"Thistle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ornaments in silver and a radiated oval of white satin with golden rays. The back was fluted in white satin, enriched with the Royal Arms in burnished gold. The State chair was covered with crimson velvet with the Royal Arms and Crown, with the rose, thistle ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... move, his hands hung powerless at his side, his tongue refused to utter a word. The bow and arrow fell from his hand, and his spear lay powerless. A little child, not so high as the fourth leaf of the thistle, came and spat on him, and a company of the spirits danced around him singing a taunting song. When they had thus finished their task of preparatory torture, a thousand little spirits drew their bows, and a thousand arrows pierced his heart. In a moment innumerable mattocks ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... fellow prowled about promiscuously a while, assailing one and another in French, to about as much purpose as one might have tried to storm the walls with discharges of thistle down; all smoked and drank as before. But as several other visitors arrived, and it became evident that if we did not come to see the castle, it was not likely we came for any thing else, a man was fished up from some depths unknown, with a promising bunch of keys. He sallied forth to that part ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... active duty on the field, Mr. M'Quarrie is even now in football harness as the treasurer of the Partick Thistle. He did not play in many of the first eleven matches of the club, but being a promising lad was always available as first reserve forward. He was rather a neat dribbler and good backer-up, but a little slow in tackling. He was always a steady player, and did very well in this game. He did not ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... are like the thistle seed, but at their rising, they will be like the thistle grown; more noisome, offensive, and provoking ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cushions, and quilts—be it enacted, that no person or persons whatsoever shall make (to the intent to sell, or offer to be sold) any feather-bed, bolster, or pillow, except the same be stuffed with dry-pulled feathers, or clean down only, without mixing of scalded feathers, fen-down, thistle-down; sand, lime, gravel, unlawful or corrupt stuff, hair, or any other, upon pain of forfeiture,' &c. One would like to know what 'unlawful or corrupt stuff' is, and whether the corruptness be physical ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... say what there was about my partner—a whimsical humor, a slight mocking sound in his voice, which pleased me; he took nothing seriously; everything he said was as light as a thistle-down; he reminded me of the wit of grandmamma and the Marquis; we ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... a flowering peach, A youth with a little blue wren held speech. With his back to a tree and his feet in the grass, He watched the thistle-down drift and pass, And the cloud-puffs, borne on a lazy breeze, Move by on their errand, above the trees, Into the vault ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... thistle-down were his feet, but no sooner had the Giant felt their tread than he gave a great start, and lifting his hand struck himself a tremendous blow upon his forehead. Pease-Blossom would have been crushed to death had he not managed ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... smiled above his harp, And turned his face to the naked sky, Where, blown before the wastrel wind, The thistle-down she ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... a thistle," returned that disgusted youth. "He means you're an ass, and you are. ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... on a purple sea-thistle close to his head. It poised there with fanning wings, so languid, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... family had arranged that Mr. Alexander should attend, instead of his brother; and as the said Mr. Alexander was deservedly celebrated for possessing all the pertinacity of a bankruptcy-court attorney, combined with the obstinacy of that useful animal which browses on the thistle, he required but little tuition. He was especially enjoined to make himself as disagreeable as possible; and, above all, to black-ball the Tauntons ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Of what avail is all this seed if it falls as it ripens upon soil already overcrowded with its kind? Hence the vigorous emigration policy to be observed in plants of every name. Hence the fluffy sails set to catch the passing breeze by the dandelion, the thistle and by many more, including the southern plant of snowy wealth whose wings are cotton. With the same intent of seeking new fields are the hooks of the burdock, the unicorn plant, and the bur-parsley which impress as carriers ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Sleepy?" said Jesse, going up to the sleek big white mule that stood with drooping head, the stalk of a thistle hanging out of a corner of his mouth. "He's fat and strong, isn't he? What makes him look so sad? And aren't you afraid he'll run away? He hasn't ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... trees, Pretty little lettuce-leaves, Pretty pebbles, Red and brown, Pretty floating thistle-down. Pretty baby, Curly head, Standing in a pansy-bed, Pretty clouds All white and curled— O ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... wheels composed of crickets' bones, And daintily made for the nonce; For fear of rattling on the stones With thistle-down they shod it; For all her maidens much did fear If Oberon had chanced to hear That Mab his Queen should have been there, He would not have ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... exceedingly prevalent throughout the universe, and the structure of the Milky Way is everywhere suggestive of them. But this is hazardous sport even for the imagination — to play with suns as if they were but thistle-down in the wind or corks ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Thistle Grove Lane is one of those quaint survivals which enable us to reconstruct the past topographically, in the same way as the silent letters in a word, apparently meaningless, enable us to reconstruct the philological past. It is no longer a lane, but a narrow passage, and about midway down is crossed ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... shower of white over the green leaves of the sumach or sage. Snap-dragons of blue and white, dandelions that you must look at three or four times to be certain what they are, thistles that are soft and tender with flowers too pretty for the thistle family, orchids that you may try in vain to classify, and sages and mints of which you can barely recognize the genera, with cruciferae, compositae, and what-not, add ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... dragged out Arthur Onslow by the head and heels—the good boy of the piece; and we found he was never missed, but the whole much lightened by throwing this heavy character overboard. Next night "The Rose, Thistle, and Shamrock": Mr. Knox laughed, and seemed ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... steps at a time whenever the lightning showed me the way. It was necessary to be careful, as the road was raised, with a deep ditch on either side; several trees had already been blown down, and lay across it, and huge branches were being driven through the air like thistle-down. I found extreme difficulty in keeping my feet, especially at the cross-roads, where I was more than once all but blown over. At last I reached my house, but even then my struggles were not quite at an end. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... wooly brown caterpillars wend their way in the short grass by the wayside, where the wild carrot and the purple bull-thistle are coming ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is thought that they date from the same period as the screen itself. It is difficult, however, to believe that they can be so old, or that such good and bad work could belong to the same period. James I. introduced into the foliage of the spandrils the rose and thistle; but this uncalled-for emendation was summarily removed in the year 1875. The side arches of the screen were at one period filled up with thick walls, and two strong doors barred the arch of entrance, but this was altered by ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... government in America the angel of freedom and the demon of slavery wrestled for the mastery. Tallyrand has beautifully and forcibly said: "The Lily and Thistle may grow together in harmonious proximity, but liberty and slavery delight in the separation." The pronounced policy of the best minds at the adoption of the Federal Constitution was to repress it as an institution inhuman in its ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... in such a brassy age I could not move a thistle; The very sparrows in the hedge Scarce answer to my whistle; Or at the most, when three-parts-sick With strumming and with scraping, A jackass heehaws from the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... had for his crown; His jacket was woven of thistle-down. His shirt was a web by spiders spun; His breeches of softest feathers were done. His stockings of red-apple rind were tyne With an eyelash plucked from his mother's eyne. His shoes were made of a mouse's skin, Tanned with ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... of earth united in the grumbling thunder of his wrath? See, there he stands, yonder in heaven—his form dark as midnight. I hear it—he calls—Overshadow the heavens, O Jupiter, With thy vaporous clouds! Cut off the oak and mountain-tops As a boy plucks the thistle. Leave me earth and my cabin Which thou hast not built, And my hearth-side, The glow of which thou enviest me! I know naught so miserable ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... field that no one knows about. We creep in and out through a little place where the barbed wire is down. We lie in the long grass and crush dandelions between our two cheeks till the milk comes out on our faces. We hold each other tight and the wind tip-toes all over us and pelts us with thistle-down. ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... free men instead of a negro livery-stable. [Great applause and laughter.] Once let slavery get planted in a locality, by ever so weak or doubtful a title, and in ever so small numbers, and it is like the Canada thistle or Bermuda grass—you can't root it out. You yourself may detest slavery; but your neighbor has five or six slaves, and he is an excellent neighbor, or your son has married his daughter, and they beg you to help save their property, and you vote against your interests and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... see the flower seeds wafted, From the nurturing mother tree, Tell we can, wherever planted, What the harvesting will be; Never from the blasting thistle, Was there gathered golden grain, Thus the seal the child receiveth, From its mother ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... told Owen the name in Arabic. These mountains were reached the following day, and, after passing through numberless defiles, the caravan debouched on a plain covered with stones, bright as if they had been polished by hand—a naked country torn by the sun, in which nothing grew, not even a thistle. In the distance were hills whose outline zigzagged, now into points like a saw, and now into long sweeping curves like a scythe; and these hills were full of narrow valleys, bare as threshing-floors. The heat hung ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Town Hall clock was just chiming half-past three as Tom Pollard left his home in Dixon Street and made his way towards the Thorn and Thistle public-house. It was not Tom's intention to stay long at the Thorn and Thistle, as he had other plans in view, nevertheless something drew him there. He crossed the tram lines in St. George's Street, and, having stopped to exchange some rustic ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... went back to the Little Country to be counsellor at law to its people in time of need, and a father to Solon Denney and his two children. Solon could direct large affairs acceptably, but he and his babes were as thistle-down ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... face resembles a bare belly?" resumed Gervaise. "And the little one, with small eyes framed in red eyelids, pared down and slashed up like a thistle head?" ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... show up again, Zenie?" Miss Susie clipped her words off short to everyone. She was a wisp of a woman with little hands as dry and yellow as parchment. Her voice had a quavering falsetto break in it and her laugh, when there was occasion, was dry and withery and short-lived like a piece of thistle-down. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... an Oaken Leaf, His Shirt a Spider's Web, Both light and soft for these his Limbs That were so smally bred. His Hose and Doublet Thistle Down, Together weav'd full fine; His Stockings of an Apple green, Made of the outward Rind; His Garters were two little Hairs Pluck'd from his Mothers Eye; His Shooes made of a Mouse's ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... expectant Eleanor; dressed, in these wilds, with a dainty care which would have done honour to London or Paris, with a bright colour in her cheeks, and the quiver of a smile on her lips. Ill! He thought he had seldom seen her look so well. Had she not always been of a thistle-down lightness? 'Exaggeration!—absurdity!' he said to himself fiercely, carrying his mind back to certain sayings in a girl's voice that were still ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... vain colossal England mows, With ponderous strength, the yielding foes; In vain fair Scotia, by her side, With courage flushed and Highland pride, Whirls her keen blade with horrid whistle And lops off heads like tops of thistle; In vain brave Erin, famed afar, The flaming thunderbolt of war, Profuse of life, through blood does wade, To lend her sister kingdom aid: Our conquering thunders vainly roar Terrific round the Gallic shore; Profoundest statesmen vainly scheme— 'Tis all a vain, ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... of Glandine, Thistle-eaters the stoutest gave way, Outdone in their own special line By the forty-ass power ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... himself with a charitable effort; for he transplanted all the thistles he could find, and tended them carefully for Toby, who was fond of the prickly delicacy, and had eaten all he could find on the place. The boys had great fun over Tom's thistle bed; but he insisted that it was better to care for poor Toby than for himself, and declared that he would devote his entire farm next year to thistles, worms, and snails, that Demi's turtles and Nat's pet owl might have the food they loved, as well as the ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... experiment of leaving Paul with his grand-parents and calling for him in the late afternoon; but one day, on re-entering the Malibran, he was met by a small abashed figure clad in a kaleidoscopic tartan and a green velvet cap with a silver thistle. After this experience of the "surprises" of which Gran'ma was capable when she had a chance to take Paul shopping Ralph did not again venture to leave his son, and their subsequent Saturdays were passed together in the sultry gloom of the Malibran. Conversation with the ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... foolish clown, 'kill me the red humble bee on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr. Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Mr. Cobweb, and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be sorry to have you overflown with a honey-bag. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... carefully, and found it so closely branched that it was impossible to see into it more than a few inches. The branched were tough and elastic, and when it struck the ground after being tossed up it would rebound several inches. But it was almost as light asa thistle-ball, and when we turned it loose it rolled away across the prairie again as ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... it to be said of me by those who know me best that I have always plucked a thistle and planted a flower in its place wherever ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... Nelly, his eyes on hers, treading lightly, his tall body apparently weighing no more than thistle-down. It was as though ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... associated with the late Lord Beaconsfield. The story of the Wars of the Roses is, of course, known to everybody, and how, in consequence of these feuds, the rose became the emblem of England, as the thistle is of Scotland, and the ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... door, where I had first to teach the bloodhounds a lesson. I never entered the filthy place but once. There were two sons and a daughter. Oh, how immortally beautiful that girl was! Such velvet darkness in the eye, such statuesque lines, such rose-leaf color, such hair—'hair like the thistle-down tinted with gold,' as John Mills, the Scotch poet-player, sang. The old man Raynier worshipped her, perhaps as a wild beast loves its whelp. But he had all sorts of fanciful names for her, Heart's-ease and Heart's Delight, and Violet and Rose and Lily. He grew almost gentle when he spoke ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... Romantic glen. Glen Ross. Camels on the down grade. Larger creek. The Ashburton. No natives. Excellent bushes for camels. A strange spot. Junction of several creeks. Large snake. Grand Junction Depot. A northerly journey. Milk thistle. Confined glen. Pool of water. Blind with ophthalmia. Leading the blind. Dome-like masses. Mount Robinson and The Governor. Ophthalmia range. Rocky spring. Native fig-trees. A glen full of water. Camels nearly drowned. Scarcity of living ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... thought that the male bird only was addicted to this practice, and that this might be his method of amusement while unprovided with a partner. The nest of the Hemp-bird is made of cotton, the down of the fern, and other soft materials, woven together with threads and the fibres of bark, and lined with thistle-down, if it be late enough to obtain it, and sometimes with cow's hair. It is commonly placed in the fork of the slender branches of a maple, linden, or poplar, and is fastened to them with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... with civil war and confusion. The queen conferred titles upon those who appeared to have influence in the nation [118] [See note Y, at the end of this Vol.] and attachment to her government, and revived the order of the thistle, which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... by whose command Was form'd this Machiavelian plot, Not leave a thistle on thy land; Then who will own thee ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... though encumbered by his burden, again inanimate, her arms clasped around his neck, as they had been round that of her kinsman, made the most desperate exertions to bear her off, seeming to regard her weight no more than if the burden had been a cushion of thistle-down. He ran for a moment with astonishing activity, leaping over bush and gully, where such crossed his path, with such prodigious strength and suppleness of frame, as to the savages appeared little short of miraculous; and, it is more than probable he might have effected his ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... was suddenly afraid and thought only of himself. Jimmy Skunk knocked Jerry Muskrat flat in his hurry to get away. Billy Mink trod on Great-Grandfather Frog's big feet and didn't even say "Excuse me." Striped Chipmunk ran head first into a big thistle and squealed as much ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... dimm'd with weeping, In the silent dust are sleeping; When above my lowly bed The breeze shall wave the thistle's head, Thou ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... medicine." Belladonna, writes Mr. Conway, is esteemed in Bohemia a favourite plant of the devil, who watches it, but may be drawn from it on Walpurgis Night by letting loose a black hen, after which he will run. Then there is the sow-thistle, which in Russia is said to belong to the devil; and Loki, the evil spirit in northern mythology, is occasionally spoken of as sowing weeds among the good seed; from whence, it has been suggested, originated the popular phrase of "sowing ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... had a little brother, With eyes that were dark and deep; In the lap of that dim old forest, He lieth in peace asleep: Light as the down of the thistle, Free as the winds that blow, We roved there the beautiful summers, The summers of long ago; But his feet on the hills grew weary, And, one of the autumn eves, I made for my little brother, A ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... kindness was his chief delight, and his examples of kindness have been of untold benefit to millions of people. You remember he said, "When they lay me away let it be said of me that as I traveled along life's road I have always endeavored to pull up a thistle and plant a rose in ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... past by his garden, and saw the wild bryar The thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher: The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags; And his money still wasts, still he ...
— Divine Songs • Isaac Watts
... brought in on her bier, and dances (she would!) her own funeral service. Maestro's heart is touched; he lies down in her stead, and she, dancing on a carpet of thistle-down shot with stars (I think), and her lord (I am sure), perpetually exclaiming, "How perfectly topping!"—both ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... him," said Ralph. So he walked slowly up to the thistle and put out his hand to catch the butterfly. But the butterfly spread his wings and flew up in the air. In a moment he came back and lighted on the ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose, He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle; But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... as Christ was—kindly, too, It seems so strange the thistle, hatred, grew To whip your tender backs, with great ado, Because you builded better ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... who was sunning himself on the top of a thistle, Frank prepared to strike, when it suddenly mounted and flitted over a hedge. In a moment the boys had scrambled through the gap and were in full pursuit. The butterfly flitted here and there, sometimes allowing the boys to approach within a few feet and then flitting ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... and thus be made to blossom as the rose. Others are dry land of a general character; but there is water enough to make all fruitful: so that instead of the thorn, the myrtle; and instead of the thistle, the fig; and instead of the deadly upas, the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... neither the rose nor the thistle, nor does he forget the solitary blade of grass in the distant waste. He destroys thoroughly and unceasingly. Everywhere we may see how he crushes to dust plants and beasts, men and their works. Even the Egyptian pyramids, that would seem to defy him, are trophies of his power,—monuments of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... breeds of camels any more than the different breeds of other domesticated animals. During the summer, when the camels are required to find their own sustenance along the road, a large caravan travels but a wretched eight miles a day, the remainder of the time being occupied in filling his capacious thistle and camel-thorn receptacle; this comes of the scarcity of good grazing along the route, compared with the number of camels, and the consequent necessity of wandering far and wide in search of pasturage, rather ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... a wish, (I mind its pow'r), A wish that to my latest hour Shall strongly heave my breast, That I for poor auld Scotland's sake Some usefu' plan or book could make, Or sing a sang at least. The rough burr-thistle, spreading wide Amang the bearded bear, I turn'd the weeder-clips aside, An' spar'd the symbol dear: No nation, no station, My envy e'er could raise; A Scot still, but blot still, I ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... helmet on; It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down: The corslet plate that guarded his breast Was once the wild bee's golden vest; His cloak, of a thousand mingled dyes, Was formed of the wings of butterflies; His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen, Studs of gold on a ground ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere they drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... Thistle for.—"Steep dwarf elder root, or Canada thistle root, and drink the tea." This is an old tried remedy that our grandmothers used to use, and can be depended upon. We all know that in olden times mothers had to use these ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... if any of your contibutors could inform me in an early number, when and on what occasion the Thistle was adopted as the emblem of the Scottish nation? I have looked into many historians, but as ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various
... procession the Highlanders, who were real Scotchmen, in plaids, and bonnets with eagle feathers. Every one had a claymore by his side, and a thistle on his breast; and there were pipers playing ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... the yard were two American goldfinches, or thistle-birds, in bright yellow and black plumage, both males. They also went to the new homestead in the oak, inspected it, chatted over it in their sweet tones, and then passed on. It began to look as though the nest were in the market for ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... common in their summer range in the United States, nesting at a low elevation in bushes and low trees. The two eggs are white, .50 x .35. Data.—Brownsville, Texas, May 5, 1892. Nest of fine bark-like fibre on the outside, lined with lint from thistle plant; located on limb of small hackberry. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... testify : atesti. text : teksto textile : teksa. thaw : degeli. theatre : teatro. then : tiam, poste, do. thick : dika; densa. thigh : femuro. thing : afero, ajxo, objekto. think : pensi, opinii. thirst : soif'i, -o. thistle : kardo. thorn : dorno. thrash : drasxi; skurgxi, bategi. threaten : minaci. threshold : sojlo. thrill : eksciti. throat : gorgxo, fauxko. throne : trono. throw : jxeti. thrush : turdo. thunder : tondr'i, -o. thus : tiel, tiamaniere; jene thyme : timiano. ticket : bileto. tickle : tikli, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... walking with papa in the fields, when he saw a red and black butterfly. It was on a thistle. ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... for all his wretched plight, but made a spring after it in the waves, and clutched it to him, and sat in the midst thereof, avoiding the issues of death; and the great wave swept it hither and thither along the stream. And as the North Wind in the harvest tide sweeps the thistle-down along the plain, and close the tufts cling each to other, even so the winds bare the raft hither and thither along the main. Now the South would toss it to the North to carry, and now again the East would yield it to the West ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... his soul In solitude.—Stranger! these gloomy boughs Had charms for him; and here he loved to sit, His only visitants a straggling sheep, The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper; And on these barren rocks, with juniper, And heath, and thistle, thinly sprinkled o'er, Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here An emblem of his own unfruitful life: And lifting up his head, he then would gaze On the more distant scene; how lovely ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... several quarters, will not be found in any volume of Browning's works, and was omitted from "Men and Women" by accident, and from further collections by forgetfulness, it may be fitly quoted here. Karshook, it may be added, is the Hebraic word for a thistle. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... a plant closely resembling the thistle, and it is extensively cultivated for its flowering head. The head is gathered just before the flower expands. The eatable portion is the fleshy part of the calyx, the bottom or basin of the blossom and the true base of the leaves of ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... otherwise. It takes the bloom off the freshness of young writers if they are determined to exhibit the last new words that are in, or out of season. New words have a doubtful position at first. They float here and there like thistle-down, and their future depends upon where they settle. But until they are established and accepted they are out of place for children's use. They are contrary to the perfect manner for children. We ask that their English should be simple and unaffected, not that it should ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... about London in those days,—or, rather, one who was an old Liberal but a young lord,—one Lord Mount Thistle, who had sat in the Cabinet, and had lately been made a peer when his place in the Cabinet was wanted. He was a pompous, would-be important, silly old man, well acquainted with all the traditions of his party, and perhaps, on that account, useful,—but a bore, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... clumps of crested dog's-tail and stray blades of succulent darnel; I force my attention on a toadstool, whose soft and lowly head gleams sickly white in the moonbeams. I glance from it to a sleeping close-capped dandelion, from it to a thistle, from it again to a late bush vetch, and then, willy-nilly, to the accursed elm. My God! What a change. It wasn't like that when I passed it at noon. It was just an ordinary tree then, but now, now—and what is that—that sinister ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... There was also Fox's "Political Pause" with its wonderful requirements of inflection to express irony; Sprague's "American Indians," "Not many generations ago, where you now sit, encircled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared." Did you not commit it to memory and speak it? Then there was Webster's Speech in which he supplied John Adams from his own fervid imagination that favorite of all patriotic boys, "Sink or swim, live ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... the power of increase is even greater and its effects more distinctly visible. Hundreds of square miles of the plains of La Plata are now covered with two or three species of European thistle, often to the exclusion of almost every other plant; but in the native countries of these thistles they occupy, except in cultivated or waste ground, a very subordinate part in the vegetation. Some American plants, like the cotton-weed (Asclepias cuiussayica), have now become common ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the nest and pick up a precarious subsistence on asters and thistles till the frosts of October cut them off. You may often see, in late September or early October, these tramp bees passing the night or a cold rain-storm on the lee side of a thistle-head. The queen bee alone survives. You never see her playing the vagabond in the fall. At least I never have. She hunts out a retreat in the ground and passes the winter there, doubtless in a torpid state, as she stores no food against the inclement season. Emerson has put this fact ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... sifted a sieve of unsifted thistles. If Theophilus Thistle, the thistle-sifter, sifted a sieve of unsifted thistles, where is the sieve of unsifted thistles that Theophilus ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... took up the pail. The cows meandered along. She was rather glad Jim did not see the thistle. She would not ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... thee; Yes, with this magic Blade I shall touch thee; Such is its power That, like a thistle, Withered 'twill leave thee, Like a thistle the ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... problem in Euclid. To do so would be to treat the creatures by a law not germane to their nature. It is, indeed, a radical vice in Calvinistic reasoning that, because God is omnipotent, He can as easily therefore create virtue in a free being as He can waft the down of the thistle on the breeze. It is quite true that "whatsoever the Lord pleased that did He in heaven and in earth" (Ps. cxxxv. 6). But the question is—What is His pleasure in regard to the production of virtue? Is it a forced ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... the verification of it are of so recent a date, that we cannot resist giving it a place in our pages. In the account of the late Captain Flinder's voyage of discovery, is the melancholy relation of the loss of the master, Mr. Thistle, with seven others, in a boat, on the inhospitable shores of Terra Australia. To this narrative, the following note is subjoined, which we shall here quote in Captain Flinder's own words: "This evening, Mr. Fowler, the lieutenant, told me a circumstance which I thought very extraordinary, and it ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... more forsaken looking place it would be hard to imagine. Not that the surrounding country wasn't ruggedly beautiful and grand; the hills were covered with live-oak, yucca grass, chulla, manzanita, and starred with the white blossoms of wild thistle. But this locality was remote ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... surveyed and explored the mountain. There are a lot of strawberries planted there, which do very well, but there were not many ripe. The common weeds and plants of the top were very like English ones, such as buttercups, sow-thistle, plantain, wormwood, chickweed, charlock, St. John's wort, violets and many others, all closely allied to our common plants of those names, but of distinct species. There was also a honey-suckle, and a tall and very pretty kind of cowslip. None of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the thistle; but the thistle maintained his abominable heresy so stoutly that the little vine and the daisy and the violet were quite at a loss to know which of the two to believe,—the old oak-tree ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... evening coolness and the gradual approach to the great Alps, which await him at the close of the day. It is about Mulhausen that he begins to feel a change in the landscape. The fields broaden into rolling downs, watered by clear and running streams; the green Swiss thistle grows by riverside and cowshed; pines begin to tuft the slopes of gently rising hills; and now the sun has set, the stars come out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights; and he feels—yes, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... oak-leaf hat he had for his crown; His shirt of web by spiders spun; With jacket wove of thistle's down; His trowsers were of feathers done. His stockings, of apple-rind, they tie With eyelash from his mother's eye His shoes were made of mouse's skin, Tann'd with ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... I can figure to myself your whole surprised attitude as you exclaim, "What, in the name of all that is restless, has sent 'Dame Shirley' to Rich Bar? How did such a shivering, frail, home-loving little thistle ever float safely to that far-away spot, and take root so kindly, as it evidently has, in that barbarous soil? Where, in this living, breathing world of ours, lieth that same Rich Bar, which, sooth to say, hath a most taking name? And, for pity's sake, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... that was so brave and so comely, and that could overtake a deer at its greatest speed, and see a thistle thorn on the darkest night, the wife he took was Eibhir of the plaited yellow hair, that was the foreign sweetheart of ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... (Cuscutaceae); the beautiful group of convolvuluses (Convolvulaceae); the gentians (Gentianaceae); the primrose group (Primulaceae); the heaths (Ericaceae); the graceful hair-bell and its allies (Campanulaceae); the very large group to which belong the daisy, dandelion, and thistle (Compositae); the honeysuckle order (Caprifoliaceae); the ivy (Araliaceae); the large order containing the fennel, hemlock, and a multitude of other forms which, though mostly ranking as herbs, attain gigantic dimensions in some species ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... hope it will grow out," she bantered, in an effort to put him at his ease. "What a pity if his illness should leave poor Don with a head like a thistle—with all the fuzzy-wuzzy inside." ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... clown, "the red bumble-bee on the top of the thistle yonder, and bring me the honey-bag. ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... you let us?" asked Betty eagerly, jumping up and dropping a kiss, light as thistle-down, upon the old face. "And we'll bring you flowers, whole bunches of them. Will you promise to ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... action, you will see many. A faint pur comes out of the heavens and two planes are seen circling as they exchange bullets from their machine guns. Another plane is turning to the right and left and ducking to avoid the thistle blows of smoke which burst from the shrapnel shells ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... paled. The indecisiveness which never dared to grasp the thistle firmly was troubling him with a new dilemma. Yet something in Marcia Terroll made a call upon him which no other woman had yet made—the call to be honest at ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... The sweet-smelling clover, He, humming, hangs over; The scent of the roses Makes fragrant his wings: He never gets lazy; From thistle and daisy, And weeds of the meadow, Some ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... because he had had so little sleep of late; and then he would be fresh for her, fresh for youth and beauty, coming towards him across the sunlit lawn—lady in grey! And settling back in his chair he closed his eyes. Some thistle-down came on what little air there was, and pitched on his moustache more white than itself. He did not know; but his breathing stirred it, caught there. A ray of sunlight struck through and lodged on his boot. A ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... be sorry to think," I broke in, "that that sweet little floating thistle-down of a child I once knew was to be done to ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... up the fulsome thistle in the prime: Young trees bend lightly, but grow strong in time. Were I the worthiest to advise your honour, You should pursue him with your spredding bandes Swifter in march then is the lightning flame, And take him tardy ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... Crickets bones, And daintily made for the nonce, For feare of ratling on the stones, With Thistle-downe they shod it; For all her Maydens much did feare, If Oberon had chanc'd to heare, 150 That Mab his Queene should haue bin there, He would ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... that there followed for M. de Cussy an extremely bad quarter of an hour. M. de Cussy, in fact, deserves your sympathy. His self-sufficiency was blown from him by the haughty M. de Rivarol, as down from a thistle by the winds of autumn. The General of the King's Armies abused him—this man who was Governor of Hispaniola—as if he were a lackey. M. de Cussy defended himself by urging the thing that Captain Blood had so admirably urged already on his behalf—that if the terms he had made ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... hills o' the cromlech and cairn, Where blossoms the thistle by hillocks o' fern; There Freedom in triumph an altar has made For holiest rites in the land ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... great, flower-grown railway banks, garden-set stations, and all the little things of the vanished nineteenth century still holding out against Immensity. Here and there would be a patch of wind-sown, wind-tattered giant thistle defying the axe; here and there a ten-foot puff-ball or the ashen stems of some burnt-out patch of monster grass; but that was all there was to hint at the coming ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... chasm of the bluffs, having better soil and underwood, which, thin at first, increases gradually in density. Low bushes, hardly a foot high, are formed by the American Thistle, (Ceanothus Americanus,) a plant whose leaves were used instead of tea, in Boston, during the Revolution. Next follow the Hazel-bush, (Corylus Americana,) the fiery-red Castilleja coccinea, and the yellow Canadian Louse-wort; the Dipteracanthus strepens, with great blue funnel-shaped blossoms, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... than ever—a wood-nymph, half divine. Yet, obscurely, he felt a change in her, from the beginning of their talk. Why had she sent for him? The wildest notions had possessed him, ever since her letter reached him. Yet, now that he saw her, they seemed to float away from him, like thistle-down on the wind. ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... boughs. We can't have all these bundles coming down on his reverence's head—— Come on, Babet, it's your turn. What's the good of staring at me like that with your big eyes? Fine rosemary yours is, my word! as yellow as a thistle. You next, La Rousse. Ah, well, that is splendid laurel! You got that out of your ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... laughing, "they say and say it very distinctly, too, 'Charlotte, Charlotte, don't you hear me whistle?' Charlotte is his mate, you know; and the reply to that is 'Philip, Philip's sitting on the thistle.'" ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... branches, which in a warm climate each stem throws out close above the surface of the ground, breaks the length of fibre and renders it unfit for those purposes for which, in the northern regions of Europe, its tall branchless stem is so well adapted. The sow thistle, a plant that occurs in almost every part of the world, was nothing different here from its usual habit in Europe. We observed also a species of Chenopodium and of Artemisia or wormwood; abundance of the Pe-tsai, and other common culinary vegetables. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... India in 1862 he was given a silver pitcher and a silver tray.[19] The pitcher (13 inches high and 7-1/2 inches in diameter) has a tall, slender neck with a decided downturn to the pouring lip and a hinged lid with a thistle flower as a knob. The neck is engraved on each side with a design of grape leaves and grapes. The bowl of the pitcher has eight panels embossed with scrolls of vines and flowers. Both the tray and the pitcher are marked "Allen and ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... there. I quite go with that line of reasoning. By their fruits shall ye know them. A man don't usually go to a thistle to find grapes. But let me ask you, Ned, do you usually find that murderers, drunkards, burglars, thieves, and blackguards in general are students of the Bible and given to ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... swept and thrashed to and fro in the thundering wind like a thistle, and flamed in the full sunshine like a bonfire. The green, fantastic human figure, vivid against its autumn red and gold, was already among its highest and craziest branches, which by bare luck did not break with the weight of his big body. He ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... There have been many other examples of the almost incredible power of multiplication of an animal or plant when taken into a new environment, removed from conditions which held it in check, as the introduction of the mongoose into Jamaica, the rabbit into Australia, the thistle into New South Wales and ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... somewhat impressive. His complexion was that of the copper-beech tree. His frame was stalwart, though slightly stooping. His mouth was large, and he carried an unpolished sapling as his walking-stick, except when he carried a spud for cutting up any thistle he encountered on his walks. His castle stood in the midst of a park, surrounded by dusky elms, except to the southward; and when the moon shone out, the gleaming stone facade, backed by heavy boughs, was visible from the distant high road as a white ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... the prime adventurer of the party, now got ready to settle at Portland Bay. He chartered a small schooner, "The Thistle", loading her with stores and live stock, and with selections of seed, fruit trees, vegetables, etc., part of them bought from Fawkner, who had then a market garden on Windmill Hill, near Launceston, besides keeping ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... with the Duke of Cumberland whom he succeeded. A cheerful, singularly polite, modest, well-conditioned man withal. To be slightly better known to us, if we live. He at present is a Boy of ten, chasing the thistle's beard. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was unceremoniously put aside, it was then. Sam had come rather leisurely at first—then with a sort of flying bound which cleared the fence like a thistle down, he bore down upon the doctor, and taking up Faith as easily as if she had been a kitten, absolutely ran with her to a spring which welled up through the long meadow grass a few yards off. There the doctor found him applying the cold water with both gentleness and skill, for Sam ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... with the country, young De Clameran was confident of eluding his pursuers. He knew that the next field was a thistle-field, and was separated from the chestnut by a ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... and squeal and whistle, Rollin' in the sand; Let him have the freedom of the whole back lot. Things that hurt like thorn o' thistle Workin' in your hand You'll be wishin' some time that those things were not! When I think of babies—old From the things that can't be told— And then look at him a-dancin', Singin', shoutin', in his joy: Don't put out a hand to stop ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... again rebound; But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee, Nor churlish porter canst thou chafing see; All dumb and silent like the dead of night, Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite! The marble pavement hid with desert weed, With houseleek, thistle, dock, and hemlock-seed.— Look to the towered chimneys, which should be The windpipes of good hospitality:— Lo there the unthankful swallow takes her rest, And fills the tunnel ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the dull-green, serried hop-rows, talking at rare intervals about the value of the crops, the drainage of the estate, the village schools, the Primrose League, and the iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of Okehurst carefully cut down every tall thistle that caught his eye—I sometimes felt, I say, an intense and impotent desire to enlighten this man about his wife's character. I seemed to understand it so well, and to understand it well seemed to imply such ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... passes, Saucy grasshoppers Leapt about the grasses And the thistle-burs; And the whispered chuckle Of the katydid Shook the honeysuckle ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... deep shade of the cool glossy leaves, through the long warm summer day; to gather the fresh nuts and berries; to drink the pure dews of heaven, all bright and sparkling from the opening flowers; to sleep on soft beds of moss and thistle-down in some hollow branch rocked by the wind as in a cradle. Yet, though this was the happy life led by a family of pretty grey squirrels that had their dwelling in the hoary branch of an old oak-tree that ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... boughs Had charms for him: and here he loved to sit, His only visitants a straggling sheep, The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper; And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath And juniper and thistle sprinkled o'er, Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here An emblem of his own unfruitful life: And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze On the more distant scene,—how lovely ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... a species of tall thistle of rank and unpleasant scent, is the first plant that appears when the ground has been freed from timbers by fire: if a piece of land lies untilled the first summer after its being chopped, the following spring shows you a smothering crop of this vile weed. The next plant ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill |
