"Birch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He also knew where the great peel rested, on their annual migration from sea to moor; where the kingfisher's nest of fish-bones lay hidden; where the otter had her home beneath the bank, and its inland vent-hole behind a silver birch. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the higher type of tree. The landscape, in Europe and America, begins to wear a modern aspect. Long before the end of the Cretaceous most of the modern genera of Angiosperm trees have developed. To the fig and sassafras are now added the birch, beech, oak, poplar, walnut, willow, ivy, mulberry, holly, laurel, myrtle, maple, oleander, magnolia, plane, bread-fruit, and sweet-gum. Most of the American trees of to-day are known. The sequoias (the giant ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... event in their uneventful days; the farm with its red gables and its crowd of gobbling turkeys; the sweet-smelling fir groves with their sandy paths; and their own particular wood where beeches, oaks, and silvery birch trees were intermingled, with here and there a tall pine sometimes stately and erect, sometimes ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... water, beckoning the phantom forth, and—as it declined to venture—seeking a passage for herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky. Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made little boats out of birch-bark, and freighted them with snail-shells, and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in New England; but the larger part of them foundered near the shore. She seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and made prize of several five-fingers, and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you've set out it's no more work to keep things shipshape than to let 'em go helter-skelter. Now here's a basket. Load into it as many of those birch logs as you can carry and bring 'em upstairs. I've kindlings ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... superior intelligence. Insatiable in their thirst for adventure, they were willing to assume all manner of risks or privations. Spring might find them at Lake Champlain, autumn at the head-waters of the Mississippi, a trusty birch-bark having carried them the thousand miles between. Their work did not figure very heavily in the colony's annual balance-sheet of progress with its statistics of acreage newly cleared, homes built and harvests stowed safely away. But according to their own ideals of service they valiantly ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... and the larks sang loud in the blue clear air; the birch-wood clothed itself in tender green; the stream, with its melting snow-drifts, wound down the mountains singing on its way; but no plough furrowed the loosened earth, and from the heights was heard no wood-horn calling the cattle at feeding time. All was still and dead in the habitations of men. ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... have a school, and to this end had hired an elderly Irishman, who gave hard lessons and a taste of the birch to children who had exhausted themselves in the mills and had no zest for learning. Mr. Dale had taken on more than two hundred pauper children from the workhouses and these were a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the yellow cane, which grew plentifully both in the islands of the Greek Archipelago and in Southern Italy, as notably at Cannae in Apulia, where it gave a name to the scene of the great battle. The virga was also used, a rod commonly of birch, a tree the educational use of which had been already discovered. The walls of Pompeii indeed show that the practice of Eton is truly classical ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... you are mistaken, you lazy, ill-behaved wench. The new frock I had bought you shall be given to Nannie Cameron, and you shall wear your old one to the kirk. How will that suit your vanity? And you may be off to bed now directly, without any supper. There are twigs enough for a birch rod, my lady, if bed does not bring you to a better frame of mind. Run in now, and don't let me see your face before ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... for them under a birch-tree near the keeper's lodge. The keeper's wife served them with smiles and curtsies, and then discreetly disappeared. Falloden waited on Constance as a squire on his princess; and all round them lay the green encircling rampart of the wood. In the man's every action, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Ben; "I saw a man from Lot Ten last week, and he said that the French were eating their seed-grain, and feeding their cattle, or such as were left alive, on birch and beech tops." ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... shall rave to see thee; restore me, oh restore me then to Bellfont, happy Bellfont, still blest with Sylvia's presence! permit me, oh permit me into those sacred shades, where I have been so often (too innocently) blest! Let me survey again the dear character of Sylvia on the smooth birch; oh when shall I sit beneath those boughs, gazing on the young goddess of the grove, hearing her sigh for love, touching her glowing small white hands, beholding her killing eyes languish, and her charming bosom rise and fall with short-breath'd ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Wrangler, but stage-fright made her burst into tears at the critical moment. Somehow or other the truth leaked out; the Duffer and John were sent up to the Head Master and "swished." Each collected a few twigs of the birch, carefully preserved to ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... until their return. Among other things which lay strewed about here, were a spearshaft, eight feet in length, recently made and ochred; parts of old canoes, fragments of their skin-dresses, &c. For some distance around, the trunks of many of the birch, and of that species of spruce pine called here the Var (Pinus balsamifera) had been rinded; these people using the inner part of the bark of that kind of tree for food. Some of the cuts in the trees with the axe, were evidently made the preceding year. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... that Philip knew anything about were quite small, and were called canoes. They were made either of birch bark fastened over a light wooden frame, or of logs that had been ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... had crossed the creek that morning, and had not yet returned. These were the two men who had been so inhumanly murdered. Immediate search was made for the canoe, and it was found a little above the spot where the men were hiding. It was a very large buoyant birch canoe, constructed for the transportation of a numerous household, with all their goods, and such game ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... thought I, why should not others be amused also? In a few days Dr. Birch's young friends will be expected to reassemble at Rodwell Regis, where they will learn everything that is useful, and under the eyes of careful ushers continue the business ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... empty torrents, or occupying the concave recesses of the bank, gave at once beauty and variety to the landscape. Above these scattered woods rose the hill, in barren, but purple majesty; the dark rich hue, particularly in autumn, contrasting beautifully with the thickets of oak and birch, the mountain ashes and thorns, the alders and quivering aspens, which checquered and varied the descent, and not less with the dark-green and velvet turf, which composed the level part ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... on the very verge of the line with a dense fence of stunted trees just before him and the wilderness of snow beyond, sloping up to the crest, outlined in white against the solid gray sky. The Spartans of the forest were around him—fir, pine, spruce, birch, and trembling little aspens up there among the stoutest. All were of one height, clean-shaven by the volleys of the wind-driven sand and pebbles that clipped off any treetop that aspired above the mass. In solid numbers was their ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... stars shone in the tips of the birch trees. Ridgeley did not come, and when they went back to the house, they found that he had been called to New York on an urgent case. He would not return ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... master-piece of an education, was not fortunate in his teachers. Saint- Laurent, to whom he was first confided, was, it is true, the man in all Europe best fitted to act as the instructor of kings, but he died before his pupil was beyond the birch, and the young Prince, as I have related, fell entirely into the hands of the Abbe Dubois. This person has played such an important part in the state since the death of the King, that it is fit ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... meadows and troubled mill waters, yellow barn-roofs and weather-gray old farm-walls, two grassy mounds threw their slopes to the margin of the stream. Here the bull-dogs held revel. The hollow between the slopes was crowned by a bending birch, which rose three-stemmed from the root, and hung a noiseless green shower over the basin of green it shadowed. Beneath it the interminable growl sounded pleasantly; softly shot the sparkle of the twisting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... no catalpa-tree, nor trumpet-creeper (Tecoma); nothing answering to sassafras, nor to benzoin-tree, nor to hickory; neither mulberry nor elm; no beech, true chestnut, hornbeam, nor iron-wood, nor a proper birch-tree; and the enumeration might be continued very much further by naming herbaceous plants and others familiar ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... settlements and to bury the dead. They proceeded to the Minnesota river opposite the Lower Agency, and found and buried sixteen corpses the first day. The next day they continued their search, finding and burying fifty-four. That night they encamped on the open prairie, near the upper timber of the Birch Coolie creek, three miles from the Lower Agency. At about four o'clock of the next morning, September 2, one of their sentinels shouted, "Indians!" and almost immediately, a shower of balls rained upon the camp. From this first fire, and during the confusion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... enough, there was the beautiful hollow, close by the road-side. The sides were so steep that it was by no means safe to run down into it, and the great oak trees and the small ones, with the pine, the walnut, and the silvery birch, grew thick and close all around, save that one small opening from the road, a little archway among the overhanging ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various
... interests are well represented in the House of Commons. The borough has had the good sense to prefer a merchant townsman, Sir Thomas Birch, and the son of a merchant, and friend and co-minister of the late Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Cardwell, to a soldier, and the dreamy poetical son of a Protectionist duke. A place like Liverpool ought to find in its own body better men than young lords or old soldiers. But young Liverpool ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... outcasting consists in seating the culprit on the ground and drawing the tribal mat over his head, from which the turban is removed; after this the messengers of the eight companies inflict a few taps with slippers and birch brooms. It is alleged that unfaithful women were formerly tied naked to trees and flogged with birch brooms, but that owing to the fatal results that occasionally followed such punishment, as in the case of the five kicks among Chamars (tanners) and the scourging ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... though promising snow—careered out of the north and followed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen and such-like sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few naked cottages and bleak fields,—these were the characters of the country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... decoction of alkanet-root. Methylated spirits and a small quantity of dragon's blood will also produce a mild red. Any yellow wood can be improved by an alcoholic solution of Persian berries, fustic, turmeric, or gamboge. An aqueous decoction of barberry-root will serve the same purpose. Birch when preferred a warm tint may be sponged with oil, very slightly tinted with rose-madder or Venetian red; the greatest care should be used, or it will be rendered unnatural in appearance by becoming too red. Maple which is of a dirty-brown ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... Barly, closing one eye, and nodding his head a number of times. "There is indeed. But those days are over, Mr. Frye. When I was a child I had the fear of God put into me. It was put into me with a birch rod. But nowadays, Mr. Frye, the children neglect their sums, and grow up wild as nettles. I don't know ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... am beginning to worship Thackeray. At seven and thirty, he will be one of my passions, I know. Now and then I come to a sentence that goes to my heart. No, do not read him yet awhile, unless it is some of the little things. There is 'Dr. Birch and his Young Friends;' and if you want to be amused you must read his continuation of 'Ivanhoe.' But then you will have neither heroines nor heroes left. And if you and Miss Daisy want to laugh beyond measure, get the 'Rose and the Ring,' ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the horses were, and urged me to take the one belonging to the chief, since it was clever and gentle. At first I had compunctions of conscience, but no choice was left me, and I had to do it. I made a rude bridle of birch bark, and jumping on the horse, came here just a little ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... Stairway and sat down in the little rock chapel. There was a picnic at the Lovers' Leap, and I had that side of the island to myself. I was leaning back, half asleep, in the deep shadow, when the sound of voices roused me; a birch-bark canoe was passing close in shore, and two were in it,—Jeannette and our surgeon. I could not hear their words, but I noticed Rodney's expression as he leaned forward. Jeannette was paddling slowly; her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes brilliant. Another moment and a ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... outside rudely fashioned to the likeness of a boat. If they were making a periagua, they left the stern "flat"—that is, cut off sharply without modelling; if they were making a canoa, they pointed both ends, as a Red Indian points his birch-bark. The bottom of the boat in either case was made flat, for convenience in hauling over shoals or up rapids. The inside of the boat was hollowed out by fire, with the help of the Indians, who were very expert at the management of the flame. For oars they had paddles made of ash or ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... two careful studies of this kind of one bough of every common tree,—oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, etc.; in fact, if you are good, and industrious, you will make one such study carefully at least three times a week, until you have examples of every sort of tree and shrub you can get branches of. You are to make two studies ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... mean the short birch for me, Steele," said the factor gloomily. "Lac Bain is just now the emptiest, most fallen-to-pieces, unbusiness-like post between the Athabasca and the Bay. We've had two bad seasons running, and everything has gone wrong. Colonel ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... the fields of the homestead; on three sides Valleys and mountains and hills, but on the fourth side was the ocean. Birch-woods crowned the summits, but over the down-sloping hillsides Flourished the golden corn, and man-high was waving the rye- field." TEGNER, Frithiof Saga ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... The cedar will burn all right, but it is a good thing to have the birch. We shall have a supper worth while in a few minutes. Stacy, get busy ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... prevents its rising. Most ovens require heating an hour and a half for bread. A brisk fire should be kept up, and the doors of the room should be kept shut, if the weather is cold. Pine and ash, mixed together, or birch-wood, is the best for heating an oven. To ascertain if your oven is of the right temperature, when cleaned, throw in a little flour; if it browns in the course of a minute, it is sufficiently hot; if it turns black directly, wait several minutes, before putting in the things that are to be ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... [The author has somewhat altered part of a beautiful unpublished fragment of Coleridge:— "Where is the grave of Sir Arthur Orellan,— Where may the grave of that good knight be? By the marge of a brook, on the slope of Helvellyn, Under the boughs of a young birch tree. The Oak that in summer was pleasant to hear, That rustled in Autumn all withered and sear, That whistled and groan'd thro' the Winter alone, He hath gone, and a birch in his place is grown. The knight's bones are dust, His good sword is rust; His spirit is with, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... existence precisely the same whether we live in a fine mansion with lap-dogs to tend, or sort rags in a workhouse? Does it make much difference whether we shall hide our gray heads beneath lace or a handkerchief striped with blue and red; whether we sweep a crossing with a birch broom, or the steps of the Tuileries with satins; whether we sit beside a gilded hearth, or cower over the ashes in a red earthen pot; whether we go to the Opera or look on in the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... I'll give you a stick," he called to her; "it's a help when you're climbing." He pulled down a slender birch, and, setting his foot on it, broke it off at the root. She stopped, with an impatient gesture, and waited while he tore off handfuls of leaves and ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... with anything the Thames can show at Nuneham or Cliefden. The angler, too, is as fortunate as the lover of the picturesque. The trout that have hidden themselves all summer, or at best have cautiously nibbled at the worm- bait, now rise freely to the fly. Wherever a yellow leaf drops from birch tree or elm the great trout are splashing, and they are too eager to distinguish very subtly between flies of nature's making and flies of fur and feather. It is a time when every one who can manage it should be by the water-side, and should take with him, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... of ancient clematis Towards the silver birch inclined, And deep in thorny fastnesses The ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... strip of bark from the birch tree, and rolled it into a cup. "Your needle and thread, Mademoiselle,—if ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... by the birch-tree's root In the heather. The hare was running with nimble foot O'er the heather. Was ever brighter a sunshine-day, Before, behind me, and every ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... beastes skinnes as well the men as women, but that the women go somewhat straiter and closer in their garments than the men do, with their wastes girded: they paint themselues with certaine Roan colours: (M97) their boates are made of the barke of birch trees, with the which they fish and take great store of Seales, and as farre as we could vnderstand since our comming thither, that is not their habitation, but they come from the maine land out of hotter countreys, to catch the saide seales and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... he halted at a farm house, some miles north of the town, got a job on the woodpile, and astonished the farmer by the amount of birch he could saw in an hour. He took his pay in the shape of a bountiful dinner, and—after half an hour's smoke and talk with the farmer, to whom he gave a few pamphlets from the store in his knapsack—said good-bye to all hands and once more set his face northward ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... oxyacantha) with pollen from a crimson not-weeping variety, and three young trees, "now six or seven years old, show a decided tendency to be pendulous, but as yet are not so much so as the mother-plant." According to Mr. MacNab,[45] seedlings from a magnificent weeping birch (Betula alba), in the Botanic Garden at Edinburgh, grew for the first ten or fifteen years upright, but then all became weepers like their parent. A peach with pendulous branches, like those of the weeping willow, has been found capable of propagation ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... that when I had grown old enough to take notice, I was apparently capable of holding extended conversations in an unknown dialect with birds and red squirrels. Once I fell asleep in my cradle, suspended five or six feet from the ground, while Uncheedah was some distance away, gathering birch bark for a canoe. A squirrel had found it convenient to come upon the bow of my cradle and nibble his hickory nut, until he awoke me by dropping the crumbs of his meal. It was a common thing for birds to alight on my cradle in ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... Piskaret drew a long breath, grasped his war-club, and stealthily pushing aside the loose birch-bark door-flap of the nearest lodge, peeped inside. By the ember light he saw that every Iroquois, man and woman, was fast asleep, under furs, on spruce ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... comforted her, and ran about so merrily, bringing fresh, fragrant birch-twigs for their beds, shaking out their blankets of reindeer-skins, and helping her so kindly, that the good dame quite forgot to be cross, and before she knew it, was telling them her very, very best story, that ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... modern aspect cover the continent from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. Among the kinds of forest trees whose remains are found in the continental deposits of the Cretaceous are the magnolia, the myrtle, the laurel, the fig, the tulip tree, the chestnut, the oak, beech, elm, poplar, willow, birch, and maple. Forests of Eucalyptus grew along the coast of New England, and palms on the Pacific shores of British Columbia. Sequoias of many varieties ranged far into northern Canada. In northern Greenland there were luxuriant forests of magnolias, figs, and cycads; and a similar ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... tells its own tale. There is nothing bold or vicious or vulpine in it, and his timid, harmless character is published at every leap. He abounds in dense woods, preferring localities filled with a small undergrowth of beech and birch, upon the bark of which he feeds. Nature is rather partial to him, and matches his extreme local habits and character with a suit that corresponds with his surroundings,—reddish gray in summer ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... the leaves and twigs of the dwarf birch-tree; and this, transformed into its own white flesh, becomes the food of the Arctic fox. The herbage, sparse though it be, does not grow in vain. The seeds fall to the earth, but they are not suffered to decay. They are ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... extreme regions of North America, many degrees beyond the limit where the ground at the depth of a few feet remains perpetually congealed, are covered by forests of large and tall trees. In a like manner, in Siberia, we have woods of birch, fir, aspen, and larch, growing in a latitude [10] (64 degs.) where the mean temperature of the air falls below the freezing point, and where the earth is so completely frozen, that the carcass of an animal ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... companies have been out, and I am beginning to feel that I am at home alone quite too much. Faye was in Washington two months, and almost immediately after he got back he was ordered to command the paymaster's escort from Helena here, and now he is off again for the summer! The camp is on Birch Creek not far from the Piegan Agency. The agents become frightened every now and then, and ask for troops, more because they know the Indians would be justified in giving trouble ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... descended, we were in Birch Creek water, and had we followed the watercourse would have reached the Yukon; but we would have travelled hundreds of miles and would have come out below Fort Yukon, while we were bound for Circle City. So there was another and a yet ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... a cool breeze waved the clinging foliage of birch and elm, rippling the lake near the shore and tossing the waves far out on its bosom, which gleamed white along their crests. This was the real Lake Champlain, for it is a very turbulent mass of water and rarely presents a picture of such calm and quiet beauty as we beheld on the preceding evening. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... dear, friendly hollows and the largest of these was their favourite stamping ground. Here they were assembled on this particular evening. There was a grove of young spruces in this hollow, with a tiny, grassy glade in its heart, opening on the bank of the brook. By the brook grew a silver birch-tree, a young, incredibly straight thing which Walter had named the "White Lady." In this glade, too, were the "Tree Lovers," as Walter called a spruce and maple which grew so closely together that ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... his eyes.—"My vig, why it's water!" exclaimed he—"water, I do declare, with worms[21] in it—I can't eat such stuff as that—it's not man's meat—oh dear, oh dear, I fear I've made a terrible mistake in coming to France! Never saw such stuff as this at Bleaden's or Birch's, or anywhere in the city." "I've travelled three hundred thousand miles," said the fat man, sending his plate from him in disgust, "and never tasted such a mess as this before." "I'll show them up in The Times," cried Mr. Jorrocks; "and, look, what stuff is here—beef ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the rude hearth of his Big Rattle camp, brooding in a sort of tired contentment over the spitting fagots of var and glowing coals of birch. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... a little scrubby thing, that looked very like a birch rod. I proceeded to examine it most minutely, while Collins waited with all the intense anxiety of a man whose character ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... first you climb a rough, rather narrow road up from the river, that the trees close about you very gradually, that there is a little church with a green turret and a fine view of the Nestor, and that there a broad solemn avenue of silver birch leads you forward, gently and without any sinister omens. Then again the forest clears and there are fields of corn and, built amongst the thin scattering of trees, the village of N——. It was here, on passing the first houses of the village, that I felt the heat to be almost ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... escape between him, Stevenson and Clarke, was carried out on 1st May, 1759. Major Stobo met the fugitives under a wind-mill, probably the old wind-mill on the grounds of the General Hospital Convent. Having stolen a birch canoe, the party paddled it all night, and, after incredible fatigue and danger, they passed Isle-aux-Coudres, Kamouraska, and landed below this spot, shooting two Indians in self-defence, whom Clarke buried after having scalped them, saying to the Major: "Good sir, by your permission, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thickest end, and are set up at three or four inches apart. The stakes are connected by one or more battens nailed along them, or by wires. They are cut eight or nine feet in length, so as to allow of a good six feet above ground when set up. Red, black, and white birch are used, also red and white ti-tree, the last variety being most esteemed, as it is more durable. A stake-fence ought to be proof against both pigs and cattle, and is reckoned to be good for seven years; if of white ti-tree ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... rays, though still hot, slanted much as the two rose into oak woodlands to the right of the pike and beyond it. Here the air was cool and light. As they ascended higher, and oaks gave place to chestnut and mountain-birch, wide views opened around and far beneath. In the south spread the green fields and red fallows of Clearwater, bathed in the sheen of the lingering sun. Miles away two white points ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... shall not find! Beech and birch and oak agree Here to dwell in company. Hazel, elder, few men could Name the kinds of underwood. Summer and winter haunt together, And golden light with misty weather. 'Tis summer where this beech is seen Defenceless in its virgin green; All its leaves ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... these trees, in the way of joists or planks, were levelled with earth and gravel. There were betwixt the trees, growing naturally on their own roots, some stakes fixed in the earth, which, with the trees, were interwoven with ropes, made of heath and birch twigs, up to the top of the Cage, it being of a round or rather oval shape; and the whole thatched and covered over with fog.[110] This whole fabric hung, as it were, by a large tree, which reclined from ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... mountains, mountains everywhere the eyes turned. And wherever there was a place to nestle an exquisite farmhouse did nestle. I used to think that England had the monopoly of beautiful farmhouses, but these Vermont ones, though as different as a birch from an oak, are just as perfect. Even Jack, whose every drop of blood is English ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... had lighted his pipe and sought a seat that creaked under his ponderous weight. He opened the door of the stove and threw two or three large pieces of yellow birch in it. ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... parted, the latter keeping to the sunny thoroughfare, the former plunging into the narrow, heavily shaded track that ran through ravine and over ridge, now beside the water and now in close woods of birch and hemlock. The road was bad, but Selim and his master bent to it grimly, with no nice avoidance of rut or stone or sunken place. To the horse there was before him food and rest, to the man his home. They took at the same pace the much of rough and the little of smooth, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... to the time it was your rods and cloaks made a little tent for me where there'd be a birch tree making shelter and a dry stone; though from this day my own fingers will be making a tent for me, spreading out my hairs and they knotted with the rain. [Lavarcham and Old Woman come in stealthily on ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... when we were paddling home to our tents among the birch trees, one of these unexpected storms came up; and Patrick, thoughtful of my comfort as ever, insisted on giving me his coat to put around my dripping shoulders. The paddling would serve instead of a coat for him, he said; it would keep him warm to his bones. As I slipped ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... certain shady spot about half a mile from the monastery, beneath a group of birch-trees, and overhung with ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... face of the hill fell, an abrupt promontory, to the woods of the plain. Its face was scored by the weather, and the dry drainage channels were headlong cascades of grey pebbles. Clumps of heather, sparse oak scrub with young leaves of bronze, contorted birch, and this year's croziers of the bracken (heaven knows their secret for getting lush aromatic sap out of such stony poverty), all made a tough life which held up the hill, steep as it was; though the hill was going, for the roots of some of the oaks were ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... hand, applied; Nor from their seats departed, till they found That butt was out and heard the mournful sound." He praised a poacher, precious child of fun! Who shot the keeper with his own spring gun; Nor less the smuggler who th' exciseman tied, And left him hanging at the birch-wood side, There to expire;—but one who saw him hang Cut the good cord—a traitor of the gang. His own exploits with boastful glee he told, What ponds he emptied and what pikes he sold; And how, when blest with sight ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... though he now belonged to these strange people, all of whom were laughing and applauding his words, from the German Princess in the Royal box to the straight-backed Tommy in the pit. Instead of the painted scene before her, she saw the birch-trees by the river at home, where he had first read her the speech to which they were now listening so intensely—the speech in which the hero tells the girl he loves her. She remembered that at the time she had thought ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... their rice at Rangoon; and now that they had not only been disturbed, but driven from their homes, he resolved to be revenged on them. The first conflict took place on the 16th of May, when Captain Birch dislodged the enemy from the village of Kemmendine, a war-boat station three miles above Rangoon. Nothing daunted, however, the enemy, as their numbers increased, gradually approached the British position, and threw up stockades ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the horses climbed the crest of the long hill the lady in green was by his side on the box. He looked anxiously ahead, and there, in a hedge of young alder bushes, he saw something stirring, and, unless he was greatly mistaken, a birch broom lay on ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... green birch trees—amid whose boughs hung gay lamps—and the rose bushes which surrounded a fountain of perfumed water, and Eva had already followed the Swiss knight across the threshold when she saw among the branches at the end of the room the Countess Cordula, at whose feet several young nobles ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for the instruction of the reader that this birch taken from the fir trees as it saps out of cracks in the bark was the only liniment that the frontiersman had to heal his wounds at that time, and it was one of the best liniments that I have ever seen applied to a ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... its native trees and immediately replant saplings of certain introduced varieties about the farmyard or along the streets. In this way a forest growth of oak, elm, beech, butternut, hemlock, basswood, and birch is cleared off to give room for saplings of soft maple, cottonwood, and brittle willow. It is felt that the inexpensiveness of leaving the forest trees standing would derogate from the dignity that should invest ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... opened the door and led the way into a long library where in the fireplace a pine backlog, crisscrossed by sturdy forelogs of birch and maple, awaited the touch of a match. It was given, and the room was filled with a flaring light that made the soft lamplight seem pale ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... of the Saguenay, under the shadow of savage and inaccessible rocks, feathered with pines, firs, and birch-trees, they built a cluster of wooden huts and store-houses. Here they left sixteen men to gather the expected harvest of furs. Before the winter was over, several of them were dead, and the rest scattered through the woods, living on ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... fireplace, with its long, soot-blackened crane, hung with hooks of various sizes, the massive iron andirons, strong enough to hold the great birch and birchen logs, that often taxed the strength of a full-grown man to lift and adjust in their places, occupied a large part of one side of the room, and served as a kind of family altar, about which the family, with their guests and friends, always assembled, in quiet ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... important ambassadorial posts and at one time was Assistant Secretary of State in charge of American Republic Affairs. In recent years, Mr. Braden has given leadership to many patriotic organizations and efforts, such as For America and The John Birch Society; and, in testimony before various committees of Congress, he has given much valuable information about communist ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... sun set, the raven went to sleep. Then the wood-worm made his way softly up the pine-tree to the raven's nest, and bound his feet together with grass and pieces of birch-bark. ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... Deerslayer," March at length observed; "here is a beech by the side of a hemlock, with three pines at hand, and yonder is a white birch with a broken top; and yet I see no rock, nor any of the branches bent down, as I told you ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... them did not lay an embargo upon their growth, in the same heartless manner as it does upon the west coast of Scotland, where, the moment a tree gets higher than a mop handle, its top becomes curved over by the gales, with the same graceful sweep as that which a successful stable-boy gives a birch broom after a day's soaking. I hope, for my hospitable friend's sake, it may not prove true in his case; but I saw an ostrich-feathery curve upon the tops of some of his trees, which looked ominous. Having spent a very pleasant day, and enjoyed good cheer ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... character of the surrounding landscape changed. We began to see glimpses ahead of us of the waters of Loch Laggan. Presently the loch, fringed with birch trees, was directly below the road. On the opposite side were mountains descending to its silvery surface, some of them bare, some green with larches, and upward from a wooded promontory wreaths of smoke were rising. Then between the wreaths I distinguished a tall gray ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... its attractive waxy white flowers, and potentilla, with bloom of gold, are shrubs which lend a charm to much of the mountain-section. Black birch and alder trim many of the streams, and the mountain maple is thinly scattered from the foothills to nine thousand feet altitude. Wild roses are frequently found near the maple, and gooseberry bushes fringe many a brook. Huckleberries flourish ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... drinking vessels of various makes—Venetian, Turkish, Tscherkessian, which had reached Bulba's cabin by various roads, at third and fourth hand, a thing common enough in those bold days. There were birch-wood benches all around the room, a huge table under the holy pictures in one corner, and a huge stove covered with particoloured patterns in relief, with spaces between it and the wall. All this was quite familiar to the two young men, who ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... clipt out by scissors; written, it appeared, by Mr. Everett's nephew; some of whose remarks, especially his wish that I might once be in New England, and see people "praying," amused me much! The Cotton Letter, &c., I have now got to the bottom of; Birch's copy is in the Museum here,—a better edition than I had. Of "Levered" and the other small American Documents—alas, I get cartloads of the like or better tumbled down at my door, and my chief ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... earth. Among the heaped-up stones that lay, And soon a tiny birch had birth, And grew in ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... card is fastened on one or more trees of each variety within certain prescribed limits. These cards may be made as fanciful or as rustic as desired. Birch bark is very appropriate for them, and for either birch bark or a conventional card a pretty element may be added by writing some appropriate quotation or verse, after the Japanese custom. The main object of each card, however, is to bear a number. Each player is provided with a card or slip of ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... out of the tent. In the open ground, on the way to a solitary birch-tree, we could see a group of soldiers.... Sara pointed to ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... them from each other: In the sycamore, the bark is mottled; in the white birch, it is dull white; in the beech, it is smooth and gray; in the hackberry, it is covered with numerous corky warts; in the blue beech, the trunk of the tree is fluted, as in Fig. 54, and in the ironwood, the bark peels in thin ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... they showed. They were valuable, for, in Scattergood's rude printing, one could read upon them the owner of every piece of timber, every farm, the acreage in each piece of timber, with a careful estimate of the amount of timber to the acre—also its proportions of spruce, beech, birch, maple, ash. ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?— By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch tree! The Oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year; And whistled and roar'd in the winter alone, Is gone,—and the birch in its stead is grown.— The Knight's bones are dust, And his good sword rust;— ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... it by the interest of Mr. Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax, who was then at the head of the treasury. He had been introduced to Mr. Montague by Congreve, who with others was desirous of honouring the descendant of so great a poet. Dr. Birch describes him as a man somewhat advanced in years, but unable to give any account of the works of his ancestor which are wanting. The family has been since very imperfectly traced."—Chalmers's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... hours of play, should be regulated according to the standard authorities laid down in Strutt, a copy of whose invaluable work, decorated with plates, was deposited in the school-house. Above all, he exhorted the pedagogue to abstain from the use of birch, an instrument of instruction which the good Squire regards with abhorrence, as fit only for the coercion of brute natures that cannot ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... tale has nothing to do; the Doomster, as I have said, had the handling of them with birch. What I have described of this kirk-session's cognisance of those rough fellows' ill behaviour is designed ingeniously to convey a notion of its strict ceremony and its wide dominion,—to show that even in the heart of Arraghael ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... aside her hat. She sat leaning against the crisp trunk of a silver birch. Her hands were in her lap. Her dress was crumpled up, displaying her crossed feet and the tantalizing line of her slim ankles. Against the copper green of the tree trunk the mass of her hair was pressed, gold upon the shadow of ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... ten thousand brooks, through which we had to wade, or by the side of which we encamped at night; infinite perspectives of heather; infinite quantities of moorfowl; here and there, by a stream-side, small and pretty clumps of willows or the silver birch; here and there, the ruins of ancient and inconsiderable fortresses—made the unchanging characters of the scene. Occasionally, but only in the distance, we could perceive the smoke of a small town or of an isolated farmhouse ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bow, O Hiawatha, Take your arrows, jasper-headed, Take your war-club, Puggawaugun, And your mittens, Minjekahwan, And your birch canoe for sailing, And the oil ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were plastered over the rough hewn cedar lath, others were just of the smaller size trees split in two and the interstices filled in. Many were lined with birch bark, with borders of beautiful ash and silver birch. Chimneys were used now, great wide spaces at one end filled in with seats. In winter furs were hung about and often dropped over the windows at night, which were always closed with tight board shutters as soon as dusk set ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of the immortality of the soul, says Mr. Birch,[161] is as old as the inscriptions of the twelfth dynasty, many of which contain extracts from the Ritual of the Dead. One hundred and forty-six chapters of this Ritual have been translated by Mr. Birch from the text of the Turin papyrus, the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the laurel bright, The Bard the myrtle bough, And smooth shillalas yield delight To many an Irish brow. The Fisher trims the hazel wand, The Crab may tame a shrew, The Birch becomes the pedant's hand, But Bows are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... I can remember her, she has suffered from 'a birch-tree growing inside me from my belly up; it presses against my chest, ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... first necessary to select the trees which would afford a strong and supple bark for the work. Now the last storm had brought down a number of large birch-trees, the bark of which would be perfectly suited for their purpose. Some of these trees lay on the ground, and they had only to be barked, which was the most difficult thing of all, owing to the imperfect tools which ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... year. I'm afraid it doesn't fit very well." He smiled from out of the light of a sudden lamp-post. "You'll find a birch footstool some day pretty soon. I noticed your feet didn't reach. By the way," he broke off, "pardon me for quoting from you, but I don't think back-season debutantes are like out-of-demand best-sellers—not all of them. Anyhow, all best-sellers ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... the minds of the boys still more by applying punishment to the most degraded part, adding contumely to tyranny. Of course, it is intended that a boy who is sent to school should gain by precept and example; but is he to learn benevolence by the angry look and the flourish of the vindictive birch,—or forbearance, by the cruelty of the ushers,—or patience, when the masters over him are out of all patience, or modesty, when his nether parts are exposed to general examination? Is he not daily ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... observed by some lurking foe. "Trust the Oak," said she; "trust the Oak, and the Elm, and the great Beech. Take care of the Birch, for though she is honest, she is too young not to be changeable. But shun the Ash and the Alder; for the Ash is an ogre,—you will know him by his thick fingers; and the Alder will smother you with her web of hair, if you let her near you at night." All this was uttered without pause or alteration ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... agent had called his place "The Shack" because it was built entirely of logs, and a woman could not have made it more comfortable. Keith stood in the big living-room. At one end was a strong fireplace in which kindlings and birch were already laid, waiting the touch of a match. Brady's reading table and his easy chair were drawn up close; his lounging moccasins were on a footstool; pipes, tobacco, books and magazines littered the table; and out of this cheering disorder rose triumphantly the amber shoulder of ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... durable; but if you take a piece of dry leather, and try to rub it over with oil or grease, you cannot make it enter the pores of the leather; the black colour is produced by rubbing it over with a solution of green vitriol, the sulphate of iron. Russian leather is tanned in an infusion of birch bark, and is said to be afterwards mixed with a quantity of birch tar, to give it that odour for which it is peculiar, which renders it valuable for book-binding, on account of preventing it from being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... me to die like a rat in a hole. I have stood the pains of hell for thirty-eight hours, and can't stand them any longer. They shan't take me alive. Box and that hound Carruthers' papers are covered with brush and leaves under the last birch in the bush, where I finished that meddlesome fool of a lawyer. You know why you ought to give a lot to Regy's boy. It's all over. Curse the lot of you. Here goes, but mind you kill that damnable Squire, or I'll come when I'm dead and ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... ever forget it as long as they live. The hit does that; for a kick is a very striking thing, that's a fact. There has been no good scholars since birch rods went out o' ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Prideaux, who took part in the Monmouth rebellion, was a son of Sir Edmund Prideaux, the purchaser of Ford Abbey. (See Birch's Life of Tillotson.) Tillotson appears to have been a chaplain to Sir E. Prideaux at Ford Abbey, and a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... used, the difference in cost being caused by the grade and amount of labor needed, the kind of wood chosen and its abundance and the fineness of grain and the seasoning. Mahogany costs more than stained birch, and walnut than gum wood, but there are certain people who for some strange reason feel that they are getting something a little smarter and better if it is tagged "birch mahogany" than if it were simply called birch. Some of the furniture is well stained and some shockingly done, the would-be ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... from Kant's saying that nature is beautiful when it looks like art, and art beautiful when it looks like nature, Schiller gives a large number of concrete illustrations of his theory. Thus a vase is beautiful when, without prejudice to the vase-idea, it looks like a free play of nature. A birch is beautiful when it is tall and slender, an oak when it is crooked; the shape in either case expressing the nature of the tree when it follows nature's law. 'Therefore', he concludes his illustrations, 'the empire ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Littered the stalls, and from the mows Raked down the herd's grass for the cows; Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; And sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows, 15 The cattle shake their walnut bows; While peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent And down his ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... birch, Of birch so supple and keen, And daintily ties them up into rods The finest ...
— King Winter • Anonymous
... and Venice—where he was noticed by almost every person of rank and reputation, and whence he brought away many a valuable article to enrich his own collection. He was born in the year 1690, and died of a second stroke of the palsy, under which he languished for three years, in 1754. Dr. Birch has drawn a very just and interesting character of this eminent man, which may be found in Nichol's Anecdotes of Bowyer, 562. 7. Mr. Edwards, the late ornithologist, has described him in a simple, but appropriate, manner. "He seemed," says ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Betty, William Henry West (the young Roscius) Beyle, M., his 'Histoire de la Peinture en Italie' His account of an interview with Lord Byron at Milan Bible, the, read through by Lord Byron before he was eight years old Biography 'Bioscope, or Dial of Life,' Mr. Grenville Penn's Birch, Alderman Blackett, Joseph, the poetical cobbler His posthumous writings Blackstone, Judge, composed his Commentaries with a bottle of port before him Blackwood's Magazine Blake, the fashionable tonsor Bland, Rev. Robert Blaquiere, Mr. Bleeding, Lord Byron's prejudice against Blessington, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... deep and sandy beds, and occasionally over small stony plains. At noon we were at some distance from the creek, but then went towards it. The gum-trees were no longer visible, but melaleucas, from fifteen to twenty feet high, lined its banks like a copse of young birch. We now observed a long but somewhat narrow sheet of water, to which we rode; our suspicions as to its quality being roused by its colour, and the appearance of the melaleuca. It proved, as we feared, to be slightly brackish, but not undrinkable. Near the edge of the water, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... of the river there were birch and beechen thickets in glory of leaf; big water-lilies spread their white beauty against the old black timbers of the water-mills; and in the quaint, ancient places of the old streets, under the gables ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the cinchona bedewed by the cool clouds of Guaranda; and last of all, among the trees, the polylepis. The twisted, gnarled trunk of this tree, as well as its size and silvery foliage, reminded us of the olive, but the bark resembles that of the birch. It reaches the greatest elevation of any tree on the globe. Then followed shrubby fuchsia, calceolaria, eupatoria, and red and purple gentians; around and on the Arenal, a uniform mantle of monocotyledonous plants, with scattered tufts of valeriana, viola, and geranium, all with rigid leaves ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... three feet of the third strake under the wale were found to be stove in, and the timbers within started. The farther they proceeded in removing the sheathing, the more they discovered the decayed state of the ship's hull. The chief damage was repaired with a birch tree, which had been cut down when they were there before, and was the only one in the neighbourhood large enough for the purpose; but Captain King gave orders that no more sheathing should be ripped off, being apprehensive that further decayed ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... from behind the piano and stood in front of him, as erect as a silver birch, and as slim and young. There was a great indignation all ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... equipments. There were not more than twenty-five thousand regularly marching. Already on the previous day the guard had shown signs of demoralization. The Emperor alone seemed impassive. For days he had shared the common hardships; clad in a long Polish coat of marten fur, a stout birch staff in his hand, without a sign of either physical or nervous exhaustion he had marched silently for long distances among his suffering men. If we picture him standing at Krasnoi, weighing how long he dared to brave an enemy which if consolidated and hurled upon his lines would have annihilated ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and exposure; but enough of both has been preserved till this time by constant submergence in the water and in the unusually moist soil above it to betray without any serious question the nature of the materials used and the mode of their employment. One of the corner-posts was a black birch and the bark on it is in a good state of preservation at and below the surface of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... about her helplessly. She found herself in a small spinney of young birch-trees, filling up the extremity of a triangular field into which she had come. Not a sign of the hounds, or, indeed, of any living creature was to be seen in any direction. She did not feel inclined to go on—or even to go back home with her broken stirrup-leather. ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... on an errand—not a particularly romantic one, as it happened, only to pay a bill for Miss Todd at a farm-house a few miles away. If the errand was prosaic the farm and its surroundings looked attractive; it stood on a hill with a beautiful group of birch-trees behind it, and a small stream came rippling down at the bottom of the garden. The path from the high road was blocked by a cart left standing with a load of straw, so it would be impossible to ride the horses up to the door. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... mountains, but many ranges of hills. Norway monopolizes almost entirely the mountain system of the great northern peninsula, but the large forests of pine, fir, and birch, which cover so much of the country, are common to both. Though iron is found in large deposits in Norway, it is still more abundant in Sweden, where it is chiefly of the magnetic kind, yielding when properly smelted the best ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... we had got down to the table-land, I found myself suddenly in front of a long, quaint, double log cottage, set between two immense bowlders, and roofed with layers of birch bark, covered with turf, which was blue with wild pansies. It was as if it were built under a bed of heart's-ease. It was very old, and had evidently been a house of some pretension, for there was much curious carving about the doors, and indeed about the whole front, the ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... we pace, hoping and despairing, till a faint, most delicate odor, indescribably suggestive of woodland freshness, catches the roused sense; or else one silvery star peeps out from under an upturned birch-leaf. Then down on hands and knees; tear up brush to right and left, the brown skeletons of the withered foliage. The ground is white with stars. Some are touched with delicate pink, some creamy white,—but all breathing out the evanescent secret of the early ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... that they usually set forth; more convenient for their purpose was a postern in the wall which enclosed the greater part of Rivenoak; the approach to it was from the back of the house, across a paddock, and through a birch copse, where stood an old summer-house, now rarely entered. Constance, with her own key, had just unlocked the door in the wall; she paused ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... with the conception of an "impossible" as little as with the actual visible facts of his ragged shirt-sleeves and faded, earth-stained overalls. They toiled upwards in silence for some moments, the man still chewing on his birch-twig. He noticed her sidelong half-satirical glance at it. "Don't you want one?" he asked, and gravely cut a long, slim rod from one of the saplings in the green wall shutting them into the road. As he gave it to her he explained, "It's the kind ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the buried bushes, across the trickly, thawing streams, through a thick swamp, close with alder and birch, on up the slope into woods more largely spaced, where great oaks towered among the fir and the spruce, and tall white birches glimmered in the dusk—all still and as yet dead. And on far up the mountain slope until beneath the Altar they came to a little circle, hedged ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... suffered considerable injury during the siege. The defenders used the lead from the chapter-house roof to cover the keep of the castle, and possibly also to make bullets. Finally, on December 18th, through the treachery of Colonel Birch, the governor of the city, Hereford was once more taken, and this time the whole place was overrun by a rabble of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... owned a hardwood tract, and Parker set his little crew at work chopping birch saplings and fashioning from them huge sleds, strongly bolted. As for himself, he entered into a contract with the local blacksmith, threw his coat off and went to work on some contrivances, round which the settlement's ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... they beheld a number of dark objects on the lake before them. It was a fleet of Iroquois canoes, heavier and slower craft than those of the Algonquins, for they were made of oak-or elm-bark, instead of the light paper-birch used ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a crown of white birch bark and her braid of hair, twined with running ever-green, fell to her waist. Patty was wreathed with columbines and decked with some turkey feathers that she had put in her basket as too pretty to throw away. Waitstill looked rather conscious in her unusual finery, but Patty sported it with ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... earache, which would be more to the point. To his direct mind no diplomacy was needed; all that was necessary was a few blunt questions. Nora could answer them as she chose. Nora, his baby, his little girl that used to run around barefooted and laugh when he applied the needed birch! How children grew up! And they never grew too old for the ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... as she worked a strip of white birch bark into the roof of the new home she and Whitefoot had been building out of the old home of Melody the Wood Thrush, "this finishes the roof. I don't think any water will get through it even in ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... obtained his permit, built his boats,—whether light, roomy bateaux made of boards, or birch-bark canoes, or pirogues, which were simply hollowed out logs. He loaded them with paint, powder, bullets, blankets, beads, and rum, manned them with hardy voyageurs, trained all their lives in the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt |
