"First of May" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... parent, but none of them seem to have been aware that she is destined to remain with him till the day of doom, whilst Gwyn ap Nudd, the king of the fairies, and Gwythyr op Greidiol, fight for her every first of May, and whichever of them may be fortunate enough to be the conqueror at that time will obtain her as a bride.] the daughter of Lludd, the constant maiden, and Ewaedah, the daughter of Kynvelyn, [Footnote: The Welsh have a fable on the subject ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... beside the Neckar and in Heidelberg—"a pleasant town," as the old song says, "when it has done raining." We sealed a compact over the indestructible German umbrella. I agreed to defer for a fortnight my departure for Marly: on his side he made a solemn vow to come there on the first of May, and there receive in full and without wincing the particulars of my Progressive Geography. As he passed by the window I took care that he should catch a glimpse of me seated by accident in a strong light, my smoking-cap crowded down to my spectacles, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... The First of May was approaching. A sinister rumor ran through Paris. The blustering leaders of the C.G.T. were doing their best to spread it. Their papers were announcing the coming of the great day, mobilizing the ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... got ready to start, which was about the first of May, my friends all persuaded me not to go, but to get some other person to go, for fear I might be caught and sold off from my family into slavery forever. But I could not refrain from going back myself, believing that I could accomplish it ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... she went; and, if the sweet spring air did not bring peace to her mind, at any rate, it to a very great extent set up her in strength. She wrote but one letter during her absence, and that was to say that she should be back in London by midday on the first of May. This letter reached Philip on the morning of the great dinner-party, and was either accidentally or on purpose sent without the writer's address. On the morning of the first of May—that is, two days after the dinner-party, which was ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... said Moscione, "you deserve to be the king of the custom-house, and you should be chosen for standard-bearer on the first of May. But I should like to see a proof of ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... put to that duel by the removal of Johnston, and the military world thus deprived of a complete lesson, except for the fact that, whether or not the contest finally resulted in the fall of Atlanta, the rebellion in that part of the South would have been practically as far from an end as it was the first of May! Johnston would have been there in front of Sherman, all the same, and at least one more campaign would have been required before the march to the sea could have ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... though in the poem the actual ceremony has been performed, and it is his triumphant return to the city of Athens that is interrupted by the widows' appeal for justice; and in the play the action passes in the three or four days before the marriage. Secondly, the wedding-day is the first of May, and there are two references to that "observance of May"[16] which is given by Chaucer as the reason both for Emilia's walking in the garden and for Arcite's seeking of the grove where Palamon lay hid.[17] Thirdly, it can hardly ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... home of your declining years: poor old grandmother, too, shall find it a welcome refuge while she lives. I have never felt that I could see the home of my birth pass to other hands; my heart still clings to it, and its hallowed associations, with all the tenacity of former days. The first of May will, in future, have special charms for me, for from this day, 1878, dates my claim to that spot of earth which to me ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... whom he saw quarterly and also on the first of May, because it was her birthday, touched and coloured his imagination far more than his father did. She was now Lady Marayne, and a prominent, successful, and happy little lady. Her dereliction had been ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... ratification of a treaty of peace between the present belligerents." There were provisions for the gradual redemption of the bonds in gold for those who did not desire cotton. Subscribers were to pay 5 per cent. on application. 10 per cent. on allotment, 10 per cent. on each of the days, the first of May, June and July, 1863, and 15 per cent. on the first of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... hardships on pack animals and the marching columns and batteries had to be moved forward over corduroy roads, (artificial roads made of logs.) All the accumulation of information and preparations necessary for breaking through the enemy's line had been quietly and secretly accomplished. On the first of May in the afternoon the artillery began its fire on the Russian positions. These in some five months had been perfected according to all the rules of the art of fortification. In stories they lay one over ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... first of May, which was the Festival of the Blessed Apostles Philip and James. The year was the 1,349th ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on the first of May for Ostend on board of a small vessel bound thither. Our fellow passengers were two officers of dragoons, several commissaries with their servants, horses, etc. After a passage of twenty-four hours, we entered ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... want to have a little May Queen for the first of May. The rest of you must be her courtiers. I want you all to vote to-morrow. Put down on a piece of paper the name of the little girl you think would make the sweetest little Queen, and the rest of you shall be ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... was shewn the place where formerly stood an elevated Altar whereon, three young citizens were sacrificed annually, and who were fattened at the public expence during a whole year, for the horrid purpose! On the first of May their throats were cut in the presence of a prodigious multitude of people assembled from all parts; among whom the blood of the victims was thrown, as they imagined all their sins were expiated by that barbarous ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... body of the army under Greene continued to suffer diminution. On the first of May a large proportion of the North Carolina troops were entitled to and claimed their discharge. No recruits were expected from the North, and it became necessary to draw together all the force that South ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... twenty-first and twenty-fourth. I do not mean that they should in any wise hasten actual marriage; but only that they should hold it a point of honor to have the right to marry. In every year there should be two festivals, one on the first of May, and one at the feast of harvest home in each district, at which festivals their permissions to marry should be given publicly to the maidens and youths who had won them in that half-year; and they should be crowned, the maids by the old French title ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... the secretary of war took this movement of his colleague in high dudgeon, as the supply of the army, he thought, belonged to the war department. To frustrate and disgrace the new company of contractors, he ordered the army destined to operate in Italy to take the field on the first of May, several weeks before it was possible for the contractors by the ordinary methods to collect and move the requisite supplies. The company explained the impossibility of their feeding the army so early in the ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... outward-bound ships that passed his home. Occasionally, too, he had alarmed his mother by threatening to run away and go to sea. His preference, however, was to become a boatman of New York harbor. On the first of May, 1810,—an important day in his history,—he made known his wishes to his mother, and asked her to advance him a hundred dollars for the purchase of a ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... The first of May has come, the thirteenth of May has come, and so forth. The line trees are arrayed in tender green, and anon blossom along the length of the Unter den Linden, but it is not Germany's new summer, and it has that irrelevance which ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... was recorded of this hat, except once, when a group of little children in front of Judge Custis's house began to whisper and titter, and one, bolder than the rest, the Judge's daughter, gravely walked up to the unsocial man; it was the first of May, and he ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... becoming obsolete, or passing into mere popular customs of the country, which the peasantry observe without thinking of their origin. About 1769, when Mr. Pennant made his tour, the ceremony of the Baaltein, Beltane, or First of May, though varying in different districts of the Highlands, was yet in strict observance, and the cake, which was then baken with scrupulous attention to certain rites and forms, was divided into fragments, which were formally dedicated to birds ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... said this same boy's mother, on the first of May, 1810, when he asked her to lend him one hundred dollars to buy a boat, having imbibed a strong liking for the sea; "on the twenty-seventh of this month you will be sixteen years old. If, by that time, you will plow, harrow, and plant with ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... off thirteen or fourteen who lived in numbered streets, Fausta started, looked back at the preface and its date, flung down her pencil in the only abandonment of dismay in which I ever saw her, and cried, "First of May! They were abroad until May. They have been abroad since the day they were married!" So that genie had to put his glories into his pocket, and carry his Directory back to ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... absence Johnnie West and I were busily engaged in making preparations to start for Bent's Fort, as soon as Carson should get back with the horses. On his return he informed us that he would not leave the park until about the first of May, which was a surprise and disappointment to us both, as we had made all calculations on getting started the following day. We asked what was up that we were to be detained ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... the difficulty was found, as there generally is; and the city fathers decided to accept the terms, and make Flora worthy of the honor by placing her among their minor deities, of which there were no less than thirty thousand. She took her place as Goddess of Flowers, with a celebration about the first of May, to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... between the squire and Mrs Dale that the removal from the Small House to Guestwick was not to take place till the first of May. When he had been made to understand that Dr Crofts had thought it injudicious that Lily should be taken out of their present house in March, he had used all the eloquence of which he was master to induce Mrs Dale to consent to abandon her project. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... circumstances, but became an opulent merchant, in Boston. He was a member of Mather's Church, and one of the Special Court to try the witches. Its Session was to commence in the first week, probably on Thursday, the second day of June. The letter, dated on Tuesday, the thirty-first of May, is addressed to John Richards alone; and commences with a strong expression of regret that quite a severe indisposition will prevent his accompanying him to the trials. "Excuse me," he says, "from waiting upon you, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... on a Thursday, the first of May, and the seventeenth day of the moon, that the Milesians arrived in Ireland; and as he set his right foot on the soil of it, Amargin chanted ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of Venice and Verona. Underlying the words was a slight tone of regret that she was now not only bound to the spot, but also to the house, for invalids cannot venture out of doors to enjoy the spring until the first of May, and September drives them back into their quiet cell. "How often one longs for a distant horizon!" she sighed. My eyes wandered over the wilderness of ancient roofs upon which the windows of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... IT was the first of May; but May was in an April mood,—half cloudy, half shiny,—and belied her name. Sprinkles of silvery rain dotted the way-side dust; flashes of sun caught the drops as they fell, and turned each into a tiny mirror fit for fairy faces. The trees were raining ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... blew so strongly in shore, that we were unable, as we had at first intended, to meet him on his watery road. The watchtower of Athens was besieged by inquirers, each sail eagerly looked out for; till on the first of May the gallant frigate bore in sight, freighted with treasure more invaluable than the wealth which, piloted from Mexico, the vexed Pacific swallowed, or that was conveyed over its tranquil bosom to enrich the crown of Spain. At early dawn the vessel ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... About the first of May, 1837, the day of deliverance came. I was to be my own master and make my own living! A fortune gilded with hope was before me. I was to go in the stage thirty-six miles to Zanesville, and thence by ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... On the first of May we started back toward Falmouth, but stopped several days at Bristersburg, a small town, where we spent our time very pleasantly, scouting through the country and living upon its rich products. Here we are very much isolated from the rest of our army. We seldom get a mail or receive any papers, ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... It was the First of May, and that same good three-master, the Caesar, which had carried Major de Blacquaire and Sergeant Jervase from the Crimea to Scutari, was bowling merrily along south of Naples, where Vesuvius had his smoking cap on. There ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... up on the first of May, with all of them, except one of the nondescript collegians and the air-current student, more or less trained aviators. Carl was going out to tour small cities, for the George Flying Corporation. Lieutenant Haviland was ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... which Tyrone entered to the depth of his saddle; but Essex stood on the opposite bank. After half an hour's conference, where Tyrone behaved with great submission to the lord lieutenant, a cessation of arms was concluded to the first of May, renewable from six weeks to six weeks; but which might be broken off by either party upon a fortnight's warning.[**] Essex also received from Tyrone proposals for a peace, in which that rebel had inserted many unreasonable and exorbitant conditions: and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... who writes himself Mat Meager, complains, that whereas he constantly used to Breakfast with his Mistress upon Chocolate, going to wait upon her the first of May he found his usual Treat very much changed for the worse, and has been forced to feed ever ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... dry and frost bound, wherefore men could not get them fresh grass to feed the cattle. For this cause some poor men brake up the roofs of their houses and gave of the thatch to the beasts: and this lack of grass endured until the first of May. ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... writing of his time, speaks of seeing May-poles in the front yards of the prominent citizens of Holland. A festival much the same as this was held in Ancient Rome and also in India. The May-pole properly pierces a disc and thus conforms with the lingam-yoni of India. We also know that the first of May was a favorite time for all nature worship with the ancients. For a number of interesting suggestions the reader is referred to R. P. Knight, Worship of Priapus, and Hargrave Jennings, Indian ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the first of May. Come along; perhaps we shall meet the Mayers, though we're too late, I expect. Hullo! there's ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was launched at last, on the first of May; and after two days he wrote: "Nothing can be better than Our Friend, now in his thirtieth thousand, and orders flowing in fast." But between the first and second number there was a drop of five thousand, strange ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the event was the first of May. On that day it was the custom of the gentlemen of Corfe Castle to hunt a stag on the island, and any one who liked to do so might participate in the sport. The Roundheads decided to attend the hunt, ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... one of Jamaica's most famous sons, was born at Montego Bay on the first of May, 1795. In 1779 his father, also named Richard, came to Jamaica from Lincolnshire, where the family had lived for several centuries, and along with a brother settled at Montego Bay. There he became a substantial merchant, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... went away the first of May. That evening Charlotte sat on the door-step in the soft spring twilight. Her mother had just come home from her sister Hannah Berry's. "Thomas Payne went this afternoon," her ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... come to tell you, madam," he said, "that I am about to hold jousts in the castle on the first of May, at which your good brother and mine, the Lord Rochford, will be the challenger, while I myself shall be the defendant. ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of the Augustinians held on the first of May I was present, at their instance; for they were divided into two parties by their usual passion. They were presided over by the most serious friar of their order, but the bold acts of the youthful friars at every juncture violated the rules of obedience, which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... be chosen, as that in which plans are originated and matured for settling the destiny of life. But it was during this winter, that Boone and Finley arranged all the preliminaries of their expedition, and agreed to meet on the first of May in the coming spring; and with some others, whom they hoped to induce to join them for greater strength and safety, to set forth together ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... that twenty-first of May when the red-mouthed cannon roar from dawn till dark. At eventide, the grim regulars bayonet the last defenders of the redoubts at the Point du Jour gates. The city is open ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... is a month that I have let the above lie by, because I got into a strain of emotion in it that I dreaded to return to. Well, so it shall be no longer. In about five weeks Mr. Stowe and myself start for New England. He sails the first of May. I am going with him to Boston, New York, and other places, and shall stop finally at Hartford, whence, as soon as he is gone, it is my intention ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... these birds are, they had been on a long journey to the southward to spend the winter, and now on the first of May, they had returned to their old home to find the land at its fairest—all blossoms, buds, balmy air, sunshine, and melody. As they flitted about in their restless way, they sang the soft, low, warbling trills, which gave them their ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... corner. There, too, was Aunt Betsey, who never looked any older, because she always looked as old as she could; who always dried her catnip and wormwood the last of September, and began to clean house the first of May. In short, this was the land of continuance. Old Time never took it into his head to practise either addition, or subtraction, or multiplication on its ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ability to live on ten dollars a week and support Phoebe, as well as to begin the task of reimbursing Nellie for her years of sacrifice. Still, it was better than nothing at all, so he accepted Mr. Davis' ten-dollar-a-week offer and sat back to wait for the coming of the first of May. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... sick. Disease reigned unrelieved, and hundreds died from pestilence, or were starved on board this floating Prison. I saw the sand beach, between a ravine in the hill and Mr. Remsen's dock, become filled with graves in the course of two months: and before the first of May, 1777, the ravine alluded to was itself ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... reaches you St. Mark's Gospel will have passed through the press. The two remaining Gospels will be printed before the arrival of Christmas, and by the first of May the entire New Testament, in the Mandchou language, will have been published. I wish this intelligence to be communicated to the public, who are at liberty, provided the Lord does not visit me with some heavy affliction, to hold me culpable, if my assertion ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... migration took place on the first of May, and was long cited in tradition as the grand moving. The anniversary of it was piously observed among the "sons of the pilgrims of Communipaw," by turning their houses topsy-turvy, and carrying all the furniture through the streets, in ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... "Now let's talk about the ball out at the Club we are going to give Nickols when he comes down the first of May." ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the situation on the first of May. The two tigers were watching each other—and one was about ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... delighted me the most was spring. I would count the days until St. Taminas, which, as you knew, falls on the first of May. And the old custom was for the young men to deck themselves out as Indian bucks and sweep down on the festivities around the Maypole on the town green, or at night to surprise the guests at a ball and force ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and determined for the Commission of the Merchants of this Company resiant (resident) in Russia, and at the Wardhouse, for the second voyage, 1555, the first of May, as followeth. ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... Kong and Yokohama, taking the steamer from there to San Francisco. It would take him more than a month to make the trip, and, as it was now the second week in March, he could hardly expect to reach New York before the first of May. He at once cabled Mr. Jennings that he would leave at once for Hong Kong, and received an answer telling him to do so by all means, and to continue to write letters describing his trip. Archie knew that these letters would probably not reach New York any sooner than he would, but he did write ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... creature, which is to be found in temperate North America, and, in winter, as far south as Cuba and Jamaica. In north-eastern Illinois the Avocet generally occurs in small parties the last of April and the first of May, and during September and the early part of October, when it frequents the borders of marshy pools. The bird combines the characteristics of the Curlew and the Godwit, the bill ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... The first of May came on Sunday, so all the celebrating must be done on Saturday, which happily proved fair, though too chilly for muslin gowns, paper garlands, and picnics on damp grass. Being a holiday, the boys decided to devote the morning to ball and the afternoon to the flower hunt, ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... that vale, from first of May Until the last of August went, Beauty, the exile, came each day In all her ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... and a half that first of May, stood at the edge of the tulip border, bowing to two hen turkeys who were poking their heads elegantly here and there among the flowers. She was absurdly like her mother, the same oval-shaped face, dark arched brows, large and clear brown eyes; but she had the modern child's open-air look; her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The first of May is ever a day of uncertainty and unrest in the world of labour. It is a time for readjustment, for the fixing of wage scales, for the assertion of labour rights and the ventilating of labour wrongs. It is a time favourable to ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... debtors, who had taken the benefit of the acts establishing the prison bounds, were anxious to join in the defence of the city, but were apprehensive of exposing their sureties. On this being represented to the legislature, an act was passed, extending the prison bounds, until the first of May following, so ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the Atchafalaya called Butte a la Rose, on the 20th of April, the same day that Opelousas, sixty miles from Alexandria, was entered by the army. The latter pressed on toward Alexandria, while the gunboats pushed their way up the Atchafalaya. On the first of May two of them, the Estrella and Arizona, passed into the Red River, and soon afterward ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... me two hundred pullets to begin the egg-making next November. That's not enough; we ought to raise just twice that number. I'll spend as much more on eggs to be hatched by the middle of April or the first of May, and then we can reasonably expect to go into next winter with four hundred pullets. They will cost the farm a dollar apiece, but the farm will have four hundred cockerels to sell at fifty cents each, which will materially reduce ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... enemy of both; and the Bourbon princes of Italy were invited to join in the covenant.[867] What was more to the present purpose, a special agreement was concluded on the same day, by which Spain bound herself to declare war against England unless that Power should make peace with France before the first of May, 1762. For the safety of her colonies and her trade Spain felt it her interest to join her sister nation in putting a check on the vast expansion of British maritime power. She could bring a hundred ships of war to aid the dilapidated navy of France, and the wealth of the Indies ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue. Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, deg. deg.5 With the English fleet ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... disturbed now and again by the woodcutters, or boys from the village. But there was one day in the year when this quiet kingdom was strangely invaded, when its inhabitants fled to their most retired corners and peeped out with terrified eyes upon a very altered scene—and this was the first of May. Then everything was changed for a little while. Instead of the notes of the birds there were human voices calling to each other, laughing, singing, shouting, and the music of a band; instead of great silent spaces, there were many brightly-coloured ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... in the Northern States have scarcely begun their work of destruction, as the buds do not unfold before the first of May. We give an account, however, of some of the beneficial insects which are now to be found in grass-lands and in gardens. The farmer should know his true insect friends as well as his insect foes. We introduce to our readers a large family of ground-beetles (Carabidae, from Carabus, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... imagine what violent contests were going on under the still roof, this very night. It was the night of the first of May. The moon came silently out from the shadows; the trees were scarcely stirring. The box of chessmen had been left on the balcony steps by the drawing-room window, and the window, too, that warm night, had been left open. So, one by one, all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... behind St. Peter's on the first day of May, before bonfires begin to blaze from all the country towns on the mountain-sides, showing like great beacons. This is a custom founded in great antiquity, and common to the North and South. The first of May is the Festival of the Holy Apostles in Italy; but in Germany, and still farther north, in Sweden and Norway, it is Walpurgisnacht,—when goblins, witches, hags, and devils hold high holiday, mounting on their brooms for the Brocken. And it was on this night that Mephistopheles carried ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... inconvenience. Their removal was to be determined by their conduct in England, not in the place from which they had come. This bill was introduced in the middle of April. It readily passed the lords. On the first of May it was introduced to the commons by the home secretary, and after an opposition of great force, from Sir William Molesworth and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... permission from the English General for you to leave the town. You see they fear even small Americans," she concluded laughingly. But before dinner was over it was decided that, if all went well, Ruth should go to Barren Hill about the first of May. That seemed a long time to Ruth; but she remembered that Betty's table was not even begun, and if she and Winifred did decide to make furniture for their dolls the three weeks that must pass before her visit to Barren Hill would perhaps ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... willing, the flesh was weak indeed, and on the morning of the first of May, his faithful servants found him kneeling at the bedside, with his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. "He had passed away without a single attendant, on the farthest of all his journeys. But he had died in the act of prayer—prayer offered in that reverential attitude about which he was ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... perhaps appear a too hackneyed topic for a place in these Glimpses, and yet they were very different from present day observances. The "May-dolling" by children in the streets of Royston as every first of May comes round is clearly a survival of the more picturesque mummeries of the past. There is this in common, in all the procession of Mayers through the ages, that their outward equipment has always sought some little bit of promise of greenery from nature's springtide, and rather a ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... the tales already given it would appear that the Fairies held revelry irrespective of set times of meeting, still it was thought that they had special days for their great banquets, and the eve of the first of May, old style, was one of these days, and another was Nos Wyl Ifan, St. John's Eve, or the evening ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... of the United States to engage in war with the Wabash Indians, no doubt now remained of their warlike intentions. Every savage town from the Vermilion Piankeshaws to ancient Kekionga, was under British control. On the first of May, 1790, Governor Arthur St. Clair transmitted to the war department a part of the report of Antoine Gamelin, written from Tippecanoe, and observed as follows: "By this letter, you will perceive that everything seems to be referred to the Miamis, which does not promise a peaceable ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... And by the first of May 'twas open and ready for business, too. You never see such a driver as that feller Brown was. He had a new wide piazza built all 'round the main buildings, painted everything up fine, hired the three best women cooks in Wellmouth—and there's some good ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... constructions in Oxford. Its quadrangles are fine, especially the one known as the Cloisters, which remains much as it was in the time of the founder, and is ornamented with rude sandstone statues erected in honor of a visit from King James I. In accordance with ancient custom, on the morning of the first of May, just as five o'clock strikes, a solemn Te Deum is sung on the top of Magdalen Tower, where the choristers assemble in surplices and with uncovered heads. When it closes the crowd on the ground below give out discordant blasts from myriads of tin horns, but the Magdalen chime ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... give a kind reception to the articles of the Union as passed in Scotland, when they were laid before that House, as was evident from the quick dispatch in approving of and ratifying the same; and so the Union commenced on the first of May 1707, a day never to be forgot by Scotland; a day in which the Scots were stripped of what their predecessors had gallantly maintained for many hundred years, I mean the independency and soveraignty of the kingdom, both which the Earl of Seafield so little valued, that when he, as Chancellor, ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... work performed on the building during the winter months, and arrangements had just been made to complete four out of the fourteen distinct suites of apartments into which it was divided, by the first of May. It was hoped that the remainder would be finished during the summer, and that by the first of October the edifice would be prepared for the reception of a hundred and fifty persons, with ample accommodations for ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... prison year commences the first of May. The former warden continued some ten weeks into the second year, during which time the Sabbath school attendance remained as usual, ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... day. T'is more like June than the first of May." The post said never a word. "I've just dropped over from Lincolnshire. My home is in the Cathedral Spire— The air is cooler and purer the higher You get—as you've ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... the first of May 1707, and for ever after, the kingdoms of England and Scotland, shall be united into one kingdom, by the name of ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... and James Island in honor of their royal patrons. The latter was by far the most advantageously situated, and became the main stronghold of the English in the northern part of Africa during all the history of the African companies. Holmes probably remained on the Gambia until about the first of May when he departed with one or two of the ships for England. In July as much of a cargo as possible was loaded on the "Amity" which finally arrived in England, after its crew ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... was the first of May. The Easter bells had rung in the resurrection of spring a few days before, and she had come eager and joyful. She came, as the German ballad says, light-hearted as the young lover who is going to plant a maypole before the window of his ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... the U States before the ice would close the Missouri; or at all events would hazard our horses which we left in charge of the Chopunnish who informed us that they intended passing the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri as early as the Season would permit them which is about the first of May. Should these people leave their Situation near Kooskooske before our arival we may probably find much dificulty in recovering our horses; without which there will be but little possibility of repassing the Mountains; we are therefore determined to lose as little time ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... first of May, many allotments of ground were parcelled out by the governor to convicts whose periods of transportation were expired, and who voluntarily offered to become settlers in the country. The terms on which they settled, and their progress in agriculture, will ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... of de La Grange arrived from the South River, bringing a letter for us from Ephraim, in which he informed us of his intention to come and visit us the last of April or the first of May, which we much desired. ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... for the Commission of the Merchants of this company residant in Russia, and at the Wardhouse, for the second voyage, 1555. the first of May, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... called by the Legislature on the first of May, and met on the 20th of May, 1861; in the hall of the House of Commons. On this anniversary of the Mecklenburg Declaration the Ordinance of Secession was passed, and North Carolina made haste to connect herself with the ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... "On the first of May, as I afterwards found out, at one o'clock in the morning, I staggered into the camp, and awoke Mr. Tietkins at daylight. He glared at me as if I had been one risen from the dead. I asked him if he had seen ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... Dryden, on the first of May, 1700, closed a period of no small significance in the history of English literature. His faults were many, both as a man and as a poet, but he belongs to the race of the giants, and the impress of greatness is stamped upon his works. No student of Dryden can fail to mark ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to Saint Malo on the Rance, With the English ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... "On the first of May will be opened, at Sharon in Connecticut, a school, in which children may be instructed, not only in the common arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but in any branch of academical literature. The little regard that is paid to the literary improvement of females, even among people ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... In plotting for his release, the plotters had marked him out as a life which was the main danger to the new state of things. Strafford still hoped in his master; he had a pledge from Charles that his life should be saved; and on the first of May the king in a formal message to the Parliament had refused his assent to the Bill of Attainder. But the Queen had no mind that her husband should suffer for a minister whom she hated, and before her pressure the ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... him warmly, and Rose shared his hopes; and said so; but Josephine was silent and thoughtful. Nothing more worth recording passed that night. But the next day was the first of May, Josephine's birthday. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... same year 1518[30], Diego Velasquez, governor of the island of Cuba, dispatched his nephew, John de Grisalva, on the first of May, with four ships and two hundred soldiers, to discover Jucutan. On the 3d of May, he fell in with the island of Cozumel, in 19 deg. north latitude, which he named Santa Cruz, because discovered on the 3d of May, being the anniversary of the holy cross. Grisalva coasted along the land, on the west ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... lights, for candles, for washing, for baths, for boots, and for what-know-I, after the most explicit declaration that the first demand included everything. Nothing definite could be evolved but the fact that when the season began, or after the first of May ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Mrs. Stanley, "it must be done. Perhaps I can assist you in making up the quarrel. Next Thursday, you know, is the first of May. You shall have a little party, and Jessie shall be Queen of May. That will be certain to ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... first of May, when there was a Celtic festival in honor of the sun. Beltane Beal-tein, or the fire of Beal, a Gaelic name for the sun. It was celebrated by kindling fires on the hill-tops at night, and other ceremonies, followed by dances, and merry-making. Cf. 410 below. See also The Lord of the Isles, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... is generally opened on the first of May. The number of works of art, consisting of paintings, sculptures, models, proof engravings and drawings, generally exhibited, are upwards of one thousand; and are usually visited by all the gaiety and fashion of the Metropolis, between ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... season now set in with unusual violence, and the struggles and hardships endured by this little band cannot be easily imagined. However, so great was their persevering industry, that before the first of May several dwelling-houses had been rendered habitable, with a small frame-house for the Agent; and a storehouse sufficient for their purposes had ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... they lit the fire on the end of May, the Beltane." And again, in his remarks on Peblis to the Play, (p. 315,) he says:—"The play was not the name for a stage play, but indicated the sports and festivals which took place at Peebles annually at Beltane, the second of May, not the first of May, as is usually supposed. These had in all probability come in place of the ancient British practice of lighting fires on the hill tops in honour of Baal, the sun god, hence the name Baaltein, Beltane, i.e. Baal's fire. The Christian Church had so far modified the ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... On the first of May, Maroney announced his intention of going North on a visit. He was with Porter at Patterson's at the time and seemed to have suddenly formed the resolution. He said he had consulted with his counsel and they had ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... and from their history we learn the meaning of our celebration. Some of you may know that the early inhabitants of Great Britain, Ireland, and parts of France were known as Celts, and that their religion was directed by strange priests called Druids. Three times in the year, on the first of May, for the sowing; at the solstice, June 21st, for the ripening and turn of the year; and on the eve of November 1st, for the harvesting, those mysterious priests of the Celts, the Druids, built fires ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... Lettuce, Colewortes, Borage, and such like, doe waxe ripe, greater, more sauourie and delectable in taste then ours, within sixteene dayes after the seede is sowen. Wheate being sowed the first of Februarie, was found ripe the first of May, and generally, where it is lesse fruitfull, the wheate will be ripe the fourth moneth after the seed is sowne, and in some places will bring foorth an eare as bigge as the wrist of a mans arme containing 1000. graines; Beanes, peace, &c. are there ripe twice a ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... with a birth, a christening, and a wedding the winter passed rapidly at No. —— Beacon street, and by the first of May Bessie was again in Allington, armed and equipped for settling Stoneleigh Cottage, and giving the finishing touches to the plateau, which with the advance of summer, began to show marks of great beauty, and to attract general attention. Bessie's idea of raising ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... practical part of all this is the remedy: keep the ground clean around the trees, and rub off frequently all the rough bark; place around each tree half a peck of air-slaked lime, and the borer will not attack it. This should be placed there on the first of May, and be spread over the ground on the first of October; refuse tobacco-stems, from the cigar-makers, or any other offensive substance, as hen-manure, salt and ashes, &c., will answer the same purpose. We should recommend the annual cultivation of a small piece of ground in tobacco, for use around ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... all the tenants that unless the whole arrears were paid on or before the end of the next month, they would be ejected; and to many of those who held portions of the better part of the land, he sent summary notices to quit on the first of May next following. These notices were all served by Pat, who assured the tenants that he only performed the duties which he had now undertaken that he might look after Mr. Thady's interests, and as, as he said, "there ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... convent before day light, but travelled no farther to day than to the well of Abou Szoueyr, where we had rested on the first of May, and where a large company of Arabs assembled when they heard of our arrival. They quarrelled long with my guides for having taken me clandestinely from the convent, but were at last pacified by a lamb which I bought, and partook of with them. In ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... boarding club of our own, and then we could stand by each other in a time like this?" After that events moved quickly. We read aloud together Beatrice Potter's little book on "Cooperation," and discussed all the difficulties and fascinations of such an undertaking, and on the first of May, 1891, two comfortable apartments near Hull-House were rented and furnished. The Settlement was responsible for the furniture and paid the first month's rent, but beyond that the members managed the club themselves. The undertaking "marched," ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... tie them to the stakes, and take off some of the lower side-shoots. Continue to tie them, as their growth advances. If the roots are planted in the open borders, without any previous growth, it should be done as early as the first of May, and they should be covered from the frosts. When they are brought forward, in pots or hot-beds, they should be put out, in the middle of June. It is said, by gardeners, that late planting, is better than early, for producing perfect flowers. In the Autumn, after the frosts have ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... a cuckoo on the first of May, and takes off her left shoe, she will find inside a hair the colour of her future husband's hair. Girls used to get up early on May morning and go into the country and wait ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... first of May. The young nobleman was thinking of the May days when he was a boy—of how the common near his early home was yellow with gorse, and the hedges were white with hawthorn. He strolled sadly along the sea-shore, ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... but let me do it in my own way. Some rolled water down the hill and said, 'this will turn the poor old miller's wheel, and a busy man he will be by morning. There has been no rain since the first of May, and how the jolly old miller will laugh till the tears fill his eyes when he sees the water rise in the milldam.' And some seized the winds and put horns to their mouths and blew sharply. 'And there!' said they shrilly, 'the merry winds go from every horn to clear the damp mildew from the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... of stormy excitement and profound anxiety followed; and then came the crash. On the thirty-first of May the mob of Paris rose; the palace of the Tuileries was besieged by a vast array of pikes; the majority of the deputies, after vain struggles and remonstrances, yielded to violence, and suffered the Mountain to carry a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with the Sidney until five P. M. on the twenty-first of May, when there were three feet of water on the orlop deck; therefore we now thought it full time to leave the ship to her fate, and to seek our safety in the boats. Accordingly, I embarked in the long-boat with Mr. Trounce, second officer, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... deal of deliberation it had been decided that James Morris should start for the west about the first of May. Dave and Henry were to go with him, and likewise Sam Barringford and three other frontiersmen named Lukins, Sanderson, and Jadwin. The party was likewise to contain four Indians of the Delaware tribe under White Buffalo. The whites were all to go mounted and were to take ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... the first of May, Goes to the fields at break of day And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree Will ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... The first of May is Belford Great Fair, where horses and cows are sold, and men meet gravely to transact grave business; and the second of May is Belford Little Fair, where boys and girls of all ages, women and children of all ranks, flock into the town, to buy ...
— Honor O'callaghan • Mary Russell Mitford
... of his own weight in walking. "But it has its science. Over in the Ritualistic burial-yard, I tap the wall of a vault with my trowel-handle, and if the sound is hollow I say to myself: 'Not full yet.' Say it's the First of May, and I tap a coffin, and don't hear anything more in it, I say: 'Either you're not a woman in there, or, if you are, you never kept house.'—Because, you see, if it was a woman that ever kept house, it would take but the least thing in the world to make her insist upon ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... sail the first of May; so Mary Alice went home almost immediately, and on an evening late in March got off the train on to that familiar platform whence she had so fearfully set forth only four ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... her has been preserved. His biographer seems to think it in another sense unique; but it is, in effect, a very typical letter from a literary lover of a rather passionate temperament. The two were married, in defiance of superstition, on Sunday, the first of May; and certainly the superstition had not ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... first of May," answered Henslowe, amid a sound of splashing. "Gee, it'd be great to be a people's Commissary.... You could go and revolute ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... of April the young white-oak leaves were the size of a squirrel's ear,—the old Indian sign of the proper time for corn-planting, which was still accepted by the new race, and the first of May saw many fields already specked with the green points of the springing blades. A warm, silvery vapor hung over the land, mellowing the brief vistas of the interlacing valleys, touching with a sweeter pastoral beauty the irregular ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... o'clock on the morning of the first of May, 1919, a young man spoke to the room clerk at the Biltmore Hotel, asking if Mr. Philip Dean were registered there, and if so, could he be connected with Mr. Dean's rooms. The inquirer was dressed in a well-cut, shabby suit. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... he had ventured to hope, on the first of May, near the town of Lutzen, celebrated already as the scene of the battle in which King Gustavus Adolphus died. The allies crossed the Elster suddenly, under the cover of a thick morning fog, and attacked the left flank of the French, who had been advancing ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... of honor; he procured the signature; Tremblay and Louviere resigned their appointments; I have paid every year twenty-five thousand francs to these two gentlemen; on the thirty-first of May, every year, M. d'Herblay himself comes to the Bastile, and brings me five thousand pistoles to distribute between ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on the first of May, in the year 1769, that I resigned my domestic happiness for a time, and left my family and peaceable habitation on the Yadkin River, in North-Carolina, to wander through the wilderness of America, in quest of the country of Kentucke, in company with ...
— The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone • John Filson
... number of the Tickets are already engaged, we expect to draw said Lottery by the first of May next. Prizes not demanded within six months after drawing will be deemed as generously given towards finishing said House. The time and place of drawing will be notified—a List of the Prizes will be immediately published in the Herald of the United ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... with two howitzers manned by sailors and a battalion of two hundred and fifty marines and took possession of the city. Meanwhile the forts had surrendered to Porter of the mortar fleet, and General Butler, arriving on the first of May, relieved Farragut of further ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... middle states the best growers make a practice of sowing the seeds in boxes about the last of April or first of May. Some make a couple of later sowings between that date and the first of June, sowing these in carefully prepared seed-beds in the open ground. This is to keep up a succession of flowers. So many sowings are scarcely ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... On the first of May, 1781, General Washington commenced a military journal. The following is a brief statement of the situation of the army at that time. "I begin at this epoch, a concise journal of military transactions, &c. I lament not having attempted it from the commencement ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Passengers were carried free until the first of May. Patrick Calhoun was trying to convert the cable roads into electric lines in spite of the objection of the improvement clubs. He was negotiating with the Supervisors for a blanket franchise to electrize all of ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... at Independence, St. Joseph, Mo., or the point of starting, by the 20th of April, and start as soon thereafter as the grass on the prairies will permit. This is sometimes by the first of May, and sometimes ten days later, ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... Traces of the holy fires, and fire worship of the Druids[26] may be observed in several customs, both of the Devonians and the Cornish; but in Ireland may still be seen the holy fires in all their solemnity. The Irish call the month of May Bel-tine, or fire of Belus; and the first of May Lubel-tine, or the day of Belus's fire. In an old Irish glossary, it is mentioned that the Druids of Ireland used to light two solemn fires every year, through which all four-footed beasts were driven, as a preservative against contagious distempers. The Irish have this custom at the present ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Jim and me what we intended to do that summer; Jim answered, "We are going back to Fort Kerney to pilot emigrants across to California, and it is time we were off now, for I believe by the first of May there will be lots of emigrants there, and we want to get there, and get the first train out, and if it is possible we are going to make two trips ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... port of Macao, she stood for some days to the westward; and, on the first of May, they saw part of the island of Formosa; and, standing thence to the southward, they, on the 4th of May, were in the latitude of the Bashee islands, as laid down by Dampier; but they suspected his account of inaccuracy, as they found that he had been considerably ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... "The first of May and a May Queen," he told her presently, when they were seated in their two chairs. "And now ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... The end of all this was, that they determined, when spring opened, to go to Kentucky. Boone knew that there were hardships and perils in the way, and Finley had practically felt them; but what were dangers or difficulties to these fearless men? The first of May was agreed upon as the day for starting, and Finley was then again to meet ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... nakedness, it seemed to Brenton more than ever like the Book of Revelation. Day after day, his enthusiasm for his theme increased its pace, threw off the bridle of hard, concrete fact, ran to the speculative limits of its course, and then ran past them. By the first of May, Brenton's lectures had made themselves one of the features of the college world; but, by the same token, they had ceased to be lectures upon chemistry, and had become harangues upon every phase of the allied sciences, harangues which ran through the entire gamut ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... first of May, 1532, the pulpit at Greenwich was occupied by Father Peto, afterwards Cardinal Peto, famous through Europe as a Catholic incendiary; but at this time an undistinguished brother of the Observants convent. His sermon ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... there a few days before the first of May, and was welcomed by the Kenerleys with ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... On the first of May I was sitting outside a cafe in the Place de la Bastille in Paris staring at the exultant column, crowned with a capering figure, which stands in the place where the people destroyed a prison and ended an age. The thing is a curious example of how symbolic ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... inconsiderate in corpulent people to come abroad in sultry weather; and if I were a senator, I'd make it high treason for persons above a certain weight to squeeze themselves into public places after the first of May. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... born in the same year, 1769, and in each case the exact date is somewhat uncertain. Wellington in later life always celebrated the first of May, but was not sure that it was his rightful birthday. Both were born upon islands—the one in Corsica, the other in Ireland—which islands, by the way, were constantly striving to achieve ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... had what they called Floralia, or Floral Games, which began on the twenty-eighth of April, and lasted several days. Later in England, and especially in the Middle Ages, it was the custom for people of all ranks, even the Court itself, to go out early in the morning on the first of May and gather flowers. Especially did they gather hawthorn, and huge branches of this flower were brought home about sunrise, with accompaniments of pipe and tabor, and much joy and merriment. Then the people decorated their ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... flourishing condition, with a promise to send them further relief, from Brazil, as sheep, hogs, and cows (being obliged to kill the latter at sea, having no hay to feed them) I went on board the ship again, the first of May, 1695, after having been twenty days among them: and next morning, giving them a salute of five guns at parting, we set sail for the Brazils. The third day, towards evening, there happening a calm, and the current being very strong, we were drove to the N.N.E. towards the land. ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... day that was! I had been to visit Ossoli in the morning, in the garden of the Vatican. Just after my return you entered. I then went to the hospital, and there passed the eight amid the groans of many suffering and some dying men. What a strange first of May it was, as I walked the streets of Rome by the early sunlight of the nest day! Those were to me grand and impassioned hours. Deep sorrow followed,—many embarrassments, many pains! Let me once more, at parting, thank you for ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... enacted, that "the slaves shall be allowed half an hour for breakfast, during the whole year; from the first of May to the first of November, they shall be allowed two hours for dinner; and from the first of November to the first of May, one hour and a half for dinner: provided, however, that the owners, who will themselves take the trouble of having the meals of their slaves prepared, be, and ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... first of May he moved in, and for some evenings Political Economy and History and Travel and the rest gave way to anxious cuttings and fittings of wall paper, and a pungent odor of paint. The old house took on new life and activity, the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Benedick, "and I have no need for glasses. She is like the last day of December compared with the first of May if you set her beside her cousin. Unfortunately, the Lady ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... The first of May being San Felipe, there will be a ball at the French Minister's, to which we shall ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... began on the thirty-first of May. At that time our army was divided by the Chickahominy. Of the five corps constituting the Army of the Potomac, two were on its right bank, or on the side nearest to Richmond, while the other three were on the left bank. There ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... 1842, I conveyed, from the first of May to the first of December, sixty-nine fugitives over Lake Erie to Canada. In 1843, I visited Maiden, in Upper Canada, and counted seventeen, in that small village, who owed their ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... at the end of three years. Over the whole territory of Fontainebleau, the communities, to save their vines, are obliged to maintain, with the assent always of the captaincy, a gang of watchmen who, with licensed dogs, keep watch and make a hubbub all night from the first of May to the middle of October. At Chartrettes the deer cross the Seine, approach the doors of the Comtesse de Larochefoucauld and destroy entire plantations of poplars. A domain rented for two thousand livres brings in only four hundred after the establishment of the captaincy of Versailles. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... night, however, some Junior Journalists caught him at the club, belated, eating supper. They afterwards recalled that he had then seemed to them possessed by a perfect demon of indiscretion; and when his book finally appeared on the first of May, it was felt that it could hardly have been produced under more unfavourable auspices. This reckless attitude was evidently unaffected (nobody had ever accused Rickman of affectation); and even Maddox pronounced it imprudent in the extreme. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... dishonesty to sell the land which had been left in their charge by the lawful possessors, to the Indians; and to obtain fresh estates, which they claimed as their own. And, having thus established a sort of lawless independence, they passed their time in drinking and wild revelry. On the first of May, they erected a may-pole, in old-English fashion; but, not contented with celebrating that day of spring-time and flowers with innocent pastimes, they hung the pole with verses of an immoral and impious character, and, inviting the ignorant heathen to share in their festivities, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... lines. In the first place, Lord B. did not bring forward his play, but opposed the same; and, secondly, it was not condemned, but is continued to be acted, in despite of publisher, author, Lord Chancellor, and (for aught I know to the contrary) of audience, up to the first of May, at least—the latest date of my letters. You will oblige me, then, by causing Mr. Gazette of France to contradict himself, which, I suppose, he is used to. I never answer a foreign criticism; but this is a mere matter of fact, and not of opinions. I presume ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... probable employer in Chicago whose attention he could secure if there were any work, and the answer was "No, sir!" This took him till about the first of May. He had no influence. He had no friend who had influence, nor any chance to get one. His watch, rings, and scarf-pin gradually went to the landlady. His shot-gun, field-glass and clothes were carried to the pawnbrokers. For his musket he ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... town of Qua, near Old Calabar, there used to grow a palm-tree which ensured conception to any barren woman who ate a nut from its branches. In Europe the May-tree or May-pole is apparently supposed to possess similar powers over both women and cattle. Thus in some parts of Germany on the first of May the peasants set up May-trees or May-bushes at the doors of stables and byres, one for each horse and cow; this is thought to make the cows yield much milk. Of the Irish we are told that "they fancy a green bough of a tree, fastened ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... was the morning, upon the first of May, And Dewey was the admiral, down in Manila Bay; And dewy were the Regent's eyes, them royal orbs of blue, And do we feel discouraged? We do not ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various |
