"Midwinter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... engaged himself to this party as assistant chain-bearer, little thinking that the day was to come when he should clank the king's chains in a dungeon, even as now he trailed them a free ranger of the woods. It was midwinter; the land was surveyed upon snow-shoes. At the close of the day, fires were kindled with dry hemlock, a hut thrown up, and the party ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... death: Each limb and each pulse of the body rejoicing, each nerve of the spirit at rest, All sense of the soul's life rapture, a passionate peace in its blindness blest. So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of the water unfathomed of man, The darkness unplummeted, icier than seas in midwinter, for blessing or ban; And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall short, and the dive is done, Shoots up as a shaft from the dark depth shot, sped straight into sight of the sun; And sheer through the snow-soft water, more dark than the roof of ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... delicate subject to touch upon; but the facts may as well be brought out now as later. People of otherwise irreproachable conduct will lose all sense of truthfulness when they speak of physical culture and fresh air. They will exaggerate the number of inches they keep their bedroom windows raised in midwinter; they will quote ridiculous estimates of the doctors' bills they have saved; they will represent themselves as being in the most incredibly perfect health. I know one sober, intelligent business-man who not ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... fellows, as crazy as their employer, tended shop. Cupido paid them with music-lessons and meals—better or worse these latter, according to the day's receipts, which were divided fraternally among the three. And if the "boss" sometimes astonished the city by going out for a walk in midwinter in a suit of white duck, they, not to be outdone, would shave off their hair and eyebrows and show heads as smooth as billiard-balls behind the shop windows, to the great commotion of the city, which would flock en ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... balsam stillness split with screaming shells and shrapnel and the rat-tat-tat of machine guns; imagine yourself floundering upward with winter overcoat, blanket, pack, rifle, and cartridge-belt—any one who has snow-shoed in mountains in midwinter can fancy what fighting meant in a place like this. Men's feet and hands were frozen on sentry duty or merely while asleep—for the soldiers slept as a rule in the open, merely huddled in their ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... at Monterey, but, with the few soldiers, we had next to nothing to do. In midwinter we heard of the approach of a battalion of the Second Dragoons, under Major Lawrence Pike Graham, with Captains Rucker, Coutts, Campbell, and others, along. So exhausted were they by their long march ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... was at 16 deg., and the trees on the shore were white with frost. The deck passengers shivered around the engines and endeavored to extract heat from them. The cabin passengers, excepting myself, were wrapped in their fur coats as if it were midwinter. I walked about in my ordinary clothing, finding the air bracing but not uncomfortable. I could not understand how the Russians felt the cold when it did not affect me, and was a little proud of my insensibility to frost. Conceit generally comes of ignorance, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... in passing westwards, I was at Colac. It was the month of June (midwinter), but the country, with its lake, was not the less beautiful in the universal green. Excepting the partial post-and-rail barricade of my friend William Robertson's 5,000 acres of purchased land, there was nothing all around ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... considerable covering on the ground is not so important, relatively, to protect the plants against the coming winter, but it is also of considerable importance, as sometimes the early snows melt so completely that the fields are left bare in midwinter. The warm temperatures which melt the snow may be followed by a cold wave, which may be greatly injurious to the plants. There may be instances, as where the snow usually falls very deeply, in which the covering left would prove excessive, ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... are eighteen departments, each of which holds special sessions during the time of the general meeting, which occurs early in the summer vacation. The department of superintendence, however, holds a midwinter meeting which attracts the ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... sweet day of rest in peaceful times, but in war there is not much observance of the Sabbath. It is midwinter, but a south-wind sweeps up the Mississippi, so mild and balmy that the blue-birds and robins are out. The steamboats are crowded with troops, who are waiting for orders to sail, they know not where. Groups stand upon the topmost ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden, in which the laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphire sky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of the south. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo of the night, the moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almost irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... extremely doubtful if the spring and summer seasons combined covered more than five months in this latitude. Assuming that the climate in this open part of the world was anything like that of the Falkland Islands, the rainy season was overdue. Midwinter usually comes in July, with the temperature averaging between 35 deg. and 10 deg. above zero over a period of four or five months. At the time of the wreck, the thermometers were registering about 70 deg. during the day, and dropping to 50 deg. or thereabouts after nightfall. This would indicate ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... of her ancestors! Lips thin as a leaf, and eyes bright as stars in midwinter!" she exclaims, as she passes on the furry bundle to the ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... the animals had gone into comfortable winter quarters, while the performers, less fortunate than the beasts, were scattered far and near, "some in rags and some in tags, and some" (a very few) "in velvet gowns." But one small group had found midwinter employment, a party of Japanese men and women, who were jugglers, contortionists, and acrobats; and as their work was pretty as well as novel, they found a place on the programme of some of ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... was taken to Cambridge on sleds in midwinter, by Colonel Knox. It enabled Washington to bring the siege of Boston ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... 38. Midwinter, and provisions low. Seven already buried in the ocean. Sickness setting in with more severity, women and children to be somehow cared for, two tiny babies to be shielded from all harm, their only home the inhospitable shore. No time to lose! The 16th they began to build the first ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... In midwinter when games are indoors, captain ball is the popular sport. The two classes always play two games. In the first one the sevenths were badly beaten, but in the second they came close to victory with a score of ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... "Under Seas," by Count Alexis Tolstoi; to G. P. Putnam's Sons for "Old Ephraim" from The Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, by Theodore Roosevelt; to Houghton Mifflin Company for "A Greyport Legend," by Bret Harte, "Midwinter," by John Townsend Trowbridge, "The First Snowfall," by James Russell Lowell, "Among the Cliffs" from The Young Mountaineers, by Charles Egbert Craddock (Mary N. Murfree), and for "The Friendship of Nantaquas" from ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... are at last!" Tom growled. "I've waited long enough for you, too! You are slower that molasses in midwinter! I suppose you want to know what ails me now. Well, I'll tell you. That last pair of trousers you made me are too short in the waist and too full around the bottoms—that's what's the matter. I'd be mobbed if I should show myself in ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... and strong. It was merely hard work being efficiently done—the breaking of a midwinter trail across a divide. On this severe stretch, ten miles a day they called a decent stint. They kept in condition, but each night crawled well tired into their sleeping-furs. This was their sixth day out from the lively camp of Mucluc on the Yukon. In two days, with the loaded sled, they ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... literature), he will doubtless remember the incident, especially if I mention the field-glass which I carried slung over one shoulder. Evidently the world sees no reason why a man with anything better to do should be wandering aimlessly about the country in midwinter. Nor do I quarrel with the world's opinion. The majority is wiser than the minority, of course; otherwise, what becomes of its divine and inalienable right to lay down the law? The truth with me was that I had nothing better to do. I confess it without shame. Surely there is no lack of ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... metal, of a red colour, and indeed identical with the richly prepared paint vermilion. A thousand workmen are employed in the Spanish mines, above or under ground. It freezes at an exceedingly low temperature, and was found solid during midwinter by the traveller Pallas. Of the other metals, some used as medicines, or pigments, or to form alloys, we have not time now ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... and tremendous stroke. The "Campaign of the Carolinas," as this northward march was called, was a really greater achievement than the march to the sea, for it was against more formidable natural odds, and was done in midwinter. The distance covered, from Savannah to Goldsboro, in North Carolina, was four hundred and twenty-five miles; five large rivers were crossed, three important cities were captured, and the Stars and Stripes were once more flung to the breeze above the ruins of Fort Sumter. And yet, in fifty ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... avalanches; midwinter windstorms; drought; forest fires in south near the Mediterranean overseas departments: hurricanes (cyclones), flooding, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in midwinter, the fleet encountered such tremendous gales, that part of it was ship-wrecked, and Margaret's vessel had wellnigh foundered. She retained, however, sufficient composure amidst the perils of her situation, to indite her own epitaph, in the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... never return home without feeling some pleasant emotion, which I often suppress as useless and foolish." He has his reveries; but they are pure and generous; their subject is the future of his children. In midwinter, instead of trapping and "murthering" the quail, "often in the angles of the fences where the motion of the wind prevents the snow from settling, I carry them both chaff and grain: the one to feed them, the other to prevent their tender feet ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... It was midwinter; a heavy fall of snow covered the ground; he rushed out without his garment, and gathering up great heaps of snow began to make a row of images. "See," he said, "here is thy wife, and behind her are two sons and two daughters, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... I got into the streets. The midwinter sky is slowly breaking to dawn. The whole town white with fresh snow, and still half-wedded to night, is nevertheless stirring ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... Through the midwinter snow which covered the fields the poor captives marched out on their terrible pilgrimage. Two of the prisoners succeeded in escaping, whereupon Mr. Williams was ordered to inform the others that if any more slipped away death by fire would be visited upon those who remained. The first night's ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... was too old to change. Leif took that good-humouredly and laughed at his father. "If I were to tell you where was a great store of gold and silver coins, to be had for a little cold water on your back, you would strip to the skin in midwinter. But you will believe in no treasure which you cannot handle and run through your hands. Where do you expect to go when you die, with all that wickedness on your shoulders? You will come to a bad end, ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... stages were apt to get stalled, so that a few stage sleighs were run in midwinter, but only in the city proper. Their farthest uptown terminal was at Fourteenth Street, so they were not much ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... high staircase which leads to the upper chambers. The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated with antique busts, which gives admission to these apartments, presented an empty vista in which the bright winter light twinkled upon the marble floor. The gallery is very cold and during the midwinter weeks but scantily visited. Miss Stackpole may appear more ardent in her quest of artistic beauty than she has hitherto struck us as being, but she had after all her preferences and admirations. One of the latter was the little Correggio ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... One midwinter day of 1892, in Boston, where I had been cast up from old ocean, so to speak, a year or two before, I was cogitating whether I should apply for a command, and again eat my bread and butter on the sea, or go to work at the shipyard, when I met an old acquaintance, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... their way, are unique in literature. For Hutten was restless and proud, and was not to be content with bread and butter and a new suit of clothes. This independence was displeasing to the professor, who finally, in utter disgust, turned Hutten out of doors in midwinter. When the boy had tramped a while in storm and slush, two servants of Loetz overtook him on the road and robbed him of his money and clothing. In a wretched plight he reached a little inn in Rostock, ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... pair of long, strong, overall boots and blanket, borrowed a revolver, arranged money affairs with Mr. Lea, who always acted with the greatest generosity, intelligence, and kindness, packed my carpet-bag, and departed. It was midwinter, and I was destined for a wintry region, or Venango County, where, until within the past few months, there had been many more bears and deer than human beings. For it was in Venango, Pennsylvania, that the oil-wells were ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... how much later the beginning of May was in New Hampshire; but as his train ran up from Springfield he realized the difference of the season from that which he had left in New York. The meadows were green only in the damp hollows; most of the trees were as bare as in midwinter; the willows in the swamplands hung out their catkins, and the white birches showed faint signs of returning life. In the woods were long drifts of snow, though he knew that in the brown leaves along their edges the pale pink flowers of the trailing arbutus were hiding their wet ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... literary accountant, would rise from the volume nervously shattered from an attempt to grasp what it was all about. The only person in the book who is accorded any comprehensive biographical resume is a certain great-uncle of Mr. Conrad, Mr. Nicholas B., who accompanied Bonaparte on his midwinter junket to Moscow, and was bitterly constrained to eat a dog in the forests of Lithuania. To the delineation of this warrior, who was a legend of his youth, Mr. Conrad devotes his most affectionate and tender power of whimsical reminiscence; and in truth his sketches of family history make ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... sending over a powerful fleet to held the English. William bribed the Danish commanders and they "sailed away without striking a blow." Then, little by little, he brought the land to obedience. By forced marches in midwinter, by roads cast up through bogs, and by sudden night attacks William accomplished the end ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... foot, which dragged on the floor and hurt cruelly, Mrs. Biggs drew Eloise to the window in time to see a handsome open carriage drawn by two splendid bays passing the house. The Colonel was muffled up as closely as if it were midwinter, and only a part of his face and his long, white hair were visible, but he was sitting upright, with his head held high, and looked the embodiment of aristocratic pride and arrogance. The lady beside him was very slight, and sat in a drooping kind of ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... joy of Elector Friedrich and his Court, almost the very nation thinking itself glad. Which joyful Potentate decided to set out straightway and have the coronation done; though it was midwinter; and Konigsberg (for Prussia is to be our title, "King in Prussia," and Konigsberg is Capital City there) lies 450 miles off, through tangled shaggy forests, boggy wildernesses, and in many parts only corduroy roads. We order "30,000 post-horses," ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... AND THE PEOPLE."—The atrocities of landlordism in Ireland, evicting the poor in midwinter, tearing down their cabins, and burning their roofs to drive them out, have excited horror in England, and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... find that young Robert Blake was one of the lieutenants of the Tiger, and equally rejoiced were we to see Martin Shobbrok walking the deck with a chain and silver whistle round his neck doing duty as boatswain. Although it was midwinter, no time was lost, and with a fair breeze we stood down channel. The winds, and the necessity of chasing every suspicious sail, prevented us from reaching our destination—the month of the Tagus—until the approach of spring. To our infinite ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... of a fresh bustling landlady, but still seizing an occasional moment to exchange a flippant word and have a rallying laugh with the group round the fire. The scene completely realized Poor Robin's humble idea of the comforts of midwinter: ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Puritan goodwives and maidens were dressed in a meagre and scanty fashion that when now considered seems fairly appalling. As soon as the colonies grew in wealth and fashion, thin silk or cotton hose were frequently worn in midwinter by the wives and daughters of well-to-do colonists; and correspondingly thin cloth or kid or silk slippers, high-channelled pumps, or low shoes with paper soles and "cross-cut" or wooden heels were the holiday and Sabbath-day covering for the feet. ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... In midwinter of this third year, Jan returned to Lac Bain, and, hugging the delighted Melisse close in his arms, he told her that never again would he go away without her. Melisse, tightening her arms around his neck, made his promise ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... It was midwinter. The owner of Willow Creek stood at his parlour window, smoking and gazing. There was not much to look at, for snow had overwhelmed and buried the landscape, fringed every twig of the willows, ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... continued into February, the animals ceased to venture far from their lairs in search of food, and the harvest of the trails was therefore light. With the disappearance of rabbits, the fox and lynx had also disappeared. The rabbit is the chief prey of these animals during the tight midwinter months, and as the wolf follows the caribou, so the fox ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... the winter aspect of these wastes can be imagined. The Northern forests are silent enough in winter time, but the silence of the Barren Grounds is far more profound. Even in the depths of midwinter the North-Western bush has voices and is full of animal life. The barking cry of the crows (these birds are the greatest imaginable nuisance to the trapper, whose baits they steal even before his back is turned) is still heard; the snow-birds and other small winged creatures are never quiet between ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... bit of wild life came to me at dusk one day in the wilderness. It was midwinter, and the snow lay deep. I was sitting alone on a fallen tree, waiting for the moon to rise so that I could follow the faint snowshoe track across a barren, three miles, then through a mile of forest ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... from the swimmer's standpoint, it is wonderful water. It is cool enough to be comfortable, while it is warm enough to permit a swimmer to stay in all day without experiencing a chill. Under the sun or the stars, at high noon or at midnight, in midwinter or in midsummer, it does not matter when, it is always the same temperature—not too warm, not too cold, just right. It is wonderful water, salt as old ocean itself, pure and crystal-clear. When the nature ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... after drifting in eight and a half months a distance of ten hundred and fifty miles. It is impossible to adequately describe their physical discomforts and dangers, the mental depression of the sunless midwinter of eight weeks, and the even harder experiences of the Arctic spring-tide, when excessive cold and increasing lassitude made steady inroads on their impaired constitutions. Kane tells us they were continually harassed by uncertainties as to their ultimate fate. Yesterday ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... on the savage ocean, and in the cold gray light all that could be seen of the Francis Spaight emerging from the sea were the poop, the shattered mizzenmast, and a ragged line of bulwarks. It was midwinter in the North Atlantic, and the wretched men were half-dead from cold. But there was no place where they could find rest. Every sea breached clean over the wreck, washing away the salt incrustations from their bodies and depositing ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... manner. The sailor takes an observation of the sun in two directions, namely, north and south, and east and west. You know, of course, that the sun moves north in the summer and south in the winter, and that the extreme southern point is in midwinter, Dec. 20: that in the spring, or March 20, it is directly above the equator, and in midsummer, or, on June 20, it is as far north as it ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... actually) big enough to cover all but three inches of table edge. In the middle of the table is a glass bowl with a wide turn-over rim, holding deep pink flowers (roses or tulips) standing upright in glass flower holders as though growing. In midwinter, when real flowers are too expensive, porcelain ones take their place—unless there is a lunch or dinner party. The compotiers are glass urns and the only pieces of silver used are two tall Sheffield candelabra at night, without shades, the salts and peppers and the necessary ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... contracts for labor could be more safely made if they began and ended at times corresponding with contracts made with their customers. The workmen opposed this change in the duration of the contract on the ground that in midwinter they would be less able to resist any disposition on the part of the company to cut down their wages, and that in the event of a strike, it would be more difficult to maintain their situation than it would be in summer. They claimed, therefore, ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... case of space clairvoyance: "Capt. Yount, of Napa Valley, California, one midwinter's night had a dream in which he saw what appeared to be a company of emigrants arrested by the snows of the mountains, and perishing rapidly by cold and hunger. He noted the very cast of the scenery, marked by a huge, perpendicular front of white-rock cliff; he saw the men cutting off what ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... And for two years, at Nahala, I was a dead woman who somehow walked and talked, and baked and scrubbed, and mended socks and saved kerosene. The doctors said it was the shoddy underwear that did for him, pursuing as always the high-mountain Nahala waters in the drenching storms of midwinter. ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... waters. Of pure iron springs, the famous Schwalbach contains rather more iron than the Ute Iron, and Spa rather less. On the whole, Manitou has the advantage of the most celebrated medicinal springs in Europe, and has a climate even in midwinter ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... built for a Southern climate, although Dick had learned that it could be cold enough in Central Mississippi in midwinter. But it was spring now and they opened all the doors and windows, letting the pleasant air ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... One midwinter I cleared away the snow under an apple-tree near the house and scattered some corn there. I had not seen a blue-jay for weeks, yet that very day one found my corn, and after that several came daily and partook of it, holding the kernels under their feet upon the ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... connection with any thought which had been uttered. "Say, it was fine, wasn't it, Christmas? We allus had firecrackers then. And eat! Why, man!" This allusion to the firecrackers would have determined that Curly had come from the South, which alone has a midwinter Fourth of July, possibly because the populace is not content with only one annual smell of gunpowder. "We had trees where I came from," said ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... of Friu'li, but amorously loved by Ansaldo. In order to rid herself of his importunities, she vowed never to yield to his suit till he could "make her garden at midwinter as gay with flowers as it was in summer" (meaning never). Ansaldo, by the aid of a magician, accomplished the appointed task; but when the lady told him that her husband insisted on her keeping her ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... replied the stranger, with no appearance of resentment, "that is a matter which must one day lie between Kha-hia, this person, and one long since Passed Beyond, and to this end have I uncomplainingly striven for the greater part of a lifetime. For the rest, men do not cross the King-langs in midwinter, wearing away their lives upon those stormy heights, to make a jest of empty words. Already sinking into the Under World, even as I am now powerless to raise myself above the ground, I, Nau-Kaou, swear and attest ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... end of October. Two months later, in midwinter, the mining fever came upon him with ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Jamestown in midwinter were more food and less mortal sickness than in the previous fearful summer, yet no great amount of food, and now suffering, too, from bitter cold. Nor had the sickness ended, nor dissensions. Less than fifty men were all that held together England ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... have been laying like mad and I've three full crates of eggs in the cellar, all dipped in water-glass and ready for barter at Buckhorn. If the output keeps up I'll store away five or six crates of the treated eggs for Christmas-season sale, for in midwinter they easily bring eighty ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the wrath of the sovereign who had elevated him, and pursuing his toilsome journey to Rome to appeal to justice against injustice, to law against violence. He reached the old capital of the world in midwinter, after having spent Christmas in that hospitable convent where Hildebrand had reigned, and which was to shield the persecuted Abelard from the wrath of his ecclesiastical tormentors. He was most honorably received by the Pope, and lodged in the Lateran, as the great ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Midwinter brought out-of-door amusements, though the season seemed short, for spring came early, and in March parties were out hunting for trailing arbutus and hardy spring flowers, exchanging tulip bulbs ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... o'clock in the afternoon on the opening day of the midwinter term at Hilton Seminary, a noted institution located in a beautiful old town of Western ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... morning, so booked an outside (no room inside, as before) for an immediate start. Now, you can readily imagine that I was by no means hot, and though the night of Thursday last was rather mild, still it was midwinter: accordingly I conceived and executed a marvellous calorificating plan, which even the mail-coachman had never heard of. Haying comforted my interiors with hot grog of the stiffest, I called for another shillingsworth ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... are 150 feet high, from six to ten feet in diameter, and they are never out of sight as you saunter among the yellow pines. Their bright brown shafts and towers of flat, frondlike branches make a striking feature of the landscapes throughout all the seasons. In midwinter, when most of the other trees are asleep, this cedar puts forth its flowers in millions,—the pistillate pale green and inconspicuous, but the staminate bright yellow, tingeing all the branches and making the trees as they stand in the snow look ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... we have a slight effect of this kind on the earth. Between midsummer (of the northern hemisphere) and midwinter our planet draws 3,000,000 miles nearer the sun, but the change occupies six months, and, at the earth's great average distance, the effect of this change is too slight to be ordinarily observable, and only the astronomer is aware of ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... though," returned Jim, firmly. "Asked him at midwinter what he'd have, and he grinned and said, 'Allee same hat!' So he ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Roger, steal thou in among the crowd, And get the swine to shout Elizabeth. Yon gray old Gospeller, sour as midwinter, Begin with him. ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... described by Scott in "The Fair Maid of Perth." I used to wonder at their folly, when I was stumbling over the rough hassocks, and sinking knee-deep in the black mire, raking the sharp sickle-edged grass which we used to feed out to the young cattle in midwinter when the bitter cold gave them appetite for even such fodder. I had an almost Irish hatred of snakes, and these meadows were full of them,—striped, green, dingy water- snakes, and now and then an ugly spotted adder by no means pleasant to touch ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that, by the almanac, it was the last day but one of the old year, midwinter, a time of frost and snow, and surely these brilliant oleanders, these great scarlet geraniums, these bright hedges of the many-colored Lantana were but a fairy scene which might vanish any moment and leave ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... her to him. Then briefly, as was the Indian way, yet with the pictured phrasing which caused each scene to spring into vivid life before the young girl's eyes, he told her of the day, already more than eighteen years gone by, when, in the wake of a long midwinter storm, the first sailing vessel ever beheld by his people had fled for refuge to their bay; and of the little girl carefully brought to shore by her old nurse in the first boat to touch the beach. A mere baby she was, ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... neighboring village. The game was played in one of the houses. Strong poles were extended from side to side, and on these sat or perched the company, party facing party, while two players struck the bowl on the ground between. Bets ran high; and Brbeuf relates, that once, in midwinter, with the snow nearly three feet deep, the men of his village returned from a gambling visit, bereft of their leggins, and barefoot, yet in excellent humor. [ Brbeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 113.—This game is still a favorite among the Iroquois, some of whom hold ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... more to rest her tired body than because she needed food. The afternoon was as the morning. At six o'clock, long after the midwinter darkness had fallen, she stumbled back to the Wollbadgasse and up ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... midwinter, and midnight. My room lay in darkness. Heavy snow was falling. I went to the window and flattened my ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... allamanda and pink hibiscus bushes, the clump of Eucharist lilies, the great trailing masses of orchids that hung among the red flowers of the stately flamboyant tree by the green hedge, joined to make me forget the midwinter date on the calendar. The time seemed in my half-dream July in New York or August ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... the bear and marmot, it too had hibernated, and we had followed its faint summer-trail to where it earthed itself in snow and ice. At first we should have thought that rivers would be empty and dry in midwinter, or else frozen solid till the spring thawed them; but their volume is not diminished even, for only a superficial cold bridges their surface. The thousand springs which feed the lakes and streams are flowing still. The issues of a few surface ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Yet, as those gray, midwinter weeks went on to Christmas, and the coming of the New Year, it became undeniable there was that in the aspect of affairs at Brockhurst which might very well provoke curious comment. For the rigour of Richard Calmady's self-imposed seclusion, to which Miss ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... it unsurveyed until spring, and perhaps until another season. The promised co-operation of the Anadyr River party had failed us, and without more men, the Major did not think it expedient to undertake the exploration of a region which presented so many and so great obstacles to midwinter travel. The distance which remained to be traversed, therefore, was only about fourteen hundred versts from Okhotsk to the Russian outpost of Anadyrsk, just south of the Arctic Circle. After some deliberation the Major concluded to send Dodd and me ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... borrowers in Rome, and thus was enabled to lend to the miserable Salaminians of Cyprus at 48 per cent, and to recover his money under the bond.[187] Writing to his brother in December 57, Cicero speaks of business done in a senate full for the time of year, which was midwinter, just before the Saturnalia, when only two hundred were present out of about six hundred. In February 54, a month when the senate had always much business to get through, it was so cold one day that the few members present clamoured ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... warm bath. There is likewise much less liability to get cold after the electric bath. The stimulus which the current furnishes to the peripheral circulation is a powerful protection against cold, so that even in midwinter I see people daily take electric baths at an average temperature of 95 deg., and enjoy ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... enough, considering the circumstances. They lived much alone, and Reanda was like them in this respect, for he rarely went where he was obliged to talk. During the day he saw much of Donna Francesca, but when it grew dark in the early afternoons of midwinter, the artist was thrown upon his own resources. In former years he had now and then done as many of the other artists did, and had sometimes for a month or two spent most of his evenings at the eating-house where he dined, in company ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... afternoon and evening, and it seems scarcely credible that, only an hour or two ago, I was out on the river in an open boat, fishing. It was a glorious sunny afternoon when we pushed off; the great hills around were at their greenest; and the only reminder vouchsafed to us that to-morrow is midwinter's day was the glitter of snow away on the top of the mountain. The water around us, reflecting the cloudless sky above, was a sea of sapphire, out of which our oars seemed to beat up pearls and silver. Arrived at our favourite fishing ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Spain's own policy of ruthless spoliation in America. Starting at the close of 1577 with five small vessels, the squadron was reduced by shipwreck and desertion until only the flagship remained when Drake at last, on September 6 of the next year, achieved his midwinter passage of the Straits of Magellan and bore down, "like a visitation of God" as a Spaniard said, upon the weakly defended ports of the west coast. After ballasting his ship with silver from the rich Potosi mines, and rifling even the churches, he hastened onward in pursuit of a richly laden ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... journey a Shinto priest was pointed out to me as observing the priestly taboo by refusing tea and cake. I noticed, however, that he smoked. I was told that when he was in Tokyo he purified himself in the sea even in midwinter. I did not like his appearance. Nor for the matter of that was I impressed by the countenances of some Buddhist priests I encountered in the train from time to time. "Thinking always of money," someone said. But every now and again I saw ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... stage route, is 2200 miles, but you can happily accomplish a part of the journey by railroad. The Pacific Railroad id completed twelve miles to Folsom, leaving only 2188 miles to go by stage. This breaks the monotony; but as it is midwinter and as there are well substantiated reports of the Piute savages being in one of their sprightly moods when they scalp people, I do not I may say that I do not leave the Capital of California in a light-hearted and joyous ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... breakfast. We awoke so early that we saw the sacred hour when a misty smoke hung over a pit surrounded by an impassable sinking mire. This strange smoke appeared every morning, both winter and summer; but most visibly in midwinter it rose immediately above the marshy spot. By the time the full face of the sun appeared above the eastern horizon, the smoke vanished. Even very old men, who had known this country the longest, said that ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... wife, nearly twenty-six years ago, had broken to him, with a blushing circumlocution that would have caused the young women of the new generation to smile, the news that she was to have a child; and there their eldest boy, Dallas, too delicate to be taken to church in midwinter, had been christened by their old friend the Bishop of New York, the ample magnificent irreplaceable Bishop, so long the pride and ornament of his diocese. There Dallas had first staggered across the floor shouting ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... One midwinter day, Father Champreau, a Jesuit missionary, pulled into Twenty Mile. Bonner fell upon him and dragged him into the post, and clung to him and wept, until the priest wept with him from sheer compassion. Then Bonner became madly hilarious and made lavish entertainment, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... It was midwinter when the Ten Thousand Greeks who had followed their leader so loyally through the plains of Asia Minor found themselves friendless and in great danger in the very heart ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... friend, permit me to inform you that my company was not solely made up of pedestrians, and, moreover, walking in midwinter as a rule is not good. So you may readily recognize I was in a perplexing predicament. After I glanced over the box office statement I hardly knew where I was at. As I thought the situation over before me arose the stern reality of a large-sized board bill, for bear in mind ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... wouldn't," said Dan. "I'm getting more and more discontented. But there's not much use crying for the moon, and France might as well be the moon, for all of me." He relapsed then into a brooding silence. It was hard for an inn-keeper to be cheerful in midwinter with an empty house. Tom too was silent, dreaming vividly, if vaguely, of the France ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... Before the midwinter holidays, the report was the round of the dormitories that Hester Alden was playing a good game of basket-ball. She was alert and quick. Her passing was particularly good and Helen praised her highly. Hester was brimming with enthusiasm. The one fly in her cup of ointment ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... the tenderfoot that old Hank was trundling, ain't you?" I admitted that I was. A good many years later, after I had been elected Vice-President, I went on a cougar hunt in northwestern Colorado with Johnny Goff, a famous hunter and mountain man. It was midwinter. I was rather proud of my achievements, and pictured myself as being known to the few settlers in the neighborhood as a successful mountain-lion hunter. I could not help grinning when I found out that they did not even allude to me as ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... had stalked a lion across stony, open country, and killed him at three hundred yards just before sunset. Another talked to him, too, of his first ibex shot in the Khor Baraka, and of antelope stalked in the mountains northward of Suakin. There was a little Greener gun which he had used upon midwinter nights in a boat upon this very creek of the Salcombe estuary. He had brought down his first mallard with that, and he lifted it and slid his left hand along the under side of the barrel and felt the butt settle comfortably ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... white hell, and his analysis was perfectly correct. Mike wished that it had been January, midsummer in the Antarctic, so there would have been at least a little dim sunshine. Mike the Angel did not particularly relish having to visit the South Pole in midwinter. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... spot it was, especially in those long, dark evenings in midwinter, when the ruddy, dancing flames went laughing up the great throat of the chimney, chasing the venturesome, wayward sparks, as they hurried out into the untried darkness of the winter's night. With what ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... distinctly. It was that of a beardless youth of twenty years. It possessed the beauty of a girl and the daring force of a man; it bore a mocking, cryptic smile. Maskull felt the fresh, mysterious thrill of mingled pain and rapture of one who awakes from a deep sleep in midwinter and sees the gleaming, dark, delicate colours of the half-dawn. The vision smiled, kept still, and looked beyond him. He began to shudder, with delight—and many emotions. As he gazed, his poetic sensibility acquired such a nervous and indefinable character that he could ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the city editor, dryly, "that Gallegher's reasoning has impressed you; and I also see that before the week is out all of my young men will be under bonds for assaulting innocent pedestrians whose only offense is that they wear gloves in midwinter." ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... Wrestlers of Southern Russia, about ten thousand of whom were brought to Canada at the instance of Tolstoy and some English Quakers to escape persecution for their refusal to undertake military service. The religious fanaticism of the Doukhobors, particularly when it took the form of midwinter pilgrimages in nature's garb, and the clannishness of the Ruthenians, who settled in solid blocks, gave rise to many problems of government and assimilation which taught Canadians the unwisdom of inviting immigration from eastern ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... ended at Poschiavo; and when, as usual, we started on our journey next day at sunrise, it was in a carriage upon wheels. Yet even here we were in full midwinter. Beyond Le Prese the lake presented one sheet of smooth black ice, reflecting every peak and chasm of the mountains, and showing the rocks and water-weeds in the clear green depths below. The glittering floor ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... furiously. He relates his very vivid impressions of the religious orthodoxy in which he was reared, especially revival sermons; his occasional falsehoods to escape severe punishment; his baptism at ten or eleven in a river in midwinter; the somberness of his intellectual life, which was long very apathetic; his phenomenal stupidity for years; his sudden insurrections in which he thrashed bullies at school; his fear that he should be sent home in disgrace for bad scholarship; ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... went by heavily enough, and the next followed, in the same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being the inevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds a time too radiant for the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late midwinter at Hintock. To people at home there these changeful tricks had their interests; the strange mistakes that some of the more sanguine trees had made in budding before their month, to be incontinently glued up by frozen thawings now; the similar ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... stones extend a rod or two into the water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay of the leaves, which have been wafted on to it so many successive falls, and a bright green weed is brought up on anchors even in midwinter. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... sometime in the winter—Philip's first winter with the Faringfields—that the next outbreak came, between him and Master Edward. If ever the broad mansion of the Faringfields looked warm and welcoming, it was in midwinter. The great front doorway, with its fanlight above, and its panel windows at each side, through which the light shone during the long evenings, and with its broad stone steps and out-curving iron railings, had then its most hospitable aspect. One evening that ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... defend, and accordingly withdrew to the older settlements, after burying such of their effects as would bear it, and leaving others to their fate. Six men, a dog, and a cat remained to keep the fort. Towards midwinter the human part of the garrison also withdrew, and the two ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... were about to turn her and her children out-of-doors in midwinter," broke in the soldier, wrathfully. "That is the way you sleek, comfortable stay-at-home people care for those fighting your battles. After you concluded that I was dead, and that the rent might not be forthcoming, you decided to put my wife into the street. Open your office, sir, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... less ridiculous person of those times. Busching (our Geographical friend) had gone with him, as Excellency's Chaplain, in this Russian Journey; which is a memorable one to Busching; and still presents vividly, through his Book, those haggard Baltic Coasts in midwinter, to readers who have business there. Such a journey for grimness of outlook, upon pine-tufts and frozen sand; for cold (the Count's very tobacco-pipe freezing in his mouth), for hardship, for bad lodging, and extremity of dirt in the unfreezable ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... not expect to see a thunder-storm almost in midwinter?" said Mr. Clifford, with a smile. "This unusual sultriness ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... Niblungs all through summer and harvest time till with the stark midwinter came tidings of war. Then the earls of Giuki donned dusky hauberks and led forth their bands from the fortress, and the fair face and golden gear of Sigurd ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... He recovered soon, however; but after that, short spells of illness, mostly heavy colds, were the rule. He was a strong man and had taken pride in being able to do things which few other men could do without harm coming to them; for instance, to chop a hole in the ice and go swimming in midwinter. But exposure to the chill, damp air of that North Sea country and the heavy fogs that drifted in from the ocean at night, when he rode alone, often many miles over the moor on his tours of inspection, had undermined his splendid constitution, and before the summer was over the doctors ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... accorded equality to all under the law and in political privilege, but he chose to select his associates, and admitted none to the familiarity of intimacy but men of high breeding and unquestioned honor. In many things he was peculiar and somewhat eccentric. In dress, especially so—often appearing in midwinter in light, summer apparel; and again, in summer, with a winter cloak wrapped carefully about him. When he appeared first before the assembled Legislature, and many of the first citizens of the State, to take the oath of office, it was a raw, cold day in November; his dress was a round jacket ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... or quarter-sessions were meetings held four times a year— in October, midwinter, spring, and midsummer—at which all the justices of the peace of the county were supposed to be present. There were, besides, occasional irregular sessions, or meetings of the regular sessions adjourned from one time to another. ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... up the river again, we hoped to fall in with game, though unfortunately found but little in our course. When we had advanced some twenty miles we halted. Our position looked threatening. It was midwinter, and everything around us bore a gloomy aspect. We were without any provisions, and we saw no means of obtaining any. At this crisis, six or seven Indians of the Pawnee Loup band came into our camp. Knowing ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... them half-buried in a bright dazzle of snow, the midwinter miracle that sets the most jaded heart singing and the weariest blood to moving more quickly. The bare trees glittered in a glassy casing, and every twig carried its burden of soft fur. Half-a-dozen shovels were scraping and clinking about Crownlands when Nina and Harriet came downstairs, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... They had choice of two routes of travel, one by way of the Kennebecasis and Anagance to the Petitcodiac, the other by way of the Washademoak lake and the Canaan to the same river. As the war proceeded the Maliseets actively supported their old allies the French. Some of them took part in the midwinter night attack, under Coulon de Villiers, on Colonel Noble's post at Grand Pre. The English on this occasion were taken utterly by surprise; Noble himself fell fighting in his shirt, and his entire party were killed, wounded or made prisoners. From the military point of view this was one of ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... keen, frosty morning in June—the midwinter of Australia—and as the red sun bursts through the sea-rim, a gentle land breeze creeps softly down from the mountain forest of gums and iron-barks, and blows away the mists that, all through a night of cloudless ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... would have been sacrificed also. It happened, too, to be exceptionally cold—not the weather in which any one would lightly set out on a journey. We must remember that the calendar had not yet been rectified, and that they were about ten days nearer to midwinter than their ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... family had a flock, and their clanking was heard all day and sometimes all night. They roamed the streets all summer, eating grass by the highways and wallowing in the puddles. Sometimes they were yoked with a goose-yoke made of a shingle with a hole in it. In midwinter they were kept in barnyards, but the rest of the year they spent the night in the street, each flock near the home of its owner. It is said that one old goose of each flock always kept awake and stood watch; and it was told in Hadley, Massachusetts, that if ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... full of woolmen's brasses, for often they knelt there, and often the village hummed with the buyers and sellers, exchanging orders and examining samples. The Celys bought chiefly from two Northleach wool dealers, William Midwinter and John Busshe. The relations between dealers and sellers were often enough close and pleasant: Midwinter even occasionally tried to provide a customer with a bride as well as with a cargo, and marriageable ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... promises to pay at certain stated intervals, for a goodly number of coming years! What annual the horticulturist can show will bear comparison with this product of auricultural industry, which has flowered in midsummer and midwinter for twenty successive seasons? And now the last of its blossoms is to be plucked, and the bare stem, stripped of its ever maturing and always welcome appendages, is reduced to the narrowest conditions of reproductive existence. Such is the fate of the financial peau ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... behind his fortifications of reserve, he was able to maintain just the right shade of dignity, when, in the half-light of the midwinter afternoon, Diane glided into the big, book-lined apartment, in which the comfortable air induced through long occupancy by people of means did not banish a certain sombreness. She entered with the subdued manner of one who ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... name of all that's unholy did you lead me a race away off to this forsaken little hole in midwinter, Hazel?" ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... decrease in quantity of stored material with growing seasons and intervals between; but the results indicate a very decided increase during the autumn storing season, and continuing large well into the winter, since some outside material can still be obtained until midwinter. From about February to April a decrease may be noted, followed, if the spring growth of annuals be good, by a slight increase; and we can very nearly predict the general character of the increases and decreases by the precipitation ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... half dreaming. "Bosh! fireflies in midwinter on the top of a mountain!" I rubbed my eyes. "Sparks from my fire?" Several peculiar low snarling growls made me start up, wide awake with a vengeance. "Wolves!" I said to myself; "there is no doubt about it." The brutes had smelt me out, and with their usual caution, they were ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... Redruff and Graytail fully recovered, but food and rest in plenty are sure cure-alls, and a bright clear day in midwinter had the usual effect of setting the vigorous Redruff to drumming on the log. Was it the drumming, or the tell-tale tracks of their snow-shoes on the omnipresent snow, that betrayed them to Cuddy? He came prowling again and again ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... seat for the driver and with the body hung by broad leather straps or thongs of bull's hide; in winter the carriole, or sledge, with or without {20} covered top, also holding two passengers and a driver. The drivers were bound to make two leagues an hour over the indifferent roads, and in midwinter and midsummer the dexterous, talkative, good-humoured driver, or marche-donc, usually exceeded this rate for most of the journey of three days. From Montreal onward no one travelled in winter except an occasional Indian messenger. Even in summer few thought of going ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... 65. The Saxon Chronicle says of the Conqueror: "He was very worshipful. Thrice he bore his king-helmet every year, when he was in England: at Easter, he bore it at Winchester; at Pentecost, at Westminster; in midwinter, at Gloucester. And there were with him all the rich men over all ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... be the condition about midwinter.) In March o.d. will be either enormously distended with eggs, or large, flabby, and empty, and ov. will be small and brownish, without any large eggs; the ovary gradually recovers its size ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... answered Jill's conundrum as to the profit of building fire-proof houses by reminding her that pecuniary loss is not the sole objection to being burned out of house and home whenever the fire fiend happens to crave a flaming sacrifice, in the daytime or in the night, in summer or in midwinter, in sickness or in health; that not only heir-looms, but hearthstones and door posts, endeared by long associations, have a value beyond the power of insurance companies to restore, and that protection against fire means also security against ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... But as early as the days of Cnut, London was beginning to be felt as the real centre of national life: and Eadward the Confessor, by founding Westminster Abbey, made it practically the home of the kings. The Conqueror "wore his crown on Eastertide at Winchester; on Pentecost at Westminster; and on Midwinter at Gloucester:" which probably marks the relative position of the three towns as the chief places in the old West Saxon realm at least. Under AEthelstan, London had eight moneyers or mint-masters, while Winchester had only six, and ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... tack through alder copse and juniper jungle—hard indeed, and terribly vexatious—and he saw with delight the great open slope, covered with an unbroken surface of glittering snow. The sun (which at midwinter is but a few hours above the horizon) had set; and the stars were flashing forth with dazzling brilliancy. Ralph stopped, as he reached the clearing, to give Biceps an opportunity to overtake him; for Biceps, like all marine animals, moved with less ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... also walrus-hunting. I have been up to my neck in work, and have had small opportunity to keep my diary up to date. We have all put on heavy clothing; not the regular fur clothes for the winter, but our thickest civilized clothing, that we would wear in midwinter in the States. In the middle of the day, if the sun shines, the heat is felt; but if foggy or cloudy, the ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... Clark spent the winter sixty-six years later. But, having been robbed of the presents which he had provided, he was unable to get a guide to lead him further and was obliged to return. The journey was made in midwinter and was full of ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... departed, it was with assurances that they had never had such a delightful Christmas party, even in midwinter, and had never had such a delightful Fourth of July ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... It was midwinter, and a cold drizzle was falling when she waited for him at the prison gates. Three years had passed since they had parted. She took him in her arms and kissed him silently. Her heart was too full for words. ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... Then, reciting (erroneously) the difficulties with the SPEEDWELL, etc., he records the MAY-FLOWER'S arrival at Cape Cod, saying, "The . . . ship with great difficulty reached the coast of New England." He then gives a glowing, though absurd, account of the attractions the planters found—in midwinter —especially naming the hospitable reception of the Indians, despite the fact of the savage attack made upon them by the Nausets at Cape Cod, and adds: "After they had well considered the state of their affairs ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... bitter night in midwinter; and between every two or three makings of the bed in the overheated room slip out of a linen coat and into a fairly thin serge one and go and stand outside the door from three to ten minutes in the snow and cold. In some ways this is one of the hardest parts ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... spring, but now in midwinter we have opened our crimson cups, smiling in delight on this thy birthday morning, that brings thee so nigh the bridal bed: better for us to be wreathed on the brows of so fair a woman than wait for ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Sweyn knew, Harold would not stand, and, as he drank at a feast with his house-carles in his castle in Gairsay,[30] the wily Viking said, slily rubbing his nose, "I think Harold is now on his voyage to the isles," a shrewd surmise which proved correct in spite of the midwinter storm then prevailing. Harold's expedition, however, failed, and he went back to Caithness to raise a force to kill a man called Erlend the Young who had seized his mother Margret and taken her by force to Shetland, where he fortified ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... only from the accustomed comforts of home, but cut off from communication with their absent ones and harrowed by vague stones of wrong and violence about them—it would have been natural had they yielded to the combined strain on mind and matter. At midwinter I had occasion to visit Evansport and Acquia creek. It had been bitter cold; a sudden thaw had made the air raw and keen, while my horse went to his girths at every plunge. More than once I had to dismount in mire girth-deep to help him on. Suddenly I came upon a Maryland camp—supports to a battery. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... known. The feast that bears his name, the Saturnalia (held on December 17 and some following days), was a time of popular festivity, when social distinctions were laid aside (slaves were on an equality with masters). Similar festivals are found elsewhere.[1380] Midwinter, when the work of gathering in the harvest was over, was a natural time for festivities.[1381] Saturn, or the figure from which he arose, may have presided over this season originally, or he may have been gradually connected with an old ceremony. The ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... crosses your path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks and remote barns. Carry the carcass of a pig, or a fowl, or a dog, to a distant field in midwinter, and in a few nights his tracks cover ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... it for a month. And she thought how delicious it would be in midwinter, just at the time her quarter's rent was due. But, alas, this was not possible! The rest and the sleep must be eternal; this thought chilled her, and her longing for death faded away before the unrelenting severity of the bonds ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... is very beautiful, as you say," she said, in answer to our admiring comments. "It came from Paris, from my daughter. She sent it to me; she is always making me gifts; she is one who remembers her old mother! Figure to yourselves that last year, in midwinter, she sent me no less than three gowns, all wool! What can I do with them? C'est pour me flatter, c'est sa maniere de me dire qu'il faut vivre pour longtemps! Ah, la chere folle! But ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... "piker," so I stood pat. Well, I had most of the dinner cooked, but it kept me hustling to get the house into anything like decent order before the old dog barked, and I knew my moments of liberty were limited. It was blowing a perfect hurricane and snowing like midwinter. I had bought a beautiful pair of shoes to wear on that day, but my vanity had squeezed my feet a little, so while I was so busy at work I had kept on a worn old pair, intending to put on the new ones later; but when the Pearsons drove up all I thought about was getting them into the house ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... seed of midwinter, unheeded, unperished, Like the autumn-sown wheat 'neath the snow lying green, Like the love that o'ertook us, unawares and uncherished, Like the babe 'neath ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... months' start of his dead and buried crop. He walks across it; his shoes sink almost to the instep in the soft soil. He sees birds hopping about in it without overcoats. Surely, he says to himself, this is a favored land. Here it lies on the latitudes of Labrador, and yet its midwinter fields are as green as ours in the last month of Spring. At this rate the farmers here must harvest their wheat before the ears of mine are formed. But he counts without Nature. The American sun overtakes and distances ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... was told to drive back for you. It's some one seeking shelter, like ourselves. Hark—the hail is stopping, and now the thunder and lightning and a good old-fashioned midwinter storm!" ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... start which the chauffeur wanted, and the sun was nearly overhead when many a huge shoulder of glittering marble still walled us away from our journey's end. The cold was the pitiless cold of northern midwinter, and I remembered with a shiver that Millau and Clermont-Ferrand were separated from one another by nearly two hundred and fifty kilometres of such mountain roads as these. Oh yes, it was an experience, a splendid, dazzling experience; ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... In the midwinter King Olaf gave a great bridal feast to his friends in his new banqueting hall at Nidaros. His bishops and priests were there, as also his chief captains and warmen, his scald and his saga men. His mother, Queen Astrid, was at his right hand, while at the other side of him sat Gudrun. The fare was ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... literature. He had to borrow books wherever they could be found among the neighbors who were willing to lend, and he thought nothing of walking several miles for one volume. The only instruction he received was at the district school, which was open a few weeks in midwinter, and at the Haverhill Academy, which he attended two terms of six months each, paying tuition by work in spare hours, and by keeping a small school himself. A feeble spirit would have languished under such disadvantages. ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... entire distinctness the moment when the consciousness possessed me that my childhood was transcended by initial manhood, and I can never forget the pang that moment brought me. It was on a bright, moonlight night, in midwinter, when my mates, boisterous with life, were engaged in their usual games in the snow, and I had gone out expecting to share in their enjoyment. I had not played, or rather tried to play, five minutes, before I found that there was nothing in the play for me— that I had absolutely ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Thus penned up on the bleak promontory, cholera-stricken, mocked rather than sustained during their benumbing toil with rations of uncooked meat and green coffee-berries, the British soldiery wasted away. Their effective force sank at midwinter to eleven thousand men. In the hospitals, which even at Scutari were more deadly to those who passed within them than the fiercest fire of the enemy, nine thousand men perished before the end of February. The time indeed came when the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the early Eighties fresh meat was not shipped any distance except in midwinter, and then as frozen meat. Surplus Western cattle were shipped East alive—and subject to heavy risks, shrinkage and expense. About fifty per cent of the live weight was dressed beef—balance non-edible—so double ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... couple of authors, a business man, an undefinable—comrades all. They are dressed variously: some have already dispensed with their overcoats, others wear long ulsters with turned-up collars as in midwinter. Everybody knows "the clique." ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... a general deduction from chemical and mechanical principles, we think no change of temperature is ever produced where the actions belonging to one or both of these principles are not present. Hence, in midwinter, when all vegetable functions are dormant, we do not believe that any heat is developed by a tree, or that its interior differs in temperature from its exterior further than it is protected from the external air. The experiments which have been made on this point, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... great gun told them that the city was once more besieged. In truth, Humayon hearing, while still on his bed of sickness, the fatal news of Shurruf Khan's treachery, had strained every nerve, ill as he was, to come to the rescue of his little son. It was midwinter, the passes were blocked with snow, he and his troops had to meet endless hardships; but at last they were before Kabul once more. Camped on the Arkaban hill, opposite the Iron Gate, the artillery were brought into position, ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... fought the drivers of Revillon Brothers and Hudson's Bay, of free trader and independent adventurer. Freight that grew more precious with each mile it advanced must reach the beginning of the waterway. It started with the early snows. The tide was at full by midwinter. In temperature that nipped men's lungs it did not cease. There was no let-up in the whip-hands of the masters of trade at Edmonton, Winnipeg, Montreal, and London across the sea. It was not a work of philanthropy. These men ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... these midwinter afternoons the cafe is filled with its habitues—distinguished old Frenchmen, who sip their absinthe leisurely enough to glance over the leading articles in the conservative Temps or the slightly gayer ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... train and rode up to London. She said to herself over and over: "This is England. I am really in England." But it did not remove the sense of unreality. Even the English grass, bright green in midwinter, only added ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from Philip Hardin arrives, in the gayest midwinter of a rejuvenated Paris. The time for decisive action has arrived. Natalie revolves every clause of Hardin's ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage |
