"Bough" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Brahmans, but otherwise these are not employed, and the caste headman, known as Kurha or Sethia, officiates as priest. At their weddings the sacred post round which the couple walk must consist of a forked bough of the mahua tree divided in a V shape, and they take much trouble to find and cut a suitable bough. They will not take cooked food from the hands of any other caste, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... day. The noonday sun was momentarily veiled by a listless cloud, which seemed to be stationary in the heavens, as if designed to enhance the effect of the beauty below, that outvied in brightness even the usual light above. Not a squirrel was seen to leap from bough to bough, nor a bird to flit across the opening between the lofty trees; but all was stillness, silence, and beauty. As Glenn stood entranced, Joe seemed to be more struck with the operation of the enchantment on his companion's features and attitude, than with ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... length which would make it a club to be used in a cramped space. She found a bit of stone, hard granite, which had scaled from the walls and which had a rough edge. With this, working many a quiet hour, she at last cut in two the fir-bough. She lifted it in her hands, to feel the weight of it, before she thrust it under her bed to lie hidden there against possible need. Poor thing as it was, she felt ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old for-sak-en bough ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... from the Cedars: he carried a broken bough to use as a walking-stick in the difficult ascent, and was panting with the exertion; yet the lightness of his heart impelled him to hum broken snatches of a song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... And all alone on the hill I wondered what was true. I had seen something very amazing and very lovely, and I knew a story, and if I had really seen it, and not made it up out of the dark, and the black bough, and the bright shining that was mounting up to the sky from over the great round hill, but had really seen it in truth, then there were all kinds of wonderful and lovely and terrible things to think ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... did come at last, although it seemed so far off to Bertha the night before. Hans and his father brought in the bough of a yew-tree, and it was ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... Soldier loves 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... ago," suggested Jack Rynson, between whom and Amy there existed a sort of armed truce, "so that you could discover what a country morning was like." But before Amy could form a sufficiently withering reply, a tiny bird, perched on the topmost bough of a neighboring tree, had burst into such music that the little party stood silenced, and even ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... dearest Sir, how great a change Has pass'd upon the groves I range, Nay, all the face of nature! A few weeks back, each pendent bough, The fields, the groves, the mountain's brow, Were bare and leafless all, but now How verdant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... I have had enough of it, no. I just begin to see what I can do in it, and what a noble profession it is for a woman. Would thee have me sit here like a bird on a bough and wait for somebody to come and put me in ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... finding some water we encamped on a piece of beautiful-looking country, splendidly grassed and ornamented with the fantastic mounds, and the creek timber as back and fore grounds for the picture. Small birds twittered on each bough, sang their little songs of love or hate, and gleefully fled or pursued each other from tree to tree. The atmosphere seemed cleared of all grossness or impurities, a few sunlit clouds floated in space, and a perfume from Nature's own laboratory ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... day; no one but the old black gardener, Raphael, whose cracked voice might be heard at intervals from the depths of the shrubbery in the opposite corner, singing snatches of the hymns which the sisters sung in the chapel. When his hoarse music ceased, the occasional snap of a bough, and movements among the bushes, told that the old man was still there, busy at ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... unfold And silver daisies star the lea, The crocus hoards the sunset gold, And the wild rose breathes for me. I feel the sap through the bough returning, I share the skylark's transport fine, I know the fountain's wayward yearning; I love, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... died away as she went into the house, and again was the silence of the riding moon. All her grief, all her lies, all her bitterness had not stirred a leaf upon the bough. Not a robin in the hedge was disturbed by her calamity, not a rabbit in the field, not a weasel in ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... of the Round Table, but this were a merry deed withal, to help thee unto that wherewith I might perchance mount some goodly bough for the crows to peck at," replied Tarquin. Terrible and unceasing was the struggle; but in vain the giant knight attempted to regain the use of his sword. Then Sir Lancelot, with a wary eye, finding no hope of his life save ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... may be a foot or two short, but you have extra inches to make matters even. When you have reached the ground, take the gravel path which turns to the right, and follow it until it leads you to the high trees which skirt the park. The seventh of these hath a bough which shoots over the boundary wall. Climb along the bough, drop over upon the other side, and you will find my own valet waiting with your horse. Up with you, and ride, haste, haste, post-haste, for the south. By morn you should be well ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a little ragged urchin came And plucked the juicy berries from the bough Of teeming Alder, trading with the same, Thus earning oft an honest meal, I trow: But stuck-up Poplar glanced with pride supreme At such low doings—such plebeian ties— Cocked up his nose, and ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... as leafy trees are peaceful When rain bends down the bough, And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted Than ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... resembles in flavor the flesh tongues and sounds of the codfish, and is generally so large as to afford a plentiful meal for two men. One of the hunters in passing near an old Indian camp found several yards of scarlet cloth, suspended on the bough of a tree as a sacrifice to the deity by the Assiniboins: the custom of making these offerings being common among that people as indeed among all the Indians on the Missouri. The air was sharp this evening; the water froze on the oars as we ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... upraised, still pulled at the tender top of a bush, and the deceitful wind, which blew from him toward Tayoga, brought no warning. Nor did the squirrel chattering in the tree or the bird singing on the bough just over his head tell him that the hunter was near. Tayoga looked again down the arrow at the chosen place on the gleaming body of the deer, and with a sudden and powerful contraction of the muscles, bending the bow a little further, ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... to Leria, and, at the entrance of the city, saw an English and a Portuguese soldier dangling by the bough of a tree—the first summary example I had ever seen ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... unpremeditated, it came so plainly from that something not one's self which makes for uses in which one's self is extinguished, that there are times when it seems to me as if I had no more to do with the writing of it than the bough through which the wind cries, or the wave by means ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... which once was Helen may be alive to-day in a thousand different forms. A violet upon a mossy bank, a bough of apple blossoms mirrored in a pool, the blood upon some rust-stained sword, a woman waiting, somewhere, for a ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... scolding to be in vain, and that the boy would not go, the squirrel did the next best thing—bounded along from bough to bough; while, after waiting wearily in the hope of seeing David, the boy began to look round this tree and the next, and finally made his way some little distance farther into the forest, to be startled ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... a loaf of bread beneath the bough. A flask of wine, a book of verse and thou, Beside me singing in the wilderness, And wilderness is ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... were to be other actors in this little overhead drama. A couple of cats, chancing to be in the campus when the students invaded it, had run up this identical elm, and had crouched in wild-eyed fear on that same bough, watching the wild orgies of the students. They had probably been there for a considerable period, not daring to descend while that howling, dancing mob held the grounds. Perhaps they even fancied that those yells and ear-splitting squeals were directed against them. They must have thought ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... the big bell that hung on the broken bough of an old elm-tree in front of the house would ring and we would all run to wash our hands ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... it, but the chief citizens had taken refuge in "the hold of the house of El-berith." "Abimelech gat him up to Mount Zalmon, he and all the people that were with him; and Abimelech took an axe in his hand, and cut down a bough from the trees, and took it up, and laid it on his shoulder: and he said unto the people that were with him, What ye have seen me do, make haste, and do as I have done. And all the people likewise cut down ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... imperfect copy—a small quarto? 2. What is the etymology of the game Blind Man's Buff? I am led to doubt whether that was the old spelling of it, for in a catalogue now before me I find a quarto work by Martin Parker, entitled The Poet's Blind Man's Bough, or Have among you my Blind Harpers, 1641. 3. What is the origin of the word muffin? It is not in Johnson's Dictionary. Perhaps this sort of tea-cake was not known in his day. 4. By what logic do we call one hundred and twelve pounds ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... Estimate, i, 74. "To those whose taste in Elocution is but a little cultivated."—Kirkham's Eloc., p. 65. "They considered they had but a Sort of a Gourd to rejoice in."—Bennet's Memorial, p. 333. "Now there was but one only such a bough, in a spacious and shady grove."—Bacon's Wisdom, p. 75. "Now the absurdity of this latter supposition will go a great way towards the making a man easy."—Collier's Antoninus p. 131. "This is true of the mathematics, where the taste has but little ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... men's calamities, are, as it were, in season, and are ever on the loading part: not so good as the dogs, that licked Lazarus' sores; but like flies, that are still buzzing upon any thing that is raw; misanthropi, that make it their practice, to bring men to the bough, and yet never a tree for the purpose in their gardens, as Timon had. Such dispositions, are the very errors of human nature; and yet they are the fittest timber, to make great politics of; like to knee timber, that is good for ships, that are ordained to be tossed; but ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... felt my heart sink within me. Never did tombs look so ghastly white. Never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funeral gloom. Never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously. Never did bough creak so mysteriously, and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... very acceptable." The man, in peeping out to see the cause of her joy, saw her, with astonishment, eating the bark of the poplar cane in the same manner that beavers gnaw. He then exclaimed, "Ho, ho! Ho, ho! this is Amik;"[77] and ever afterward he was careful at evening to bring in a bough of the poplar or the red willow, when she would exclaim, "Oh, this is very acceptable; this is a change, for one gets tired eating white fish always (meaning the poplar); but the carp (meaning the red willow) is a ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... leading to a beautiful valley, and before him a long vista of tombs, white head-stones and low crosses, edged by drooping cypress and trailing feathery vines. Some vines had fallen and been caught in long loops from bough to bough, like funeral garlands, and here and there the tops of isolated palmettos lifted a cluster of hearse-like plumes. Yet in spite of this dominance of sombre but graceful shadow, the drooping delicacy of dark-tasseled foliage and leafy fringes, and the ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the Piccaninny woke up because the bough had ceased to sway gently up and down. At first he was very surprised, and then, poking his little brown head out, he was horribly frightened. Instead of the green leafy arch above him, he saw a flat white thing, and all around him were enormous strange objects. Craning ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... own great loveliness always, And takes new beauties from the touch of time; Its bough owns no December and no May, But bears its blossoms into ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... go up, up, until he had reached the last bough that would support him. Then he drew some thing from his pocket which he unrolled and began to wave rapidly. It was a flag and through his powerful glasses Harry clearly saw the Stars and Stripes. It was evident that they were signaling, but when ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a year Have you kept pace with me, Wan Woman of the waste up there, Behind a hedge, or the bare Bough of a tree! ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... was with doubt and trembling I whispered in her ear. Go, take her answer, bird-on-bough, That all the world may ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... labelled blank-books, a morocco portfolio, and a Wedgewood inkstand and vase. In an arch, which she had manufactured from the space under the garret stairs, stood her bed. At its foot, against the wall, a bunch of crimson autumn leaves was fastened, and a bough, black and bare, with ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... thou bonnie bird, That sings upon the bough; Thou minds me o' the happy days, [remindest] When my fause luve ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... the grove, In plaintive moans replying, To every leafy bough above His tender tale is sighing; Ruffled beneath his viewless wing Thy wavelets fret and wimple, Now forth rejoicingly they spring In many ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... the second scream the small monkey laid hold of a bough with its tail, swung itself off, and caught another with its feet, sprang twenty feet, more or less, to the ground, which it reached on its hands, tumbled a somersault inadvertently, and went skipping over the ground at a great rate in the direction ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... "The bough on the round tree near the church. I want it most particular badly; you won't let anyone pick ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the ground. Blest with these riches he could empires slight, And when he rested from his toils at night, The earth unpurchased dainties would afford, 160 And his own garden furnished out his board: The spring did first his opening roses blow, First ripening autumn bent his fruitful bough. When piercing colds had burst the brittle stone, And freezing rivers stiffened as they run, He then would prune the tenderest of his trees, Chide the late spring, and lingering western breeze: His bees first swarmed, and made his vessels foam ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... between them is scarcely worthy of record. It is enough to say that Sepia found her companion distrait, and he felt her a little invasive. In a short while they came back together, and Sepia saw Letty under the great bough of the Durnmelling oak. Godfrey handed her down the rent, careful himself not to invade Durnmelling with a single foot. She ran home, and up to a certain window with her opera-glass. But the branches and foliage of the huge oak would have concealed ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... the window one beautiful summer evening, listening to the carolling of a bird which was perched upon the bough of a tree that shaded the house, and little Mamie was playing at her feet, when Allie, who was in the parlor practising on the piano, struck up with her ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... maidenhair fern interspersed with feathery tufts of wild asparagus, sung merrily at our side, the soft air murmured through the leaves of the silver trees, doves cooed around, and bright-winged birds flashed like living gems from bough to bough. It was ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... out my hand and nearly reach them," said Moppet; "you remember Reuben cut the bough nearest, but oh, Betty, the tree has a limb which runs an arm's length only from the ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... came to the William Morris plantation in Burke County. Eliza Morris, a slave, who was her master's, "right hand bough" was entrusted with burying the family silver. "There was a battle over by Waynesboro," Eliza's daughter explained to us. "I hear my mother speak many times about how the Yankees come to our place." It seems that some of the other slaves were jealous of Eliza because of her being ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... her smiles were the more beautiful through the vestiges of her tears. The sunlight was spattered lavishly among the shadows, glowing with a lambent light in the hidden places under shrub and thicket and dancing madly on leaf and bough. There was mischief in the air and it took but a little flight of the fancy to conjure Pan and his nymphs gamboling about the sleeping house of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... to reach the particular bough that I wanted, but then came the tug. I was half-inclined to give up the whole thing and go down to the ground, but Ned kept egging me on so confidently that I determined to ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... marble Venus, just rising in the immense basin and wringing out her locks. Then the park,—there was none more beautiful, more stately, extending far back to the banks of the Somme, where birds sat on every bough and the nightingale seemed to pour its very heart away, singing so thrillingly and so long. I hear the liquid notes now, my Adele, so tender, so sweet! At the end of the avenue of poplars of which I spoke stood the chateau, with the trim flower-beds in ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the success of her plan than her hint to the baronet that he had made an impression on Celia's heart. For he was not one of those gentlemen who languish after the unattainable Sappho's apple that laughs from the topmost bough—the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... "women" by the Dinka, because among these tribes the men wear an apron, while the women obstinately refuse to wear any clothes whatsoever of skin or stuff, going into the woods every day, however, to get a supple bough for a girdle, with, perhaps, a bundle of fine grass. (Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, vol. i, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... wonder though they vse such vile and beastly trade, Sith with the hatchet and the hand, their chiefest gods be made. Their Idoles haue their hearts, on God they neuer call, Vnlesse it be (Nichola Bough)[2] that hangs against the wall. The house that hath no god, or painted Saint within, Is not to be resorted to, that roofe is full of sinne. Besides their priuate gods, in open places stand Their ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... air,—listened with appreciation to the trilling of a bird swinging on a bough of apple-blossom above him, and began to feel quite easy in his mind. Half his mission was done for him, Prince Humphry having declared himself in his true colours. "I always said," mused the Professor, "that he was a very honest young man! And I think ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... went stealing up the alleys again, beginning to be half afraid, for they seemed to me full of something strange, unusual sound, rustling motion,—whether it were a waving bough, a dropping o'er-ripe pear, a footstep on adjacent walks. Nay, indeed, I saw now! I leaned against the beach-bole there, all wrapt in shade, and looked at them where they inadvertently stood in the full ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... if you do not find me faithful, honest, and true to you, tell your men to string me up to a bough. I do not drink, and have been in so many services that, ragged as you see me, I can yet behave so as not to do ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough; life everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... delay, so that we were able to continue our journey about seven o'clock. The banks were from twenty to forty feet high; and, with the exception of the cry of some rhinoceros birds which fluttered from bough to bough on the tops of the trees, we neither heard nor saw a trace of animal life. About half-past eleven we reached Taibago, a small visita, and about half-past one a similar one, Magubay; and after two hours' rest at noon, about five o'clock, we got into ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... should manage a newspaper; nominally an Opposition newspaper, but Ministerialist in petto. So the fall of this noble nature was really due to the Government. To Cerizet, as manager of the paper, it was rather too evident that he was as a bird perched on a rotten bough; and then it was that he promoted that nice little joint-stock company, and thereby secured a couple of years in prison; he was caught, while more ingenious swindlers ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... western wind has blown but a few days; Yet the first leaf already flies from the bough. On the drying paths I walk in my thin shoes; In the first cold I have donned my quilted coat. Through shallow ditches the floods are clearing away; Through sparse bamboos trickles a slanting light. In the early dusk, down an alley of green moss, ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... hear them crack on the side farthest away, and the great bush came slowly bodily over towards him, bringing bough after bough within his reach; and these he seized, forcing those he before clung to down beneath him into ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... scenery changed, and animal life became more abundant. Snake-birds, uttering their shrill cries, flew off from every overhanging bough; kingfishers darted hither and thither, astonished at the appearance of our canoe; bitterns flew from tree to tree, and terrapins splashed hastily into the water, as we approached. Tall lilies, with large white, crimson, or purple blossoms, and beautiful flowers of various descriptions, ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... every bough, to give the day "good-morrow," and the small streamlets, swollen by past rains, are chanting loud but soft harmonies to the water-pixies, as they dash headlong towards ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... chest, as he sat on that bough, Singing "Willow, titwillow, titwillow!" And a cold perspiration bespangled his brow, Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow! He sobbed and he sighed, and a gurgle he gave, Then he threw himself into the billowy wave, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... like a summer-time brook, planning that he was to buy a Christmas bough of evergreen, which she would smuggle to breakfast in the morning. Through their chatter persisted the new intimacy which had been born in the ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... this branch of sciences is continued:—that trunk of universality which we are forbidden henceforth to scorn, because all the professions are nourished from it. That universality which the men of practice scorn no more, since they have tasted of its proofs, since they have reached that single bough of it, which stooped so low, to bring its magic clusters within their reach. Fed with their own chosen delights, with the proof of the divinity of science, on their sensuous lips, they cry, 'Thou hast kept ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... condition, when my first impression is, "My good sir, I strongly suspect that you were up my pear-tree last night?" It is a dreadful state of mind. The core is black; the death-stricken fruit drops on the bough, and a great worm is within—fattening, and feasting, and wriggling! WHO stole the pears? I say. Is it you, brother? Is it you, madam? Come! are you ready to answer—respondere parati et cantare pares? ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for use, although they were ornamental, too. Those were the pots he made in which to grow bulbs or roots, and the "bough pots" which were filled with cut flowers and used to ornament the hearth ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... a dead bough from a scrub oak he approached the snake cautiously while the rest sat in their saddles silently anxious, and Charley edged his restive pony a little closer ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... surprise and well-bred contempt in semitones. Any heart, still young and sensitive, might well have applauded the philanthropy of savage tribes who kill off their old people when they grow too feeble to cling to a strongly shaken bough. Mme. d'Aiglemont rose smiling, and went away to ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... hidden city, from end to end a three days' march, where gold-dust thickened the air, and an Inca drank with his nobles in a garden whose plants waved not in the wind, whose flowers drooped not, whose birds never stirred upon the bough, for all alike were made of gold. They believed in a fair fountain, hard indeed to find, but of such efficacy that the graybeard who dipped in its shining waters stepped forth a youth ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... learned to understand the speech of birds, and this was now of great use to her, for, seeing a raven pluming itself on a pine bough, she cried softly to it: "Dear bird, cleverest of all birds, as well as swiftest on wing, wilt thou help me?" "How can I help thee?" asked the raven. She answered: "Fly away, until thou comest to a splendid ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... bakery was metamorphosed into a decent, dear little room, about nine by eleven, and commanding the sun on the four sides of its quadrangle. In fact, it was a veritable sun-bath; and how dainty was the tip-drip of the icicles from the big elm-bough, upon the little roof! To this spot I used to travel down in all weathers; sometimes when it was so slippery on the hill behind the carriage-house (for the garden paths were impassable in winter) that I have had to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... elements of heroic character, though but the attributes of riotous spirits, magnificent formation, flattered vanity, and imperious egotism. She was a bird gazing spell-bound on a gay young boa-constrictor, darting from bough to bough, sunning its brilliant hues, and showing off all its beauty, just before it takes the bird for ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... baby, on the tree-top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, Down will come ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... the ilex, of more ancient birth, More deeply planted in that genial earth, From her Italian wildwood even now Revert, and bear once more the golden bough. ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" (Isa 53:1) When the prophet speaks of the saved under this metaphor of gleaning, how doth he amplify the matter? "Gleaning-grapes shall be left," says he, "two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the Lord." (Isa 17:6) Thus you see what gleaning is left in the vineyard, after the vintage is in; two or three here, four or five there. Alas! they that shall be saved when the devil ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... your effort by springing back and slapping you in the face. You can cut them with your knife, but it is slow work and will blister your hands. Take twig by twig with the thumb and fingers (the thumb on top, pointing toward the tip of the bough, and the two forefingers underneath); press down with the thumb, and with a twist of the wrist you can snap the twigs like pipe-stems. Fig. 3 shows two views of the hands in a proper position to snap off twigs easily and clean. The one at the left shows the hand as it would appear looking down ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... heritage that cannot fail? As well might a flower complain of the rains that called it from the sod, of the winds that rocked it, and the cloudless noons that flamed above it, when June at last has lightly laid the coronal of summer's perfect bloom upon its bending bough. We shall find our June somewhere, never fear. Be content then a little longer with uncongenial surroundings and a life that knows no outlook of hope. Be all the sweeter and the stronger and the braver that the way is short. ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... full of mystery for her. The moon hung over branches, some that showed young buds, some still bare. Presently the long, rich, single notes cut the air, and melted to their glad delicious chuckle. The singer was answered from a farther bough, and again from one. It grew to be a circle of melody round Emilia at the open window. Was it the same as last year's? The last year's lay in her memory faint and well-nigh unawakened. There was likewise a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... me, you do so at your own risk, I will not promise "peace," but confusion rather. But if you get me, you must take me. Yet, if you come to Morningtown after me, I will deny my love, not out of perversity, but out of fear. The sight of you is a signal for me to take refuge upon my tallest bough. And I can no more come down to you than a young lady robin could fly into your pocket. It is all very well for you to exhort me to love you "simply and unreservedly,"—I do. Nothing could be simpler, more elemental, than my love is; and do I ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... moreover, the air in it which no breeze stirred, was heavy with the exhalations of rotting foliage. There seemed to be no life here and no sound—only now and again a loathsome spotted snake would uncoil itself and glide away, and now and again a heavy rotten bough fell ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... intervals to melody, but no person, not even the dullest ruffian among the baser sort of bird-fanciers would maintain for a moment that the happiness of the little sightless captive, whether vocal or silent, is at all comparable in degree to that of the chaffinch singing in April "on the orchard bough," vividly seeing the wide sunlit world, blue above and green below, possessing the will and the power, when its lyric ends, to transport itself swiftly through the crystal fields of air to ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... a platform up in the great horse-chestnut tree. When there was time, it could be reached comfortably by a short ladder, but, in times of hurry, it was the custom to swing up to it by a low-hanging bough, with a long running jump as a starter. To-day they ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Sunday mornings. The scheme was his wife's; she regarded it as his duty to himself to exercise this grand male privilege of staying in bed; to do so gave him majesty, magnificence, and was a sign of authority. A copy of The Referee, fresh as fruit new-dropped from the bough, lay in the hall at the front door. Mr. Haim had read The Referee since The Referee was. He began his perusal with the feature known as "Mustard and Cress," which not only amused him greatly, but convinced ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... to whom specific acknowledgment is therefore due. Like many others I owe to Sir J. G. Frazer the initial inspiration which set me, as I may truly say, on the road to the Grail Castle. Without the guidance of The Golden Bough I should probably, as the late M. Gaston Paris happily expressed it, still be wandering ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... and sky mixed themselves before his gaze, and he was so drugged with sleep that he had no wits to bid the Plough slacken from its speed. Therefore it happened that as they passed a wood, a hanging bough caught him, and brushed him like a feather from his place, landing him on a green bosom of grass, where he slept the sleep of the weary, nor ever lifted his head to see the Plough fast disappearing over hill ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... Trogon). Of course, being anxious to watch as well as to shoot one of these birds myself, I immediately hurry to the spot. I have not to wait long. A distant clattering noise indicates that the bird is on the wing. He settles—a splendid male—on the bough of a tree not seventy yards from where we are hidden. It sits almost motionless on its perch, the body remaining in the same position, the head only moving from side to side. The tail does not hang quite ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... with an elaborate prologue. The three Norns sit in the night on Brynhild's mountain top spinning their thread of destiny, and telling the story of Wotan's sacrifice of his eye, and of his breaking off a bough from the World Ash to make a heft for his spear, also how the tree withered after suffering that violence. They have also some fresher news to discuss. Wotan, on the breaking of his spear by Siegfried, has called all ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... Busch, in a thrillingly mysterious whisper; "and, remember, any time you want to learn the lay of the land and follow up the spoor of movements on the quiet, that Van Busch, of the British South African Secret War-Intelligence-Bureau, is the man to put you on. A line to that address, care of W. Bough, will always get me. And with nerve and josh like yours, and plenty of money for palm-oil...." His greedy mouth made a grinning red gash in the smug brown face with the fine whiskers of blackish-brown. His cold eyes scintillated and twinkled unspeakable things ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of the Hopi finally discovered that the supposed Calako carried a cedar bough in his hand, when it should have been willow; then they knew that it was Masauwuh who had been ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... love." Then I courteously asked them to disclose to me some of those secrets: they then looked towards a window on the southern quarter, and lo! there appeared a white dove, whose wings shone as if they were of silver, and its head was crested with a crown as of gold: it stood upon a bough, from which there went forth an olive; and while it was in the attempt to spread out its wings, the wives said, "We will communicate something: the appearing of that dove is a token that we may. Every man ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... attracting a monkey, a fox, a peacock, and other animals, Apollo singing to his lyre, Venus being loved by Mars, Neptune with his trident, attended by hosts of seamen. The seasons form an accustomed group, "Winter" being represented, as at Brading, by a female figure, closely wrapped, holding a lifeless bough and a dead bird. Satyrs and fauns, flowers, Graces and wood-nymphs, horns of plenty, gladiators fighting, one with a trident, the other with a net—all these and countless other fanciful representations ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... relations, and as well enabled as most of them be, I would have erected a monument for her—thus designed. A fair tree should have been erected, the said lady and her husband lying at the bottom or root thereof; the heir of the family should have ascended both the middle and top bough thereof. On the right hand hereof her younger sons, {469} on the left her daughters, should, as so many boughs, be spread forth. Her grandchildren should have their names inscribed on the branches of those boughs; the great-grandchildren on the twigs of those branches; and the great-great-grandchildren ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... little lanterns, round ones and square, of every size, colour, and shape, lit up the darkness of the summer night. Huge red dragons swung between the white, vine-covered pillars of the porch. Luminous fish and beasts and birds, hanging from the shrubs and trees on the lawn, set every bough a-twinkle, while all through the grass and all through the flower beds the flashing of hundreds of tiny fairy lamps made it seem as if the glow-worms ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the home of Mrs. Storrs, I thought her one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen—of the Andalusian type—dark hair and lustrous starry eyes, beautiful features, perfect teeth, a slender, willowy figure, and a voice so musical that it would lure a bird from the bough. She had a way all her own of "telling" you a poem. She was perfectly natural about it, a recitative semi-tone yet full of expression and dramatic breadth, at times almost a chant. With those dark and glowing eyes looking into mine, I have listened until I forgot everything about me, and was ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... a tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, Down comes the baby ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... for something better. The Berecynthian hero[9] departs joyful, and rejoices in his own misfortune, and tries the truth of his promise by touching everything. And, hardly believing himself, he pulls down a twig from a holm-oak, growing on a bough not lofty; the twig becomes gold. He takes up a stone from the ground; the stone, too, turns pale with gold. He touches a clod, also; by his potent touch the clod becomes a mass {of gold}. He plucks some dry ears of corn, that wheat ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... therefore, past glades, obscure and gloomy, where the flying-foxes hung in branches from the trees, and the little striped squirrels leaped and scuttled from bough to bough, where the blue jays laughed with abandoned mirth and the parroquets squabbled unceasingly, and cunning monkey-faces ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the wives of Cambrian chieftains—more particularly to one Morfydd, the wife of a certain hunch-backed dignitary called by the poet facetiously Bwa Bach—generally terminating with the modest request of a little private parlance beneath the greenwood bough, with no other witness than the eos, or nightingale; a request which, if the poet may be believed, rather a doubtful point, was seldom, very seldom, denied. And by what strange chance had Gwilym and Blackstone, two personages so exceedingly ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... her forehead when carrying the papoose on her back, or which the mother fastened to the pommel of her saddle when making long journeys. It served also to hang the cradle to the branch of a tree, when the child swayed backwards and forwards with the motion of the bough while the wind crooned him to sleep. The cradle would sometimes be placed upright against a tree-trunk, so that Tecumseh's eyes might follow Tecumapease as she helped to grind the corn in a hollow stone or sift it through baskets; or, again, while she mixed the meal into cakes, and carefully ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... his fox-skin cap trailing by his ears; saw facing him Almo, bare-kneed, his hunting-boots of soft leather like chamois-skin coming half way up to his calves, his leek-green tunic covering him only to mid-thigh, his head bare, his right hand waving an oak bough. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... turning over in my mind whether, having come thus far, it would not be advisable to let my Moll know of our project. Because, if she should refuse, the sooner we consider some other plan, the better, seeing that now she is in good case and as careless as a bird on the bough, and she is less tractable to our purposes than when she felt the pinch of hunger and cold and would have jumped at anything for a bit ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... taught it to the no small comfort of Mr. Ruskin and his men. Giuditta, dainty, blue-eyed, a girl still and three years a widow, flits homeward through a spring landscape of grey and green and the smile of a milky sky, being herself the dominant of the chord, with her bough of slipt olive and her jagged scimitar, with her pretty blue fal-lals smocked and puffed, and her yellow curls floating over her shoulders. On her slim feet are the sandals that ravished his eyes; all her maiden bravery is dancing and fluttering like harebells in the wind. Behind her plods ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... her side, and the men after us with their wives, each carrying a cake or a roasted apple on a string. We halted as usual by the bent tree in the centre of the orchard, and there, having hung our offerings on the bough, formed a circle, took hands and chanted, while Lizzie splashed cider against ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... were not barred, unclothed as I was I dropped down, and reached the ground in safety. I took the precaution, when I was outside, to shut the window, that my having escaped should not enter their ideas, and climbing a tree which overhung the wall of the garden, dropped from a bough on the other side, and found myself at liberty. As I knew that the farther I was from the nunnery, the less chance I had of being supposed an impostor, I gained the high road, and ran as fast as I could in the direction from ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... of the whip across the fingers of the daring young artist. This so enraged Kinch, that in default of any other missile, he threw his lime-covered cap at the head of the coachman; but, unfortunately for himself, the only result of his exertions was the lodgment of his cap in the topmost bough of a neighbouring tree, from whence it ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... it from the windows. The flower beds, desolated, formed muddy fountains, the gravel walk was a shining rivulet, the sycamore held three yellow leaves that clung vainly to a sheltered bough, the aspen faced her, naked—only the impenetrable gloom of the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... due respect and ease; For yonder see that hoary swain, whose age Can with no cares except its own engage; Who, propt on that rude staff, looks up to see The bare arms broken from the withering tree, On which, a boy, he climb'd the loftiest bough, Then his first joy, but his sad emblem now. He once was chief in all the rustic trade; His steady hand the straightest furrow made; Full many a prize he won, and still is proud To find the triumphs of his youth allow'd; A transient pleasure sparkles in his eyes, He hears and smiles, then ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... away some boughs, but could do no more. He shortened the anchor-rope, and tried the hold of the anchor on the bottom to make sure the lugger might not swing into the willows, for in every fork of every bough was a huge dark mass of serpents plaited and piled one upon another, and ready at any moment to glide apart towards any new ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie: There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily, shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough." ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... our smoke-sail yard was manned; we looked like a parcel of larks spitted, with one great goose in the midst of us. "Doey, get beyond me, zur; doey, Mr Rattlin," he would say. "Ah! zur, I'd climb with any bragger in this ship for a rook's nest, where I ha' got a safe bough to stand upon; but to dance upon this here see-sawing line, and to call it a horse, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... stopped under a young chestnut-tree as if overcome with a sudden reflection, and turning half away from him leaned her head and hand upon a bough, and sighed. The attitude was pensive and womanly. He asked her with innocent concern what was the matter; then faintly should he take her home. All her answer was to press his hand with hers that was disengaged, and, instead of sighing, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... eyes a gleam of early spring sunshine struck upon an old beech-tree at the lower end of the garden, and turned all its young green into gold. The glorified bough waved like a banner in the breeze, and seemed to bring some beautiful message to Hetty which she could not quite catch. The charm of colour fascinated her eye, the graceful movement had a meaning for her. Springing up from her despondent attitude she leaned from the doorway, and ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... the dry splinters as he scratches up that dead hemlock. Now we've got him! Go round on the other side of the tree and he will dodge back this way, and I shall get a crack at him. But he don't though! He must have a hole up there. Sure enough, there is one! Let me get this old bough broken in two, and I will start him. Now be ready, and shoot him as he comes out. The old tree is hollow all the way up; it sounds as I strike like an old bass-drum. There! he's out! blaze away! Not that time did you hit him. That's better! see him hang by ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... at one fell blow The gold shield of Helge which hung on a bough. It fell asunder,— Its clang on the grave-mound was ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... he cried softly in restrained enthusiasm. "I never saw a forest so petted, even in Germany. Look, there's not a dead bough—the vines are trained—actually! And see here"—he stopped and looked about him, calling Jeff's attention to the ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... distance to the wood, but the space was speedily traversed. The youth looked about him, discovered a bough sticking in the ground, with a small bit of rag tied to it, then led the way into the forest, watching for similar boughs and finding them at intervals; they were evidently guides to the point he was aiming at. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an ant crawls over the crack in the ground. Shakespeare writes Hamlet as easily as Tupper wrote his tales. Once an oak, always an oak. Care and culture can thicken the girth of the tree, but no degree of culture can cause an oak bough to bring forth figs instead of acorns. Rebellion against temperament and circumstance is sure to end in the breaking of the heart. Happiness and success begin with the sincere acceptance of the birth-gift and career ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... in the air about it. Flexion and contraction are not wholly checked. It were sparrowlike and childish after our deliverance to explode into twittering laughter and caper-cutting, and utterly to forget the imminent hawk on bough. Lie low, rather, lie low; for you are in the hands of a living God. In the Book of Job, for example, the impotence of man and the omnipotence of God is the exclusive burden of its author's mind. "It is as high as heaven; what ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... to think of something pleasant to say to him, when she noticed that the Plynck, having finished her luncheon, had flown up to a bough of the tree just over the spring; and suddenly she ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... mossy path, shadowed by the black foliage of stately casuarinas, leads into the gloomy jungle. The forest monarchs are curtained with tangled creepers and roped together with serpent-like lianas, stag-horn ferns, and green veils of filmy moss fluttering from every bough. A swampy path through rank grass and rough boulders pierces the dense thickets, matted together with inextricable confusion, teak and tamarind, acacia and bread-fruit, palm and tree-fern losing their own characteristics and merging themselves into concrete form. The appalling stillness ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... sat commercing with the manes of my beloved poet, or straggling about the shrubbery which hangs directly above the mouth of the grot. I wonder I did not visit the eternal shades sooner that I expected, for no squirrel ever skipped from bough to bough more venturously. One instant I climbed up the branches of a chestnut, and sat almost on its extremity, my feet impending over the chasm below; another I boldly advanced to the edge of the rock, and saw crowds of people and carriages, diminished by distance, issuing ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford |
