"Stem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were met face to face by the reinforcement coming to their assistance. At this crisis some of the soldiers refused to obey Pyrrhus's order to retreat, while others who were willing enough to do so could not stem the tide of men marching in from the gate. At the gate itself too the largest of the elephants had fallen sideways and lay there bellowing, blocking up the way for those who were trying to pass out, while one of the elephants of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... of the entrance, and wait a change in the tide. After waiting in this position for nearly an hour they again put out, and headed for the entrance. A rapid current was still setting in, and the men had to pull with all their strength to stem it and ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... Tulipiferum, the most magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but, in its riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension, in the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. Embracing the huge cylinder as closely as possible with his arms and knees, seizing with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes upon others, Jupiter, after one ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... no initiative: the stem of her being seems to be cut through. Her husband, physically the stronger, maddened by pangs he had foreseen, but still flaming with life, comes into the foreground, and she retires. Her will remains, and she does her best to ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... do? It was useless to run; the waters could run faster than he. It would be impossible to stem that fierce current and fight his way out against it. Must he, then, die, alone in that awful place with no sound save the roar of waters in his ears? Could it be that he should never again see his mother and little Helen and the sunlight? Was his life over, and must he be carried ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... Riderless horses crashed through them, neighing with pain; the wounded begged for help; while, with cries of terror, the cowardly Arikara scouts lashed their ponies in wild efforts to escape. Scarcely one hundred and fifty white troopers waited to stem as best they might that fierce onrush of twelve hundred ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... local authorities or benevolent landed proprietors of the neighbourhood—like the benevolent people in England who try to preserve the traditional cottage industries—and some of the associations work very well; but the ultimate success of such "efforts to stem the current of capitalism" is extremely doubtful. At the same time, the periodical bazaars and yarmarki, at which producers and consumers transacted their affairs without mediation, are being replaced by permanent stores ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... treasure tenderly from its velvet bed, and he showed her how to twist its stem, and then pinned it securely on the breast of her light sailor suit, where she looked down upon it in ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... returned a second later for a big vase, and in this Linda arranged a great sheaf of radiant roses. As Katy started to carry them back to the room, Linda said "Wait a second," and selecting one half opened, she slipped it out, shortened the stem and tucked it among the coils of hair where she would have set an ornament. The other package was a big box that when opened showed its interior to be divided into compartments in each of which nestled an exquisite flower made of spun sugar. The petals, buds, and leaves ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Union politics are not at present very thriving. Pamphlets are in shoals, in general against a Union; a few for it; but I do not yet see anything of superior talent and effect. The tide in Dublin is difficult to stem. In the country hitherto, indifference. We have no account from the North, and that is the quarter I apprehend. The South will not be very hostile. The Bar is most impetuous and active, and I cannot be surprized at ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... stem the torrent. Some who had been in its service even dared to insist that they had not thereby rendered themselves infamous and unworthy. The nation listened for a time with kindly pity to their indignant protests, and then buried the troublesome and persistent clamorers ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... bound with a flat back, without nerfs, might practically as well not be bound at all. The practice was the herald of the French and may open the way for the English Revolution. Of what avail were the ingenious mosaics of Derome to stem the tide of change, when the books whose sides they adorned were not really BOUND at all? Madame de Pompadour's books were of all sorts, from the inevitable works of devotions to devotions of another sort, and the 'Hours' of Erycina Ridens. One of her treasures had singular fortunes, a copy of ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... my memory, I take this opportunity of observing, that the standard law of Africa runs thus: If an ass should break a single stem of corn, the proprietor of the corn has a right to seize the ass; and if the owner of the ass will not satisfy him for the damage he thinks he has sustained, he can retain the ass. He cannot sell ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... happened. Then, when I had begun to fear failure, I heard a faint sound overhead. A window was opening. There was no gleam of light, no whisper; but something soft and small fell close to my feet. I stooped and picked it up. It was a rose, weighted by a grey suede glove, tied round the stem; and the glove was scented with orris, the same delicate fragrance which had come to me when I kissed ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... face turned a darker green. The Vegan girl retreated from Ramsey's side in fright. Symm raised his hand and an Irwadian waiter brought over a drink in a purple stem glass with a filigree pattern of titanium, bowing obsequiously. Symm lurched with the glass toward Ramsey. "I'm telling you to go," he said in a ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... quiet part of the city, where I determined to spend the winter. The next morning I went out, accompanied by Adolphe, to examine the lions of the place. By accident we got entangled in a crowd, which had collected in one of the principal thoroughfares, to witness a fire. While striving to stem my way through the heaving mass of human forms that hedged us in on every side, I suddenly missed my child. To find him among such a multitude, was, indeed, to look for a needle in a waggon of hay; yet I commenced the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... side. Some doubted their succeeding, but Howe overbore them. "That's right, my lord!" cried Bowen, the sailing-master, who looked to the ship's steering. "The Charlotte will make room for herself." She pushed close under the French ship's stern, grazing her ensign, and raking her from stern to stem with a withering fire, beneath which fell three hundred men. A length or two beyond lay the French Jacobin. Howe ordered the Charlotte to luff, and place herself between the two. "If we do," said Bowen, "we shall be ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... "there's only a little over half an hour." He paused, and looked about the group, holding his watch in his hand and fingering the stem. The lines about his mouth were settling. Hilda glanced again at him, and from the determined look in his eyes, she knew that his week of waiting was over; that he meant to speak to her before she left ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... describe this craft? It was a tiny one in which to venture upon an untravelled ocean in search of an unknown continent,—a vessel shaped somewhat like a strung bow, scarcely fifty feet in length, low amidships and curving upwards to high peaks at stem and stern, both of which converged to sharp edges. It resembled an enormous canoe rather than aught else to which we can compare it. On the stem was a carved and gilt dragon, the figurehead of the ship, which ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... brought forth in Scotland, anno 1610, a certain amphibian brood, sprung out of the stem of Neronian tyranny, and in manners like to his nearest kinsman, the Spanish Inquisition. It is armed with a transcendant power, and called by the dreadful name of the High Commission. Among other things, it arrogateth to itself the power of ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... which takes its name from a fancied resemblance of some of its forms to a quill pen. It was a composite animal with a horny framework, the individuals of the colony living in cells strung on one or both sides along a hollow stem, and communicating by means of a common flesh in this central tube. Some graptolites were straight, and some curved or spiral; some were single stemmed, and others consisted of several radial stems united. Graptolites occur but rarely in the Upper Cambrian. In ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... the wood about a quarter of an inch deep. The portion between these two incisions forms the keel. Then carry the line up the middle of the end A, and repeat the incisions as along the bottom, these making the boat's stem-post. Next turn to the top again, and make a line, similar to the dotted line CC in Fig. 1, about three-eighths of an inch inside the outline of the boat, and then carefully hollow out with a gouge everything inside this dotted line. It must be very carefully done; it is better, indeed, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the hands of mankind so ready for immediate use, that a few sharp cuts suffice to convert them into all kinds of various utensils. [Strength.] The bamboo possesses, in proportion to its lightness, an extraordinary strength; the result of its round shape, and the regularity of the joints in its stem. The parallel position and toughness of its fibers render it easy to split, and, when split, its pieces are of extraordinary pliability and elasticity. To the gravelly soil on which it grows it owes its durability, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... to stem with heart and hand The roaring tide of life, than lie, Unmindful, on its flowery strand, Of God's occasions drifting by! Better with naked nerve to bear The needles of this goading air, Than in the lap ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... girl flung the man from the wheel, seized the spokes herself, and began to nurse the schooner to windward with truly superhuman art. Closer yet she brought the graceful craft; closer, until the luffs trembled and the seas burst fair upon the stem and volleyed stinging spray the full length of her. And as she drew nearer, the blaze seemed to diminish and blaze afresh as if fire-fighters were there indeed, but lacking weapons ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... to stem the progressive encroachment on and loss of wetlands now and in the future, recognizing the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands and their economic, cultural, scientific, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... everywhere throughout California, blooming from May to July, their six long, slender, white petals shading to gold at the base, grayish on the outside, a pollen-laden pistil upstanding, eight or ten gold-clubbed stamens surrounding it, the slender brown stem bearing a dozen or more of these delicate blooms, springing high from a base of leaves sometimes nearly two feet long and an inch broad, wave margined, spreading in a circle around it. In the soil of the plains and the dry hillsides you will ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... indeed partly built down the face of the cliff. Rooms have been hollowed, so that their windows look down on the river from a sheer height of two hundred feet, the surface of the natural wall, broken only here and there by a projecting ledge, or by the crooked stem of a strong wild cherry tree which somehow finds enough soil and moisture there to support its hardy growth. The inn is very primitive, but comfortable in its simple way, and the scenery is surpassingly beautiful. Far ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... conscious that we moved around an iron world palpitating with life. Though my knowledge was all by touch—as, for example, when Pyecroft led my surrendered hand to the base of some bulging sponson, or when my palm closed on the knife-edge of the stem and patted it timidly—yet I felt lonely and unprotected as the enormous, helpless ship was withdrawn, and we drifted away into the void where ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... Lexington, whose owners had left them on the road and betaken themselves to the woods; but there still stood by them a mulatto man of our town—Lindsay Reid by name—who indignantly refused to be routed, and was doing his utmost, with voice and example, to stem the tide, saying, "It is a shame to fear anything; let's stand and give them ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... we're licked. Even if Jeff were to show up, with all these stories against him, we wouldn't be able to stem the tide now." ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... Sokles of Pedia, who were both sailing in the same vessel, met him stem to stem. Each ship crashed into the other with its iron beak, and was torn open. Ariamenes attempted to board the Greek ship, but these two men set upon him with their spears, and drove him into the sea. His body was noticed by Queen ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... denies fair start for a rush at the power of the hill front. Yet here must the heavy boats beach themselves, and wallow and yaw in the shingly roar, while their cargo and crew get out of them, their gunwales swinging from side to side, in the manner of a porpoise rolling, and their stem and stern going up and down like a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... was the first to succumb to the heavy attack, and soon she turned in to shore to save her crew from drowning. Then the Oquendo caught fire in several places, and burning fiercely from stem to stern, she, ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... men—surely not men? Those drowning, mangled little creatures tore with their clutching fingers at Bert's soul. "Oh, Gord!" he cried, "Oh, Gord!" almost whimpering. He looked again and they had gone, and the black stem of the Andrew Jackson, a little disfigured by the sinking Bremen's last shot, was parting the water that had swallowed them into two neatly symmetrical waves. For some moments sheer blank horror blinded Bert ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... loss of blood, which oozed from a flesh-wound in his shoulder, was among the gallant few who strove to stem the ebbing current; struck at last by a spent ball in the temple, he fell senseless to the ground. He would have been trampled upon and crushed by the retreating column, had not a friendly hand dragged him from the road to a little mound ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... was loaded from stem to stern, and only Harrigan, McTee, and half a dozen more remained on the ship when the boat swung a dozen feet away from the Mary Rogers and with the next wave was picked up and smashed against the freighter. Its side went in like a matchbox pressed by ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... been so long consumed that I had forgotten the flavour of pulse and maize and pumpkins and purple and sweet potatoes. For Nuflo's cultivated patch had been destroyed by the savages—not a stem, not a root had they left: and I, like the sorrowful man that broods on his sorrow and the artist who thinks only of his art, had been improvident and had consumed the seed without putting a portion into the ground. ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... to break up? Would it result in several smaller sections separating from the main stem, none of which might be of a size to allow them sufficient room ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... such as the fur-traders of those days furnished for barter with the Indians. Cheenbuk quietly plucked this off her neck and tied it firmly round her face and mouth so as to effectually gag her. This done they fastened her to the stem ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Of such stem consolations the poet speaks as having restored him in his hour of need. But he gratefully acknowledges also another solace of a gentler kind. It was about this time (1795) that Wordsworth was blessed with the permanent companionship of his sister, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... thread (Conferva, Monilia); others in which they form a network (Hydrodictyon); others in which they form plates (Ulva); and others in which they form masses (Laminaria, Agaricus): all which vegetal forms, having no distinction of root, stem, or leaf, are called Thallogens. Among the Protozoa we find parallel facts. Immense numbers of Amoeba-like creatures, massed together in a framework of horny fibres, constitute Sponge. In the Foraminifera we see smaller groups of such creatures arranged ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... lips together like the stem-end of a tomato and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a weed seven feet away. One after another the several chewers expressed a charge of tobacco juice and delivered it at the deceased with ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... pottery and cloth, tilled and farmed the adjoining lands, and probably belonged to the late Celtic race before the advent of the Romans. These lake dwellers used a canoe in order to reach the mainland, and this primitive boat has been discovered. It is evidently cut out of the stem of an oak, is flat-bottomed, and its dimensions are 17 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot deep. The prow is pointed, and has a hole, through which doubtless a rope was passed, in order to fasten it to the little harbour of the ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... was none the worse for his late gallant exertions; "the current won't stop for no man; an' the bales ain't likely to stem it o' their own accord till we're ready to look ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... nursing his knee, drinking in a thousand scents and sounds. Myra watched the great humble-bees staggering from flower to flower, blundering among their dew-filled cups. She drew down a lily-stem gently, and guided her brother's hand so that it held one heady fellow imprisoned, buzzing under his palm and ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as He unfolds the flower. For Christ's words are not a general appeal to consider nature. Men are not to consider the lilies simply to admire their beauty, to dream over the delicate strength and grace of stem and leaf. The point they were to consider was how they grew—how without anxiety or care the flower woke into loveliness, how without weaving these leaves were woven, how without toiling these complex tissues spun themselves, and how without any effort or friction ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the air is so deliciously sweet and cool. Cousin, there is a chair. Beulah, you and I will stem these berries at once, so that they may be ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... one among many of endeavors constantly being made by associated librarians to stem the ever increasing flood of poor fiction which threatens to submerge the better class of ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... prolonged resistance against these tremendous engines of war was impossible. Owing to this the siege was perhaps the shortest in the annals of war that a fortified city has ever sustained. Heroic efforts were made by the Belgians to stem the tide of the enemy's advance, but the end could not long be delayed when the siege guns began ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... rife in France that renders the position of premier in it almost untenable; and he must unite the firmness of a stoic, the knowledge of a Machiavelli, and the boldness of a Napoleon, who could hope to stem the tide that menaces to set in and sweep away the present institutions. If honesty of intention, loyalty to his sovereign, personal courage, attachment to his country, and perfect disinterestedness could secure success, then might Prince ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... invoke to be your guide: Then spread the sail, and boldly stem the tide. Whether the stormy inlet you explore, Where the surge laves the bleak Cyanean shore, Or down the Egean homeward bend your way, Still as you pass the wonted tribute pay, An humble cake of meal: for Philo here, Antipater's good ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... aim have been truer. I signaled back to Olson: "Let 'er go!" The U-33 trembled from stem to stern as the torpedo shot from its tube. I saw the white wake leap from her bow straight toward the enemy cruiser. A chorus of hoarse yells arose from the deck of our own craft: I saw the officers stand suddenly erect ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... some of which is of a most extraordinary length. It seemed to be the same kind of vegetable production that Sir Joseph Banks had formerly distinguished by the appellation of fucus giganteus. Although the stem is not much thicker than a man's hand, Captain Cook thought himself well warranted to say, that part of it grows to the length of sixty fathoms ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... treasure adorned. Yet lying there a longer while, Beheld I sad the Saviour's tree 25 Until I heard that words it uttered; The best of woods gan speak these words: "'Twas long ago (I remember it still) That I was hewn at end of a grove, Stripped from off my stem; strong foes laid hold of me there, 30 Wrought for themselves a show, bade felons raise me up; Men bore me on their shoulders, till on a mount they set me; Fiends many fixed me there. Then saw I mankind's ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... reason. It was the ghost of a garment; but, however, with the blessing of God, my last quarterly bill, and the help of a tailor, we have had a regular refit, and the ancient family of the O'Briens of Ballyhinch are now rigged from stem to starn. My two sisters are both to be spliced to young squireens in the neighbourhood; it appears that they only wanted for a dacent town gown to go to the church in. They will be turned off next Friday, and I only wish, Peter, you were here to ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... between heaven and earth, and everything swam in circles before her dazed eyes. Then, with a supreme effort, she managed to clutch the bough, to which she clung with a firmer grasp, and slowly but surely to drag herself up into safety on its broad, firm stem. ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... trees and bushes and flowers, the tender living things about, the voiceless and passionless music of lonely nature, the hearty sun, and the maternal embrace of the sweet waters. It was dying as the wild animals die, without ceremony; as the flowers die, a gentle weakening of the stem, a rush of perfume to the soft earth, and the caressing winds to do the rest. Yes, down to the bottom again! Who would have looked for so pleasant a door to death in ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... forget how the time was going," said Rosamond, rising to reach her hat, which she had laid aside before singing, so that her flower-like head on its white stem was seen in perfection above-her riding-habit. "Fred, we must ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... insects. These are flat and appear to be only a scale on the stem or fruit. They are usually covered with a hard crust-like covering and are found on trees and bushes. They are usually the color of the bark on which ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... this! The end which he had so long delayed by tender love and care was approaching. The flower which had adorned his youth and, spite of its broken stem, had grown still dearer and was treasured beyond everything else that bloomed in his garden, would be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... attempts to devise means in order to stem the torrent of iniquity, to instruct the ignorant, and to convert the sinner from the error of his way, he cannot help crying out, "Who is sufficient for these things?" Unbelief passes over the question, and trembles. ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... doors; the bridegroom puts The eager boys to gather nuts. And now both love and time To their full height do climb: Oh! give them active heat And moisture both complete: Fit organs for increase, To keep and to release That which may the honour'd stem ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... tree, so gray and dry in our climate, is better worth observing than the boughs and foliage; a verdant messiness coats it all over; so that it looks almost as green as the leaves; and often, moreover, the stately stem is clustered about, high upward, with creeping and twining shrubs, the ivy, and sometimes the mistletoe, close-clinging friends, nurtured by the moisture and never too fervid sunshine, and supporting themselves by the old tree's abundant strength. We call it a parasitical vegetation; ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... white-bearded. That, except the rough stools and benches on which the company sat, was all the furniture. The walls were panelled roughly enough with oak boards to about six feet from the floor, and about three feet of plaster above that was wrought in a pattern of a rose stem running all round the room, freely and roughly done, but with (as it seemed to my unused eyes) wonderful skill and spirit. On the hood of the great chimney a huge rose was wrought in the plaster and brightly painted in its proper colours. ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... still," said Madame, speaking the slightly tinged Irish-English of her birth, "for if I shoot, le Capitaine Rouille will be no more. See! Upon my dressing-table behind you is a small vase supporting a rose. I will cut off its stem," She quickly moved the pistol, and fired. "You may turn round." He obeyed, and saw that the vase was unbroken, but that the rose, cut off at the stem, lay upon the dressing-table. Behind it appeared a bullet-hole in ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... my pale people peace; On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek, And every feathered mother's callow brood, And all that love green haunts and loneliness. Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns 10 Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem, Upon my image at Athenai here; And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above, Was dearest to me. He, my buskined step To follow through the wild-wood leafy ways, And chase the panting stag, or swift with darts Stop the swift ounce, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... dignity, his spiritual and mental graces, assured to him the influence he desired. The notable characteristic of his rule was a sanctifying of intellectual labour. In abandoning the world, he by no means renounced his interest in its civilization. Statesmanship having failed to stem the tide of Oriental tyranny and northern barbarism, he set himself to save as much as possible of the nobler part, to secure for happier ages the record of human attainment. Great was the importance ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... It must, however, be recollected that to emigrate and settle in Canada was, at that time, a very different affair to what it is now. The difficulty of transport, and the dangers incurred, were much greater, for there were no steamboats to stem the currents and the rapids of the rivers; the Indians were still residing in Upper and many portions of Lower Canada, and the country was infested with wild animals of every description—some useful, but many dangerous: moreover, the Europeans ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... line in a pattern should have its due growth, and be traceable to its beginning, this, which you have doubtless heard before, is undoubtedly essential to the finest pattern work; equally so is it that no stem should be so far from its parent stock as to look weak or wavering. Mutual support and unceasing progress distinguish real and natural order from its mockery, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... Crown. On the contrary, he started its decline. The land passed by an instinctive multiple process—but very rapidly—to the already powerful class which had begun to dominate the villages. Then, when it was too late, the Tudors attempted to stem the tide. But the thing was done. Upon the indifference which is always common to a society long and profoundly Catholic and ignorant of heresy, or, having conquered heresy, ignorant at any rate of struggle for the Faith, two ardent minorities converged: ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... and tried to stem her protests. She was of the blood,—her aunt's own niece. But whereas Medora Phillips sometimes "scrapped," as he called it, merely to promote social diversion and to keep the conversational ball a-rolling, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... escape. Thrusting his slim figure between the beams of the open-work, where no full-grown man could have passed, he held on with all his strength. Crash came the great billow against the side, making the whole ship quiver from stem to stern; but Austin remained unhurt. The next moment ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the country, where long-continued heat parches the soil. This plant is an herbaceous creeper, and deposits under ground a number of tubers, some as large as a man's head, at spots in a circle a yard or more, horizontally, from the stem. The natives strike the ground on the circumference of the circle with stones, till, by hearing a difference of sound, they know the water-bearing tuber to be beneath. They then dig down a foot or so, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... a double key—a long, slender stem, with a key at each end—one about the size which opens an ordinary room door; the other as small, almost, as ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to three inches long,—generally two or three roots to a stalk,—with wrinkles running around it, and a few small fibers attached. It has a peculiar, pleasant, sweetish, slightly bitter, and aromatic taste. The stem or stalk grows about a foot high, is smooth, round, of a reddish green color, divided at the top into three short branches, with three to five leaves to each branch, and a flower stem in the center of the branches. The flower is small and white, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... almost as heavy as lignum-vitae, the trunk not high, but sometimes five or six feet in diameter, and extending its crooked branches far over the land, with the long, pendulous, funereal moss adhering to them,—and the palmetto, shooting up its long, spongy stem thirty or forty feet, unrelieved by vines or branches, with a disproportionately small cap of leaves at the summit, the most ungainly of trees, albeit it gives a name and coat-of-arms to the State. Besides ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wind was fresh from the eastward that I could hope to stem the tide and get through this place; but once in the middle of the hubbub, the wind went down almost to nothing, so that for three or four hours I could only hold my place at most, and the wearisome monotony here of "up and down" on every ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... get round Narborough Isles and advance in a more southerly direction, till at length the rock of Cape Pilares, the extreme point of Desolation Island, came in sight, thirty-six hours after entering the straits. Before her stem lay a broad, open, sparkling ocean, which Jacques Paganel greeted with enthusiastic gestures, feeling kindred emotions with those which stirred the bosom of Ferdinand de Magellan himself, when the sails of his ship, the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... recoil into a disorderly retreat. There was no panic; but most of the military units dissolved into a mere mob whose heart was set on getting back to Washington in any way left open. The regulars and a few formed bodies in reserve did their best to stem the stream. But all ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... able to repatriate over two million Afghan refugees but several million more continue to reside in Iran and Pakistan in camps and elsewhere, many at their own choosing; Coalition and Pakistani forces continue to patrol remote tribal areas to control the borders and stem organized terrorist and other illegal cross-border activities; regular meetings between Pakistani and Coalition allies aim to resolve periodic claims of boundary encroachments; occasional conflicts over water-sharing arrangements with Amu Darya ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... this painful silence, the chief with the long white hair deliberately lighted a large pipe drawn from his belt. It was curiously and grotesquely fashioned, the huge bowl carved to resemble the head of a bear. He drew from the stem a single thick volume of smoke, breathed it out into the air, and solemnly passed the pipe to the warrior seated upon his right. With slow deliberation, the symbol moved around the impassive and emotionless circle, passing from one red hand to another, ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... Cull, stem or seed, and clean fruit by placing in a strainer and pouring water over it until clean. Pack product thoroughly in glass jars until full; use table knife or tablespoon for packing purposes. Pour over the fruit boiling water from kettle, place rubbers and caps in position, partially ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... talent for the management of all business, whether private or public; a perfect enthusiast for the House of Vipont, and aided by a marchioness in all respects worthy of him,—he might be said to be the culminating flower of the venerable stem. But the present lord, succeeding to the title as a mere child, was a melancholy contrast, not only to his grandsire, but to the general character of his progenitors. Before his time, every Head of the House had done something for it; even the most frivolous ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... once, but he had to call several times before Gerwazy heard his voice. He was a man of gentle birth, a servitor of the ancient lords of the castle, the last that remained of the Horeszkos' retainers; a tall grey-haired old man with a hale and rugged countenance, ploughed by wrinkles, gloomy and stem. Of old he had been famous among the gentry for his jollity; but since the battle in which the owner of the castle had perished, Gerwazy had changed, and now for many years he had not gone to any fair or merry-making; since then no one had heard his witty jests or seen ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... the Louisa Hatch and Kate Cory, slipped cables, and stood seaward. When about five miles from land both vessels were set fire to; Mr. Evans, the officer in charge of the brig, returning on board long before me, the strong westerly current rendering it extremely difficult to stem it. ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... to the pervading silence, Domini began to hear the tiny sounds that broke it. They came from the trees and plants. The airs were always astir, helping the soft designs of Nature, loosening a leaf from its stem and bearing it to the sand, striking a berry from its place and causing it to drop at Domini's feet, giving a faded geranium petal the courage to leave its more vivid companions and resign itself to the loss of the place ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... different, fell after this into some disrepute, and experienced, like many other prophets, the fate of being without honour in his own country. What made the matter worse, he could not obtain it in any other. Still, however, there were not wanting zealous advocates to stand forward in his behalf, and stem the tide of incredulity, which, unopposed, would have carried away his reputation. The Bishop of Freysinghen declared that prophets were not always able to prophesy, and that the vices of the Crusaders drew down the wrath of heaven upon them. But the most ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... then refused to be convinced of the inconceivable fact that they were resting on Violet Prendergast. It was at first too amazing, too amazing only. Then an old forgotten feeling rose in her bosom; the hand on the stem of her wine-glass grew tense. The sensation fell away; she remembered her emancipation, the years arose and reassured her during which Violet Prendergast, living or dead, had been to her of absolutely no importance. Yet there was a little aroused tremour in her voice as she went on, 'She is ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... heard grand stories in the forecastle of how this man was marooned in the Bahamas, and that man was married to a Maori queen, by God? Me, the hero that dowsed skysails, and they cracking like guns. Is this lousy room a place for me that's used to a ship as clean as a cat from stem to stern?' And you stand up bravely, and you look the man of the public house square in the shifty eyes, and you say: 'Listen, bastard! Do you ken e'er a master wants a sailing man? A sailor as knows his trade, crafty in trouble, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... was a banana at the end of it instead of a stone. Our first parents ran at the banana and took it. Then there came a voice from heaven, saying: "Because ye have chosen the banana, your life shall be like its life. When the banana-tree has offspring, the parent stem dies; so shall ye die and your children shall step into your place. Had ye chosen the stone, your life would have been like the life of the stone changeless and immortal." The man and his wife mourned over their ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... begotten Son. And then, how he makes them sons, is as wonderful as the thing itself, that he should make his own Son our brother, "bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh," and make him spring out as a branch or rod out of the dry stem of Jesse, who himself was the root of all mankind. This is the way, God sent his Son, made of a woman, under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons, Gal. iv. 5. The house of heaven marries with the earth, with them who have their foundation in the dust, the chief ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... my intention to rail against the short-comings of the day. That ungrateful task I leave to sterner moralists, and hopeful souls who naively imagine they can stem the current of an epoch with the barrier of their eloquence, or sweep back an ocean of innovations by their logic. I should like, however, to ask my sisters one question: Are they quite sure that women gain by these changes? Do they imagine, these "sporty" young females in short-cut skirts and mannish ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... had a wooden bowl and a hard porcelain stem it was not broken, so Tom took care of it, knowing how glad Hans would be to get his old friend ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... a singular affinity among those who smoke corncobs. A Missouri meerschaum whose bowl is browned and whose fiber stem is frayed and stringy with biting betrays a meditative and reasonable owner. He will have pondered all aspects of life and be equally ready to denounce any of them, but without bitterness. If you see a man on a street corner ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... Eileen Aroon! Beauty in childhood blows, Eileen Aroon! When, like a diadem, Buds blush around the stem, Which is the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... turn one's back upon; set at naught, slap in the face, slam the door in one's face. be at cross purposes; play at cross purposes; counterwork[obs3], countermine; thwart, overthwart[obs3]; work against, undermine. stem, breast, encounter; stem the tide, breast the tide, stem the current, stem the flood; buffet the waves; beat up against, make head against; grapple with; kick against the pricks &c. (resist) 719; contend &c. 720; do battle &c. (warfare) 722 -with, do battle against. contradict, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in the dinghy, and the dinghy was adrift. The yacht's screw chumed the water, and the beautiful vessel slipped away from them. As it receded a figure appeared at the stem. ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... much too that draws to them a world of sympathy. And when one realizes the old Dopper President hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilization, from which his people have fled for generations—trying to fight both fate and Nature—standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the eternal sea—one sees the pathos of the picture. But this is as another generation ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... to where they are to be laid up that the Colaptes shows his remarkable intelligence. In the forests where he lives are to be found aloes, yuccas, and agaves. When the agaves have flowered, the flower-bearing stem, two or three metres in length, shrivels, but remains standing for some time. Its peripheral portion is hardened by the heat, while the sap in the interior almost entirely disappears. A hollow cylinder with a well-sheltered cavity is thus formed, ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... picture reminds the spectator of the tree of Jesse, of which the branches, supporting a human figure on every twig, spread fan-like as they rise on each side of a throne, while at the top, on a single stem, the radiant beauty of a Virgin is the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... happened. Gourlay had a curious stick of foreign wood (one of the trifles he fed his pride on) the crook of which curved back to the stem and inhered, leaving space only for the fingers. The wood was of wonderful toughness, and Gourlay had been known to bet that no man could break the handle of his stick by a single grip over the crook and under it. Yet now, as he saw his bargain whisked ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... galleries; these wings are of oiled sail-cloth, set into oblong iron frames, and are worked by machinery. They may be opened or closed, inclined to or from each other, at any angle, upwards or downwards. At each end of the vessel, near the stem and the stern, is a pair of screws, similar to the propellers of a steam-ship, and worked by a couple of small steam-engines of three horse-power each, one being placed just above and behind each pair of screws. Lastly, attached to masts projecting horizontally from each end of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... other things, he may now feed his canary by opening its mouth with a button-hook and dropping in coffee beans till the little songster shows by its gratified air that it is full. A little time may be well spent among the flowers and bulbs of the apartment, clipping here a leaf and here a stem, and removing the young buds and bugs. For work among the flowers, a light pair of rather long scissors, say a foot long, can be carried at the girdle, or attached to the etui and passed over the shoulder with a looped cord so as to fall in ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... selects a certain lavender-border for her dormitory. At dusk, especially after a stifling day, when a storm is brewing, I am sure to find the strange sleeper settled there. Never was more eccentric attitude adopted for a night's rest! The mandibles bite right into the lavender-stem. Its square shape supplies a firmer hold than a round stalk would do. With this one and only prop, the animal's body juts out stiffly, at full length, with legs folded. It forms a right angle with the supporting axis, so much so that the whole weight of the insect, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... son, Mrs. Dowey—he has got five days' leave.' She shakes her head slightly, or perhaps it only trembles a little on its stem. 'Now, now, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... feeling of the stem of Grant Adams's watch as he wound it, he judged that they had lived nearly four days in the tomb. Little Mugs Bowman was crying for food, and his father was trying to comfort him, by giving him his shoe leather to chew. Others rolled and moaned ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... had kept it warm Was tossed about by the autumn storm; The stem was cracked, the old house fell, And the chestnut burr was an ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... hold of a stout pine branch, and leaning on it, was standing in the eddy, though scarcely able to stem it, but he stepped boldly forward—when a sweet voice exclaimed close behind him: "Trust him not—trust not! The ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... illustrated in the other branch of the early many-celled animals, which continued to move about in search of food. Here, as will be expected, we have the main stem of the animal world, and, although the successive stages of development are obscure, certain broad lines that it followed are clear ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... time had elapsed, when one day he saw that far down from the bottom was shooting up a green stem, and when it reached the surface a leaf grew on it. The leaf became broader and broader; close by it came a bud; and one morning, when the stork flew over it, the bud opened in the warm sunshine, and in the centre of it lay a beautiful infant, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... called it ere Volsung changed his life, But his dawning of fair promise, and his noontide of the strife, His eve of the battle-reaping and the garnering of his fame, Have bred us many a story and named us many a name; And when men tell of Volsung, they call that war-duke's tree, That crowned stem, the Branstock; and so was it ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... most remarkable instance known to me of the direct and prompt action of climate on a plant. It might have been expected that the tallness of the stem, the period of vegetation, and the ripening of the seed, would have been thus affected; but it is a much more surprising fact that the seeds should have undergone so rapid and great a change. As, however, flowers, with their product the seed, are formed by the metamorphosis of the stem ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... suspend, interpel^; intermit, remit; put an end to, put a stop to, put a period to; derail; turn off, switch off, power down, deactivate, disconnect; bring to a stand, bring to a standstill; stop, cut short, arrest, stem the tide, stem the torrent; pull the check-string, pull the plug on. Int. hold!, stop!, enough!, avast!, have done!, a truce to!, soft!, leave off!, tenez! [Fr.], Phr. I pause for a reply ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... raven will endure to be laughed at, especially when he is merely repeating a boy's pet phrase. Nor will he tamely submit to being chased from stem to stern with shouts of "Shoo! shoo!" Thor felt trebly insulted just then; possibly he believed that "Shoo! shoo!" had something to do with shooies, and the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... Scotch firs (thirty in one square yard) with their tops nibbled off by the few cattle which occasionally roam over these wretched heaths. One little tree, three inches high, by the rings appeared to be twenty-six years old, with a short stem about as thick as a stick of sealing-wax. What a wondrous problem it is, what a play of forces, determining the kind and proportion of each plant in a square yard of turf! It is to my mind truly wonderful. And yet we are pleased to wonder when ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... member of the owner's family; and he saw a lady seated near the rudder-head, who might be the owner of the name. He looked about the deck,—what of it could be seen,—though most of it was covered by the house, extended nearly from stem to stern, as on the Guardian-Mother. Everything was as neat and trim as though she had been a man-of-war. He could see two twelve-pounders on the side where he was; and he concluded there were two more ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... plant of the Brahminical rites of India, and was considered as the symbol of their elemental trinity,—earth, water, and air,—because, as an aquatic plant, it derived its nutriment from all of these elements combined, its roots being planted in the earth, its stem rising through the water, and its leaves exposed to the air.[192] The Egyptians, who borrowed a large portion of their religious rites from the East, adopted the lotus, which was also indigenous to their ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... descended from Ethelhild, who was a granddaughter of Alfred the Great. You recall that the Etheling Ethelwold, the son of Alfred's brother Ethelred, took sides with the Danes. To stem the invasion, Edward and ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... bustled about the ship, setting every loose thing in place, until the decks were clear. In the other ships the guard were at the same work, and at last they cast off all the shore lines but one at stem and stern. The ships might sail at the moment their men were on board if they ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... thought, and hence often did less than men who did not care as much. He gave a slight movement now that was not so much impatience as a thrusting away of a thing that sickened him and which he felt he could not stem. It seemed to him that the glory of the day had departed. He, too, remembered that shambles of which the Parson spoke; it had been the first time the pain in the world he so loved had come home to him. ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... thought so; but we said nothing for fear of interrupting the old man. In five minutes half the battalion had gathered round him in a circle. He was smoking a clay pipe and pointing out all the positions with the stem. He was a sort of commissioner between Chatelet, Fleurus, and Namur and knew every foot of the country and ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... its first entrance, was composed of the most charming flowering shrubs that can be imagined; each growing upon its own stem, at so convenient a distance from the other, that you might fairly pass between them any way without the least incommodity. Behind them grew numberless trees, somewhat taller, of the greatest variety of shapes, forms, and verdures ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... of mortal men that was set before William Douglas, served with the sweep of white arms and the bend of delicate fingers upon the chalice stem. He did not care to eat, but again and again he set the wine cup down empty, for the vintage was new to him, and brought with it a haunting aroma, instinct with strange hopes and vivid with ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... hard on his pipe-stem. Ignorance, and the helplessness of a limited man who is more a good animal than a discerning soul; time, the slow transmission of news, his fixed state as a voyageur—all these things were against him. He ...
— The Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... those who urged half measures. When John Dickinson of Pennsylvania said the country was not ripe for independence, Witherspoon broke in upon the speaker exclaiming, "Not ripe, Sir! In my judgment we are not only ripe, but rotting. Almost every colony has dropped from its parent stem and your own province needs no more sunshine to mature it." He further declared that he would rather be hanged than desert his country's cause. One of his sons was killed at ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black |
