"Tree trunk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... She listened awhile and then, upon hearing once more the love song above the beating of the drum, yielded to the dictates of her heart and began to climb the hill. Little Pine saw her coming, ceased his drumming, and slid down to hide behind the tree trunk. ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... silky head under her hand, was resting against the prop formed by a great tree trunk behind her shoulders, and looking down at the two ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... bound the apron around his head as well as she could, and then sat down a moment on a fallen tree trunk, to think what she should do next. The man already seemed more comfortable; he had ceased moaning, and lay ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... accomplishments were indeed fruitful. However, there is still room and need for a program of expansion. It is our responsibility and obligation to see that this growth continues. The rings of growth on a tree trunk push outward and continually expand and grow—so must our association. Sometimes we become so deeply engrossed in what we are doing or trying to do that it is advisable to back up and take a broadside view of our objectives ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... cover of a fallen tree trunk and crossed to a covered shell-hole which answered to the name of dug-out. Anyway, apart from shrapnel or a direct hit from an H.E., we were comparatively safe, being below ground level. Along the centre was a rough plank on two boxes ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... seen, as Alfred Stieglitz has so clearly shown, that an eyebrow, a leg, a tree trunk, a body, a breast, a hand, any part being equal to the whole in its power to tell the story, could be made as interesting, more so indeed than all the famous people in existence. It doesn't matter to us in the least that Morgan and Richard Strauss helped fill a folio ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... when he was very old, Milo wandered out alone into a forest where some woodcutters had been at work. The men had gone away, leaving their wedges in an unusually large tree trunk. ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... forward warily, and stept across that mighty snake, and tore the fleece from off the tree trunk; and the four rushed down the garden, to the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Sindbad are equally conscious of the value of ivory. Pliny (viii. 3) quotes Herodotus about the buying of ivories and relates how elephants, when hunted, break their "cornua" (as Juba called them) against a tree trunk by way of ransom. AElian, Plutarch, and Philostratus speak of the linguistic intelligence and religious worship of the "half-reason with the hand," which the Hindus term "Hathi"unimanus. Finally, Topsell's Gesner (p. 152) makes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... before you could even get your eye on the place where the noise was; and where only the earliest birds were turning out and getting to business with a song here and a quarrel yonder and a mysterious far-off hammering and drumming for worms on a tree trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remotenesses of the woods. And by and by out we would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... heaps grew fast. They were not arranged in a row on a level, but mounted one above another on the slope. Jimmies idea was to so place the fires one above the other, some thing like notches cut in a tree trunk. ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... clambered over a large tree trunk that had fallen across the path and the little pappoose was jolted wide awake, he did not cry. His beady black eyes followed every stray sunbeam and every bounding rabbit, or chance bird with wonder and delight. When his mother went to work ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... night was spent as our former one had been. The next morning we rode forward to visit the pound which I will briefly describe. It consisted of a large circle of stout stakes, driven into the ground perpendicularly, close together. There was one opening, at the entrance of which a strong tree trunk was placed about a foot from the ground, and at the inner side an excavation was made sufficiently deep to prevent the buffalo from leaping back when once in the pound. From this entrance, on either side, gradually widening, ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... them got a grip on Jack as he leaned against the dead tree trunk. I just caught a glimpse of it, and called to prevent Mark from running ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... down on a fallen tree trunk to readjust his boot strap, he had mistaken for the booming of a huge jungle insect something which whizzed through the space where his head had been a ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... said Harriet. "I'm not a bit braver than you are. As it happened, I knew what that was the instant I saw it. The tree trunk was not standing there when we came into camp last night. Had it been, Mr. Grubb would have seen it. The trunk had fallen across the trail. When I started to go down below to look for our supplies I stumbled ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... was used to tremendous storms, and loved nothing better than to stand out on the veranda to watch one raging round among the hills or out at sea. Now it was a positive blessing. Every flash showed him where he was, and he took care to have a tree trunk between himself and the camp. Then during the thunder bursts he made his way swiftly forward, groping cautiously like a blind man. His spirits rose with the excitement, and all his courage came back ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... dressed like a tree trunk in a long brown cambric robe that fitted him closely and gave him at the foot only the absolute space that he needed for walking. He carried real apple twigs almost entirely stripped of their leaves and laden with blossoms made of white and pink ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... black-throats, myrtle and magnolia warblers, oven birds, peewits, blue jays, purple finches, passed silently or noisily, each according to his kind. Once a lone spruce hen dusted herself in a stray patch of sunlight until it shimmered on a tree trunk, raised upward, and disappeared, to give place to long level dusty shafts that shot here and there through the pines laying the spell of sunset on the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... But they were far away from the shore. At first he did not think of this very much. He had overcome so many difficulties that he thought, "Never mind, I will get my boat to water, no matter where I make it, in some way." So he selected a tree trunk some distance from the bank of the little creek near his ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... I do not say weight on weakness. The superimposition of the human body on its limbs I call weight on lightness: the superimposition of the branches on a tree trunk I call lightness on weight: in both cases the support is fully adequate to the work, the form of support being regulated by the differences of requirement. Nothing in architecture is half so painful as the apparent want of sufficient support when the weight above ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... found a smooth and gentle slope where Melicent sat herself comfortably down, her back against the broad support of a tree trunk, and Gregoire lay prone upon the ground with—his head ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... had wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore, but the same minister returned not from the forest. He might have said to the friends who greeted him—"I am not the man for whom you take me! I left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree trunk, and near a melancholy brook! Go, seek your minister, and see if his emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung down there, like a cast-off garment!" His friends, no doubt, would still ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... three distinctly heard the swishing of a slender tree trunk as it hissed backwards and forwards. Then, a cry so horrid, harsh and piercing that even the sceptical, sneering Curtis gave vent to an expression of fear. Again a hush, and increasing darkness and cold. Kelson ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the bench beneath the pleasant shade of the wide-spreading oak in front of the inn door, drinking ale and beer, and all stared amain at this fair and gallant lad. Two of the stoutest of them were clothed in Lincoln green, and a great heavy oaken staff leaned against the gnarled oak tree trunk ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... fool goin' to do?" he said to himself; the man's evident ignorance regarding footprints had lessened the boy's awe of him. But the stranger's next essay took Johnny's breath away. Standing on the fallen tree trunk at its axis on the outcrop, he began to rock it gently. To Johnny's surprise it began to move. The upper end descended slowly, lifting the root in the excavation at the lower end, and with it a mass of rock, and revealing ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... distorted with pain, stood up behind the fallen tree trunk, the upper part of his ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... at him. Vines scraped against his sides. He was hurled against a tree trunk with stunning force, and rebounded, and swung clear, and then dangled halfway between earth and the jungle roof. It was minutes before his head cleared, and then he felt at once despairing and a fool. Dangling in his parachute ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... tenderfoot, even if he did not know as much as some of the others about woodcraft. He walked along the log, made the jump successfully, though falling flat on his face when he gained the rock; managed to gain the second tree trunk, and conducted himself so cleverly on the whole that Ned gave him a wave of approval after he had joined ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... and sat down in the shade of some overhanging branches. Reinhard stood opposite to her, leaning against a tree trunk; and as he heard the cuckoo calling farther back in the woods, it suddenly struck him that all this had happened once before. He looked at her and with an ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... Spaniards in the West Indies early in the 17th century; but its first introduction to this country was about 1770, when it was employed by artists for erasing black-lead pencil marks, hence its familiar name; it is collected by making incisions in the tree trunk and gathering the slowly exuding juice, which is first solidified by drying, then purified by boiling and washing; it is flexible and elastic, insoluble in water, and impenetrable to gases and fluids, and these qualities give it great commercial importance; the use of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... her head toward the top of the tree and calling.] Mr. Woodpecker! [To CHANTECLER.] We will ask the learned gentleman in the green coat. [To the WOODPECKER the upper half of whose figure appears at a round hole high up in the tree trunk; his coat is green, his waistcoat buff, and he wears a red skull-cap.] Do you say ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... houses are built at the foot of a hill and sacrifice is regularly offered on the hill-side in the fourth month of each year. The Pehmo determines which is the most propitious day, and the Tumuh and his people proceed to the appointed spot. A limestone rock with an old tree trunk near is chosen as an altar, and a sheep and pig are brought forward by the Tumuh. The Pehmo, having adjusted his clothes, sits cross-legged before the altar, and begins intoning his incantations in a low muttering voice. The sacrifice is then slain, and the blood poured beneath the altar, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... thoughts were passing through Desmond's mind he heard a man rise from the group aft and come forward. Instinctively he moved from the side of the vessel towards the mainmast, and as the man drew near Desmond stood so that the stout tree trunk was between them. The man went rapidly towards the bows, and in a low tone hailed the lookout, whispering him a summons to join the Gujarati at the helm. The lookout, one of the Marathas, left his post; he came aft with the messenger, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... bottom of the picture, not quite in the middle of the picture, a little on the right, is also ultramarine, and here the colour is used nearly in its first intensity. And the colossal woman who wears the blue gown leans against some grey forest tree trunk, and a great white primeval animal is what her forms and attitude suggest. There are some women about her, and they lie and sit in disconnected groups like fragments fallen from a pediment. Nor is any attempt made to relate, by the aid of vague look or ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... sound, he saw Sally sitting there, with her hands resting on the moss and her eyes deeply troubled. She was gazing fixedly ahead, and her lips were trembling. At once Samson's face grew black. Some one had been making Sally unhappy. Then, he saw beyond her a standing figure, which the tree trunk had hitherto concealed. It was the loose-knitted figure ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... him. He waited till he was only two paces off and then he seized a stone weighing half a hundred weight and hurled it at him—the tree trunk behind which Szilard had taken refuge bent beneath the blow. Then Fatia Negra fled down towards ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... black beard. His flannel shirt, trousers and leather apron, and even his arms and hands were as dark as the inside of his workshop, whose dinginess he seemed, as it were, to wear on his person. And the grimy fellow, who seemed really an insult to the sunset glow, stood there like a tree trunk, taller and broader than any one ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... turned, and when he came up again it was bobbing five feet ahead of him. Ages seemed to pass before he flung his numb arm over it and floated with it. He was not alone in the flood; a coyote was pushing steadily across his path towards the nearer bank, and on a gliding tree trunk crouched a frightened cougar, its ears flattened and its sharp claws dug solidly through the bark. Here and there were cattle and a snake wriggled smoothly past him, apparently as much at home in the water as out of it. The log turned again and he just managed to catch hold ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... Sechard printing establishment bore testimony to the sordid avarice of the old "bear," who never spent a penny on repairs. The old house had stood in sun and rain, and borne the brunt of the weather, till it looked like some venerable tree trunk set down at the entrance of the alley, so riven it was with seams and cracks of all sorts and sizes. The house front, built of brick and stone, with no pretensions to symmetry, seemed to be bending beneath the weight of a worm-eaten roof covered with the curved pantiles ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... himself slowly on, like a great serpent, he watched for the Indian sentinels, and at last he saw one, a Shawnee warrior crouched in the lee of a huge tree trunk to shelter himself from the driving rain, but always looking toward the mouth of ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... too deep, lassie," he said. "Sae deep ye canna reach them. There's little ye can dae for tree or man, Marcella, but juist not hinder them. All we can do, the best of us, is to put a bit of soil an' watter half-way up a tree trunk an' ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... Henry awoke, yawning a little and stretching himself mightily. Then he looked questioningly at Shif'less Sol who sat in a position of great luxury with his doubled blanket between his back and a tree trunk, and his rifle across his knees. The look of satisfaction that had come there in the morning like a noon glow still overspread his tanned ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... against the apple-tree trunk, and closed his eyes. The spice-pink, still held at his nostrils, shielded his lips. He looked rather white, his nurse noticed, but she had become accustomed to seeing these moments come upon him—they ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... opened her eyes very wide and looked round, and saw a funny native Bear on the tree trunk behind her. He was quite clearly to be seen in the moonlight. His thick, grey fur, that looked as if he was wrapped up to keep out the most terribly cold weather; his short, stumpy, big legs, and ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... nutting. His beautiful swift movements are checked by the thickness of the hazels. In a beech grove he has more liberty to run and leap. Sometimes you will see twenty at once all nibbling the beech nuts on the ground. On hearing you they make for a tree trunk, and, rushing up it for a yard or two, stop suddenly, absolutely still, with fearful eyes, and ears intently and intensely cocked. If you stand equally still the squirrel will stay there, motionless, like a piece of the ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... to look, for now he remembered the Beautiful Wicked Witch and the bird she had caged in there. He saw a door in the tree trunk ajar, and swinging to and fro with tiny tinkling music. He peeped in, and between the swingings caught glimpses of little blue and yellow flowers arranged in tight bunches in hanging vases. He could smell their sweetness even out ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... plashes of ripples. A piece of wood pushed out from the hillside, the trees that formed it struggling out into the meadow in a broken succession of individuals like a line of men. Here, leaning against the last tree trunk that stood quite alone in advance of its companions, was a young woman, her arms folded above the cap—like the Grecian cassos—that imperfectly held her hair, and dressed in a yellow tunic and the half seen leggings of meshed chalcal ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... edge of the barb-wire, and what looked like part of a tree trunk turned into a man-sized bird's nest. The sentry in the nest had his back to us, and was peering intently down through the branches of the tree tops. He remained so long motionless that I thought he was not aware of our approach. But he had ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... open and only stopped when behind shelter, peeping out with one eye. At last he left the tent, and I followed him into the woods. Beneath the overhang of the cliff he stopped, his piercing eyes flashing in the darkness as I advanced with the torch. Patiently he waited beneath a leaning tree trunk. Ten feet from him I knelt upon the velvet needles of the forest, and with torch held aloft, steadied the six-shooter, ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... were drowned by the crash outside. The lightning had struck a big old tree that overhung the house. The tree trunk was splintered right down from the top, and before the sound of the thunder died away the broken-off part of that tree fell right across ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... a slow drizzle, but Henry still watched at the loophole, and soon he caught a glimpse of two parallel rows of men bearing something heavy, and approaching the cabin. They had secured a tree trunk, and would batter down the door; but they must come within range, and Henry smiled to himself. Then he beckoned to Paul to come to ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... descent to the road except for one shelving bit of level ground upon which rested, as if it had alighted there, a one-room cabin, for which an end of a tree trunk served as a doorstep. A loosely-hung wooden door provided the only light by day, except that given by the flickering of the flames from the burning logs ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... young railroader living in the place, saw an old man floating down the river on a tree trunk whose agonized face and streaming gray hair excited his compassion. He plunged into the torrent, clothes and all, and brought the old man safely ashore. Scarcely had he done this when the upper story of a house floated ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... of the darkest part before us there arose a loud tearing noise as if bark was being scratched from a tree trunk. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... irrigate by a dhekli or dipping lift, from temporary wells or from water-holes in rivers. The pole of the lift has a weight at one end and a kerosene tin suspended from the other. Another form of lift is a hollowed tree trunk worked on a fulcrum, but this only raises the water a foot or two. The Marars do general cultivation as well; but as a class are not considered skilled agriculturists. The proverb ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... here shoving from disaster against a tree trunk, there avoiding a smash with something else. How it was all done I have not the remotest notion—perhaps it was mere luck—but when I came level with the hillock I was only three feet clear of it on the ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... have so many stores? Why! There was one just for tobacco alone, and one (a lovely one—the Art Shoppy it was) for pictures and vases and stuff, with oh, the dandiest vase made so it looked just like a tree trunk! ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... which came too near I dived for cover. If there was no friendly wall or vehicle or tree trunk at hand the ditch beside the road was always there. And every time I dived my companion stood in the middle of the road and shook with laughter—not unkindly, but in the utmost friendliness and good humor—waiting till I rejoined him and we resumed ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... without the slightest feeling of dizziness. Sometimes I leaped over a crevasse whose depth would have made me recoil had I been in the midst of glaciers on shore; sometimes I ventured out on a wobbling tree trunk fallen across a gorge, without looking down, having eyes only for marveling at the wild scenery of this region. There, leaning on erratically cut foundations, monumental rocks seemed to defy the laws of balance. From between their stony knees, trees sprang up like jets under fearsome ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... been intent, as before, upon finding some of the coveted crystals. She had no luck; but presently she discovered something decidedly worth while—a fallen tree trunk, not too large, and near enough to the bank to be handled without help. A few minutes later she was floating at ease, and making ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... on the other hand, they have this in common with all laws, that they may be observed with mathematical precision, yet with no grateful result; the disciplined eye and the life in the woods are worth more than all botanical knowledge. For there is that about the growing of the tree trunk, and that grace in its upper ramification which cannot be taught, and which cannot even be seen but by eager watchfulness. There is not an Exhibition passes, but there appear in it hundreds of elaborate paintings of trees, many of them executed from nature. For three ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... day, too, he uttered his first genuine woodpecker cry of "pe-auk!" He had not the least embarrassment before me. I think he regarded me as a part of the landscape,—the eccentric development of a tree trunk, perhaps; for while he never looked at me nor put the smallest restraint upon his infant passions, let another person come into the wood, and he was at once silent and on his guard. All this time he had become more and more fascinated with the view without his door; one could fairly see the love ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... was never at a loss which trees to search. No sooner had he begun, than he was surprised at the quantities that he found. To an ordinary observer the trunk of the spruce tree seems like any other tree trunk—no rougher, and perhaps somewhat smoother than many; but Tom now found that on every tree almost there were little round excrescences, which, on being picked at with the knife, came off readily, and proved to be gum. Vast quantities ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... a canoe out of a solid tree trunk is a sufficiently formidable task for two men to undertake when they possess no more suitable tools than their hangers—the hanger being a weapon very similar to the more modern cutlass; and although the two Englishmen had already done a similar piece of work once before, and were therefore ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... wigwams down, And pine-tree trunk and limb Began to sprout among the leaves In shape of steeples slim; And out the little wharves were stretched Along the ocean's rim, And up the little school-house shot To keep ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... up soon after dawn by one of the cubs tugging at his shoelaces in play. When he sat up he saw two of the cubs standing near him on their hind legs, wrestling with each other, the other two were playing hide and seek round a tree trunk, and now Angelica let go his laces and came romping into his arms to kiss him and say "Good morning" to him, then worrying the points of his waistcoat a little shyly after ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... a hole in a tree to carry his mate some food and told her where fire was kept. He was overheard by a squirrel running up the tree trunk. ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... among the bushes, and then Jadwin led the way to where a fallen tree lay. "Tie up the horses," he ordered, and it was done. Next the tree trunk was pushed into the stream and all straddled it. By means of rude paddles cut from tree boughs they ferried ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... Tim ran up fearlessly and began fingering the bits of stuff that clung to him from the fields and ditches. In his beard were some stray rose leaves and the feather of a little bird. The children had an air of sheltering against a tree trunk—woodland creatures—mice or squirrels chattering among the roots, or birds flown in to settle on a hedge. They were not one whit afraid. For nothing surprised them on this marvellous ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... people of the woods came peeping through the greenery surveying her, weighing her, examining her, testing her spirit of good or ill. A little squirrel went scampering up one huge tree trunk and down another, just a pace ahead, scouting for the other pixies of the woods, till with a scurr-r-r and chitter—chipper—ee, he whisked back in his tracks. "She's all right, people," he said. Then a whisky ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... befriend!" she whispered, as she felt her way forward. With touch of tree trunk and slipping moccasin, lithe bend and sway and turning, as sure in the forest as any savage, this Maid of the Trail took into her hands the saving of a man. It was simple. Wit must play the greater part, wit that invades a sleeping camp, risks its life, and laughs at its ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... stripped off his jacket, and, by means of a lift from Fred, got upon one of the great horizontal boughs, and soon contrived to reach the one to which the kite tail was fluttering. But Harry was at the thick end, by the tree trunk, and the tail was twenty feet further off, at the thin end; and, as those who have tested the wood in their lead pencils well know, cedar is very brittle. Now, Harry was no coward, but he knew that he would be laughed at if he ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... of an hour, twenty minutes, surprised, not understanding what could be keeping them. She had dismounted. She sat there, leaning against a tree trunk. Suddenly a thought came to her as she glanced again at the glove, the whips and the two horses left tied there, and she sprang to her saddle with an irresistible desire to make ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the branch which offered a perch high up on the tree trunk and once more searched the landscape for a sign of fresh water or a solid path through the mud. The scene below him now resembled nothing so much as a painter's palette streaked and splashed with all the bright primary colors and all their possible ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... his escape, and so were Richard and Marguerite. They seated themselves on an overturned tree trunk, to recover a little strength. When they had rested a little, the Count quickly threw off his uniform and donned some old clothes belonging to Richard. With a staff in his hand and a bundle on his back, Richard now led the way, while the Count and Marguerite ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... answered with a low whine. Jonathan looked up and down the creek valley and along the hillside, but he saw no living thing. Snow, snow everywhere, its white monotony relieved here and there by a black tree trunk. Tige sniffed again and then growled. Turning his ear to the breeze Jonathan heard faint yelps from far over the hilltop. He dropped his axe and the traps and ran the remaining short distance up the hill. When he reached the summit the clear baying of hunting wolves ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... and stretched his arms over his head with a regretful sigh. "My mind comes out of it as stubbornly as Sigmund's sword came out of the tree trunk. We will return to it the first thing in the morning. You have done me a service which I shall never forget while my mind ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... two claws and then by one claw, and the whole weight of him was pulling me down. It didn't seem to be my leg. I wasn't frightened, I felt absolutely nothing, I was amazed. I slipped, tried to get a hold on the tree trunk, felt myself being hauled down, and then got my arm about the branch. I still clung to my unloaded gun as an impoverished aristocrat might cling to his patent of nobility. That was, I felt, my answer for ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... has four rooms. It has a hall running through it. It was built in slave times. There is a spring about two hundred yards from it. That is about ten or twelve feet deep. There is a big cypress tree trunk hollowed out and sunk down in it to make a curbing. That cypress is about two or three feet across. The old man, Henry Goodman, sunk that cypress down in there in slavery time. He drove an ox team all the time. That is all the work he done. She would tell all the ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... twos and threes, the villagers were melting away: and Desmond, who was leaning against a tree trunk close to Norton, helmet tilted over his nose, apparently half ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the flooded forest about two hours, and now they pulled very cautiously toward the main stream. It was a large boat for two men, however strong, to handle, but they got through without colliding with snag or tree trunk, or making any noise that could be heard ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... they were as much at ease as a farmer on his own acres. To their keen eyes, trained for generations to more than a wild beast's watchfulness, the wilderness was an open book; nothing at rest or in motion escaped them. They had begun to track game as soon as they could walk; a scrape on a tree trunk, a bruised leaf, a faint indentation of the soil, which the eye of no white man could see, all told them a tale as plainly as if it had been shouted in their ears.[14] With moccasined feet they trod among brittle twigs, dried leaves, and dead branches as silently as the cougar, and they ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... his senses, the youth's hands had been bound behind him, and now he was made to sit down with his back against a fair-sized tree trunk which had been dragged into the cave for firewood. A rope was passed around the log and this in turn was fastened to the cord about his wrists, thus ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... thicket, and seizing the most convenient ammunition, which chanced to be in great plenty that day upon the braes of Balmaghie, pursued his insulter along the glade with such excellent aim and good effect that the black unadorned armour of the horseman showed disks of defilement all over, like a tree trunk covered with ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... 7th Tuesday 1806 Set out at Day light, porceded up the Creek about 2 mile and crossed on a tree trunk the Salt makers have fallen across, then proceeded on to the Ocean 3/4 mile & proceded up 3 miles to the mouth of Colimex River about 80 or 100 yds wide verry rapid & Cuts its banks, here we found an old Village ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... violence of cloudbursts, it clung like an octopus to a shattered reef of rocks and sucked up its nourishment from the water. In the pool formed by its roots the minnows leapt and darted, solemn bull-frogs stared forth from dark holes, and in a natural seat against the huge tree trunk Big Boy sat cooling his feet. He looked younger now, with the blood washed off his face and the hard lines of hunger ironed out, and as Bunker Hill made some friendly crack he showed his white ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... up behind him, and when I do I grip him where he won't make too much noise nor do me too much harm till I let him. He wasn't a very big chap, nor any too strong, and I sets him down on the nearest old tree trunk and—'What is ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... what they were doing. It tried to escape their range by going up, but they followed it. By this time the compensators were already beginning to fail. Haywire instruments jerked the machine back down and then side to side, then into a tree trunk, blindly. It rebounded and dipped low, almost touching the ground before it curved back up. Some of Glynnis' shots were missing, but Nelson made every shot count, even while the ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... dream that I'm lying in a dark wood under a tall tree and I would up—up to the top, where I can look far over the fair landscape, where the sun is shining. I climb—climb, to plunder the birds' nests up there where the golden eggs lie, but the tree trunk is so thick, so smooth, and the first limb is so high! But I know if I reached the first limb I should climb as though on a ladder, to the top. I haven't reached it yet, but I shall reach it, if only ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... mumbled Anderson, and the two men who supported him lowered him gently to the ground, with his back against a tree trunk. "Come here, Alf," he ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... hundred yards wide. And lastly, he could throw a knife backwards while running at full speed with such strength and precision of aim that this new kind of Parthian arrow would go whistling through the air to hide two inches of its iron head in a tree trunk no thicker than a man's thigh. When to these accomplishments are added an equal skill with the musket, the pistol, and the quarter-staff, a good deal of mother wit, a deep hatred for Republicans, against whom he had vowed vengeance at the foot of the scaffold on which his father ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... pictures that are wonderful, pictures that you strove for for weeks, months at a time! One looks at your picture and sees that it is wonderful, but does not understand how wonderful. You cling to a branch or a tree trunk or the side of a cliff, fifty or a hundred and fifty feet of space below you, and take your picture. People look at the picture and do not see that the wonderful thing, the interesting thing, is how you ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... go home," he whispered in her ear. You see, he had forgotten about his dream-tree now. So they scrambled down the tree trunk again and then it suddenly dawned on them that they had no idea where they were or in which direction ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... there are some large sorts which may do great damage in short order—rabbits and field mice. They may be kept away by mechanical protection, such as wire, or by heaping the earth up to a height of twelve inches about the tree trunk. Or they may be caught with poisoned baits, such as boiled grain in which a little Rough on Rats or similar poison has been mixed. The former method for the small home garden is little trouble, safer to Fido and Tabby, and the ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... forgot us as they heard that, and huddled together in twos and threes, looking out to whence the sound came. As for Brand the thrall, he fell on his knees and hid his face against a tree trunk, crying faintly: ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... man sat in the shade of an oak tree that stood near a corner of the tavern, with a number of children playing around him. He had sat leaning against the tree trunk reading a book. He had risen as they came near and stood looking at them, with the book under his arm. . ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... felt a little awed at the outburst, and possibly Lance a little ashamed, for he suddenly started from his tree trunk, crying, 'I'm sure we ought to go home. However there are Jack and Mettie on beyond ever so far.' And he elevated his voice in a coo-ee, after what he believed to be Australian fashion; but his weakness prevailed, and he laughed at his own want of power to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the good beast, a leap over a fallen tree trunk, and in a wide clearing I saw before ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... Chanler sisters of New York, and many more. He has painted landscapes, as well. Professor Barrett Wendell possesses a charming example. Most recently he has been engaged on a large mural decoration, best fitted, perhaps, for a music room, showing Pan seated on a tree trunk by a lake, making into a pipe the broken reeds in his hand after Syrinx eluded him. No horizon line shows. Pan and his tawny leopard skin (his automobile coat, the artist calls it) tell against the high purple banks across the lake. The god is making the best of his loss—making music ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... dagger flashed, and he hurled it at Eadmund, but so skilfully that it did but graze his head, sticking firmly into the tree trunk. And he cried in a voice that ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... sharp claws in the pole. It was part of a tree trunk, for the regular tent pole had been broken when the tent was ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... She was silent and the quietude seemed oppressive. The girl leaned back to a great tree trunk and looked up. The sky wore an ocher hue against which the branches quivered in zigzags of blackness. Mr. Heatherbloom moved apart to watch, but still he neither saw nor heard sign of any one drawing near. The sad ocher merged into a somber blue; the stars came out, one by one, then in shoals. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... a small party of elderly men. They were at work upon a prone tree trunk of vast girth. They were cutting and splitting it, fresh feed for the fires which must never be permitted to ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... which is naturally about August or September. It is reaped with a short knife called ani-ani, with which the reaper cuts off each separate ear with a few inches of the stem; and the ears are then threshed by being placed in a hollow tree trunk and there stamped with a toemboekan, a heavy piece of wood with a broad end. The lands are ploughed, harrowed, and weeded by the men, but the transplanting, reaping, and threshing is done ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... alternately its bright yellow breast and olive back towards the light; now jetting his beautiful tail, or quivering his wings tremulously, he darts off into some thicket in response to a call from his mate; or, flying to a neighboring tree trunk, clings for a moment against the mossy hole to pipe his little strain, or look up the exact whereabouts of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... or emblem of this ancestor, called the totem, was often painted on the clothing, or tattooed on the body. On the northwest coast, it was carved on a tall pole, made of a tree trunk, which was set ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... their further proceedings, when at a turn of the lane he caught sight of a spreading clump of trees and what seemed to be a village green, about which clustered a few humble cottages, and an inn whose sign projected from a tree trunk ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... mittens of the two and, enveloped in a cloud of flying snow, the man in the frozen moose hide went shooting down the slope! Connie and 'Merican Joe barely saved themselves from following him, and, squatting low on their webs they watched in a fascination of horror as the flying body struck a tree trunk, shot sidewise, ploughed through the snow, struck a rock, bounded high into the air, struck another rock and, gaining momentum with every foot, shot diagonally downward—rolling, whirling, sliding—straight ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... hollow the Jerseyman had no further difficulty; he breasted the hill and kept a hand extended so as to avoid colliding with a tree trunk. Expecting at any instant to have a bull's-eye lantern flashed in his eyes, which he did not want to happen, he ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... was set against the spot where the force was needed, and a blow struck in the crotch of the limb caused the chip to fly. This apparatus was improved and refined by putting a horn tip on the end point of contact. Another device was to cut a notch in a tree trunk, which could be used as a fulcrum. A long lever was used to apply the pressure to the stone laid at the root of the tree, or on the horizontal space at the bottom of the notch.[207] These variations show persistent endeavor to get ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... it then that thou dost not kill the man-cub. He is no tree trunk to sharpen thy blunt claws upon. But what are those Master Words? I am more likely to give help than to ask it"—Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it—"still I should like ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the apple," replied the King, "but some one has cut away the tree trunk, so that we ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... children, we wandered about and saw the sights. We had our revolvers strapped on, and the boat's crew, fully armed, lay at the oars, stern in; but the lesson of the man-of-war was too recent for us to apprehend trouble. We walked about everywhere and saw everything until at last we approached a large tree trunk that served as a bridge across a shallow estuary. The blacks formed a wall in front of us and refused to let us pass. We wanted to know why we were stopped. The blacks said we could go on. We misunderstood, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London |
