"Soil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... She would have traded with the Indians, would have endeavoured to Christianize them, and would have left them their land and freedom, well satisfied with the fact that the flag of France should wave over so vast an extent of country; but on England conquering the soil, her armies of emigrants pressed west, and the red man is fast becoming extinct on the continent of which he ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... But white-cliffed Wheen, Six miles in girth, with crowds of hunchback waves Crawling all round it, and those moonstruck windows, Held its own magic, too; for Tycho Brahe By his mysterious alchemy of dreams Had so enriched the soil, that when the king Of England wished to buy it, Denmark asked A price too great for any king on earth. "Give us," they said, "in scarlet cardinal's cloth Enough to cover it, and, at every corner, Of every piece, a right rose-noble too; ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... eclipses and epidemics had personal human meanings, that Infinite Wisdom would be guided in action by the prayers of ignorance, self-seeking and hatred, etc., etc. The savage who believes that his medicine man's antics, paint and feathers will bring rain and fertile soil has his counterpart in the civilized man who believes that this or that ceremonial and professed belief insures salvation. Faith is beautiful in the abstract, but in the concrete it is often the origin of superstition and amazing folly.[1] However crudely intelligence and honest scientific ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... at the top of a bank which descended steeply for a great distance. It was almost a cliff, only it was not rock, but sandy soil, dotted here and there with patches of grass and clumps of trees. Far below us was the river, whose broad bosom lay spread out for miles, dotted with the white sails of passing vessels. The place where we stood was a slight promontory, and commanded a larger ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... of the men of Thule be blotted in oblivion; for though they lack all that can foster luxury (so naturally barren is the soil), yet they make up for their neediness by their wit, by keeping continually every observance of soberness, and devoting every instant of their lives to perfecting our knowledge of the deeds of foreigners. Indeed, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... bit, sir; but if they do, we must mend it; and every night we work, we can get it stronger and more earthy. Nothing like soil to swallow balls. Of course it's no use as a defence, because the enemy could come round either end; but it'll do what's wanted, sir—stop the shot from hitting the bridge-chains and smashing through the ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... seemed probable that processions of prosperous aldermen, school directors, contractors, mayors, and ward politicians, returning to their native land to see how Herself was getting on, the crathur, might have deposited on the soil successive layers of Irish-American virtues, such as punctuality, thrift, and cleanliness, until they had quite obscured fair Erin's peculiar and pathetic charm. We longed for the new Ireland as fervently as any of her own patriots, but we wished to see the old Ireland before ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Theophrastus the Lesbian. Alluding delicately to his own critical situation, he told his assembled scholars that the wine he was accustomed to drink was injurious to him, and he desired them to bring the wines of Rhodes and Lesbos. He tasted both, and declared they both did honour to their soil, each being excellent, though differing in their quality;—the Rhodian wine is the strongest, but the Lesbian is the sweetest, and that he himself preferred it. Thus his ingenuity designated his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... glowing in the setting sun, as if they had no sympathy for us, till, when we came near the black heaps of coal, we saw the crowd standing round,—then getting into the midst, there was the great broken down piece of blackened soil and the black strong-armed men working away with that life-and-death earnestness. By the ruins of a shed that had been thrown down, there was a little group, Lady Lucy, looking so fair and delicate, so unlike ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the love which stands sweet and sturdy like the stocky hyacinth, to bloom afresh, no matter how often the flowers be struck, or the leaves be bruised, from the humdrum bulb deep in the soil of quiet content. But the God-given, iridescent love of youth for youth, with its passion so swift, so sweet; a love like the rose-bud which hangs half-closed over the door in the dawn; which is wide-flung to the sun at noon; which scatters its ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... where the cheeks were streaked with the colour of a dry winter apple; and where his beard had been, there lingered yet a few grey tufts which seemed, like the ragged eyebrows, to denote the badness of the soil from which they sprung. The whole air and attitude of the form was one of stealthy cat-like obsequiousness; the whole expression of the face was concentrated in a wrinkled leer, compounded of cunning, lecherousness, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... bank, at a point where the current had washed away a large portion of the soil, exposing to view half of the roots of a tree standing above. To get out of the stream at that spot was an impossibility, and he let himself go once more, when he had regained his breath and felt able to take ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... character, educated beyond the average of those days, energetic, having good executive ability, and blessed with robust health. The family cultivated a small farm in Pennsylvania, which yielded but a moderate support, so that when news came of the land of rich promise beyond the mountains, where the soil yielded with an abundance marvellous in the eyes of those who painfully cultivated and carefully gathered in the older States, they collected their implements and stock, packed their household effects, disposed of the farm, and, crossing the mountains, settled down somewhere ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... thing will start them, and, if the wind be favourable, they gallop over miles of country faster than a horse. The inhabitants must turn out and work like demons, for it is not only the pleasant groves that are destroyed; the climate and the soil are equally at stake, and these fires prevent the rains of the next winter and dry up perennial fountains. California has been a land of promise in its time, like Palestine; but if the woods continue ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... within the limits which he had predicted. Nor in the disastrous commencement of the year 1572 did the Duke less signally manifest his military genius. Assailed as he was at every point, with the soil suddenly upheaving all around him, as by an earthquake, he did not lose his firmness nor his perspicacity. Certainly, if he had not been so soon assisted by that other earthquake, which on Saint Bartholomew's Day caused ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... arrival. Up to this moment I fancied that I knew something of the natural history of the race, having studied them and fought with them and slept with them in their happiest hunting grounds. Greek fleas, Albanian fleas, Tartar fleas, Russian fleas, I had combated on their own soil, but never before was I put to such utter confusion. All night long the enemy poured in upon me, and several times during the action was I forced to leave the field and recruit my shattered forces ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... attempt had been made to find level for the foundation. The log structure had been built apparently at random on the slope. It conformed, at vast waste of labor, to the angle of the base and the irregularities of the soil. This, perhaps, made it seem smaller than it was. They caught the scent of wood smoke, and then saw a pale ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the mountain seems to be smouldering, as sulphur fumes and steam issue at many points, and the ground is covered with a friable white alkaline substance. In many a hollow the water bubbles with clouds of vapor and sulphuretted hydrogen; here the soil is hot and evidently underlaid by active fires. It is not safe to go very near, as the crust is thin and crumbling. The water running down the hills has a refreshing sound and a tempting clearness, but the thirsty tongue at once detects it to be a very strong ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... near and watched his dead companion lying motionless, unbreathing, with a face that was like white clay; and then, more horrible still, he saw him taken out and put into a grave, and the heavy, cold soil cast ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... catches the measles not because he remembers having caught them in the persons of his father and mother, but because he is a fit soil for a certain kind of seed to grow upon. In like manner he should be said to grow his nose because he is a fit combination for a nose to spring from. Dr. X—-'s father died of angina pectoris at the age of forty-nine; so did Dr. X—-. Can it be pretended that Dr. X—- remembered having ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... ten minutes sufficed for the rest. Five troopers lay helpless on the dusty soil. Five dead Boers blocked the trail at the entrance of the narrow pass. It was a drawn game; but the end was not yet. From beyond the ridge, Weldon could hear the guns still pounding ceaselessly. He knew that, half a ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... distant islands and continents. Vessels, with seeds in their cargoes, destined for particular ports, where perhaps they were not needed, have been cast away on desolate islands, and though their crews perished, some of their seeds have been preserved. Out of many kinds a few would find a soil and climate adapted to them, become naturalized, and perhaps drive out the native plants at last, and so fit the land for the habitation of man. It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and for the time lamentable shipwrecks may thus contribute a new vegetable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... incredible; but, owing to the custom of felling only ripe trees, landed proprietors had no sure clew to the value of all the timber on an acre. Richard Bassett had found this out, and bought Dean's Wood upon the above terms—i.e., the vender gave him the soil and three hundred pounds gratis. He grubbed the roots and sold them for fuel, and planted larches to catch the overflow of Sir Charles's game. The grass grew beautifully, now the trees were down, and he let it ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... made its first step on Kentucky soil with a little bit of pardonable ostentation. Every one looked upon it as the real beginning of its military career. When the transport was securely tied up at the wharf, the Colonel mounted his horse, drew his sword, placed himself at the head of the regiment, and gave the command "Forward." ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... made researches (which they may or may not have done), their labours had never reached the masses. What wonder, then, that the mushroom spawn of myth, ever present in an atmosphere highly charged with ignorance, had germinated in a soil so favourably prepared for ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... learned that Lee had moved. From Parkton to Hanover Junction, to Westminster, to Harrisburg, to Green Castle, to Hagerstown, to Keitisville he rode, and at these places he wrote, hoping to be in at the mightiest battle which, until this time, had ever been fought on American soil. For many days it was a mystery to the Washington authorities, and to the Army of the Potomac, where Lee and his divisions were; but, with his usual good fortune, Carleton was but nine miles distant, at Hagerstown, when the booming of the cannon ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... good thing, we proceeded without pause to the English Cathedral,—cathedral by courtesy?—and heard a sermon by a Connecticut bishop, which, however good, was a disappointment, because we wanted the flavor of the soil. And after dinner we walked on the high and sightly Durham terrace, and then went to the Scotch church, joined in Scotch singing, and heard a broad Scotch sermon. So we tried to worship as well as we could; but it is impossible not to be sight-seeing where there are sights to see, and for ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... receive him [the envoy of the United States], or to listen to his propositions, but, after a long-continued series of menaces, has at last invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil"; ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... throw farther on, the stream curving to the west, we left it, and found ourselves in a sparsely wooded glade, with a bare and sandy soil beneath our feet, and above, in the western sky, a crescent moon. Again Diccon lagged behind, and presently I heard him ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... London; a character like Mrs. Flitch, for instance, who is angelic to behold but a spiteful gossip at heart, is, alas! to be found anywhere. And where the dialect does crop out it does not seem to be dependent on suburban soil for its raciness. I don't doubt the accuracy of Mr. RILEY'S Yorkshiremanship, but I do think he has under-estimated the difficulty of localising the peculiar ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... the gum for two days in succession. There are two kinds of leeches known as Bhainsa-jonk, the large or buffalo-leech, and Rai-jonk, the small leech. They are found in the mud of stagnant tanks and in broken-down wells, and are kept in earthen vessels in a mixture of black soil and water; and in this condition they will go without food for months and also breed. Some patients object to having their blood taken out of the house, and in such cases powdered turmeric is given to the leeches to make them disgorge, and the blood ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... William Hanna, a missionary of Ta-li Fu, told us that one day he was riding over this same road with a Chinese gentleman, a deep scholar, who was considered one of the best educated men of the province. Pointing to the barren hills washed clean of soil and deeply worn by countless floods, Mr. Hanna remarked that all this could have been prevented, and that instead of a rocky waste there might have been a fertile hillside, had the trees been left ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... directness into the harmless vacancy of Miss Delano's brain. How many inhabitants had Joppa in precise figures? what was the height of those farther hills to the left? upon what system was the village-school governed? what was the mineral nature of the soil? what was the fastest time ever made by that bay mare of Mr. Upjohn's with the white hind foot? etc. etc., etc., on all which points poor Miss Delano could only assure her timidly: "I don't know, dear; it would be well if I did," and ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... the fly among our very feet. Or he would go with us into the heart of the great wood, to show us where the foxes had their earths—the party being sometimes so fortunate as to see the cubs disporting at the mouth of the briery aperture in the strong and root-bound soil. Or we followed him, so far as he thought it safe for us to do so, up the foundations of the castle, and in fear and wonder that no repetition of the adventurous feat ever diminished, saw him take the young starling ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... have they their reward. But I am He Made the Four Castes, and portioned them a place After their qualities and gifts. Yea, I Created, the Reposeful; I that live Immortally, made all those mortal births: For works soil not my essence, being works Wrought uninvolved.[FN7] Who knows me acting thus Unchained by action, action binds not him; And, so perceiving, all those saints of old Worked, seeking for deliverance. Work thou As, in the days gone by, thy ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... entrance or disturb the roots of the heather growing there. Any movement might be noticed by those below. It is lucky, indeed, that the rock ends just when it gets to its narrowest, and that it is but sandy soil through which we have to scrape our way. It will be hard work, for you have scarce room to move your arms, but you have plenty of time since we cannot sally ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... looks ghastly ill. A letter was sent to his Majesty at Myerscough, communicating this and certain other particulars with which I am not acquainted; but I know they relate to some professors of the black art in your country, the soil of which seems favourable to the growth of such noxious weeds, and at first he was much disturbed by it, but in the end decided that both parties should be brought hither without being made aware of his design, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... before they are ready for consumption by civilized peoples. Iron and the various other ores used in the arts must undergo elaborate processes of manufacture; coal must be mined, broken, cleaned, and transported; the soil in which food-stuffs are grown must be fertilized and mechanically prepared; and even the water required for domestic purposes in many instances must be ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... unmarked the happy workman toil, And break unthanked of man the stubborn clod? It is enough, for sacred is the soil, Dear are ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... year (A.D. 1496), certain witnesses deposed that on the 20th day of June, A.D. 1476 (i.e. 19 years before his decease), the said Thomas Knyght, and his servants, about the middle of the night "broke and dug the soil of the parlour of his house, and found 1,000 pounds, and more, of the coinage of the Treasury . . . there placed and hidden," which as "tresour-trove, by reason of the prerogative of the lord the King, ought to come to his use, &c." This ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... I doubt—you may bring her to my wife, and we'll cook up some story about her being a relative of mine. So she is, I guess, through Adam and Eve! If you think she's been badly treated, we'll stand by her, once she's under this roof (which means she'll be on American soil), through thick and thin, whatever the consequences. I can't go farther, and I don't believe you ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... worked, there he lived, and there he died, returning but once to France, in the height of his renown, for just a few months, without even enriching his own land with any great number of his works; nearly all, of them remained on foreign soil. Le Poussin, born at the Andelys in 1593, made his way with great difficulty to Italy. He was by that time thirty years old, and had no more desire than Claude to return to France, where painting was with difficulty beginning to obtain a standing. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... side. Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow on the turf; tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies clustered thick around its base; it had acquired a look of growing from the soil. "I should like to get hold of that," the stained-glass man remarked; "I don't know when I 've seen a better specimen," and he walked round ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Meanwhile, the night drew on. The soldier's bed out-of-doors is a sheepskin laid on the bare ground, under a tent so small that he cannot stand upright in it. Now, as the earth was very damp, those who did not take the precaution of choosing a little mound, and removing a portion of the wet soil, soon found themselves literally in the mud, and were obliged to get up, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... state which makes money from the cultivation of the soil only, and has no foreign trade, must consider what it will do about the emigration of its own people to other countries, and the reception of strangers from elsewhere. About these matters the legislator ...
— Laws • Plato
... striking the earth with joy; they had now only a hundred miles to go before reaching Cape Belcher, but their fatigue increased strangely on this soil, covered with sharp rocks, and interspersed with dangerous points, crevasses, and precipices; they had to go down into the depths of these abysses, climb steep ascents, and cross narrow gorges, in which the snow was drifted to the depth of thirty or ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... pleasant, smiling countenances and good physique; they also seem to have, somehow, acquired easy, agreeable manners. The secret of the whole difference, I opine, is that, instead of being located among the inhospitable soil of barren hills they are cultivating the productive soil of the Alashgird Plain, and, being situated on the great Persian caravan trail, they find a ready market for their grain in supplying the caravans in winter. Their Sheikh ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... The soil that produces the rankest weeds would by proper care and cultivation produce the richest crops: so will the human heart when regenerated ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... country is undulating; its stony waves recall forcibly to the mind the heavy swell of mid-ocean. It seems as if, in times long gone by, the soil was upheaved, en masse, from the bottom of the sea, by volcanic forces. This upheaval must have taken place many centuries ago, since isolated columns of Katuns 1m. 50c. square, erected at least 6,000 years ago, stand ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... or rather cabin, consisted only of two rooms, both on the ground, and both without flooring or ceiling; the black rafters on which the thatch was lying was above, and the uneven soil below; still this place of entertainment was not like the cabins of the very poor: the rooms were both long, and as they ran lengthways down the street, each was the full breadth of the house: in the first sat the widow Mulready, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... going out from the home of her master, would fain have gone around by the grave of Ellice. But, besides thinking she might be watched, she felt in her disgrace too unworthy to kneel upon that sacred soil. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... the starting-line gave room. Skinner stepped quickly out from his blanket, and stamped his spikes into the soil; he raised and lowered himself on his toes to try his muscles. Speed drew his bath-robe from his shoulders and thrust it toward his trainer, ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... carried them away, the see of Hereford then comprising all these parts. The vineyard of Norton, together with certain wastes, were let to John de Witham and his heir for 50s. 6d. per annum, provided two hundred acres of the adjoining soil were brought into cultivation and enclosed at a certain rent, by which all injury to the Crown would be avoided, Norton not being a vineyard, but a "lacius" worth sixpence per annum. So also William Jote might hold ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... met. To be sure, there existed other people besides French and British, who thought they had a title to the territory about which the children of their White Fathers were battling, namely, the native Indians and proprietors of the soil. But the logicians of St. James's and Versailles wisely chose to consider the matter in dispute as a European and not a Red-man's question, eliminating him from the argument, but employing his tomahawk as it might serve the turn ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tears in his eyes, he stood still for a moment to think, when he caught sight of a little paper book. He knew it at once; he had made it for Maggie so that she would not soil or tear his own. In a moment he was running as fast as his feet would carry him to the boat on the sand, a considerable distance off; quickly he reached it, and climbed up the ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... nearly covers the southern half of the county and contains the city of Aberdeen. It is mountainous, especially Braemar (q.v.), which contains the greatest mass of elevated land in the British Isles. The soil on the Dee is sandy, and on the Don loamy. The second district, Formartine, between the lower Don and Ythan, has a sandy coast, which is succeeded inland by a clayey, fertile, tilled tract, and then by low hills, moors, mosses and tilled land. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... got into the Bay of Biscay the weather was worse than ever. Giles was pleased, as Calthorpe told him that there was the better chance of catching The Dark Horse before she reached her port of destination. Once on Spanish soil and Giles feared lest Morley should carry Anne off to the mountains. He was such a scoundrel, and so clever, that it might be possible he had confederates at Bilbao to help him to carry out any scheme he might suggest. Giles wished to catch him ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... of farm-houses, of rather an ancient date (for the settlement is much older than the college), and of a little inn, which even in that secluded spot does not fail of a moderate support. Other dwellings are scattered up and down the valley; but the difficulties of the soil will long avert the evils of a too dense population. The character of the inhabitants does not seem—as there was, perhaps, room to anticipate—to be in any degree influenced by the atmosphere of Harley College. They are a set of rough and hardy yeomen, much inferior, as respects refinement, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beneath your gaze, until you realize the monster as if he stood stupendous and grim before you. In the first of the figures the bear has paused in his great stride to paw over and snuff at the horned head of a mountain sheep, half buried in the soil. The action of the right arm and shoulder, and the burly slouch of the arrested stride, are of themselves worth a gallery of pseudo-classic Venuses and Roman senators. The other bear is lolling back on his haunches, with all four paws in the air, munching some grapes from a vine which he has torn ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... precarious before; but now its difficulties were infinitely increased. The clay sub-soil to the rubble turned slippery and adhesive. On the sides of the mountains it was almost impossible to keep a footing. We speedily became wet, our hands puffed and purple, our boots sodden with the water that had trickled from our clothing ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... neighborhood. A third part died of smallpox on the way. On the 24th of October, he sighted land; on the 27th, he arrived before Newcastle, in Delaware; on the 28th, he landed. Here he formally received turf and twig, water and soil, in token of his ownership. On the 29th, he entered Pennsylvania. Adding ten days to this date, to bring it into accord with our present calendar, we have November 8 as the day of his arrival in the province. The place was Upland, where there was a ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... part, beside rotting stumps in the new ground, where the earth had to be kept light and clean for tobacco, and where the vines got somewhat of shade, and the roots fed fat upon the richness of virgin soil. ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... Washington sought to make its occupation inconvenient and insecure, by rendering it inaccessible to the British fleet. With this design, works had been erected on a low marshy island in the Delaware, near the junction of the Schuylkill, which, from the nature of its soil, was called Mud Island. On the opposite shore of Jersey, at a place called Red Bank, a fort had also been constructed which was defended with heavy artillery. In the deep channel between, or under cover of these ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... would have all that nature, almost all that luxury could want. The harbour he found capacious and secure, and, therefore, thought it worthy of the name of Egmont. Of water there was no want, and the ground he described, as having all the excellencies of soil, and as covered with antiscorbutick herbs, the restoratives of the sailor. Provision was easily to be had, for they killed, almost every day, a hundred geese to each ship, by pelting them with stones. Not content with physick and with food, he searched yet deeper for the value of the new ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... savannahs, on which are bred cattle, mules, and horses. It is essentially a pasturage country, though much maize and a little sugar and indigo are grown in some parts. The western zone skirts the Pacific, and is a country of fertile soil, where all the cultivated plants and fruits of the tropics thrive abundantly; the rich, fat land might, indeed, with a little labour, be turned into ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... the World[1214], a series of letters supposed to be written from London by a Chinese. No man had the art of displaying with more advantage as a writer, whatever literary acquisitions he made. 'Nihil quod tetigit non ornavit'[1215]. His mind resembled a fertile, but thin soil. There was a quick, but not a strong vegetation, of whatever chanced to be thrown upon it. No deep root could be struck. The oak of the forest did not grow there; but the elegant shrubbery and the fragrant parterre appeared in gay succession. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Carolina was admitted to the Union, why black sheep eat less than white ones, the height of the highest mountain and the length of the longest river in the world, when the first potato was dug from American soil, when the battle of Bull Run was fought, who invented the first fire-escape, how woman suffrage has worked in Colorado and California, the number of trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, the principle of the Westinghouse ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... soil at least, the road was well guarded. A few miles in the battered car, then a slowing up, a showing of passports, the clatter of a great chain as it dropped to the road, a lowering of leveled rifles, and a salute from the ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... our cities, the magnitude of our commerce, the wealth of our country, the vastness of our Empire. But the true glory of a nation does not consist in the extent of its dominion, in the fertility of the soil, or the beauty of Nature, but rather in the moral and ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... indignation rival bursts I pour'd, Half execration mingled with my pray'r; Kindled at man, while I his God adored; Sore grudg'd the savage land her sacred dust; Stamp'd the cursed soil; and with humanity (Denied Narcissa) wish'd them all ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... their shoulders torn by the tigers of thy circuses, have perched themselves on the pedestals of thy fair desirable gods. The Christ has enveloped the whole world in his winding-sheet.... Oh purity, plant of bitterness, born on a blood-soaked soil, and whose degenerate and sickly blossom expands with difficulty in the dank shade of cloisters, under a chill baptismal rain; rose without scent, and spiked all round with thorns, thou hast taken the place for us of the glad and gracious roses, bathed ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... of 1621 they had a comfortable residence on the bank of the St Charles, on the spot where now stands the General Hospital. Here they had been granted two hundred acres of land, and they cultivated the soil, raising meagre crops of rye, barley, maize, and wheat, and tending a few pigs, cows, asses, and fowls. There were from time to time accessions to their ranks. Between the years 1616 and 1623 the fathers Guillaume Poullain, Georges le Baillif, Paul Huet, Jacques de ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... associated in the mind with the exertions of patriotic valour, and the achievements of individual enterprize, like the Alps or the Danube, the Grampians or the Tweed. It is impossible to tread the depopulated and exhausted soil of Greece without meeting with innumerable relics and objects, which, like magical talismans, call up the genius of departed ages with the long-enriched roll of those great transactions, that, in their moral effect, have raised the nature of man, occasioning ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... that are appropriate in themselves to the accomplishment of the end intended. The appliance must be water, and not sand—or rather water or sand, with judgment, discrimination, and tact; for the gardener often finds that a judicious mixture of sand with the clayey and clammy soil about the roots of his plants is just what is required. The principle is, that the appliance must be an appropriate one—that is, one indicated by a wise consideration of the circumstances of the case, and of the natural characteristics of the ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... had been forming itself in Thyrsis' mind. He would suppress the artist in himself for the present—he would do it, cost whatever agony it might. He would turn propagandist for a while; instead of scattering his precious seed in barren soil, he would set to work to make the soil ready. There was seething in his mind a work of revolutionary criticism, which would sweep into the rubbish-heap the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... required to go to. He starts towards it, and knows that by a certain time he must cross an upland or a river, that the streams should flow in a certain direction, and that he should cross some of them at a certain distance from their sources. The nature of the soil throughout the whole region is known to him, as well as all the great features of the vegetation. As he approaches any tract of country he has been in or near before, many minute indications guide him, but he observes them so cautiously that his white companions cannot ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... certainly more appropriate to a journey from London to Sockburn, than from Goslar to Gottingen; and what follows, the "green shady place" of l. 62, the "known Vale" and the "cottage" of ll. 72 and 74, certainly refer to English soil.—Ed.] ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... this phenomena is that of "youthful genius"—in fact, genius of any age, for that matter, for genius itself seems to be out of the category of the ordinary cause of heredity and environment, and to have its roots in some deeper, richer soil. It is a well-known fact that now and then a child is born which at a very early age shows an acquaintance with certain arts, or other branches of mental work, which is usually looked for only from those of advanced years, and after years of training. ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... that my remarks on the supposed connection of Hercules with Genius, Dius Fidius, and Jupiter in the same work, p. 143 foll., have lost much strength since Wissowa's book appeared. Yet I am not prepared to accept the view which would deny to Hercules on Italian soil all contamination with Italian ideas; as Willamowitz-Moellendorf puts it (Herakles, ed. 2, vol. i. p. 25), "Die Italiker haben dem Koerper, den sie uebernahmen, den Odem ihrer eigenen Seele eingeblasen: aber wie der Name ist der Gestalt des Hercules hellenischer Import." There are points in connection ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... that her father suffered all his life from straitened circumstances, and indeed it was by means of money supplied by friends that the duchess of Kent was enabled to reach England and give birth to its future sovereign on British soil. Although the duke died when his daughter was too young to have heard from him of these pecuniary troubles, she was no doubt cautioned by her mother to avoid all chance of incurring them; and a circumstance in itself likely to impress their inconvenience on her memory was that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... and mounted his horse. It was said that he did some tall riding that day. From door to door he galloped, a lesser Paul Revere, but sowing seeds of harmony. It was true that the soil was ready. Indians in full costume were lurking down cellar or behind kitchen doors, swearing they would never ride, but tremblingly eager to be urged. Settlers, gloomily acquiescent in an unjust fate, brightened at his heralding. The ghost was the ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... lords, I trust I am enough of a Christian and enough of a man to understand the awful responsibility of the question that has been put to me. My lords, standing on this my native soil—standing in an Irish court of justice, and before the Irish nation—I have much to say why the sentence of death, or the sentence of the law, should not be passed upon me. But, my lords, on entering this court, I placed my life, and ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... remainder of the day without being noticed by any one; and it was not till the second day that somebody, as he expressed it, "took compassion on him." The pain which is felt when we are first transplanted from our native soil—when the living branch is cut from the parent tree is one of the most poignant which we have to endure through life. There are after-griefs which wound more deeply, which leave behind them scars never to be effaced, which bruise the spirit, and sometimes ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... uniting the people of all classes in a determination to maintain the majesty of the Union, and vindicate the honor of the flag. How little he foresaw the mighty sweep and terrible devastation of the pitiless storm of civil war which now burst over the land, and which never departed from the soil of South Carolina till every rebel ensign was "lowered and trailed in a sea of blood;" till slavery, the cause of the conflict, was forever abolished, and the power of the United States firmly re-established on ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... roofs, this fruitful soil, Bathed with an azure all divine, Where springs the tree that gives us oil, The grape ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... not Tennyson's lot to illustrate any modern theory of the origin of genius. Born in 1809 of a Lincolnshire family, long connected with the soil but inconspicuous in history, Tennyson had nothing Celtic in his blood, as far as pedigrees prove. This is unfortunate for one school of theorists. His mother (genius is presumed to be derived from mothers) had a genius merely for moral excellence and for ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... results from uncontrolled cutting of trees for fuel; overgrazing; soil exhaustion; ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... any fears of the kind. He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull, with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... to themselves, so that we will merely take this occasion of recording our wish that he may some day turn his unique faculty of painting real Indian pictures toward the composition of a novel which shall not be about Anglo-Indian society (for the thin soil of that field has already been over-harrowed), but shall give a true and lively rendering of the thoughts which strike an imaginative Englishman when he surveys the whole moving landscape of our Indian empire, watches the course of actual events, and tries ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... great followers; for the big men in Russian literature are all Realists. Romanticism is as foreign to the spirit of Russian Realism as it is to French Classicism. What is peculiarly Slavonic about Pushkin is his simplicity, his naivete. Though affected by foreign models, he was close to the soil. This is shown particularly in his prose tales, and it is here that his title as Founder of Russian Literature is most clearly demonstrated. He took Russia away from the artificiality of the eighteenth century, and exhibited the possibilities ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... long drive to the river, up hill and down, over rocky roads, through sandy soil, among the ugly Spanish bayonets and cacti resplendent with scarlet blossoms, and over the desert, now a mass of gorgeous colors, for the summer suns had not yet burned out the little life which the winter rains had coaxed into ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... often to bathe must be considered along these physiological lines. They whose employments soil their clothes and bodies spend the least time in cleansing their bodies; and yet in no medical work that treats of diseases and their causes is there to be found a hint that any special disease has ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... town, was a simple-minded, true-hearted, honest man, named Jones. His father had left him a large farm, a goodly portion of which, in process of time, came to be included in the limits of the new city; and he found a much more profitable employment in selling building lots than in tilling the soil. The property of Mr. Jones lay at the west ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... hens did "take it." So did some one else. The missile struck just beneath the fowl as she fled, lifted her and a peck or two of soil as well, and hurled the whole mass almost into the face of a person who, unseen until then, had advanced along the path from the gate and had arrived at that spot at that psychological instant. This person uttered a little scream, the hen fled with insane yells, the log and its accompanying ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... her then, to soil her name, to blast her future, for surely you are not courting her with marriage as ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... at last! The straight, steep, dreadful half mile of slope was at Bachelor Billy's back. He stood out once more in the free and open air. Under his feet were the grass and flowers and yielding soil; over his head were the shining stars, now paling in the east; below him lay the fair valley and the sleeping town clothed lightly in the morning mist; and in his arms he still held the child who had thought never again to draw breath under the starry sky or in the dewy ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... tumbled mountains, on a low one of which, near at hand but far below, could be seen the scattered village of San Augustin. There was still a long hour down the opposite face of the mountain, with thinner pine forests and the red soil showing through here and there; not all down either, for the trail had the confirmed habit of falling into bottomless sharp gullies every few yards and struggling out again up the steepest of banks, though the privilege of thrusting my face ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... page, Monsieur—virgin soil—and you confess it. You interest me extremely. I should even like to teach you a little. I am the most ignorant person in the world. I know nothing about artists in books. Mais je suis artiste, moi! fille d'artiste. I could ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of nature, brings on its necessary effect. It is not from a fear of France that we deprecate this measure proposed by her. For however greater her force is than ours, compared in the abstract, it is nothing in comparison of ours, when to be exerted on our soil. But it is from a sincere love of peace, and a firm persuasion, that, bound to France by the interests and the strong sympathies still existing in the minds of our citizens, and holding relative positions which insure their continuance, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... returned the other, thoughtfully. "I cannot bring myself to believe that we have been working on unconsecrated soil; but still we do not know. Of course I could baptize him hypothetically, but I should like to ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... soon cleared off the soil, and came to what appeared to be a coffin or a large chest. Both then got out of the pit to consider how they should remove the chest; the whole party were discussing the matter, when a tremendous crash, succeeded by a ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... as they were planted centuries ago. These are royal demesnes, and hunting grounds, and parks connected with the country palaces of the kings or the chateaux of the ancient nobility. The cultivators of the soil live, not, as in America, in little farm-houses built along the road-sides and dotting the slopes of the hills, but in compact villages, consisting of ancient dwellings of brick or stone, densely packed ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... we meet and touch each day The many travellers on our way, Let every such brief contact be A glorious, helpful ministry; The contact of the soil and seed, Each giving to the other's need, Each helping on the other's best, And blessing ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... understood. The advantages of thorough draining are universally recognized, and tiles are for sale everywhere. Mowing and reaping machines have ceased to be a novelty upon our plains and meadows. The natural fertilizers have been analyzed, and artificial nutrients of the soil have been contrived. The pick and pride of foreign herds have regenerated our neat stock, and the Morgan and the Black-Hawk eat their oats in our stalls. The sheepfold and the sty abound with choice blood. Sterling agricultural journals are on every farmer's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... all the Gods, Who dwell in Heav'n, were leagued to daunt his soul So oft the Heav'n-born River's mighty wave Above his shoulders dash'd; in deep distress He sprang on high; then rush'd the flood below, And bore him off his legs, and wore away The soil beneath his feet; then, groaning, thus, As up to Heav'n he look'd, Achilles cried: "O Father Jove, will none of all the Gods In pity save me from this angry flood? Content, thereafter, would I meet my fate. Of all the pow'rs of Heav'n, my mother most Hath wrong'd me, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... refutation of the prejudice which almost universally exists against the climate and soil of North America generally, but especially of the divisions included in the Hudson's Bay Company's Territories, we cannot do better than quote the following just remarks from the Reverend Mr Nicolay's ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... to people who have the charge of a wife, what are you going to say about it? We hope that this rapid review of the question does not make you tremble, that you are not one of those men whose nervous fluid congeals at the sight of a precipice or a boa constrictor! Well! my friend, he who owns soil has war and toil. The men who want your gold are more numerous than those ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... goats on a thousand grassy ridges; beaver and mink far back on many a rushing stream; Indians floating and basking along the shores; leaves and crystals drinking the sunbeams; and glaciers on the mountains, making valleys and basins for new rivers and lakes and fertile beds of soil. ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... kindly sent me different samples of soil from different fields on his estate, and I analyzed them carefully and found them singularly like each other. I don't think the estate benefited much by my scientific investigation. It was my first job, and brought me twenty pounds (out of which I bought two beautiful fans—one for my sister, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... It might hurt me and cut up the soil. So I jumped gingerly out, and stood poised with a foot in the water on either side, dreading at any moment to see the stones slip and the tell-tale gleam ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... precepts which each conceived would be most conducive to my future happiness. My fathers great object appeared to be, to fire the young aspiring hope with deeds of honour, courage, and patriotism. My mother's more gentle nature induced her to cultivate the genial soil with the milder virtues, making Christian piety and charity the foundation of all her present and future hopes. There never lived a child that had more pains and care bestowed upon him, by his parents, than I had. My father inherited ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... moisture to the soil. Their leaves and roots make the best reservoirs for water, to be given out when needed by the growing crops. The forests are full of lessons for the children and the ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... rents, which, as the time for rent revision has approached, has presented to the tenant the temptation not to make the best of his land, and so run the risk of an augmentation of rent, has been a source of insidious demoralisation to the occupant of the soil. ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... Solomon lay for weeks in this dirty, noisome jail, where their treatment was well calculated to change opinions not deeply rooted in firm soil. They did not fear the smallpox, as both were immune. But their confinement was, as doubtless it was intended to be, memorably punitive. They were "rebels"—law-breakers, human rubbish whose offenses bordered upon treason. The smallpox patient was soon taken away, but other ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller |
