious-looking object about the size of an acorn, flattened, made of flesh and covered with hair, and nearly the shape of a large bean. He gazed at it, and, turning to ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... elm with vine; how tend the steer; What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof Of patient trial serves for thrifty bees;- Such are my themes. O universal lights Most glorious! ye that lead the gliding year Along the sky, Liber and Ceres mild, If by your bounty holpen earth once changed Chaonian acorn for the plump wheat-ear, And mingled with the grape, your new-found gift, The draughts of Achelous; and ye Fauns To rustics ever kind, come foot it, Fauns And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing. And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first Sprang from earth's womb at thy ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... that of any other tree, and is valuable on that account. The acorns, or fruit, are good food for hogs, which are observed to grow very fat when turned into the forests at the season when they are ripe. The tree is raised from the acorn, which grows ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... bedstead," dated 1593, showing many of the characteristics of the ornament of the time, is 103-1/2 inches high, 94 inches long, 68 inches wide. The majority of the beds were smaller and lower, however, and the pillars usually rose out of drum-like members, huge acorn-like bulbs that were often so large as to be ugly. They appeared also on other articles of furniture. When in good proportion, with pillars tapering from them, they were very effective, and gradually ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... we had a rather nondescript and poor pack of hounds; and the fact discouraged me. I wanted to hunt the bad cinnamons and the grizzly sheep-killers, with which this rim-rock country was infested. I had nothing against the acorn-eating brown or black bears. And with this pack of hounds I doubted that we could hold one of the vicious fighting species. But there was now nothing to do but try. No one could tell. We might kill a big grizzly. And the fact that the chances were against us ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... Temples. Above it and farther to the left, is Isis Temple (seven thousand and twenty-eight feet), the cap of which, at this angle, presents the appearance of two acorn-like structures resting upon their cups, the taller of which is carved out of the cross-bedded sandstone. It is the eastern supporter of Shiva Temple (seven thousand six hundred and fifty feet), of which Captain Dutton, who named ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... over by Gardnerville. In that hole Indians can always find plenty of wild-grub—wild-wheat, wild potato, wild acorn—plenty there. Snow very deep. No difference. Always plenty wild grub there. I see that hole. I believe ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... the termination of our view opposite the North Dome. Here the precipice rises to the height of nearly one sheer mile with a parabolic sky-line, and its posterior surface is as elegantly rounded as an acorn-cup. From this contour results a naked semi-cone of polished granite, whose face would cover one of our smaller Eastern counties, though its exquisite proportions make it seem a thing to hold in the hollow of the hand. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... shattered by the roots of a tree, or perhaps by the might of an insignificant looking fungus? I have, many times, and I never see such a rock without thinking of its aptness as an illustration of this Socialist philosophy. A tiny acorn tossed by the wind finds lodgment in some small crevice of a rock which has stood for thousands of years, a rock so big and strong that men choose it as an emblem of the Everlasting. Soon the warm caresses of the sun ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... of thy repentance. But believe The spark divine dwells in thee: let it grow. That which the upreaching spirit can achieve The grand and all-creative forces know; They will assist and strengthen as the light Lifts up the acorn to the oak tree's height. Thou hast but to resolve, and lo! God's whole Great ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... within a world the forest is! Under the trees were the shrubs,—knee-high rock-maples making the ground verdant for acres together, or dwarf thickets of yew, now bearing green acorn-like berries; while below these was a variegated carpet, oxalis and the flower of Linnaeus, ferns and club-mosses (the glossy Lycopodium lucidulum was especially plentiful), to say nothing of the true mosses ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... two draw-strings of gold and red braid, each ending in an ornamental oval acorn of silver thread and coloured silks, probably worked on canvas over a wooden core, ending in a tassel similar to ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... saw has it, "Great oaks from little acorns grow," and all of us who remember the saying have thus some idea of what the beginning of an oak is. But what of the beginning of the acorn? In a general way, one inferentially supposes that there must be a flower somewhere in the life-history of the towering white oak that has defied the storms of centuries and seems a type of everything sturdy and strong and masculine; but what sort of a flower could one imagine as the ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... more and for the last time," said the fairy, "but beware of what is little and gray." Stooping she picked from the grass beside her a fallen acorn cup and handed it to him. "Take this with you," she said, "for it may serve ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... your good leave to gather the green plant which grows between your roots. If an acorn falls into this my right hand" (which I held out) "I will count it that you answer yes—and give you thanks." The acorn fell straight into the palm of my hand. I said, "I thank you, Oak: good growth to you. I will ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... underlies the deeper oddities of a civilization which is the modern eighth wonder of the world. We shall see this as we look at what these people are, at what they were, and at what they hope to become; not historically, but psychologically, as one might perceive, were he but wise enough, in an acorn, besides the nut itself, two oaks, that one from which it fell, and that other which from it will rise. These three states, which we may call its potential past, present, and future, may be observed and studied in three special outgrowths of a race's ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... English colors and commenced firing her stern guns. At 5.90 took in the steering sails, at the same time she fired a broadside. We opened a fire from our larboard battery and at 5.30 she struck her colors. Got out the boats and boarded her. She proved to be the British brig Acorn from Liverpool to Rio Janeiro, mounting fourteen cannon." * But now and then one finds in these old sea-journals an entry more intimate and human, such as the complaint of the master of the privateer Scorpion, cruising ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... a piece with this setting. He fitted into it as an acorn fits its cup. All his life he had lived on Reelfoot, always in the one place, at the mouth of a certain slough. He had been born there, of a negro father and a half-breed Indian mother, both of them now dead, and the story was ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... proudest hour. Paganism had been met and conquered. The Church had passed through a baptism of blood, and was now wholly consecrated to the cause of its Great Head. Here Christianity flowered, here it brought forth rich fruit in the lives of its tenacious adherents. Here the acorn had become the sturdy oak, under which the soldiers of the cross pitched their tents. The African ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... with their mother and the cart, I took a large canvas bag, and with Fritz and Ernest, the former mounted on his onager, and the latter carrying his little favorite, Knips, made a detour toward the Acorn Wood. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... thousand years pass by, since I was an acorn planted here. In a few moments I shall die and fall down. Cut my body into staves. Of these make a wooden petticoat, like a barrel, for your daughter. When her temper is bad, let her put it on and wear it until she ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... children is to watch the gradual growth of the acorn into the oak tree. They will suspend the acorn in a glass of water and watch the slow progress during long months. First one tiny white thread is put forth, then another, until at length the glass is almost filled with a tangle of white fibers, a sturdy little stem raises itself up, and ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... noted. On page 176, in John's first speech, "fermentations" was, in 1802, "stimuli." On page 178, in the speech of the Third Gentleman, there is a change. In 1802 he said "(dashing his glass down) Pshaw, damn these acorn cups, they would not drench a fairy. Who shall pledge," &c. And at the end of Act III, one line is omitted. In 1802 John was made to say, after disarming ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... let us view Your acorn goblets fill'd with dew; Nor warn us hence till we have seen The nut-shell chariot ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... father, once the chieftain of the Yana tribe, having domain over all the country immediately south of Mt. Lassen, was long since gone, and with him all his people. Ranchers and stockmen had usurped their country, spoiled the fishing, and driven off the game. The acorn trees of the valleys had been taken from them; nothing remained but evil spirits in the land ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... this man any better than Will Foushee or Ned Burgess? He is no stronger nor better able to do a day's work. Why am I afraid of him, when I don't care an acorn for the others? Why do my father and the men listen to him and crowd round him? What makes him stand among them as if he did not belong to them, even when he talks of what they know better than he? There is not a man round Sandy that could make me feel as ashamed as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Lincoln are inseparably associated, and yet as the popular historian would have us believe one spent his entire life in chopping down acorn trees and the other splitting them up into rails. Washington could not tell a story. Lincoln always could. And Lincoln's stories always possessed the true geometrical requisites, they were never too long, and never ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... recesses he hunts the animals whose flesh and furs supply him with food and clothing, and from their wood he obtains the implements for capturing and subduing them. Man's earliest farinaceous food was likewise the product of trees; for in his nomadic condition he makes his bread from the acorn and the chestnut: he must become a tiller of the soil, before he can obtain the products of the cereal herbs. The groves were likewise the earliest temples for his worship, and their fruits his first offerings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... which was not broken until the sun had risen high, and the birds were whistling gaily among the branches—some of them gazing at her in mute surprise, as if they had discovered some new species of gigantic acorn. ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... Young's Inn, at the confluence of Salt River with the Ohio, I saw, at my leisure, immense legions still going by, with a front reaching far beyond the Ohio on the west, and the beech wood forest directly on the east of me. Yet not a single bird would alight, for not a nut or acorn was that year to be seen in ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... place). Their chief attribute is their possibility as food for stock and wildlife. Some of the same people who dislike them (among nurserymen) recommend planting oaks which certainly do not compare with C. crenata. When a very "sweet" acorn is found it is proclaimed to be "as good ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... up to this hunt, but at the same time he collects acorns, which he does not touch, however, so long as he can find other food. He amasses them in the following ingenious manner: he chooses a tree and hollows out in its trunk a cavity just capable of receiving one acorn. He then carries a fruit and introduces it forcibly into the hole he has just made. Thus buried, the acorn can neither fall nor become the prey of another animal. In the domain of these birds trees may be found which are riddled like a sieve ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... is in Italy or Germany. But as a weapon of defence it leaves much to be desired. The man of whom I am telling you had grown so much used to using it in this way, that whenever he saw anything coming in the shape of a carte he thrust it forward as naturally as a pig does when he sees an acorn. After a couple of semesters the cartes sat on his nose from bridge to tip, one after the other, like the days of the week in a calendar. But when the third semester began, and the cartes began to fall too near together, and sometimes two in ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... joys of earth and air are thine entire, That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly; And when thy poppy works, thou dost retire To thy carved acorn-bed ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... fairies are curiously youthful compared with these hoary infants, which is all the more remarkable when the daring exaggerations of Cambrian story-tellers are considered. It is a modest claim only to have seen the acorn before the oak and the egg before the hen, yet that is all that is put forward. In one of the Lays of Marie de France the wood of Brezal is indicated as the spot where the oak was seen.[85] The formula thus variously used would appear to be a common one to describe ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... when the flame of responsibility on some high subject is blazing at your heart, and the young Elihu, even if he would, cannot keep silence? Is it not a wrong to find pearls unprized, because many a modern, like his Celtic progenitors, (for I must not say like swine,) would sooner crush an acorn? to know your estimation among men ebbs and flows according to the accident of success, rather than the quality of merit? to be despised as an animal who must necessarily be living on his wits in some purlieu, answering to that antiquated ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... through Evershead as we came,' he continued, 'and I just looked in at the "Sow-and-Acorn" to see if old Mike still kept on there as usual. The carrier had come in from Sherton Abbas at that moment, and guessing that I was bound for this place—for I think he knew me—he asked me to bring on a dressmaker's parcel for Sally that ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Marine sponges have it and so has the beautiful green or flesh-coloured liver sponge (common on the wood of rafts and weirs in the Thames). A rather uncommon marine worm, called Balanoglossus or the acorn worm, has a very strong and unpleasant smell like that of iodoform. In neither case is the nature of the odorous body known, nor its use to the animal suggested. Smelts smell like cucumbers: the green-bone fish ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester |
