"Midsummer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was all done, midsummer was upon them, but she and Wolf thought that there had never been anything so complete and so charming in all the world. The striped awnings that threw clean shadows upon the clipped grass; the tea table under the blue-green leaves of an old apple tree; ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... heart throbbed with pain as she pressed the great cakes of the golden treasure back and forth in the blue bowl, for it was a quiet time and Rose Mary was tearing up some of her own roots. Her sad eyes looked out over Harpeth Valley, which lay in a swoon with the midsummer heat. The lush blue-grass rose almost knee deep around the grazing cattle in the meadows, and in the fields the green grain was fast turning to a harvest hue. Almost as far as her eyes could reach along Providence Road and across the pastures to Providence Nob, beyond Tilting Rock, the land ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... week of the midsummer holidays. Mark and Dank had gone to stay for three days at Aunt Bella's, and on the second day they had been ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... grasshopper began with a sudden shrill note which grew drowsy toward the close as if he were too lazy and hot to complete it. Over the sunburnt fields shimmered the heated air. I seemed to be the only living, moving thing; the intense hush, the high noon of the midsummer day interfused my whole being so that I hardly dared to step for fear of disturbing the universal repose. It oppressed me with a sense of loneliness. A wagon coming along the road broke the spell and all things were restored ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... long years have we closely observed its forms, its changing hues and expressions. We do like when we look at a picture to know whether the trees be oaks, elms, or pines; whether the rocks be granitic, volcanic, or stratified; whether the foliage be of spring, midsummer, or autumn; even whether the foreground herbage be of grasses or broad-leaved weeds; but is there no danger that minutiae may absorb too much attention, that the larger parts may be lost in the lesser, that while each weed tells its own story, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... One day about midsummer it was old Raastad himself that came down to meet the train, driving a spring-cart, with a waggon following behind. Was he expecting visitors? the people at the station asked him. "Maybe I am," said ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... that stood in the forest, being remains of a temple of the heathen, the which had long ceased to exist. And he cleared the wood round about, leaving only tree stumps and bushes; and close by in a ravine, between high fir-trees, ran a river, always full to the brim even in midsummer, owing to the melting snows, and of greenish waters, cold and rapid exceedingly; and around, up hill and down dale, stretched the wood of firs, larches, pines, and other noble and useful trees, emitting a very pleasant and virtuous fragrance. The man thought to enjoy his house, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... opinion first entertained in Eden,) that fruit pleasant to the eye is desirable for the taste. Such was the opinion prevalent in that region; and the sight of merry "blue-berry companies," sometimes in wagons, sometimes on foot, was among the most common of our midsummer morning scenes. Equally familiar was the sight of like companies returning at evening, weary, but better satisfied; glad that, with well-filled pails and baskets, they were so near home. This was the time of year when the young Graffams became visible. The blue-berry ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... as she was one June when we gathered eglantine together, and the richest and deepest of all reds in roses. In the midsummer afternoons we plucked our garlands and brought them home at sunset time. Such afternoons they were, tempting all living things into the symphony of glory, such afternoons of splendour that now, looking back, it seems to be the very acme ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... o'clock in the morning two days later, a train of three coaches, two sleepers and a parlor car, pulled out of Fairberry northwest bound. It was a clear midsummer day, not oppressively warm. The atmosphere had been freshened by a generous shower of rain a few hours ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... midsummer days, the end of June and the beginning of July, Mr. Sowerby had but an uneasy time of it. At his sister's instance, he had hurried up to London, and there had remained for days in attendance on the lawyers. He had to ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... leaves a little dab of mud, the wolf scratches with his hind feet, and the bear tears the signal tree with tooth and claw. Since this is done from time to time, when the bear happens to be near the tree, it is kept fresh as long as the region is claimed. But it is especially done in midsummer when the bears are pairing, and helps them to find suitable companions, nor all are then roaming the woods seeking mates; all call and leave their mark on the sign post, so the next bear, thanks to his exquisite nose, can tell at once the sex of ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... lonely stretch of uphill road, upon whose yellow clay the midsummer sun beat vertically down, would have represented a toilsome climb to a grown and unencumbered man. To the boy staggering under the burden of a brimful carpet bag, it seemed fairly unscalable; wherefore he stopped at its base and looked up ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... wide-open doors; the walls had been stripped and the floors taken up. The drawing-room was a dungheap, Pani Joselawa, the innkeeper's wife, had put up hencoops there and in the adjoining rooms; axes and saws were lying about everywhere. The farmhands, who according to agreement were kept on till midsummer, strolled idly from corner to corner; one of the teamdrivers had taken desperately to drink; the housekeeper was ill with fever, and the pantryboy, as well as one of the farm-boys, were in prison for ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... By midsummer the lines on both sides of the western front were an elaborate series of field fortifications. The shallow trenches of the preceding fall were practically things of the past. And these fortifications extended from the Vosges to the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... manipulation. Every director of school dramatics knows the delight of utilizing the same material over and over again. Here is one instance. An interior set, neutral in tones and with no marked characteristics of style and period, was built to serve in Acts I and V of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hangings, furniture, costumes gave it the proper appearance. Later it was used in Ulysses. It has also housed Moliere's Doctor in Spite of Himself (Le Medecin Malgre Lui) and The Wealthy Upstart (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme), ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... told Penelope the truth I should have replied that I happened to be there because for four long months I had been looking for her, whenever I could, walking the streets with eyes alert, even on midsummer days when I had as well searched the Sahara as the deserted town. Perhaps in thus surrendering to the hope that, after all, I should find her, I had laid myself open to a self-accusation of disloyalty to Gladys Todd; ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... 1914. He had decided upon a new position about the town of Le Cateau, east of Cambrai. Before dawn, August 25, 1914, the southward march over rough, hilly country was resumed, and toward evening of August 25, 1914, after a long, hard day's fighting march over the highroads, in midsummer heat and thundershowers, the Guards Brigade and other regiments of the Second Corps, wet and weary, arrived at the little market town of Landrecies. From Landrecies, after an encounter with a German column, they marched south toward Wassigny ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... within its course. Only stagnant pools and feeble rivulets running in widely separated channels—hiding under osiers or lurking within shady stretches of a friendly bank—remain to show where in April the noisy Goose engulfs everything within reach of its foaming wings. The creek bed becomes in midsummer a mere sandy ford that may be crossed by a child—a dry map that prints the running feet of snipe and plover, the creeping tread of the mink and the muskrat, and the slouching trail of ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... of Lorenzo's life constituted the midsummer bloom of the Tuscan renaissance, the meridian of the intellectual and artistic supremacy of Florence. In Lorenzo it found its fullest expression. He was typical of its spiritual as well as of its moral ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... that fence was appalling in a vague, wordless way, Val unconsciously drew closer to her husband when she looked at it, and shivered in spite of the midsummer heat. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... is agreeable to them because it has been connected with countless of their greatest gratifications—with the gathering of wild flowers in childhood; with Saturday-afternoon excursions in school-boy days; with midsummer holidays in the country, when books were thrown aside and lessons were replaced by games and adventures in the fields; with fresh, sunny mornings in after-years, when a walking excursion was an immense relief from toil. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... selling a book which his father wrote about the remains. This man showed, indeed, a pretty accurate, acquaintance with these old stones, and pointed out, what is thought to be the altar-stone, and told us of some relation between this stone and two other stones, and the rising of the sun at midsummer, which might indicate that Stonehenge was a temple of solar worship. He pointed out, too, to how little depth the stones were planted in the earth, insomuch that I have no doubt the American frosts would overthrow ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wet soils occurs almost wholly at the surface. Yet it is well known that evaporation from the soil surface may continue until the soil-moisture to a depth of eight or ten feet or more is depleted. This is shown by the following analyses of dry-farm soil in early spring and midsummer. No attempt was made to conserve the moisture ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... puzzling," said Steve. "It took me some time to get it into my head, but I do pretty well understand it now. Why, Watty, if we stood at the North Pole at midsummer, we should see the sun go round and round in the sky, and then every day get a little lower and a little lower, till it was only just in sight; and then still lower, ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... midsummer evening, a group of persons were gathered in this place, listening intently to Will Marks (that was the nephew's name), as with his cap very much on one side, his arm coiled slyly round the waist of a pretty girl who sat beside him, and his face screwed into a comical expression ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... building that he sought. It was a new flathouse, bearing carved upon its cheap stone portal its sonorous name, "The Vallambrosa." Fire-escapes zigzagged down its front—these laden with household goods, drying clothes, and squalling children evicted by the midsummer heat. Here and there a pale rubber plant peeped from the miscellaneous mass, as if wondering to what kingdom it ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... her little heart rendered her quite unreasonable for the time being. She was, in short, past reason. By-and-by she crept into the old bower where Rosamund and Irene had spent a midsummer night—a night altogether very different from the present one, for the bower was not waterproof, and the cold sleet came in and fell upon the half-dressed child. She sank down on the seat, which was already ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... His only son—I mind the lad weel, with his long yellow locks and his bonnie blue eyes—when I was but a gilpie of a lassie, he was stolen away from off the horse at his father's elbow, as they crossed that false and fearsome water, even Locherbriggflow, on the night of the Midsummer fair of Dumfries. Ay, ay, who can doubt the truth of that? Have not the godly inhabitants of Almsfieldtown and Tinwaldkirk seen the sweet youth riding at midnight, in the midst of the unhallowed troop, to the sound of flute and of dulcimer, and though meikle ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... In midsummer, 1244, twenty waggon loads of copies of the Talmud were burnt in France. This was in consequence of, and four years after, a public dispute between a certain Donin (afterwards called Nicolaus), a converted Jew, with Rabbi Yehiel, of Paris, on the contents ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... down our deepening eyes Rained glamours from his green midsummer mass. The worth and sum of all his centuries Suffused his ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... pass a portion of each year upon the earth, in order to watch over and console love-sick virgins who were separated from their betrothed. To her request the god consented, giving to the maiden the figure of a swan. Since that time she visits the earth a short time after midsummer day; and you can hear her singing upon our great inland waters during the night, at any place between the lonesome stretches of the far north to the great southern lakes, from the middle of summer till the first golden gleam comes in the maple leaf. Then she arises, and the hunter marvels ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... store early in order that the partners might go down to the house for breakfast. They had gone and she had just finished placing on the counters and in other likely spots about the store sheets of sticky fly paper. Flies are a nuisance in South Harniss in midsummer and Captain Shad detested them. Just as the last sheet was laid in place, a young fellow and a girl came in. Mary-'Gusta recognized them both. The girl was the seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy summer resident, a Mr. Keith from Chicago. The Keiths had a fine cottage on the ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Last midsummer's morning, as going to the fair, I met with young Jamie, wh'as taking the air; He ask'd me to stay with him, and indeed he did prevail, Beneath the pretty hawthorn that blooms in the vale— That blooms in the valley, that blooms in the vale, Beneath the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... winter—with women. Very different, though, if a brave man beards him. Now he's dunning me for two years' rent, and even when I told him all that hangs on my keeping the cottage, he won't change or hold to the solemn promise his father made my husband. In fact, he'll turn me out at midsummer." ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... cricket-ground nine days later, in the golden afternoon of Midsummer Day, George Clement Cottrell, a boy beautiful alike in face and in character, was killed in an instant by a blow from a ball, which struck him behind the ear when he was umpiring in the Sixth Form game. On the 29th of June his five hundred school-fellows followed him to his resting-place ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... earliest venture perhaps is Unique in the rapture intense Displayed in these riotous Lapses From all that could savour of sense, Recalling the "goaks" and the gladness Of one whom we elders adored— The methodical midsummer madness Of ARTEMUS WARD. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... upon rare occasions indeed—such as a first advent to school or final departure thence, or perhaps, when a parent or friend having called for us, we joyfully took our way home for the Christmas or Midsummer holy-days. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... under sentence, she endeavoured to put off the thoughts of the fatal day as much as she could, always asserting that she thought the crime no sin, for which she was condemned. It seems her mother died at Tyburn before midsummer, and this poor wretch would often say that she little thought she should so soon follow her, when she attended her to death, averring also that she suffered unjustly. As for this poor woman, her temper was exceedingly unhappy, and as it had made her uneasy and miserable ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... and adds that among the boys the master was supposed to know nothing, and one of the ushers was supposed to know everything. "We are still inclined to think the first-named supposition perfectly correct. We went to look at the place only this last midsummer, and found that the railway had cut it up, root and branch. A great trunk line had swallowed the playground, sliced away the school-room, and pared off the corner of the house. Which, thus curtailed of its proportions, presented itself in a green stage of stucco, profile-wise towards ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... midsummer languor at Lake Geneva, and Amory caught sight of his mother waiting in her electric on the gravelled station drive. It was an ancient electric, one of the early types, and painted gray. The sight of her sitting there, slenderly erect, and of her face, where beauty and ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... The long midsummer heat Chars the thin leafage of your rocks in fire: Autumn with windy robe and ruinous feet On your wide forests wreaks his fell desire, Heaping in barbarous wreck The treasure of your sweet and prosperous days; And lastly the grim tyrant, at whose beck Channels are turned to ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... of a lawyer connected with a large shipping firm, and at the midsummer his chief offered him a trip in the Mediterranean on one of the boats, for quite a small cost. Mrs. Morel wrote: "Go, go, my boy. You may never have a chance again, and I should love to think of you cruising there in the Mediterranean almost better than ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... to the May that proved so momentous to me; and I sought occupation in the fields. Occupation, however, would not do. Anneke was with me, go where I would; and glad was I when Dirck, about midsummer, in one of his periodical visits to Satanstoe, proposed that we should ride over, and make another visit to Lilacsbush. He had written a note, to say we should be glad to ask a dinner and beds, if it were convenient, for a day a short distance ahead; and he waited ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... goal of its working. Hercules in his cradle is still Hercules, and strangles snakes. Frost and sun may struggle in midwinter, and the cold may seem to predominate, but the sun is steadily enlarging its course in the sky, and increasing the fervour of its beams, and midsummer day is as sure to dawn as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... where is the man would strike the lyre, Or spurn with his foot the thief, Or melt all day, In a Midsummer way, At the sight of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... women wrapped in furs, above the Polar Circle, might have been seen gliding over snow-covered roads in sledges drawn by reindeer on their way to suffrage meetings, from whence petitions went to the Parliament at Stockholm. At the same moment other women, in the midsummer of the southern hemisphere, protected by fans and umbrellas and riding in "rickshas," were doing the same thing under the fierce rays of a tropical sun; while petitions poured into the Parliament asking suffrage for the women of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... to the tourist, owes to it all that is peculiar in its appearance—its tall pyramidal quartz mountains, that rise at one stride, steep, and well-nigh as naked as the old Pyramids, from nearly the level of the sea, to heights on which at midsummer the snows of winter gleam white in streaks and patches; and a picturesque sandstone tract of precipitous hills, which flanks its western shore, and bore at this period the remains of one of the old pine forests. A continuous wall of gneiss mountains, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... In the great midsummer pageant of St. John's Day there were twenty-two floats with scenery and actors to represent such events as the Delivery of the Law to Moses, the Creation, the Temptation, etc. The machinery of those shows was so elaborate that ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... McMurdo, Palmer, and offshore anchorages in Antarctica note: few ports or harbors exist on the southern side of the Southern Ocean; ice conditions limit use of most of them to short periods in midsummer; even then some cannot be entered without icebreaker escort; most antarctic ports are operated by government research stations and, except in an emergency, are not open to commercial or private vessels; vessels in any port south of 60 degrees south ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... lamented the concessions made by the Crown to the people; Bismarck had the courage to say so. When reaction came there were naturally many, and among them King Frederick William, who were interested in the man who in the heyday of constitutional enthusiasm had treated the whole movement as so much midsummer madness, and had remained faithful to monarchical authority as the one thing needful for the Prussian State. Bismarck continued to take a prominent part in the Parliaments of Berlin and Erfurt; it was not, however, till 1851 that he passed into the inner official circle. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... It was midsummer now and the period of dry weather had begun. So the travelers were very comfortable in their wagon camp while they were making their new town ready to be lived in. Both for the sake of company and prudence they built the houses in a close cluster. First the men, and most of them ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... essences, He smells not, who in a paltering hand Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming face Propped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime, Your curfew secrets out in fervid scent To the attendant shadows! Tinge the air Of the midsummer night that now begins, At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to dusk And downward caper of the giddy bat Hawking against the lustre of bare skies, With something of th' unfathomable bliss He, who lies ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... Trees were scarcely discernible, and so dry was the wind that drops of water vanished like magic. Neither ferns, mosses, nor lichens grow along the banks of the Ganges, they cannot survive the transition from parching like this to the three months' floods at midsummer, when the country is for ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... other term to conveying to the mind of a person unfamiliar with Amador its present condition. One becomes acutely sensitive to the "atmosphere" of these places, after a few days upon the road, for each has a distinctive individuality. in spite of the fact that it was mid-day in midsummer, gloom seemed to pervade the streets and to be characteristic of its inhabitants. With the exception of an attempt to get into telephonic communication with a friend at Placerville, I lost not a moment ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... is the day after midsummer, about one o'clock. A multitude of soldiery and spectators lines each bank of the broad river which, stealing slowly north-west, bears almost exactly in its midst a moored raft of bonded timber. On this as a floor stands a gorgeous pavilion of draped woodwork, having at each side, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Llewellyn, pushed him, as it were, along the track of what he had to put up with, you would have come upon the further fact that as a woman of business Miss Howe had no parallel for procrastination. Next season was imminent in his arrangements, as Christmas numbers are imminent to publishers at midsummer, and here she was shying at a contract as if they had months for consideration. It wasn't either as if she complained of anything in the terms—that would be easy enough fixed—but she said herself that it ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... follow back along the vlei where we've just come?" I doubted it very much as it was black and raining; I had no coat, having been sent after the patrol immediately I came in from firing the King's huts, and although it was December, or midsummer south of the line, the rain chilled my fingers. Wilson said, "Come, I must have those men back." I told him I should need some one to lead my horse so as to feel the tracks made in the ground by our horses. He replied, "I will ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Anson's voyage, for Cape Blanco. In the evening it blew extremely hard at S.W. by S. so that we brought to for the night under our main-sail. In the morning we made sail again, but we had a great sea; and although, it was now almost Midsummer in these parts, the weather was, in every respect, much worse than it is in the Bay of Biscay at the depth of winter. About six in the evening, having carried all the sail I could, we made land, bearing about S.S.W. which, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... For a time we had heard the roar of the torrent as it boiled below us, but as we ascended it had gradually hushed, and we at length were in a region of profound silence. The night was cloudy, and as dark as it ever is in midsummer in that far northern latitude; but I knew that we were climbing along the edge of a precipice, on a narrow ledge of rock along the face of the cliff. The vast black wall above us rose sheer up, and I could feel rather than see that it went ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... for midsummer; heavy rains to the west of us had kept it full. I crossed the bridge and went upstream along the wooded shore to a pleasant dressing-room I knew among the dogwood bushes, all overgrown with wild grapevines. I began to undress for a swim. The girls ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... should marry an older woman, one, moreover, who had gained her public in a field to which he had not gained admission, was doubly distasteful by reason of his deference to the conventional. If she had flirted with him, his midsummer madness would have evaporated into thin air; but she kept him at arm's-length, ostensibly took him seriously, and the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... air circulates freely beneath their oaks, the sun penetrates in a thousand places, and grass grows, wild but verdant. There was little of the dampness of the virgin woods; and the morning air, though cool, as is ever the case, even in midsummer, in regions still covered with trees, was balmy; and, at that particular spot, it came to the senses of le Bourdon loaded with the sweets of many a wide glade of his favorite white clover. Of course, he ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... plain from this that his artist's soul rejected the paltry fact? For "blue" the hours of New Year's Day may be in Italy, but as "long blue hours" they cannot, even there, be figured. I maintain that, whatever it may be called, it is really Midsummer's Day on which Pippa passes from Asolo through Orcana and Possagno, and back ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... among the Mediterranean races, was known and adored also upon the northern and western coasts of Europe. Professor Nilsson finds traces of Baal worship in Scandinavia; he tells us that the festival of Baal, or Balder, was celebrated on midsummer's night in Scania, and far up into Norway, almost to the Loffoden Islands, until within the last fifty years. The feast of Baal, or Beltinne, was celebrated in Ireland to a late period. I argue from these facts, not that ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... to Vigfusson the merit of having kept Aasa at home a whole day, and that in the month of midsummer. And while he sat there listening to their conversation, while he contemplated the delight that beamed from his daughter's countenance and, as he thought, the really intelligent expression of her eyes, could he conceal from himself the paternal hopes that swelled his heart? She was all that was ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Belfast, and if report speak truth, the result of the gathering will be an advancement of science in more than one department. Concerts, musical gatherings, spectacles, are in full activity, the entrepreneurs seizing the moments, and coins too, as they fly. In short, midsummer has come, and fashion is about to substitute languor for excitement. Meantime, our excursion trains have commenced their trips to every point of the compass; and during the next few months, thousands will have the opportunity of exploring the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... school in winter; but in midsummer she pays frequent visits to "Flora's Looking-Glass," and thinks of the kind old lady who taught her so much about ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Mexicans. To this we can only answer by commending the discretion of both men and beasts. In the early evening, as soon as the sun sets, the natives begin to wrap up their throats and faces, even in midsummer. Yet they seem to avoid the sun while it shines in ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... member of the Bear family, Snow King is a flesh eater. This is because only in certain places, and then only for a few weeks in midsummer, is there any plant life. He is a great fisherman, and fish furnish him a great deal of his food. In that far northern country are great numbers of animals who live in the ocean, but come ashore to rest and bask in the sun, and to have their babies there. ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... midsummer, still and sunny, the old man sat among his books; open before him the great poem of Dante. His much-lined face, austere in habitual expression, yet with infinite possibilities of radiance in the dark eyes, of tenderness on the mobile lips, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... homeless, friendless, forlorn, how could ever make his fortune in this bleak New England, for all he has, according to Cuvier, more brains in his head in proportion to his size than any other created being? I saw him already in midsummer, drenched with cold rains, chilled and perishing; but sharper eyes than mine had marked his flight, and a pair of swift hands plunged after him into the long grass that tangled his wings and kept ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... new ways—some of these new ways startling, which only made the wearers centers of interest and shocked no one. And Alice remembered that she had heard a girl say, not long before, "Oh, ORGANDIE! Nobody wears organdie for evening gowns except in midsummer." Alice had thought little of this; but as she looked about her and saw no organdie except her own, she found greater difficulty in keeping her smile as arch and spontaneous as she wished it. In fact, it was beginning to make her ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... At midsummer, 686, Lucullus set out from Tigranocerta, and, marching doubtless through the pass of Bitlis and farther to the westward along the lake of Van—arrived on the plateau of Musch and at the Euphrates. The march went on—amidst constant and very troublesome skirmishing with the enemy's ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... monument to human credulity and memorial to an impossible, wholly apocryphal genius, known as the works of William Shakespeare. The extent of my writing during this incarnation was ten autographs for collectors, and one attempt at a comic opera called "A Midsummer's Nightmare," which was never produced, because no one would write the music for it, and which was ultimately destroyed with three of my quatrains and all of Bacon's evidence against my authorship of "Hamlet," in the fire at the Globe Theatre in ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... "some of his highest and most fortunate efforts in rhyme." "The Pilgrims of the Sun" was his next poem; it was originally intended as one of a series, to be contained in a poetical work, which he proposed to entitle "Midsummer Night Dreams," but which, on the advice of his friend, Mr James Park of Greenock, he was induced to abandon. From its peculiar strain, this poem had some difficulty in finding a publisher; it was ultimately published by Mr John Murray of London, who liberally ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... 24th (Midsummer-day). Up very betimes, by six, and at Dr. Clerke's at Westminster by 7 of the clock, having over night by a note acquainted him with my intention of coming, and there I, in the best manner I could, broke my errand about a match between Sir G. Carteret's eldest son and my Lord Sandwich's eldest ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... up the south branch was in strong contrast to the pleasant scenes of the previous. It was midsummer and the weather was suffocatingly hot. Fierce storms of wind and gusts of rain swept the country, while the bisons were everywhere. They literally numbered hundreds of thousands, and, look in whatsoever direction the men chose, they were sure to see the huge creatures cropping the grass or lumbering ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage the platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon and Columbia the forest fires were raging. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I did not know how my heart was wrapped up in it until I had to part from it. My father stood high in public esteem. My mother was a leader in society. All doors were open to me. I had many friends. Going back to Tennessee in the midsummer of 1861, via Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, there happened a railway break and a halt of several hours at a village on the Ohio. I strolled down to the river and sat myself upon the brink, almost despairing—nigh heartbroken—when I began to feel an irresistible ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... their opinion: they were left however, though only by a few votes, in the minority.[187] The Act of Uniformity passed, by which the Prayer-book, in the form which should be given it by a new revision, was to be universally received from the following Midsummer. The bishops raised an opposition yet once more, at a sitting of the Privy Council, on the ground that the change was against the promises made by Mary to the See of Rome in the name of the crown. Elizabeth answered, her sister ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... in on trembling pinions, and alighted on the golden head of a gathered crocus that lay dying on the stones—a moth that should have been born to no world save that of the summer world of a Midsummer Night's Dream. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... prove that Shakespeare in his earliest plays, as in his latest, in his Sonnets as in his darkest tragedy, loved flowers and music. In almost every play he speaks of flowers with affection and delight. One only needs to recall the song in "A Midsummer's Night's Dream," "I know a bank," ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... great Saskatchewan, of Peace River, and the delta of the Mackenzie, of the winter journeys beyond Great Bear Lake into the Land of the Little Sticks, and the half-mythical lake of Yamba Tooh. He spoke of life with the Dog Ribs and Yellow Knives, where the snow falls in midsummer. Before her eyes slowly spread, like a panorama, the whole extent of the great North, with its fierce, hardy men, its dreadful journeys by canoe and sledge, its frozen barrens, its mighty forests, its solemn charm. All at once this post of Conjuror's House, a month in the wilderness ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... window, his curly head buried in a well-worn Shakespeare opened at "Midsummer Night's Dream." Lyddy was sitting under her favourite pink apple-tree, a mass of fragrant bloom, more beautiful than Aurora's morning gown. She was sewing; lining with snowy lawn innumerable pockets in a square basket that ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... at this reception, passed through an ante-room into a handsomely furnished apartment full of books and pictures. In spite of the fact that it was still very little past midsummer there was a cheery fire in the grate, and on a table set near a roomy arm-chair was set such creature comforts as a spirit-case, a syphon, a tumbler, and a novel—from which things Spargo argued that Mr. Elphick had been taking his ease since his dinner. ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... Midsummer came and passed, and still no sign from the outer world came to relieve the growing anxiety of the boys so long marooned on these unfrequented shores. They had kept very small account of the passing of the days, and perhaps none of them could have told ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... treasures, or mount a horse that goes more swiftly than the wind, or go off on a long journey to find the water of youth and life, or do anything else that happens to be very dangerous and troublesome. If he doesn't like work, it is again just the place to suit idle people, because it is all Midsummer holidays. I never heard of a school in Fairy Land, nor of masters with canes or birch rods, nor of impositions and long lessons to be learned when one gets home in the evening. Then the weather is so delightful. It is perpetual sunshine, so ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... near the close of a sultry day in midsummer, which I had spent in exploring a part of the shore line of the lake where I was camping, and wearied with the trip I had made, I ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... by the Welsh in his Castle, in Flintshire. In this extremity, the earl sent to his constable, Roger Lacy, (who for his fiery qualities received the appropriate cognomen of hell), to hasten, with what force he could collect, to his relief. It happened to be Midsummer-day, when a great fair was held at Chester, the humours of which, it should seem, the worthy constable, witless of his lord's peril, was then enjoying. He immediately got together, in the words of my authority, "a great, lawless mob of fiddlers, players, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... slipped away to Summer. Still no glass Sighted the brigantine. Then Grootver came Demanding Jufvrouw Kurler. His trespass Was justified, for he had won the game. Christine begged time, more time! Midsummer went, And Grootver waxed impatient. Still the ship Tarried. Christine, betrayed and weary, sank To dreadful terrors. One day, crazed, she sent For Max. "Come quickly," said her note, "I skip The worst distress until we meet. The ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... midsummer morning, at the lull Just about daybreak, as he looks across A sparkling foreign country, wonderful To the sea's edge for gloom and gloss ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... this painful load was removed from George Hope's mind, he rapidly improved in health and spirits; and, before the midsummer vacation commenced, Mr. Carter proclaimed him sufficiently ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... stupid when you have a scene like this before you?" said Helen, with a sigh of pleasure, as she looked from the balcony which overhangs the Rhine at the hotel of the "Three Kings" at Coblentz. Ehrenbreitstein towered opposite, the broad river glittered below, and a midsummer moon lent ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... are deep in hay; lakelets every where. Rivers close in mid-November and open in mid-April. The lakes teem with fish; and such fish! fit for the table of a prince, but disdained at the feast of the Indian. The river-heads lie all in a forest region; and it is midsummer when their water has reached its highest level. Through the land the red man stalks; war, his unceasing toil—horse-raiding, the pastime of his life. How long has the Indian thus warred?-since he has been known to the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... to be midsummer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... cannot do, the brisk winds will contribute. The result is usually a red-eyed, red-nosed, flakey-skinned little woman, whom one would never suspect of having been rollicking through a few weeks of midsummer joys. If her ears are not blistered, her nose is, and if her complexion is not harsh and rough from lack of care, it is bespeckled with freckles and covered with a deep layer of golden brown tan that has distributed itself like patches ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... his work had fascinated his sovereign, and many a time during her remaining nine years of life was she to seek delight again in the renderings of plays by himself and his fellow-actors at her palaces on the banks of the Thames. When Shakespeare was penning his new play of A Midsummer Night's Dream next year, he could not forbear to make a passing obeisance of gallantry (in that vein for which the old spinster queen was always thirsting) to "a fair vestal throned by the West," who passed her life "in maiden meditation, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... was, one day many years ago, nigh upon Midsummer, lying out on the grassy slopes atop of old Pendle Hill, and ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... when I ploughed through snow half a foot deep, round about the wilds of Willesden." For the present, however, I shall glance only briefly from time to time at his progress with the earlier portions of the story on which he was thus engaged until the midsummer of 1844. Disappointments arose in connection with it, unexpected and strange, which had important influence upon him: but, I reserve the mention of these for awhile, that I may speak of the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... with springlike charm but perfectly hollow and ready to be filled by east wind or west wind, north wind or south wind, according as each blew last and hardest; the other thirty-six—the rose: in its midsummer splendour with fold upon fold of delicate symmetric structures, making ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... It was midsummer when we arrived at this place, and the weather, which had for a long time been wet and gloomy, now became bright and glorious. I was subjected to but little control, and passed my time pleasantly enough, principally in wandering about the neighbouring country. It was flat and somewhat fenny, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to far happier, far higher exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of variegated mosaic, charged with wild fancies and dark hosts of imagery, thicker and quainter than ever filled the depth of midsummer dream; those vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves; those window labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry light; those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed tower; the only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations. ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... all of which marshalled themselves to memory's foreground as the question of division was talked pro and con by the entire family while camped at the base of the snow-capped mountains on that midsummer night. ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... to Sarah and said: "This is a growing country. You ought to see the cities springing up there in the Legislature. I was looking with great satisfaction at the crop when Samson came along one day and fell on it. He was like a frost in midsummer." ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... Washoe. But it is not a feature confined to Russia. I notice the same thing every where all over the world; and what vexes me about it is that I never get tired myself, and rarely hungry or thirsty. Here, in midsummer, with a sweltering hot sun, and an atmosphere that would almost smother a salamander, were whole legions of officers, elegantly-dressed ladies, and a rabble of miscellaneous second and third class passengers like myself, puffing, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... by the midsummer moon misguided, Scarce seen in the twilight garden if gloom insist, Seems vainly to seek for a star whose gleam has derided Light ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
