"Stem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coast near the seat of perhaps the oldest and most interesting culture of Africa. It came at a critical time. The culture of Yoruba, Benin, Mossiland, and Nupe had exhausted itself in a desperate attempt to stem the on-coming flood of Mohammedan culture. It has succeeded in maintaining its small, loosely federated city-states suited to trade, industry, and art. It had developed strong resistance toward the Sudan state builders toward the north, as in the case of the fighting ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... Raven, and marched to a thicket of hazels within thirty yards of the camp fire. Dick heard one or two strokes of the little axe, and then Chippy came back dragging a tall, straight hazel stem nine or ten feet long. He sat down, took his knife, and began to trim ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... Curcuma in the same work. From these one might be led to imagine, that each plant at first consisted of a single bulb or flower to each root, as the gentianella and daisy; and that in the contest for air and light new buds grew on the old decaying flower stem, shooting down their elongated roots to the ground, and that in process of ages tall trees were thus formed, and an individual bulb became a swarm of vegetables. Other plants, which in this contest for light and air were too slender to rise by their own strength, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... administration. No Dublin tradesman could find it in his heart to vote against the nominee of so liberal a nobleman, and the public opinion of Dublin was as yet the public opinion of Ireland. But the Patriot party, though unable to stem successfully the tide of corruption and seduction thus let loose, held their difficult position in the legislature with great gallantry and ability. New men had arisen during the dotage of Swift, who revered his maxims, and imitated his prudence. Henry Boyle, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the carinate birds and pterodactyles take on independently one special common structure when disagreeing in so many; while the struthious birds, agreeing in many points with the Dinosauria, agree yet more with the carinate birds? Indeed by no arrangement of branches from a stem can the difficulty ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... squatted himself down on the stool of a large hemlock, which, being recently cut down, cumbered the woodside with its giant stem, and secured him, with its evergreen top now lowly laid and withering, from the most narrow scrutiny; while I, giving the gallant horse his head, went at a brisk hand-gallop across the firm short turf of the fair sloping hill-side, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... Joe Hawkridge aside and was swiftly enlightened concerning the alliance with the Indians. Presently they were holding a conference, all seated together in the shade of a tree. A tobacco pipe of clay, with a long reed for a stem, was lighted and passed from hand to hand. The chief puffed solemnly with an occasional nod and a grunt. It was agreed, with due ceremony, that the pirates should be attacked in their camp and driven away. The Yemassee warriors ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... must have been a terrible thing to have a friend like Chatterton or Burns. And here is a being who certainly has more than talent, at once poet and artist in tendency, if not yet fairly developed,—a woman, too;—and genius grafted on womanhood is like to overgrow it and break its stem, as you may see a grafted fruit-tree spreading over the stock which cannot keep pace ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the divine as the love of an honest man for a woman should have any tincture of aught ignoble in it, and one is caused thereby to decry one's state of mortality, which seems as inseparable from selfish ends as the red wings of a rose from the thorny stem which binds it to earth. Truly the longer I live the more am I aware of the speck which mars the completeness of all in this world, and ever the desire for a better, and that longing which will not be appeased groweth in my soul, until methinks the very keenness of the appetite must prove ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... fondness for it. Every object has its lesson, enclosing the suggestion of everything else—and lately I sometimes think all is concentrated for me in these hardy, yellow-flower'd weeds. As I come down the lane early in the morning, I pause before their soft wool-like fleece and stem and broad leaves, glittering with countless diamonds. Annually for three summers now, they and I have silently return'd together; at such long intervals I stand or sit among them, musing—and woven with the rest, of so many hours and moods ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... I (and with fear I bid my strain Record the marvel) where the souls were all Whelm'd underneath, transparent, as through glass Pellucid the frail stem. Some prone were laid, Others stood upright, this upon the soles, That on his head, a third with face to feet Arch'd like a bow. When to the point we came, Whereat my guide was pleas'd that I should see The ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... stitch which is taught to a beginner is "stem stitch" (wrongly called also, "crewel stitch," as it has no claim to being used exclusively in crewel embroidery). It is most useful in work done in the hand, and especially in outlines of flowers, unshaded leaves, and arabesque, and ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... service in the courtyard of a temple, and while I, with all the other girls, was sitting on the window step, you came up to us, talking nonsense, and trying to get up a flirtation? Don't you remember how we tied a handkerchief on the stem of a bamboo?" Then she continued: "Another time at a temple, when I threw down two gold hairpins and an ivory box as an offering, you asked the priest to let you look at the things, and after admiring them for a long time you turned toward me, and said ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... himself to purposeless copying, without thought, each blade of grass, as commended by the inconsequent, but, in the long curve of the narrow leaf, corrected by the straight tall stem, he learns how grace is wedded to dignity, how strength enhances sweetness, that elegance ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... Garth attempted to stem the man's flow of words. It was plain that he did not know Mr. Vanstone, even by sight—otherwise he would never have committed the error of supposing that Magdalen took after her father. Did he know Mrs. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... do be still," broke out Delia at last after a dozen futile attempts to stem the tide of the girl's anger. "I didn't listen nor peek nor anything, and you scream so loud she'll hear every word you say. You—now be quiet and let me speak—you walked in your sleep last night. You went into her room ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... with dignity, as became a good housewife presiding at her own table, the two gentlemen lifted their glasses of champagne. There was a full glass beside Daisy's plate. Her fingers closed lightly about the stem; but she looked to Barstow for orders. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... should suppose that I would, with as much material, find greater similarity in the other languages, but the only one I have been able to trace at all generally is Dak yu. This merely converts the stem into a verb without changing its meaning. Dak y is nearly always represented in the allied languages so far as I have observed by r, d, l or n; so that I find it in Min. du (ru, lu, nu), Iowa, Mandan, and Crow ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... Thou! who pour'd the patriotic tide, That stream'd thro' Wallace's undaunted heart, Who dar'd to nobly stem tyrannic pride, Or nobly die, the second glorious part: (The patriot's God peculiarly thou art, His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!) O never, never Scotia's realm desert; But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard In bright succession ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... grew larger to their eyes, and fell, with the noise of thunder, upon the bowsprit, which it smashed close to the stem, and buried itself in the waves with a ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... part may be acted upon by reflected rays of equal density. This condition being fulfilled, the temperature communicated will be perfectly uniform. A short tube passes through the upper head of the heater, through which a thermometer is inserted for measuring the internal temperature. The stem being somewhat less than the bore of the tube, a small opening is formed by which the necessary equilibrium of pressure will be established with the external atmosphere. It should be mentioned that the indications of the thermometer ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... alone, the oracle had declared, could prejudice either, and this was an accident to the flower. From such disaster it had long been shielded by the most delicate care; yet in the inscrutable counsels of the Gods, the dreaded calamity had at length come to pass. Broken through the upper part of the stem, the listless flower drooped its petals towards the earth, and seemed to mourn their chastity, already sullied by the wan flaccidity of decay. Not one had fallen as yet, and Iridion felt no pain or any symptom of approaching dissolution, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... have not sufficiently fallen from their eyes, to accept it for themselves individually, much less to trust others with it. But that will come in time, as well as a general ripeness to break entirely from the parent stem. You see, my dear Sir, how easily we prescribe for others a cure for their difficulties, while we cannot cure our own. We must leave both, I believe, to Heaven, and wrap ourselves up in the mantle of resignation, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... their voyage I was born, to be the sport of fortune and almost an outcast to civil society; to stem the current of adversity through a long chain of vicissitudes, unsupported by the advice of tender parents, or the hand of an affectionate friend; and even without the enjoyment from others, of any of those tender sympathies that are adapted to the sweetening of society, except such as naturally ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... 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, which ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the month came a rain—a cold, bitter, driving storm that raged for three days and started a drift that the cattlemen could not stop. Arrayed in tarpaulins the cowboys went forth, suffering, cursing, laboring heroically to stem the tide. The cattle retreated steadily before the storm—no human agency could halt them. On the second day Norton came into the Circle Bar ranchhouse, wet, ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... unlock the "Sanctum" door and let him in. He lights one of the office pipes—not reflecting, perhaps, that the editor may be one of those "stuck-up" people who would as soon have a stranger defile his tooth-brush as his pipe-stem. Then he begins to loll—for a person who can consent to loaf his useless life away in ignominious indolence has not the energy to sit up straight. He stretches full length on the sofa awhile; then draws up to half length; then gets into a chair, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were shed, and many sighs were heaved about her! So young, so fresh a flower in life's great garden, lying before us with its broken stem! ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... bold Hujir lies vanquished on the plain, And drags a captive's ignominious chain; Myriads of troops besiege our tottering wall, And vain the effort to suspend its fall. Haste, arm for fight, this Tartar-power withstand, Let sweeping Vengeance lift her flickering brand; Rustem alone may stem the roaring wave, And, prompt as bold, his groaning country save. Meanwhile in flight we place our only trust, Ere the proud ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... a tufted annual with numerous radiating branches, growing on all directions, bent below and erect above; they vary in length from 6 inches to 18 inches, but sometimes when growing under favourable conditions attain the length of 2-1/2 feet. The stem is slender, green, or pale reddish in the exposed portions and pale in parts covered by sheaths slightly ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... through the time when vernal fruits receive The grateful showers that hang on April's eve; Though every coarser stem of forest birth Throws with the morning beam its dews to earth, Ne'er does the gentle rose revive so soon, But, bath'd in nature's tears, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... her bows passed beyond the pier, the sea struck her, and tossed her like an eggshell, and the deck, from stem to stern, was drenched in a moment, and running with floods as if she had been under water. For a few moments H. and I both enjoyed the motion. We stood amidships, she in her shawl, I in a great tarpauling which I had borrowed of Jack, and every pitch sent the spray over us. We exulted ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... still played with her syringa flower, tapping her thin cheek, and twirling the stem with her fingers. She looked as if she were going to say something more, but after a ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem; To spare thee now is past my power, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... wild stream, begotten Where its Red Sons fought and died, With traditions unforgotten Strives to stem Oblivion's tide; Tells the mighty, who, like ocean, Whelm the native stream, how they First in far dim days' commotion, Wrestling, fought for ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... her how tired he had become in trying to stem the tide of doubt alone. It warned her, too, that she had gone too close, for he veered off sharply. Steve persisted in generalities, but he ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... therefore don't sneer at them—don't jeer at them—it hurts! If you have reared a rosebush in your garden, and seen it bud and bloom, are you pleased to have some ruthless vandal tear the flowers from their stem and trample them in the mud? And it is not always our most beautiful children we love the best. The parent's heart will surely warm toward ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... life, though turned or driven This way or that beyond a course begun, Cannot be stayed or quenched, but moves, conforms To soil and sun, makes roots, or thickens leaves, Or thins or re-adjusts them on the stem To fashion forth itself, produce its kind. Nor dies not, rests not, nor surrenders not, Is only changed or buried, re-appears As ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... swung the craft around slowly. It scraped on more of the rocks, and one of the oars was caught and snapped off like a pipe-stem. But then the boat struck water that was a little more calm, and soon they reached a cove and felt themselves ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... of taste. Which is handsomer, a flat wall or a wall with a surface varied with columns and pilasters? Well, then, when you take a horse, no man who loves art wants to see him smooth and even from stem to stern. What you want is a varied surface—a little bit of hill and a little bit of valley; and you get it in a horse like mine. Most horses are monotonous. They tire on you. But swell out the ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... huge rolls of red silk. These we all commenced to cut into narrow strips about two inches wide and three feet long. When we had cut sufficient Her Majesty took a strip of red silk and another of yellow silk which she tied round the stem of one of the peony trees (in China the peony is considered to be the queen of flowers). Then all the Court ladies, eunuchs and servant girls set to work to decorate every single tree and plant in the grounds with ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... speaking of psychology and physiology (idealism and materialism), says: "Our stem divides into two main branches, which grow in opposite ways, and bear flowers which look as different as they can well be. But each branch is sound and healthy, and has as much life and vigor as the other. If a botanist found this state of things in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... found something of which they were not afraid. Then the superintendent pushed his way through the bushes and found the bear dead. The big slug from the musket had entered his throat and traversed him from stem, to stern, and spouting his life blood in quarts he had gone half a mile before his amazing vitality ebbed clean away and left him a huge heap ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... was to see Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. 530 Here lay two sister twins in infancy; There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep; Within, two lovers linked innocently In their loose locks which over both did creep Like ivy from one stem;—and there lay calm 535 Old age with snow-bright hair and ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... his high office stool, never felt more keenly the nervous pain of desire and the lassitudes of resistance. You think John Norton did not suffer in his imperious desire to pull down the home of his fathers and build a monastery! Mrs Norton's grief was his grief, but to stem the impulse that bore him along was too keen a pain to be endured. His desire whelmed him like a wave; it filled his soul like a perfume, and against his will it rose to his lips in words. Even when the servants were present he could not help discussing the architectural changes ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... self-respect. The wayward, drifting youth or man cannot respect himself. He knows that there is no decision of character in drifting with the current, no enterprise, spirit, or determination. He must look the world squarely in the face, and say, "I am a man," or he cannot respect himself; and he must stem the current and row up stream to command ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... honey, soap, sugar, and such other articles of grocery. These little shops are not in general kept by Moors, but by people from the country of Suz, who speak a different language from the Moors, and are of a different race, being a branch of the Berber stem; they are the grocers of Barbary and are, in comparison with the Moors, an honest, peaceable, and industrious people. The castle of the Governor stands at the northern extremity of Tangiers, on the top of a high ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... cried, standing up on the stem and brandishing his death-knife at Manaia. "I shall give thy head to the children of the village for a football ere the sun ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... knew little of Ravenswood, or the disputes which had existed betwixt her father and his, and perhaps could in her gentleness of mind hardly have comprehended the angry and bitter passions which they had engendered. But she knew that he was come of noble stem; was poor, though descended from the noble and the wealthy; and she felt that she could sympathise with the feelings of a proud mind, which urged him to recoil from the proffered gratitude of the new proprietors of his father's house and domains. Would ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... indeed a perilous climb, but that special providence which guards reckless lads befriended them, as it has thousands of their kind before and since. So, by climbing from one knotted, clinging stem to another, they were presently seated snugly in the ivied niche in the window. It was barred from within by a crumbling shutter, the rusty fastening of which, after some little effort upon the part of the two, gave way, and entering the narrow opening, they found themselves in a small ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... difficulties, but the philosopher moved them aside contemptuously, and Joseph understood that he could not demean himself to the point of discussing the fallacies of the Pharisees, who, Joseph said, hope to stem the just anger of God on the last day by minute observances of the Sabbath. Mathias raised his eyes, and it was a revulsion of feeling, Joseph continued, against hypocrisy and fornication, that put me astride my mule as soon as I heard of the Essenes, the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... moment anxiously at this fragile girl, whose tiny head was poised on a long, delicate neck like a fruit on its stem. ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... opened out into a patio which overlooked a vast and perfectly tended garden. The verdant perfection of the scene was marred only by one of the Bugs, sunning itself and gnawing on the stem of a flower. Tyndall was impressed again with the repulsive ugliness of the thing. This one was the size of a small adult human, and even vaguely human in outline, although the brownish armored body was still more suggestive of ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable
... nowt bud a slope(2)— I were fooild by his speeches an' rhymes, For his promises wattered my hope, An' I leng'd for his sunshiny times; Bud I feel at my dearest desire Within me 'll wither away; Like an ivy-stem trailin' i' t' mire, It's deein for t' want of ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... removed to Oxford. Just after Easter Robert of Gloucester, the Empress's brother, had landed in England. Stephen had been importuning him for some time to give up his sister's cause and acknowledge him as king. So far as we know, Robert had done nothing up to this time to stem the current of events, and these events were probably a stronger argument with him than Stephen's inducements. All England and practically all Normandy had accepted Stephen. The king of Scotland had abandoned the opposition. Geoffrey and Matilda had accomplished ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... two sharp cuts on the tree with his tomahawk, and putting his great toe in the nick, rose on it, made another nick higher up, and holding the smooth stem put his other great toe in it, and so on till in an incredibly short time he had reached the top and left a staircase of his own making behind him. He had hardly reached the top when he slid down to the bottom ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... coming to you!" she says to my mother. "See," and she points into the cup. We all crowd near, and I perceive a leaf with a stem sticking up from its body like a bayonet over a man's shoulder. "He is almost home," the widow goes on. Then with sudden dramatic turn she waves her hand toward the road, "Heavens and earth!" she cries. "There's ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... jarred upon his mood, and set herself to soothe him into harmony with himself and nature. Jim watched the white fingers deftly fill the bowl, and strike the match for him; then he took it from her hand and breathed softly through the curved stem until the fire circled brightly round, and the tobacco all was burning. He leaned back on his elbow and sent the smoke out in long quiet wreaths, and Pocahontas, with her hands folded together in her lap, watched ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... never have met her, but I've seen her a good many times, and she always reminds me of one of those rich, dark roses florists call Black Prince. And there's her sister, who makes me think of a fine, creamy hyacinth; the sturdy sort, able to stand on its own stem without a prop. And they are exotics, both of them; their personality, wherever they are, has the effect of a ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... only the most desperate resistance on the part of the Chancellor would be able to stem the tide of hate and keep America out of the war. On January 7th the American Chamber of Commerce and Trade in Berlin gave a dinner to Ambassador Gerard and invited the Chancellor, Dr. Helfferich, Dr. ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... Cleopatra's passion and Hamlet's woe. Thus tender is the touch of ocean; and look, how around this piece of oaken timber, twisted and torn and furrowed,—its iron bolts snapped across as if bitten,—there is yet twined a gay garland of ribbon-weed, bearing on its trailing stem a cluster of bright shells, like ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... o'clock, and as, with the rising tide, the gale swelled once more to its former violence, the remnants of the barque fast yielded to the resistless waves. The cabin went by the board, the after-parts broke up, and the stem settled out of sight. Soon, too, the forecastle was filled with water, and the helpless little band were driven to the deck, where they clustered round the foremast. Presently, even this frail support was loosened from the hull, and rose and fell ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... he is safe for a good fright," continued I; "and now we had better get away ourselves; for the animal may come back, and, although one can pin her in that way from behind, it is not to be done when she comes stem on ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... and of neater construction: one which I examined at the Cumberland Isles was made of three pieces of bark neatly sewn together; it was six feet long and two and a half feet wide, sharp at each end, with a wooden thwart near the stem and stern, and a cord amidships to keep the sides from stretching. In the creeks and bays of the now settled districts of New South Wales another kind of canoe was once in general use. At Broken Bay, in August 1847, a singular couple of aborigines whom I met upon ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... stem-windin', self-actin' proposition that's wound up, and is now tickin' smooth and reg'lar," said the Cap'n, with deep conviction. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... fringe of the capsule encasing its seed,) and many other strange and beautiful things, were the constant attendants of our march. We counted six or seven varieties of the spurge, (Euphorbium,) each on its milky stem, and in passing through the villages had Carnations as large as Dahlias flung at us by sunburnt urchins posted at their several doors. The sandy shore for many miles is beautifully notched in upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... to free coinage and fourteen opposed. Ten of the latter committed themselves definitely to the gold standard. The fourteen included all the northeastern states, together with Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Such gold Democrats as President Cleveland sought to stem the tide, but Cleveland's control over his followers was rapidly dwindling, and it seemed likely that the silver element of the party might reach out to seize the organization and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... permanent bridge of boats. There were thirty-two of these barges, each of them sixty-two feet in length and twelve in breadth, the spaces between each couple being twenty-two feet wide, and all being bound together, stem, stern, and midships, by quadruple hawsers and chains. Each boat was anchored at stem and stern with loose cables. Strong timbers, with cross rafters, were placed upon the boats, upon which heavy frame-work the planked pathway was laid down. A thick parapet of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Argantes said, and said no more, As if the case were clear of which he spoke. Orcano rose, of princely stem ybore, Whose presence 'mongst them bore a mighty stroke, A man esteemed well in arms of yore, But now was coupled new in marriage yoke; Young babes he had, to fight which made him loth, He was a ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... peeping out of the earth. Gradually, more and more of them come to light, and finally by Christmas they are all ready to gather. There they stand, swaying to and fro, and dancing lightly on their slender feet which are connected with the ground, each by a tiny green stem; their dresses of pink, or blue, or white—for their dresses grow with them—flutter in the air. Just about the prettiest sight in the world, is the bed of wax dolls in the garden of the Christmas ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... this date, expressing a wish to be employed in the execution of some of the fiscal duties of the superintendency during the season. "I write to you," he adds, "as a friend. Times are hard, and every little that is directed to aid one in his efforts to stem the current of life, possesses an incalculable value." I yielded the more readily to this request from the chain of circumstances which, however favorable, had hitherto disappointed his most ardent aims and the just expectations ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... this time, happened to be looking away from the machinist. Williamson, in utter unconcern, drew a pipe out of one of his pockets, filled it, and stuck the stem between his lips. Next, he struck a safety match, softly, against the side of the match-box, and lighted his pipe, drawing in ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... its clusters fewer every year till it deadened to the root, I could have wept in heavenly sympathy, and learned from you the way I have not walked. But, in your flower to be a forester's plucking, stripped from my stem and trodden in the sand, your pride reduced, your tastes unheeded, your heart dragged into the wigwam of a savage and made to consult his maudlin will—— Oh, what shall ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Tigris. They are cut in March, tied in bundles, laid six months in a manure heap, where they assume a beautiful color, mottled yellow and black." Tournefort saw them growing in the neighborhood of Teflis in Georgia. Miller describes the cane as "growing no higher than a man, the stem three or four lines in thickness and solid from one knot to another, excepting the central white pith." The incipient fermentation in the manure heap dries up the pith and hardens the cane. The pens were about the size of the largest swan's ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... spent the last few months of her life hungering for death. Along the road of death she went, seeking, hungering. She personified the figure of death and made him now a strong black-haired youth running over hills, now a stem quiet man marked and scarred by the business of living. In the darkness of her room she put out her hand, thrusting it from under the covers of her bed, and she thought that death like a living thing put out his hand to her. "Be patient, lover," ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... larger kinds seemed mostly to be sleeping. He ran full tilt against a drowsy butterfly, sweeping its close-folded wings through half a circle, as he passed. They sprang back with a jerk, but the insect itself remained motionless. Grasshoppers clung to every other grass-stem; their eyes were dead and staring. Here and there he saw a spider gripping its support and waiting for ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... Archie; Adair had command of the pinnace, a mate and Desmond going with him; Mr Mildmay commanded the cutter, accompanied by Billy Blueblazes; and Dicky Duff was in the boatswain's boat. The commodore led the expedition in his own gig, in the stem of which sat, as coxswain, Tom Bashan, noted as the biggest man in the fleet—even the carpenter of the Opal looked but of ordinary size alongside him. He had followed Captain Douce from ship to ship, and had often rendered his commander ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... therefore no time to give any account of my journey hither. My boat is, properly speaking, a floating house, sixty feet by fourteen, containing dining-room, kitchen with fireplace, and two bedrooms; roofed from stem to stern; steps to go up, and a walk on the top the whole length; glass windows, &c. This edifice costs one hundred and thirty-three dollars, and how it can be made for that sum passes ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... varied forms of vegetable life. Forests of the broad-leaved plantain and banana line the banks. The fruit is the most common article of food in equatorial America, and is eaten raw, roasted, baked, boiled, and fried. It grows on a succulent stem formed of sheath-like leaf-stalks rolled over one another, and terminating in enormous light green, glossy blades nearly ten feet long by two feet wide, so delicate that the slightest wind will tear them transversely. Each tree (vulgarly called "the tree of paradise") produces fruit but once, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... embowered in trees. The end of the village came upon a large rising green, leading up to the only accessible side of the castle. It presented a most animated scene, being covered with various groups, all intent upon different rustic amusements. An immense pole, the stem of a gigantic fir-tree, was fixed nearly in the centre of the green, and crowned with a chaplet, the reward of the most active young man of the village, whose agility might enable him to display his gallantry by presenting it to ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... sweater up to her ears and buttoned it over. Then she muttered something about "wishing Joy would hurry, for it's going to rain!" Then she dug her hands into her sweater pockets and stared across the lawn at a blue hydrangea bush with a single remaining bunch of blossoms hanging heavy on its stem. ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... guard against unlicensed intrusion; the top story had not been thought to stand in need of this protection, and a few panes were broken. On these dead frontages could be traced the marks of climbing plants, which once hung their leaves about each doorway; dry fragments of the old stem still adhered to the stucco. What had been the narrow strip of fore-garden, railed from the pavement, was now a little wilderness of coarse grass, docks, nettles, and degenerate shrubs. The paint on the doors had lost all colour, and much of it was blistered ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... borne in more or less branched clusters, located on the stem on the opposite side and usually a little below the leaves; the first cluster on the sixth to twelfth internode from the ground, with one on each second to sixth succeeding one. The flowers (Fig. ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat (Ramsar) note - abbreviated as Wetlands opened for signature - 2 February 1971 entered into force - 21 December 1975 objective - 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, and recreational ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Louis Quatorze period, a species of vegetable grotesque was the fashion, from which we suffer even now, and it deserves censure. Leaves and flowers of different plants were made to grow from the same stem, as only artificial flowers could do. The Greeks introduced into their decorations sprays and wreaths of bay, olive, oak, ivy, and vine, with their fruits; which are exquisitely composed and carefully studied from nature. It is true that they ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the elderly man cared little for anything that happened in the world, outside of his manuscripts and printing. His long, narrow head rested on a thin neck, which did not stand erect, but grew out between the shoulders like a branch from the stem. His face was grey and lined with wrinkles, like pumice-stone, but large bright eyes lent meaning and attraction to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not? It was no use dwelling on the past, however attractive it might seem just then, and as to the future, we had every right to expect the best of it. Who cared to think of coming troubles? No one. Therefore the Fram was dressed with flags from stem to stern, and therefore faces beamed at each other as we said good-bye to our home on the Barrier. We could leave it with the consciousness that the object of our year's stay had been attained, and, after all, this consciousness was of considerably more weight than the thought that we had been so ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... E. "balled" is usually explained as literally "round and smooth like a ball," but it may be connected with a stem bal, white or shining. The Greek [Greek: phalakros] certainly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... country was to pass down the cycle of time known as the land of freedom; that it was to be forever the asylum for religious liberty and the cradle of progress, unless the sober thought of our people be at once aroused to stem the rising tide of Governmentalism and the steady encroachment of religious organizations ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... infernal hot iron balls, which to my mind ain't fit for Christians to make use on, that they ain't. Well, there was we a-waiting for a boat to get aboard her, though I didn't think there was much use, seeing she was in a blaze from stem to stern. In a few minutes the flames licked and coiled themselves up round the masts and spars till they reached the mast-heads, and then she broke adrift from her moorings, and, not content with getting burnt herself, what ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... sister," exclaimed Beatrice; "for I am faint with common air. And give me this flower of thine, which I separate with gentlest fingers from the stem and place it ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... insure to London a decided superiority over Paris. Were the Seine to-morrow rendered navigable for vessels of large burden, they must, for a considerable distance, be tracked against the stream, or wait till a succession of favourable winds had enabled them to stem it through its various windings; whereas nothing can be more favourable to navigation than the position of London. It has every advantage of a sea-port without its dangers. Had it been placed lower down, that is, nearer ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... exclamation out around his pipe stem with a gush of smoke. "A few fanatics hate us, but nine-tenths of them have benefitted ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... event broke from the parent stem one of the strong branches of the Anglo-Saxon family, and gave each an opportunity to work out in different ways the ideals after which both were striving. And who will say that the descendants of Cromwellians and Quakers, ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... 20 is quite simple, and presents no resemblance to the elaborate gear of Plate LX, in which the ornament of a leaf (?), or more probably feather, cross-hatched at the end and divided symmetrically by a stem (?) or quill about which four dots ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... sheepishly at first, but by-and-by we'd quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp. 'Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers, aren't they, Jack?' he'd say, after chewing his cud, or rather the stem of his briar, for a long while without a word. (He had his pipe in his mouth as often as any of us, but somehow I fancied he didn't enjoy it: an empty pipe or a stick would have suited him just as well, it seemed to me.) 'Those are great lines,' ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... the forests round Para, Bates says:—"In these tropical forests each plant and tree seems to be striving to outvie its fellows, struggling upwards towards light and air—branch and leaf and stem—regardless of its neighbours. Parasitic plants are seen fastening with firm grip on others, making use of them with reckless indifference as instruments for their own advancement. Live and let live is clearly not the maxim taught in these wildernesses. There is one kind of parasitic tree ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... chance of its indicating the exact mean of the whole barometric column, that is to say, fifteen inches above the cistern enclosed within the case of the barometer, nearly in contact with its tube, and with a stem so long as to be read off at ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... came he buried his face in her breast and sobbed: "His head hangs like a flower broken at the stem. He can not lift it, and he ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... of fortune Ne'er water'd this stem, Nor one fostering sunbeam Matured the rich gem— Oh! give me that pure bosom, Her lot let me share, I'll laugh at distinction, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... number of coming years! What annual the horticulturist can show will bear comparison with this product of auricultural industry, which has flowered in midsummer and midwinter for twenty successive seasons? And now the last of its blossoms is to be plucked, and the bare stem, stripped of its ever maturing and always welcome appendages, is reduced to the narrowest conditions of reproductive existence. Such is the fate of the financial peau de chagrin. Pity the poor fractional capitalist, who has ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with those papers, son," ordered Kitchell; "I'll bide here and dig up sh' mor' loot. I'll gut this ole pill-box from stern to stem-post 'fore I'll leave. I won't leave a copper rivet in 'er, notta co'er rivet, dyhear?" he shouted, his face purple with ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... There should be a small space of open ground. ARPACHSHAD thought that perhaps "the gents," as he calls us, would enjoy digging a clear space round the trees. We thought we would, and set to work. But SARK having woefully hacked the stem of a young apple-tree (Lord Suffield) and I having laboriously and carefully cut away the entire network of the roots of a damson-tree, under the impression that it was a weed, it was decided that ARPACHSHAD ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... time, are exceedingly aggravating. They consult you, they ask your advice upon the best way of concealing the stem of a rose, of giving a graceful fall to a bunch of briar, or a happy turn to a scarf. As a neat English expression has it, "they fish for compliments," and sometimes for ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... that? That is the incomparable big Bells melting. There they vanish, their fine tones never to be tried more, and ooze through the red-hot ruin, "Hush-sh-sht!" the last sound heard from them. And the stem for holding that immense Crown-royal,—it is a bar and bars of iron, "weighing sixteen hundred-weight;" down it comes thundering, crashing through the belly of St. Peter's, the fall of it like an earthquake all round. And still the fire-drums ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... the pine was the first tree on the ridge to burn. It was impossible to tell how the flames had reached it. Had the fire flown on red wings, or crawled along the ground like a snake? It was not easy to say, but there it was at all events. The great pine burned like a birch stem. ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... to Cambridge, and bought two pipes in a case. In those days Greek was compulsory, but not more so than two pipes in a case. One of the pipes had an amber stem and the other a vulcanite stem, and both of them had silver belts. That also was compulsory. Having bought them, one was free to smoke cigarettes. However, at the end of my first year I got to work seriously on a shilling briar, and I have smoked that, or something ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... able to stand so well the shock of being shot," says Donovan in telling the story. "My friends thought also that I was shot. But when I slowed up, still bewildered, and they caught up with me, they were puzzled to see my face covered with powder marks and a broken pipe stem ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... fork, with three, or at the most four branches; so that a soldier, with his arms slung at his back, can conveniently carry several of them together; and then they stick them down so closely, and interweave the branches in such a manner, that it cannot be seen to what main stem any branch belongs; besides which, the boughs are so sharp, and wrought so intimately with each other, as to leave no room for a hand to be thrust between; consequently an enemy cannot lay hold of any thing capable of being dragged out, or, if that could be done, could ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... digitata (natural order Bombaceae), a native of tropical Africa, one of the largest trees known, its stem reaching 30 ft. in diameter, though the height is not great. It has a large woody fruit, containing a mucilaginous pulp, with a pleasant cool taste, in which the seeds are buried. The bark yields a strong fibre which is made ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... his arm around the stem of a tree to hold himself up. Then, with a cynical laugh, he said: "Perhaps you'll send Hellgum back ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... know by the stir of the branches, The way she went; And at times I can see where a stem Of the grass is bent. She's the secret and light of my life, She allures to elude; But I follow the spell of her beauty, Whatever ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... bow of the canoe, back and forth, with loud quackings. The weakling was behind as usual; and in a sudden spirit of curiosity or perversity—for I really had a good deal of sympathy for the little fellow—I shot the canoe forward, almost up to him. He tried to dive; got tangled in a lily stem in his fright; came up, flashed under again; and I saw him come up ten feet away in some grass, where he sat motionless and almost invisible amid the ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the Translator.] Your freight a flagon, and a leaf your sail; O may no envious rush thy course impede, Or floating apple stop thy tide-born speed. His mildest breath a gentle zephyr gave; The little vessels trimly stem'd the wave: Their precious merchandise to land they bore, And one by one resigned the balmy store. Stretch but a hand, we boarded them, and quaft With native luxury the tempered draught. For where they loaded the nectareous fleet, The goblet glow'd with too ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... lay in the path, an orange-coloured scrap with a broken stem, dropped from some coolie's necklace. Hilda picked it up, and drew in the crude, warm pungency of its smell. She closed her eyes and drifted on the odour, forgetting her speculations, losing her feet. All India and all her passion was in that violent, penetrating fragrance; it brought her, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... first frost nips them. Still others lack the woolly coating in its finest abundance, and the browsing animals eat these. Others lack power to put out a wide-ranging root supply and the first drought kills these. Still others fail to send up a vigorous stem and the passing animal knocks them over and they die. Of the few that are still surviving, some produce such small and inconspicuous blossoms that the insects scarcely see them, and they go unfertilized. In ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... potent force in existence. All the hot sunlight of Virginia that stirred the growing leaf in its odorous plantation now crackles in that glowing dottel in your briar bowl. The venomous juices of the stalk seep down the stem. The most precious things in the world ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Patron of his Art he pray'd; The Patron of his Art refus'd his Aid. But now the Goddess Mother, mov'd with Grief, And pierc'd with Pity, hastens her Relief. A Branch of Healing Dittany she brought, Which in the Cretan Fields with Care she sought; Rough is the Stem, which woolly Leaves surround; The Leafs with Flow'rs, the Flow'rs with Purple crown'd: Well known to-wounded Goats; a sure Relief To draw the pointed Steel, and ease the Grief. This Venus brings, in Clouds involv'd; and brews Th' extracted Liquor with Ambrosian ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... interminable stretch of asphalt, the heat waves danced and flickered. Already the knapsack on his shoulders pressed upon him like an Old Man of the Sea; the linen in the valise had turned to pig iron, his pipe-stem legs were wabbling, his eyes smarted with salt sweat, and the fingers supporting the valise belonged to some other boy, and were giving that boy much pain. But as the motor-cars flashed past with raucous warnings, ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... was good advice, and Captain Skinner took it; while the old man sat quietly in his saddle, with Steve Harrison at his side, as if they two were quite enough to stem the torrent of fierce, whooping Apaches which was now sweeping down upon ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... was consolidated with the Bellefontaine line, thus placing its western terminus in Indianapolis. Its southern stem had previously been extended by way of the Delaware Cut-Off to Springfield, thus opening another connection ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... incisions right along 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 ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher |
