"Twig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be a common practice to send for so-called "water finders," who being usually shrewd observers would locate by the aid of a hazel twig the exact spot where water could be found. In searching for water one sometimes runs across these men even to-day. The superstitious faith in the power of the forked twig or branch from the hazelnut bush to indicate ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... flew away, but soon came back with a twig six or seven inches long and an eighth of an inch thick. This was dropped before the poor little cripple, and at each end was picked up by a sparrow, and held so that the lame bird was able to catch the middle of ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... and Lynde followed on in silence, hardly able to realize the success of the ruse which had come so near being a failure. His companion was equally preoccupied. Once she stopped for Lynde to detach her dress from a grasping twig, and once to pluck one of those pallid waxen flowers which sometimes dauntlessly find a footing even among the snowdrifts of the higher Alps. The air was full of the resinous breath of the pines, whose boughs, meeting and interlacing overhead, formed an arabesqued ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... again, now with joy. The shiftless one had not been taken nor slain, and doubtless none of the others either, or they would have referred to it. But he waited to hear more, and not a dead leaf nor a twig stirred in the ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... back, so as not to interfere with their proceedings, I saw two of these insects seize hold of a twig, one at each end. The twig, which was dead and dry, and had dropped from a fir, was not quite so long as a match, but rather thicker. They lifted this stick with ease, and carried it along, exactly as labourers carry a plank. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... hours pass by, slowly he turns the leaves of memory's record, lingering over its cherished pictures, the home-scenes, the fond father and mother, the dear sister, and the dearer some-one-else's sister. The snapping of a twig startles him, and hastily brushing away a tear—fond memory's tribute—he instantly closes the book, and stands, with every sense on the alert, unflinching, though he knows that each moment may be his last, only remembering ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... draw aside the curtain to look in, while the other stood ready with his spear to transfix the person who they might expect would attempt to spring out if he had not been killed. Now I thought I must fire. I took aim at the older Indian. In doing so the barrel of my rifle touched a twig. The younger savage in a moment detected the sound; he turned round full on me. His quick eye caught sight of my rifle as I instantly brought it to bear on him. He uttered an exclamation of astonishment. It was his last. I fired, and he fell with his face forward. His companion sprang up, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... flakes drifted to crotch and twig and limb. They gathered on the brim of Buck's slouch hat, filled out the wrinkles in his big coat, whitened his hair and his long mustache, and sifted into the yellow, twisting path that ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... Nature. "Sometimes he climbs up in low bushes or in small, low-branching trees to cut off tender shoots, but he doesn't do much of this sort of thing. His home is the ground. He is most active at night, but where undisturbed, is out more or less during the day. When he wants to cut off a twig he sits up like a Squirrel and holds the twig in his hands while he bites it ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... up along the trunk as near Miss Brown as possible, but the boys perched aloft, sitting astride some crotch or forked branch with their dinner pails hung conveniently on a twig nearby. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... near the dawn of day. Her husband, much annoyed by this practice, roughly asked what was the object which so constantly allured her from her bed, and was told that it was the sweet voice of the Nightingale. Having heard this he set all his servants to work, spread on every twig of his hazels and chesnut trees a quantity of bird-lime, and set throughout the orchard so many traps and springs, that the nightingale was shortly caught. Immediately running to his wife, and twisting the bird's neck, he tossed it into her bosom so hastily that she ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... the contrast between the two Visions—the blossoming twig and the boiling caldron brewing tempests from the North. Unrelated as these seem, they symbolise together Jeremiah's prophesying throughout. For in fact this was all blossom and storm, beauty and terror, tender yearning and thunders of doom—up to the very ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... hither, open hence, Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, Where the strawberry runs red, With white star-flower overhead; Cumbered by dry twig and cone, Shredded husks of seedlings flown, Mine of mole and spotted flint: Of dire wizardry no hint, Save mayhap the print that shows Hasty outward-tripping toes, Heels to terror on the mould. These, the woods of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wind and blow through your rustling branches, to be your shadow and lengthen with the day on the water, to be a bird and perch on your top-most twig, and to float like those ducks among the weeds ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... brother in a subdued voice that nevertheless caught his sister's ear and caused an oak twig to fly in ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... necessary to know a very large number of persons of a certain kind before one can evolve a type. Each he or she contributes a twig, and the author weaves them into a nest. I have no doubt that I must have taken such a twig from nearly every clergyman I met who had a soupcon of ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... night, but at sunrise, the storm ceased. Miss Evelina had gone to sleep, lulled into a sense of security by the icy fingers tapping at her cobwebbed window pane. She awoke in a transfigured world. Every branch and twig was encased in crystal, upon which the sun was dazzling. Jewels, poised in midair, twinkled with the colours of the rainbow. On the tip of the cypress at the gate was a ruby, a sapphire gleamed from the rose-bush, and everywhere were diamonds ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... passed thus. The wind had fallen, and absolute silence reigned under the great trees. The snapping of the smallest twig, a footstep on the dry leaves, the gliding of a body amongst the grass, would have been heard without difficulty. All was quiet. Besides, Top, lying on the grass, his head stretched out on his paws, ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... stood up thar as straight an' han'some as a young spruce on a still day—not a quiver in ary twig. The Clarke boy was a leetle pale an' when he raised his pistol I could see a twitch in his lips. He looked kind o' stiff. I see they was one thing' 'bout shootin' he hadn't learnt. It don't do to ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... guillotine. Knowing now that she would not be cut, she took the end of the handle in her teeth and pulled it down as far as it would go. Still the edge of the blade remained balanced against the top of the sucker. So she rolled about until she found a pine twig, which she took in her mouth, rolling with it back to the razor. With one end of the twig in her mouth, she was able to push the blade open with the other end, and it fell back against the root of ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... apples or a quince bush produce luscious Duchess pears? Is it not strange that the sap from the same root can produce red apples on one branch, yellow ones on another, and russets on a third? How does it come that one twig can be made to produce sour apples and the next Paradise Sweets? Strange! Wonderful!! but True!!! It is all owing to the fact that the sap of a tree is a homogeneous substance and that it is the bud through which it passes that stamps the individuality upon it whether it shall ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... twig is named, and Lopt plucked it, down by the gate of Death. In an iron chest it lies with Sinmoera, and is with nine ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... slender black feet and legs, that we may not see this one bit of mortality about him! No, my little immortal does not touch the earth; he hangs suspended by that long bill, which just tethers him to its flowers. Now and then he will let down the little black tendrils of legs and feet on some bare twig, and there be rests and preens those already smooth plumules with the long slender bodkin you lent him. Now, just now, he darts into my room, coquets with my basket of flowers, "a kiss, a touch, and then away." I heard the whirr of those gauzy wings; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... must have been a twig sticking up in the ice," declared Cora, before Nancy could reply. "You ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the serried tree-trunks. The slender birches had faded utterly, the stately beeches resembled dim ghosts of trees and only the spruces retained, imperfectly, their shape and form. Thurston was country bred, and, lifting high his feet to clear bramble trailer and fallen twig, he walked by feeling instead of sight. The beck moaned a little more loudly, and there was a heavy astringent odor of damp earth and decaying leaves. When beast and bird were still again it seemed as if Nature, worn out by the productive effort of summer, were sinking under ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... tiger. He has no dignified Mr. Asquith to deal with now. If Northcliffe, by any journalistic sensations, interferes in what in Lloyd George's opinion is the proper and efficient conduct of the war, Lloyd George will break him like a twig and without a second thought. Some people of Britain talk of what will happen to Lloyd George when Northcliffe throws him over. One can only smile. To stop the publication of the Daily Mail and the Times, wrecking a million pounds' ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... second case, the extinction caused by a flurry is sudden and complete, or nearly so. In my nocturnal hunts for young Glow-worms, measuring about 5 millimetres long,[3] I can plainly see the glimmer on the blades of grass; but, should the least false step disturb a neighbouring twig, the light goes out at once and the coveted insect becomes invisible. Upon the full-grown females, lit up with their nuptial scarves, even a violent start has but a slight effect and ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... bear the agony. And then, while we counted out the last seconds of the half, came a snap like that of a whip's lash, and the bowl of Richter's pipe lay smouldering on the grass. The noble had cut the stem as clean as it were sapling twig, and there stood Richter with the piece still clenched in his teeth, his eyes ablaze, and his cheek running blood. He pushed the surgeon away when he came forward with his needles. The Count was smiling ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lop the side-boughs of an elm (which may be about January for the fire, and more frequently, if you desire to have them tall; or that you would form them into hedges, for so they may be kept plashed, and thickned to the highest twig; affording both a magnificent and august defence against the winds and sun) I say, when you trim them, be careful to indulge the tops; for they protect the body of your trees from the wet, which always invades those parts first, and will in time perish them to the very ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... separatism!"—What exists, exists. The facts will laugh at your reflections; they will tell you that, they cannot be undone. They will tell you that you are like Endymion, whom Diana made sleep until the twig on which he leaned his head had become a tree. They, will tell you that you could as well reduce Buffalo to the log-house of MIDDEAU and LANE; the mighty democrat the steam-engine to the horse on the back of which EZRA METCALF brought the ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... speaks frankly, as friend to friend; and when I had read that portion of your letter which describes the scene in the conservatory, I seemed to see it all.' I was speaking with my eyes upon the ripples of the little stream at our feet, into which, from time to time, I tossed a leaf or twig from the ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... like drenched birds on a twig, listening to what was happening below. And there for some time a deep silence continued, but soon came a peculiar sound as though of lapping, smacking of torn-off pieces of flesh, together with the horses' heavy breathing and the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... A dry twig snapped under Hugh's foot and the boys stopped short, their breath coming fast. The hoot of an owl directly overhead startled them violently and unconsciously they clutched each other's arm. The giant trees loomed black and forbidding in ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... said Burleson, briefly; but the fire-warden cut in ahead, cantering forward up the trail, nonchalantly breaking off a twig of aromatic black birch, as she rode, to place ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... other felonious devices hazed three Swedes and the four Boyle kids out of the place and toward their several homes and then when the schoolmarm very discreetly locked the door and mildly informed him that she would brain him with a twig off a sage-bush if he burst the lock, he straightway forgot that he was old enough to have a son quite old enough to frighten, abduct and otherwise lighten the monotonous life of said schoolmarm, and became a bold, bad man. He bursted ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... trees Bent lower than in autumn 'neath their weight Of glossy fruit: the youthful pines that stood, With leafless beech and maple interspersed, To speak of summer when all else that laughed In balmy air with summer should depart, Were robed in white, save where some little twig Of deepest verdure timidly looked forth, Like gentle Spring reclining in the arms Of stern old Winter. Silence reigned abroad; There was no sun, no sky, but over all A dense dark mist ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... a pause. The King had inadvertently cracked a twig on one of the pine-boughs he was holding back in an endeavour to see the speakers. But he now boldly pushed on, beckoning De Launay to follow close, and in another minute had emerged on a small sandy plateau, which led, by means of an ascending path, to a rocky eminence, encircled by ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... not meet Miss Heydinger's renewed advances with invariable kindness. Yet something of the old relations were presently restored. He would talk well to her for a time, and then snap like a dry twig. But the loaning of books was resumed, the subtle process of his aesthetic education that Miss Heydinger had devised. "Here is a book I promised you," she said one day, and he tried to remember ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... that which Captain Cook remarks are so plentiful in Thirsty Sound. He says, 'We found also an incredible number of butterflies, so that for the space of three or four acres the air was so crowded with them, that millions were to be seen in every direction, at the same time that every branch and twig were covered with others that were not upon the wing.' The numbers seen by us were indeed incredible; the stem of every grass tree, which plant grows abundantly upon the hills, was covered with them, and on their taking wino, the air appeared, as ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... house, on the occasion of my last visit to Red Hall, you were pleased to express a wish that a' would send you up as arthentic a list as a' could conveniently make up of my qualifications for the magistracey. Deed, a'm sore yet, Sir Tomas, and wouldn't it be a good joke, as my friend Dr. Twig says, if the soreness should remain until it is cured by the Komission, which he thinks would wipe out all recollection of the pain and the punishment. And he says, too, that this application of it would be putting it to a most proper and legutimate ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... moral or his physical perceptions. The day was dawning from a patch of watery light in the east, and sullen clouds came driving up before it, from which the rain descended in a thick, wet mist. It streamed from every twig and bramble in the hedge; made little gullies in the path; ran down a hundred channels in the road; and punched innumerable holes into the face of every pond and gutter. It fell with an oozy, slushy sound among the grass; and made a muddy kennel of every furrow ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... turned, in response to this diplomatic advance, and leant his right elbow on the back of the seat, and his chin on his right palm. He put his left leg over his right leg, and thus his left foot swayed like a bird on a twig within an inch of Helen's flounce. The parasol covered the faces of the just ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... and, as a consequence, several persons may ultimately have proprietary interest in one house. In such a case the ground space is divided, often resulting in many twig-separated patches, as is shown in ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... hardest and most solid on their surfaces, and hollow, or spongy, inside. The long bones of the limbs are hollow, and the cavity is filled with a delicate fat called marrow—just as an elderberry stem or willow-twig is filled with pith. This tubular shape makes them as strong as if they were solid, and ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... a repetition of the whistle, I soon saw my trusty adherent spanning the chasm like a Colossus, one foot on one bank, the other on the opposite—each of which appeared to me to be resting, so to say, on nothing—tugging away at a long twig that grew on the brink of the precipice, and exceedingly likely to resolve the inquiry as to the source of the Loddon, by plumping souse into the fountain-head. I, of course, called out to warn him; and he equally, of course, went on ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... new to her Southern eyes, and far surpassing anything she had imagined of the splendor of Solomon's Temple. On the evening previous, the air had been full of mist, which, as it grew colder, had settled on the trees of the Common, covering every little twig with a panoply of ice. A very light snow had fallen softly during the night, and sprinkled the ice with a feathery fleece. The trees, in this delicate white vesture, standing up against a dark blue sky, looked like the glorified spirits of trees. Here and there, the sun ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... sensitive in every leafless twig to spring, stood in silence and dim nightfall around a lodge. Wherever a human dwelling is set in the wilderness, it becomes, by the very humility of its proportions, a prominent and aggressive point. But this lodge of bark and poles was the color of the woods, and nearly ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... baskets were quite full. The fire was burning cheerfully, sending long streamers of wood smoke into the morning air. On the bricks sat a billy-can full of water just on the boil, and, as it bubbled up, Grizzel threw in a small handful of tea, giving it a stir round with a cherry twig. She let it bubble again while she counted ten, then lifted the can to one side and put the lid on. She had begged a cup of warm, frothy milk from the milk-boy's pail as he came up the hill. The ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... clear, cold, shining bright. A slight thaw the day before had left every bough and twig and pine-needle covered with a moisture that had frozen in the night into glittering crystal sheaths, which flashed like millions of prisms in the sun. The beauty of the scene was almost solemn. The air was so frosty cold that even the noon ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... The all-hiding Earth has received him, the bloated Tilebeard: may we never look upon his like again!—Jourdan one names; the other Hundreds are not named. Alas, they, like confused faggots, lie massed together for us; counted by the cartload: and yet not an individual faggot-twig of them but had a Life and History; and was cut, not without pangs as ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was covered in a gray coat of ice. A young maple grew directly under my window, and its poor head was bent over as though in sorrow at the treatment it had to endure, and its branches hung listlessly in their icy case, with a frozen raindrop at the end of each twig. The sidewalks were treacherous, and I found some amusement in watching the pedestrians as they warily proceeded along the slippery pavement, most of them treading as though walking on egg-shells. There went an old gentleman who must have had business down town, for I had seen him ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... of nearly two hundred men. Two Japanese guides, changed at each new district, led the way, carrying handsomely carved staves. Three soldiers followed. Then came Captain Golownin, with a soldier on one side, and on the other an attendant with a twig to drive off the gnats, from whose troublesome attacks he was unable to defend himself. Next came an officer holding the end of the rope that bound him, followed by a party carrying his litter or palanquin. Each of the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the heel, and at another with the tip of his scythe, clipped the hillock round both sides with short strokes. And while he did this he kept looking about and watching what came into his view: at one moment he picked a wild berry and ate it or offered it to Levin, then he flung away a twig with the blade of the scythe, then he looked at a quail's nest, from which the bird flew just under the scythe, or caught a snake that crossed his path, and lifting it on the scythe as though on a fork showed it to Levin and ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... little flycatcher chose a small twig under one of the boughs of the apple tree, where it perched for hours, darting out when a fly or other insect buzzed by; but always returning to the little twig as if it were home. In the shade of the thick-leaved boughs, the friendly cows sought shelter, patiently chewing their ...
— The Little Brown Hen Hears the Song of the Nightingale & The Golden Harvest • Jasmine Stone Van Dresser
... glided out into the darkness, and Rodney was left alone to think over the situation; but Merrick had not been gone more than five minutes when the horse indicated by his actions that there was some one approaching the stable. Presently a twig snapped, a hand was passed along the wall outside and a figure appeared in the doorway. It wasn't tall enough for Merrick, and besides it had a coat on. Believing that it was one of Thompson's men who had been left ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... heart: "ONCE BEING MINE, THOU ART FOREVER MINE!" Half-mad he clasped both hands upon his brow, Amidst the storm of voices, till they died, And all was silence, save the reckless song Of a young bird upon a twig without. Then a defiant, ghastly face he raised, And shrieked, "'T is false! I am no longer thine!" And through the windows open to the park, Rushed forth, beyond the sight ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... track we could follow with greatest safety. M'Iver seemingly stopped to listen, or made up his mind to deviate to the side after a little; for I soon found myself running alone, and two or three men—to judge by their cries—keeping as close on me as they could by the sound of my plunging among twig and bracken. At last, by striking to an angle down a field that suddenly rolled down beside me, I found soft carpeting for my feet, and put an increasing distance between us. With no relaxation to my step, however, I kept running ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore, and having fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, would show when he had a bite. These alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as you walked halfway round ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... laughed the friars, for they were lusty men with beards that curled like the wool of black rams; but loudest of all laughed the Tinker, and he sang more sweetly than any of the rest. His bag and his hammer hung upon a twig of the oak tree, and near by leaned his good stout cudgel, as thick as his wrist and ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... their cloaks about them. The train passed across the vista, and the women wondered how long it would take Jack to walk from the station. Then another rook stooped to the edge of the plantation, gathered a twig, and carried it away. The wind was rough; it caught the evergreens underneath and blew them out like umbrellas; the grass had not yet begun to grow, and the grey sea harmonised with the grey-green land. The women waited on the windy lawn, their skirts blown against ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... flowers. First and foremost comes the primrose, and cowslips—Heaven's keys as we call them—open the gates to all the other children of the Spring. "Come forth, come forth!" the returning birds shout from out the bushes, and silver-grey catkins sprout on every twig. Beech leaves burst off their sharp, brown sheaths and open to the light, as soft as taffety ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rock which had so excited him and which she had uncovered after he had gone, a little forked stick stood upright, and in its fork, with one end slanted to the ground, a twig of green witch-hazel still reposed. Beneath the twig a tiny spiral of arizing smoke showed that here, with these primitive appliances, the treasure seeker had prepared his dinner, later carefully ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... name was Richard Hedges from Chicago—stepped out, and they both stepped in front of the minister, who was from Jacksonville, wearin' a black robe with white sash around his neck; and the orchestra stopped playin'. But just then we heard a twig or somethin' snap and we looked around quick and there was Doc Lyon who read the Bible all the time and acted queer. My pa thought he was crazy. And he began to say: "She doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians, her neighbors, which were clothed with ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... Then, while his friends held the tree-top down, Doctor Rabbit made a snare or loop of the rope he had found, and arranged it in the thicket so that if Brushtail got to the cow's head he would have to step through the snare, or slip noose. Finally, Doctor Rabbit tied the tree rather loosely to a small twig of the thicket and told his friends to step back carefully, because the least thing would make the tree fly up as it was before and ...
— Doctor Rabbit and Brushtail the Fox • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... forwards in the world, not so much by doing services, as receiving them; you take a withering twig, and put it in the ground; and then you water it, because you have ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... were: we could keep the ladies in plain sight, and I could not mistake "Washington Post" when the band came to it. Mr. Deering sank into one of the chairs with a sigh of satisfaction which seemed to complete itself when he discovered in the thick grass at his feet a twig from one of the tall, slim pines above us. He bent over for it, and then, as he took out his penknife and clicked open a blade to begin whittling, he cast up a critical glance at ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dear," I said, and raised her to the saddle—if I may say raised, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to another than she sprung from the ground ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... was spoken now, and as they went they took the greatest pains not to brush against any branch or twig. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... in the grip of a painted warrior, ran panting by their sides. Hurrying on, faster and faster, until even Tom was nearly out of breath, the savages, without exchanging a word among themselves, continued their flight (for such it seemed), carefully avoiding even the breaking of a twig, or anything that could furnish a clue to those who might come ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Liddy! Don't you hear something? No, that was only the village boys shouting out on the lake! Dust away, dear woman! And you, Charity, throw wide the study-blinds, and brush that stray twig from the study-table before the young mistress of the house comes back! Ah, little you dream of the joy that will thrill those very walls to-night when under Dot's own fingers the clasp of a quaint old necklace shall yield to the touch of a tiny key, and Uncle George and his precious ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... understandest not how it is to be repaired. The essieu is left on the spot, as the load is too heavy for the horses. Thy courage has evaporated. Thou beginnest to run. The heaven is cloudless. Thou art thirsty; the enemy is behind thee; a trembling seizes thee; a twig of thorny acacia worries thee; thou thrustest it aside; the horse is scratched till ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... sun has been up just long enough to take the before-dawn chill from the air without having swallowed all the diamonds that spangle bush and twig and grass-blade after a night's soaking rain, it is good to ride over the hills of Idaho and feel oneself a king,—and never mind the crown and the sceptre. Lone Morgan, riding early to the Sawtooth to see the foreman about getting a man ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... to despair, and had almost made up her mind to turn back, when the golden note rose again and she stopped, entranced. There, over her head and not five feet away, swaying perilously on a slender twig, balanced the little songster, pouring out his ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... there is some change of particular individuality. Every growth to a plant is by the sprouting out of new individuals—new plants—a ceaseless multiplication of individuals, and not the preservation of the same individual. The species is preserved, but not the particular individual. Each limb, each twig, even each leaf is a new individual, which grows out from the previous growth as the first sprout grew from the seed. Each part furnishes a soil for the next. When a plant no longer sends out new individuals, we ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... said he, "has puzzled half the doctors on the Pacific Slope. It's as good as new, and as limber as a hickory twig." ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... flowers, flowers to feathers, in that long-past dynasty of the Humming-Birds? It is strange to come upon his tiny nest, in some gray and tangled swamp, with this brilliant atom perched disconsolately near it, upon some mossy twig; it is like visiting Cinderella among her ashes. And from Humming-Bird to Eagle, the daily existence of every bird is a remote ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and well-proportioned branches, but presents the aspect of a tree closely trimmed, and with only a few twigs left at the very top. And when all his children are sent away, his family presents the aspect of a trunk without branch, shoot, twig or foliage, standing alone in an open field. This is unnatural, blighting to much of the comfort and cheerfulness of the parental abode, and is not the example which it is desirable to hold up before the eyes of the heathen. One important reason, then, why a missionary should ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... approach them. In winter they are always on the alert. Their sense of smell—as well as of sight and hearing—is acute to an extreme degree, and they are cunning besides. They can scent an enemy a long distance off—if the wind be in their favour—and the snapping of a twig, or the slightest rustle of the leaves, is sufficient to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... a year's growth, a central pith, a single ring of reticulated tissue arranged in lines that radiate outwards, and a thin layer of enveloping bark. Nothing, then, can be more certain than that this ancient twig, which must be accepted as representative of the foliage of whole forests of the Secondary ages in Scotland, formed part of a conifer of the Lias; and the foliage of several of the other twigs, its contemporaries, though I have failed ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Hickory shuckworm Galls Spider mites Twig girdlers Fall web worm Pecan phylloxera Black pecan aphids Flathead ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... and good, I shall live alone and faithful." The thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the too slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer swept out by ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... struggling. It seemed to be getting exhausted, its tail dragged, the mouth foamed, and the tongue hung out, while it still moved on as if drawn by an unseen cord. I followed, going very close to it, but it took no notice of me. Sometimes it dug its claws into the ground or seized a twig or stalk with its teeth, and it would then remain resting for a few moments till the twig gave away, when it would roll over many times on the ground, loudly yelping, but still dragged onwards. Presently I saw in the direction ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... noiselessly round the bend and was about to enter the burrow, it made no difference; he was certain to pass over and throw the gin. The instant the teeth struck him he gave a jump which lifted the trap off the twig platform, and it immediately sank in the deep water and soon drowned him; for the water-rat, though continually diving, can only stay a short time under water. It proved a fatal contrivance, chiefly, as was supposed, because the gin, being just under the water, could not be smelt. No ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... storms; Ten thousand seeds each pregnant poppy sheds Profusely scatter'd from its waving heads; 350 The countless Aphides, prolific tribe, With greedy trunks the honey'd sap imbibe; Swarm on each leaf with eggs or embryons big, And pendent nations tenant every twig. Amorous with double sex, the snail and worm, Scoop'd in the soil, their cradling caverns form; Heap their white eggs, secure from frost and floods, And crowd their nurseries with uncounted broods. Ere yet with wavy tail the tadpole swims, Breathes with new lungs, or tries his nascent ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... round her, went to the door and opened it. Every blade, every twig was still. The air was yet thick with moisture, though somewhat less dense than during the afternoon, and a steady smack of drops upon the fallen leaves under the boughs was almost musical in its soothing regularity. It seemed better to be out of ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... vascular system, which consists of another set of small vessels. If, for example, we, early in the spring, cut a branch transversely, we will perceive the sap oozing out from numerous points over the whole of the divided surface, except on that part occupied by the pith and the bark; and if a twig, on which the leaves are already unfolded, be cut from the tree, and placed with its cut end in a watery solution of Brazil-wood, the colouring matter will be found to ascend into the leaves and to the top of the twig. In both ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... eastern banks of Korus, the crimson sward, the gorgeous forest. Beneath the trees we saw feeding many herds of plant men. The adults stood aloft upon their toes and their mighty tails, their talons pruning every available leaf and twig. It was then that I understood the careful trimming of the trees which had led me to form the mistaken idea when first I opened my eyes upon the grove that it was the playground ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wood of second growth, birch, beech, and maple; sunlight lay in white splashes here and there; nothing except these blinding pools of light and the soft impression of a fallen twig varied the immaculate snow surface as far as ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... opens, and out comes the fowler. He is lowbrowed, swarthy, ill kept, and wears rings in his ears. A soiled hand seizes the struggling linnet, and drags it violently from the threads that entangled it. A sharp-pointed twig is thrust straight through the head of the helpless victim at the eyes, and after one ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... by five brave sons (such is polygamy, That she spawns warriors by the score, where none Are prosecuted for that false crime bigamy), He never would believe the city won While Courage clung but to a single twig.—Am I Describing Priam's, Peleus', or Jove's son? Neither—but a good, plain, old, temperate man, Who fought with his five children in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... litter, with the Doctor seated in it, slowly ascending the winding steps of the Table. Reaching the flat top at last, it halted and the Doctor stepped out upon the flowery carpet. So still and perfect was the silence that even at that distance above I distinctly heard a twig snap beneath his tread. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... life young birds are taught some of the lessons that are needful for their own safety! One day I heard a young redstart chirping for his dinner. I quietly thrust my head into the thicket, and soon espied the birdkin perched on a twig only about a rod away. He either did not see me, or else decided that I was not a bugaboo. A few minutes later the mother darted into the enclosure and fed her baby. She was too much absorbed in her duties to notice me until the repast was over; then she suddenly ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... I ventured out again, trembling at every bush I passed, and thinking each twig that touched me a savage. The next day I concealed myself in the same manner, and at night travelled forward, keeping off the main road, used by the Indians, as much as possible, which made my journey far longer, and more ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Alciphron. 'Come, come! why should we stand beneath This hollow tree's unwholesome breath?' Said Alciphron, 'here 's not a blade Of grass or moss, and scanty shade. Come; it is just the hour to rove In the lone dingle shepherds love; There, straight and tall, the hazel twig Divides the crooked rock-held fig, O'er the blue pebbles where the rill In winter runs and may run still. Come then, while fresh and calm the air, And while ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... had given Oliver Leach his dismissal, and where she had first met John Walden. The wind rustled softly through the boughs, which bent and swayed before her, as though the grand old trees said: 'Thanks to you, we live!' Birds flew from twig to twig,—and the persistent murmur of many bees working amid the wild thyme which spread itself in perfumed purple patches among the moss and grass, sounded like the far-off ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... together in low tones for a few minutes. Then they flew to the woods. They soon brought back a strong twig and dropped it in front of ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... to set light foot where no foot seemed ever before to have been set, with Jarvo to inspect every twig and pebble and to take sharp turns where no turn seemed possible, the ascent, perilous as it was, proved to be no such superhuman feat as from below it had appeared. But it seemed interminable. Even when the sea lay far beneath them ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... of "Five and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie," and, too, there was that child wonder, "Little Jack Horner" who, with the same unerring instinct of a water wizard with a willow twig, could, by the sole means of his thumb, locate and extricate, upon the tip of the same, a plum from the ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... seed.[767] This is to a certain extent the case, according to Bose,[768] with three varieties of the elm, namely, the broad-leafed, lime-leafed, and twisted elm, in which latter the fibres of the wood are twisted. Even with the heterophyllous hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), which bears on each twig leaves of two shapes, "several plants raised from seed all retained the same peculiarity."[769] I will add only one other remarkable case of variation in foliage, namely, the occurrence of two sub-varieties of the ash with simple instead of pinnated ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... stopped our work and talk, to peer into the gathering night and listen for the breaking of a twig. At length I took my rifle and fired at intervals half a dozen shots; but the reports echoed and died away without a reply. A damp north wind chilled the air, and the ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... yards or so when, just as he turned a winding in the path, he found himself face to face with an old buffalo-bull, fast asleep, and lying down not ten yards off. To drop on one knee and level his piece was the work of an instant, but unfortunately he snapped a dry twig in doing so. The eyes of the huge brute opened instantly, and he had half risen before the loud report of the gun rang through the thicket. Leaping up, Tom Brown took advantage of the smoke to run back a few yards and ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... stretched out mighty arms to fondle willow-twig across the shady aisles, and maidenblush rubbed cheeks with Spitzenberg, all reddening in the sun. Under many of the trees the ground was as bare as if fire had devastated it, for the sun never fell through those close-woven branches from May to October, and there no clover ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... mountains were crossed. In the latter the lowest passes and the most used trails were selected, but these were always rough and bewildering at best—a few blazoned spruces on the hills or hatchet-hacked willows near the creeks, a tin can placed upon a stake or a bit of rag flying from a twig; all these but poorly marked the paths which were seldom pressed by the foot of a human being. Weeks might elapse, or months even, when no soul passed that way. Perhaps the whir of a partridge's wing as he flew from one feeding ground to another on the tundra was the only sound disturbing ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... And genuine transport in his bosom glow'd) His own shrill matin join'd the various notes Of Nature's music, from a thousand throats: The blackbird strove with emulation sweet, And Echo answer'd from her close retreat; The sporting white-throat on some twig's end borne, Pour'd hymns to freedom and the rising morn; Stopt in her song perchance the starting thrush Shook a white shower from the black-thorn bush, Where dew-drops thick as early blossoms hung, And ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... about with awkward gait, as if troubled with the gout, or with corns on his toes, casting about many a prying look, turning down first one eye, then the other, in earnest consideration, upon every straw he meets with; until, espying some mighty twig, large enough to make a rafter for his air-castle, he will seize upon it with avidity, and hurry away with it to the tree-top; fearing, apparently, lest you should dispute with him the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... remembrance of his desperate situation stopped the instinctive movement, and, with grinding teeth, he held it again under the rope. The smell of the burning flesh rose to his nostrils and sickened him. He felt himself turning faint. "I can not stand it!" he groaned and flung away the burning twig. In an instant he realized what he had done, and stooping over he tried to reach it where it blazed upon the ground. But it was too far away. In an agony of hopelessness he seized the rope with his one free hand and jerked it with all his strength. It broke at the burned place and left him ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... twig in the snow had scratched poor Tim rather violently on his small pug nose, but ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley
... mistaking it for one of its own species. Mr. Collingwood (22. 'Rambles of a Naturalist in the Chinese Seas,' 1868, p. 182.) in speaking of the difficulty in collecting certain butterflies in the Malay Archipelago, states that "a dead specimen pinned upon a conspicuous twig will often arrest an insect of the same species in its headlong flight, and bring it down within easy reach of the net, especially if it be of the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... caught everything in a throttling violence. The bright short grass lay all one way like brushed hair. Every shrub in the garden tugged at its roots like a dog at the collar, and strained every leaping leaf after the hunting and exterminating element. Now and again a twig would snap and fly like a bolt from an arbalist. The three men stood stiffly and aslant against the wind, as if leaning against a wall. The two ladies disappeared into the house; rather, to speak truly, they were blown into the house. Their two frocks, blue and white, looked like ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... mention these trivial occurrences? Not, Heaven knows, from the interest I can now attach to them; but because, like a drowning man who catches at a brittle twig, I seize every apology for delaying the subsequent and dreadful part of my narrative. But it must be communicated: I must have the sympathy of at least one ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... would mind any change in the mercury of the dream. The snow crunches under the feet; the chopper's axe rings funereally through the tragic air. At early morn the frost on button-bushes and willows was silvery and every stem and minutest twig and filamentary weed came up a silver thing, while the cottage smoke rose salmon-colored into that oblique day. At the base of ditches were shooting crystals, like the blades of an ivory-handled penknife, the rosettes and favors fretted ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm tree Was ridged ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... earth and sky With one sensation, and those wakeful Birds Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy, At if one quick and sudden Gale had swept An hundred airy harps! And she hath watch'd Many a Nightingale perch giddily On blosmy twig still swinging from the breeze, And to that motion tune his wanton song, Like tipsy Joy that ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... time a little leaf was heard to sigh and cry, as leaves often do when a gentle wind is about. And the twig said: "What is the matter, little leaf?" And the leaf said: "The wind just told me that one day it would pull me off and throw me down to die ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... promise by tickling Fred's nose with a twig, and the prisoner was by no means averse to the cruel sport, since it gave him a good ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... of a sevillana I came out from the shadows of the kiosk and walked without a sound of rattling pebble or cracking twig, along a path which the moon had ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... biographical addresses, I do not know where to find it. How flat and commonplace seem the works of some of the masters of prose to whom Arnold alludes—Cicero, Voltaire, Addison, Swift—compared with those of Emerson! A difference like that between the prismatic hues of raindrops suspended from a twig or a trellis in the sunlight and the water in the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... bulky; how then shall I pull it up?" and he made answer, "Pluck but a branchlet of the Tree and plant it in thy garden; 'twill at once take root and in shortest time be as gross and fair a growth as that in yonder copse." So the Princess broke off a twig, and now that she had secured the three things, whereof the holy woman spake to her, she was exceeding joyful and turning to the Bird said, "I have in very deed won my wish, but one thing is yet wanting to my ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... to break a laurel-twig and pluck a blooming wall-flower. Albano sank away into musing: the autumnal wind of the past swept over the stubble. On this holy eminence he saw the constellations, Rome's green hills, the glimmering city, the Pyramid of Cestius; but all became Past, and on the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... it, and soon produced a recognizable imitation of Tom Madison's "Old Dan Tucker." My success quite pleased me, and I became so absorbed that I quite lost account of the time and place. There was no one to hear me save a bluejay which for an hour or more kept me company. He sat on a twig just across the brook, cocking his head at me, and saucily wagging his tail. Occasionally he would dart off among the trees crying shrilly; but his curiosity would always get the better of him and back he would come again to try to solve the mystery of this rival whistling, which I'm sure was ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... still. But after they had listened for a while they discovered that it wasn't so still as it had seemed. Every bird and insect, each leaf and blossom, was busy, preparing its dinner, or else just growing. A twig rustled as a little garter snake squirmed into the thicket. A little gray nuthatch looked for its lunch on a locust tree, crawling over the trunk head-downwards, while, on a branch overhead, a crested flycatcher perched ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... started. Passers-by on the sidewalk stopped and looked in through the lighted window to see the cause of the disturbance. A flame sputtered as it burned perilously near a resinous twig. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... and leaned back in his chair, and looked at me. I looked at him very, very hard. Then we both began to blow clouds of smoke in each other's faces. Hardly a word had Tim and I passed since that day in the field when I drew the long twig that sent me away and left him behind to keep our home. What a blessing a pipe is at a time like this! Tim says more by the vigor of his smoking than Perry Thomas could express in a year's oration. So we enshrouded ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... camp were as dead weights on the lad's spirits, already burdened with most unhappy thoughts, and standing as still as the motionless trees about him, he could not summon back the resolution and courage which had kept him unfaltering throughout the night. The snapping of a twig recalled his scattered senses, however, and his sudden movement frightened a gaunt wolf which had crept up almost to the lifeless horse, and now went ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... up to this, in the unpropitious atmosphere of my own home, I daresay such phases of existence would have come upon me quite naturally, and without my ever stopping to question their real or relative solidity. But the "twig" had been differently inclined, by hands more worthy of training tender, susceptible off-shoots. Where can frail young innocence find a safe, secure and profitable refuge, from the destroying influence of evil, if ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... reach its goal. A solid bullet may deflect slightly, but it will generally deliver its message direct, unless the opposing objects are more formidable than ordinary small branches. A hollow bullet from an Express rifle will fly into fragments should it strike a twig the size of the little finger. This is quite sufficient to condemn the hollow projectile ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... web through which God himself—hush, don't think of God! How firm the stitches are! You must be proud of your darning. Let nothing disturb her. Let the light fall gently, and the clouds show an inner vest of the first green leaf. Let the sparrow perch on the twig and shake the raindrop hanging to the twig's elbow.... Why look up? Was it a sound, a thought? Oh, heavens! Back again to the thing you did, the plate glass with the violet loops? But Hilda will come. Ignominies, humiliations, oh! ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... over the road; the horses dug their hoofs firmly into the frozen ruts. Suddenly a burst of sunlight enveloped the land, and the land responded with an instant, intolerable brilliancy, a blinding sheet of white radiance. Every limb, every individual twig and blade of grass, was covered with a sparkling, transparent mail; every mound of brown earth scintillated in a crisp surface of ice like chocolate confections glazed in clear sugar. The clouds dissolved; the trees, encased in crystal pipes, rose dazzling against a pale, luminous blue ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... bough, like a withered arm with its sinews ragged out, bent over across my path. The sea gulls screamed and screeched; they flocked out from the cliff-ledges, and with still wings they towered up into the sky. Every twig and leaf began to play a diabolic symphony. Where the hedge ended I was blown back upon my heels.—It was more than half a gale ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... mahogany table, with various stains of conviviality upon its polished surface. There was a fire on the hearth, and on the mantel stood some gilded vases and a glass case of wax-flowers, also a stuffed canary under a glass shade, pathetic on his little twig. Doctor Gordon pointed to the flowers and the canary. "Poor old man lost his wife, when he had been married two years," he said. "She and the baby both died. That was before I came here. Damned if I wouldn't have pulled them through. That ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... turnrostilo. Turnstile turnkruco. Turpentine terebinto. Turpitude hontindajxo. Turquoise turkiso. Turret tureto. Turtle-dove turto. Tusk dentego. Tutor guvernisto. Twain du. Tweezers prenileto. Twelve dekdu. Twig brancxeto. Twilight vespera krepusko. Twin dunaskito. Twine sxnureto. Twinkle brileti. Twist tordi. Twitter pepi. Two du. Tympanum oreltamburo. Type (model) modelo. Type tipo, preslitero. Typhoid (fever) tifa febro. Typhus tifo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... know—if any one has been curious enough to keep the record—when the seed was planted, when the shoot first appeared above the ground, how many branches it had when it was five years old, how high it was when it was ten years old, when this limb and that twig were added, when the first blossom appeared, when that branch was grafted and those others were trimmed off. All this knowledge I may have gained; and in setting forth these facts, or such as these, concerning the natural history of the tree, I do not assume ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... adjustment of the index, another outshooting of vibratory force, a rapid up and down motion of the index to include a certain range of vibrations, and the crow itself was gone—vanished in empty space! There was the bare twig on which a moment before it had stood. Behind, in the sky, was the white cloud against which its black form had been sharply outlined, but there was no ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... mirthful and boisterous as any white child. They ride mock horses, and play mud ball. The Indian boy prepares willow sticks, peels off the bark, then rolls the wet clay into balls, and, sticking the ball on the end of the twig, he throws it at a mark with great speed and accuracy. Perhaps the most popular sport among the children is what they term the stick game. Again willow rods are used without the bark, only this time they are cut short enough to be rigid, and ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... Penobscot River. The clouds of steam rising into the cold air from the surface of the warmer water were tinged with gold by the newly-risen sun. A heavy frost rested on the spruces and balsams that fringed the banks of the river, and as the sunlight struck one twig after another, it covered them with millions of points like diamonds. Many cakes of ice were floating in the river, showing that its navigation would soon be closed ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... closed the door—in the instant when he lost sight of her—his disinclination to be associated with the private theatricals revived. At the foot of the house-steps he stopped again; plucked a twig from a plant near him; broke it in his hand; and looked about him uneasily, on this side and on that. The path to the left led back to his father's cottage—the way of escape lay open. Why not ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... them right to the edge of the water, where he saw Samson select and cut two long willow rods, and strip them clean of leaf and twig before shouldering them, and marching on ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... journey. The deer were skipping gaily over the plains. The wolves were hiding in their holes. We came at length to a stream. It was skirted by a grove, into which we made our way, and there we kindled a fire, and prepared our breakfast. We filled our coffee kettle from the brook. A hazel twig served us for a toasting fork; and we were soon engaged in one of the pleasantest parts of a hungry traveller's work. We relished our bread and ham and coffee amazingly. The wolves might be snuffing the odor of our viands, and coveting our repast; but they remained ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Sir Philip in every part, did these tears I speak of have their free way. All things wakening into life, buds swelling on the stately trees he loved; birds singing, for the time to pair is come; dew sparkling like the lustre of precious stones on every twig and blade of grass, daisies with golden eyes peeping up between. Life, life, everywhere quickening life, and he who loved life, and to see good days, can walk no more in the old dear paths of his home, which he trod with so graceful and alert a step, his ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... to a twig no thicker than a steel knitting needle. 5. It seemed to have been made of cotton fibers, and was covered with the softest bits of leaf and bark. It had two eggs in it, quite white, and each about as large as a small sugarplum. 6. When you approach the ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... gravelled nearly all over. Not a blade of grass was to be seen. A narrow little border of bare brown mould joined the gravel to the high walls. In the centre was a little domed patch of earth and there a chestnut tree stood. Great bulging brown-varnished buds were shining whitely from each twig. The girls seemed to be gathering in the room behind her—settling down round the table—Mademoiselle's voice sounded from the head of the table where Fraulein had lately been. It must be raccommodage thought Miriam—the weekly mending Mademoiselle ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... after mob of cattle came in in single file, treading carelessly, until each old bull leader, scenting the camp, gave its low, deep, drawn-out warning call that told of danger at hand. After that rang out, only an occasional snapping twig betrayed the presence of the cattle as they crept cautiously in for the drink that must be procured at all hazards. But after the drink the only point to be considered was safety, and in a crashing stampede they rushed ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... we've had a lot since then. We picked our way up through the woods on the side of the ridge, using our compass, because we couldn't see far ahead. It was getting dark and the woods were awful still. Every time a twig cracked under us it seemed to make a loud noise. There were crickets chirping too. It kind of reminded me of Temple Camp after supper. We kept straight west because we knew that was where the tree was. I guess we all got sort of excited ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Willoughby house, a sizable colonial residence set up on a hill. It was dark, except for one dim light in an upper story. In the shadow of the hedge, Craig silently vaulted the low fence and slipped up the terraces, as noiselessly as an Indian, scarcely crackling a twig or rustling a dead leaf on the ground. He paused as he came to a wing on the right ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... which the visitor might have hunted for a year. Every good librarian, every private book-owner, who has grown into his library, finds he has a bunch of nerves going to every bookcase, a branch to every shelf, and a twig to every book. These nerves get very sensitive in old librarians, sometimes, and they do not like to have a volume meddled with any more than they would like to have their naked eyes handled. They come to ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... there were a few who said, with gleeful certainty, that the elder daughter was a mere twig who could hide within the shadow of her bounteous and ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... it came into my mind as unconsciously as you broke off that twig just now. If I do not get what I lack, nothing can be accomplished—there can be no explosion! I shall abandon the whole thing and let ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... the writer was once travelling with a black boy the latter produced from the lining of his hat a bit of twig about an inch long and having three notches cut on it. The black boy explained that he was a dhomka (messenger), that the central notch represented himself, and the other notches, one the youth sending the message, the other the girl for ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... bird's beak, no attempt was made to retrieve it, although it only fell some 10 feet on to the floor of the verandah. In this respect all birds behave alike. They never attempt to reclaim that which they have let fall. A bird will spend the greater part of half an hour in wrenching a twig from a tree: yet, if this is dropped while being carried to the nest, the bird seems to lose all further ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... haunched his horse as the certain coil sank in the Grizzly's hock, and checked the Monarch with a heavy jar. Uttering one great snort of rage, he turned; his huge jaws crossed the rope, back nearly to his ears it went, and he ground it as a dog might grind a twig, so the ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... intensity once more of Adelaide Crapsey. It haunts you like the something on the dark stairway as you pass, just as when, on the roadway in the dead of night, the twig grazing one's cheek would seem like the springing panther at one's throat. Dramatic vividness is certainly her chief distinction. No playfulness here, but a stout reckoning with austere beauty. The wish to record the element at its best that played so fierce a role ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... some one had been mixing up finely powdered glass in your chop. It's an old trick, and you don't twig it till the doctors cut you up ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... to Liverpool in the steamer, I became acquainted with a charming young lady, who proved to be a second-cousin of my father's. She belongs to the aristocratic branch of our family. Every family tree has an aristocratic branch, or bough, or little twig at least, I believe. She was a Todworth; and having always heard my other relations mention with immense pride and respect the Todworths,—as if it was one of the solid satisfactions of life to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... uprising, Hiawatha aimed an arrow; Scarce a twig moved with his motion, Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled, But the wary roebuck started, Stamped with all his hoofs together, Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow, Ah! the singing, fatal arrow; Like a wasp it ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... a straw or a reed!" thought the boy; but there was hardly a twig of the sage-brush to be seen, and he shook ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... enemy, is bluff. He raises his ugly mane, lifts his ungainly shoulders and assumes the look of a Jason, while in reality he is as harmless as a mouse, and the smallest child could drive him away with a twig. His bravery is all pose—a make-believe game—which he plays over and over again with every one ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... never objected, for that would show cowardice. I picked my way through the woods, dipped my pail in the water and hurried back, always careful to make as little noise as a cat. Being only a boy, my heart would leap at every crackling of a dry twig or distant hooting of an owl, until, at last, I reached our teepee. Then my uncle would perhaps say: "Ah, Hakadah, you are a thorough warrior," empty out the precious contents of the pail, and order me to ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... made, dust and grass blades mingled together, and scratches made by the dragging poles. It did not seem possible that anything of his friend's body remained; yet he must search, and breaking a green willow twig he began carefully to work over the dust, stopping his crying, for the tears blinded his eyes so that he could ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell |
