"Twig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... open 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 ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... that, to operate successfully, this branch of education must be early attended to. True it is, that, just as 'the twig is bent, the tree's inclined;' and true it is, that on the discipline of childhood depends the moral character of manhood. The tree in the forest, after it has grown to a considerable height, may yet be bent from its natural course, and, by long-continued force, ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... supper, Dona Isabella played charmingly on the guitar, while amidst the shrubbery before the house the enormous fire-flies made long streaks of light or blazed like jewels on leaf and twig. With the graceful Pascal Charley chased and captured some. Pascal had a wicker cage partly full of them, and used it as a lantern. He lent it to Charley to go to ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... Billee crept. Dick could see him picking his way like a dancer, so that he might step on no branch or twig which would break and give him away. Now he was almost at the side of the house. Dick saw him lean forward and cautiously peer in ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... it gently by tickling his nose with a twig of wild honeysuckle. He said 'Bother the flies!' twice, ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... hands, one by one;—"that is what Mr. Raleigh calls them. When may I see the snow? You shall wrap me in eider, that I may be like all the boughs and branches. How buoyant the earth must be, when every twig becomes a feather!" And she moved toward Mr. Raleigh, singing, "Oh, would I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... one to warn her of the dangers abroad, so when she came to the railroad track she just settled upon it, with no more fear than if it were a twig. An ugly brown worm that had been sunning himself on a ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... concerned. When, however, man becomes awakened to the great truth that he is a spiritual being: when he learns that the little petty self and finite personality are not his real self at all, but merely a mask to the real man: when he realizes that the Spiritual Ego, a true Divine Spark of, or branch or twig of the Eternal Logos, [13] is his real Self: when he understands that his body is not himself, that his mind is not himself, that even his soul is not himself, being but vehicles through which he seeks expression, but that he is spirit, ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... 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 as he put up his sword, his friends crowding around him, when Ebhardt cried out that his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... harmonized in color with the light and dark patches on the log; the color was as concealing, here in its natural surroundings, as is the color of our common wood-frog among the dead leaves of our woods. When I stirred it up it jumped to a small twig, catching hold with the disks of its finger-tips, and balancing itself with unexpected ease for so big a creature, and then hopped to the ground and again stood motionless. Evidently it trusted for safety to escaping observation. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... to the fire, and look at the flames. A pine cone falls from the branch; a dry twig or so falls too. The night is like a boundless depth. I close ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... Gathering the fruit is not yet over, and the thousand unaccustomed cracklings make the tree seem alive. A branch groans as it bends beneath a burden which has reached, of a sudden, the last stage of growth; or perhaps an apple breaks from the twig, and falls on the damp earth at your feet with a dull sound. Then you hear rush by, brushing the branches and the grass, a creature you cannot see; it is the peasant's dog, that prowling and uneasy ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... and watered. The jar was placed on the stone pavement of the hotel, not ten feet away from our eyes. He covered the jar with a little tent not two feet in diameter. After a few passes of the hand, the tent was lifted. The seed had already sprouted, and had become a twig with leaves. Covering the plant once more, he called our attention to a cobra-charmer, who played harmlessly with a hooded and venomous snake. At last he threw the tent wholly aside, and there stood a fully developed little ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... that he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse of him ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... with several terms, chiefly for such ideas as they have acquired since the period of European discoveries to the eastward. They write on paper, using ink of their own composition, with pens made of the twig of the anau tree. I could never discover that the Malays had any original written characters peculiar to themselves before they acquired those now in use; but it is possible that such might have been lost, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... heard a pause of silence: till the Moon Emerging, hath awaken'd 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 reels with ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... and her beautiful blue eyes expanded wide with terror. She caught her breath with a sob, and, seizing the oar with two soft, childish hands, made a desperate attempt to turn the boat. The current resisted her weak effort, snapping the oar in twain like a slender twig and whirling ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... regret to say, to see Eliza's eggs hatch out from the cocoon; but in other instances, especially in Southern Europe, I have noticed the little heap of well-covered ova, glued together into a mass, and attached to a branch or twig by stout silken cables. If you open the cocoon when the young spiders are just hatched, they begin to run about in the most lively fashion, and look like a living and moving congeries of little balls or seedlets. The common garden spider lays some seven hundred ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... of day," the story- teller says—the Giant's daughter said to her husband, "My father's breath is burning my back; put thy hand into the ear of the grey filly, and whatever thou findest, throw it behind thee." "There is a twig of sloe-tree," he said. "Throw it behind thee," said she; and he did so, and twenty miles of black-thorn wood grew out of it, so thick that a weasel could not get through. But the Giant cut through it ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... the inward and spiritual idea of language is attached does not matter. It may be the firing of a gun; it may be an old semaphore telegraph; it may be the movements of a needle; a look, a gesture, the breaking of a twig by an Indian to tell some one that he has passed that way: a twig broken designedly with this end in view is a letter addressed to whomsoever it may concern, as much as though it had been written out in full on bark or paper. ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... tell her wonderful things. She had a passionate longing for the garden, the darkness, the pure sky, the stars. Again her shoulders shook with laughter, and it seemed to her that there was a scent of wormwood in the room and that a twig was tapping ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... footmarks, so as to conceal their number, although traces of six or seven different men could be perceived as far as the spot where they had been disturbed. From this point these children of the Bush had disappeared, as it were, by magic: not a twig was broken, not a stone was turned, nor could it be observed that the heavy drops of rain had been shaken from a single blade of grass. All efforts to hit upon the direction in which they had fled were to no purpose, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... 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 not within convent walls? ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... privileges by her love of system; for she knows that order was made for the family, and not the family for order. Quietly she takes on herself what all others refuse or overlook. What the unwary disarrange she silently rectifies. Everybody in her sphere breathes easy, feels free; and the driest twig begins in her sunshine to put out buds and blossoms. So quiet are her operations and movements, that none sees that it is she who holds all things in harmony; only, alas, when she is gone, how many things suddenly appear disordered, inharmonious, neglected! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... night—for the braves deemed it best to keep the knowledge of their military operations from the women—the girl crept away to the lake again and rowed to the accustomed place, but while waiting for the quail call a twig dropped on the water beside her. With a quick instinct that civilization has spoiled she realized this to be a warning, and remaining perfectly still, she allowed her boat to drift toward shore, presently discovering that her lover was standing waist-deep in the water. In a whisper ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the feet of Karkapaha lay a tremendous bow, larger than any warrior ever yet used, a sheaf of arrows of proportionate size, and a spear of a weight which no Maha could wield. Karkapaha drew the bow as an Indian boy bends a willow twig, and the spear seemed in his hand but a reed or a feather. The shrill war-whoop burst unconsciously from his lips, and his nostrils seemed dilated with the fire and impatience of a newly-awakened courage. The heart of the fond Indian girl dissolved ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... talking to a little girl who was skipping back and forth between a rough tea-table set near the fire and an open cupboard-door in the wall. She was carrying dishes to the table, and now and then stopping to stir something good-smelling which hung over the fire in a pewter pot, with a strong bent twig for a handle. ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... twig, no bough nor branch, therefore, The Saracens cut from that sacred spring; But yet the Christians spared ne'er the more The trees to earth with cutting steel to bring: Thither went Ismen old with tresses hoar, When night on all this earth spread forth her wing, And there in silence ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... my feet; my problem is architectural, creative - to get this stuff jointed and moving. If I can do that, I will trouble you for style; anybody might write it, and it would be splendid; well-engineered, the masses right, the blooming thing travelling - twig? ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hour before the examining magistrate. And then, when you don't talk at all, you run no risk of talking too loud. That's no matter, as I can't see your face and as I don't know your name, you are wrong in supposing that I don't know who you are and what you want. I twig. You've broken up that gentleman a bit; now you want to tuck him away somewhere. The river, that great hider of folly, is what you want. I'll get you out of your scrape. Helping a good fellow in a pinch is what suits me to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... wind enough in the air To move away the ringlet curl From the lovely lady's cheek— There is not wind 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 ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... greenhouse of a friend. He had ferns from Ceylon, the branches of which were in some cases not much thicker than an ordinary pin—hard, smooth, and cylindrical—often leafless for a foot or more. But at the end of every one of them the unsightly twig unlocked the exuberant beauty hidden within it, and broke forth into a mass of fronds, almost large enough to fill the arms. We stand here upon a higher level of the wonderful: we are conscious of a music ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... were there in plenty; for every limb was covered with pendent cactuses, gorgeous orchises, and wild pines; and while one-half the tree was clothed in rich foliage, the other half, utterly leafless, bore on every twig brilliant yellow flowers, around which humming-birds whirred all day long. Parrots peeped in and out of every cranny, while, within the airy woodland, brilliant lizards basked like living gems upon the bark, gaudy finches flitted and chirruped, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... that," commented Haigh, blinking at the shabby black steamer thoughtfully. "You'd better pop down below in case he has ventured his little self on deck, and should happen to twig you. But still it's best to be on the safe side." He chose a cigar, lighted it and puffed for a minute, and then took it out of his mouth and grinned at the glowing end. "Look here. The fellow doesn't know me from Adam. I'll slip ashore, and see if I can't ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... no attempt to discover their identity. For that invaders were inside the shack he was now certain. It was not a fire. There was neither smoke nor flame. Softly he crept nearer, the thick matting of pine needles muffling his footsteps. But how his heart beat! Suppose a twig should crack beneath his feet and warn the vandals of his approach? And suppose they rushed out, caught him, and—for a moment he halted with fear; then, summoning every particle of courage he possessed, he tiptoed on and contrived to reach one of ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... (as yet) dirt under my feet; my problem is architectural, creative—to get this stuff jointed and moving. If I can do that, I will trouble you for style; anybody might write it, and it would be splendid; well-engineered, the masses right, the blooming thing travelling—twig? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the orchard or the wood, in the garden or by the rustic wayside. We have seen him, on still winter-days, flitting from tree to tree, with the liveliest motions and in the most engaging attitudes, examining every twig and branch, and winding over and under and in and out among them, and, after a few lively notes, hopping to another tree to pass through the same manoeuvres. Even those who are confined to the house are not excluded from a sight of these birds; one cannot open a window, on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... life. While sitting one evening under the trees by the roadside, my attention was called to the unusual conduct of half a dozen men and boys who were standing opposite. An elderly man was moving slowly up and down the road, holding with both hands a forked twig of hazel, shaped like the letter Y inverted. With his palms turned upward, he held in each hand a branch of the twig in such a way that the shank pointed upward; but every few moments, as he halted over a certain spot, the twig would ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... the thick woods, here and there pierced by the moonlight, they moved swiftly and silently. Now and again a dry twig would snap beneath the discreet and padded footfalls. Now and again, as they rustled some low tree, a pewee or a nuthatch would give a startled chirp. For an hour the noiseless journeying continued, and ever and anon the two gray, sinuous ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... entered the same carriage a very lady-like and pretty woman. The guard, seeing this, concluded that—whatever he concluded, he carefully drew down all the curtains, looking at me with a cheerful, genial air of intense mystery, as if to say, "I twig; it's all right; I'll keep ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... strongly impelled to shunt my bass snorer off the bed or twig his Roman nose, but one experiment of a kick roused such a vigorous snort, like that produced by dropping a brick on a sleeping pig, that I abandoned such physical means of retaliation. I thought of tickling his nose with a feather or a straw, but the bed contained ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... pernicious. Few wild animals depend for their subsistence on vegetable products obtainable only by the destruction of the plant, and they seem to confine their consumption almost exclusively to the annual harvest of leaf or twig, or at least of parts of the vegetable easily reproduced. If there are exceptions to this rule, they are in cases where the numbers of the animal are so proportioned to the abundance of the vegetable that there is no danger of the extermination of the plant from the voracity ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... will," ses the dark man, shaking his 'cad; "if they was all as fly as you, I might as well put the shutters up. How did you twig I was ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... Roger. "Your father can swim; and why does not he? Because nobody could swim across that stream. It is a torrent. It would carry any stout man out over the carr; and you would be no better than a twig ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... from side to side, drunk with gladness and plenty. Here the peach was beginning to droop over a wall. There, and yonder again, beyond, ranks of fig-trees, that had so muffled themselves in their foliage that not the nakedness of a twig showed through, had yet more figs than leaves. The crisp, cool masses of the pomegranate were dotted with scarlet flowers. The cape jasmine wore hundreds of her own white favors, whose fragrance forerun the sight. Every breath of air was a new perfume. Roses, an innumerable host, ran ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... effort, and summon every resource at their command. Anyone who was in Athens at that time and saw the Cretan guards, often with the Premier's photograph pinned on their breasts, assault such citizens as displayed the olive-twig (emblem of the Opposition), or saw the gendarmes, who patrolled the streets with fixed bayonets, protect the excesses of Venizelist bravoes, would appreciate how far the Government was prepared to stoop in ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... September evening; the sunlight fell through the branches, and whenever Lenore's hair caught its rays, it shone like gold. The proud eye, the delicate mouth, the slender limbs of the noble girl took his fancy prisoner. She laughed, and showed her little white teeth—he was enraptured; she broke off a twig, and struck the shrubs with it as she passed—it seemed to him that they bent before her in homage ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... everything else in the world, failing to perceive its connection with the branch or limb, and tree, and its unity in being with every other leaf on the tree. After a bit the unfolding consciousness of the leaf enables it to perceive the stem that connects it with the twig. Then it begins to realize certain relationships, and feels its vital connection with the twig and the few other leaves attached to the same twig. Later on, it unfolds sufficiently to perceive that ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... deer came down the pathway, Flecked with leafy light and shadow. 205 And his heart within him fluttered, Trembled like the leaves above him, Like the birch-leaf palpitated, As the deer came down the pathway. Then, upon one knee uprising, 210 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, 215 Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow; Ah! the singing, fatal arrow; Like a wasp it buzzed and stung ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... was yet abroad, no stir or sound except the tinkling of tiny bells all about me that were set to swinging as I moved along. The crusted snow was strewn with them; every twig was hung, and every pearl-bent grass blade. Then off through the woods rang the chime of louder bells, sleigh bells; then the shrill squeal of iron runners over dry snow; then the broken voices of men; and soon through the winding wood road came the horses, their bay coats white, as all things were, ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... your gun in your hand for a shot at them," came from Dick. "But be careful, or you may trip up on some frozen twig and ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... twigs of 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 to demonstrate their true character in ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... of dried leaves and the sharp crack of a breaking twig now crept upon the ear; and P——, a sportsman at all points and at all times, had already turned in the direction whence the interruption came; and, as I was about to speak, he grasped me convulsively by the arm, and, without any other intimation ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... 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 ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... of patience went on. A quarter of an hour, a half hour, and an hour passed, and still Henry did not stir. If a blade of grass or a twig beside him moved it was because the force of the wind did it. While he lay there, he examined the thicket incessantly with his eyes, but he depended most upon his ears. He listened so intently that he could hear a lizard scuttling through the grass, or ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... man stepped softly, as if he feared to alarm somebody or something. The moss beneath his feet gave no sound. Not even a twig snapped. Without knowing that he did so, Hodge ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... there fell upon Massachusetts such a snowstorm as the rugged old State never had known before. It piled itself a foot deep on the level ground, heaped up on fence and wall, covered the trees with ermine, until even the tenderest twig had its soft garment; bent telegraph poles as ruthlessly as if communication was the last thing to be cared for, blotted telephoning out of existence, delayed trains all over the north, turned electric and horse cars into nuisances, filled ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded or unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above him conspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will scare him nearly to death, and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All you can see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched out straight and "streaking it" through the low sage-brush, head erect, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a stinking smoke. Achilles' sceptre was of wood, Like Sid's, but nothing near so good; Though down from ancestors divine Transmitted to the heroes line; Thence, thro' a long descent of kings, Came an HEIRLOOM,[6] as Homer sings. Though this description looks so big, That sceptre was a sapless twig, Which, from the fatal day, when first It left the forest where 'twas nurs'd, As Homer tells us o'er and o'er, Nor leaf, nor fruit, nor blossom bore. Sid's sceptre, full of juice, did shoot In golden boughs, and golden fruit; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... noon the clouds broke and melted away as if by magic. Their lifting was like the raising of some majestic curtain on a wonderful stage. The moisture from the recent storm still glistened on every twig and leaf, and the fresh-bathed air was as clear as crystal. The summit of Pike's Peak was decked in a new covering of snow which sparkled like beautiful gems. The robins chirped gayly as they fed on the worms that had come to the ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... old Wanderobo guide said it was only an hour or so old and that we should soon overtake the elephant. It was evidently only one elephant and not a large one. It is fascinating to watch an experienced elephant hunter and to see how eloquent the trail is to him. A broken twig means something, the blades of grass turned a certain way will distinguish the fresh trail from the old one, the footprints in the soft earth, the droppings—all tell a definite story to him, and he knows when he is drawing down upon his quarry. As we proceeded his movements became slower ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... entered the forest. A purple light filled its vast aisles. Far overhead bits of azure gleamed through the rifts in the foliage, but around them was the constant patter and splash of rain drops, falling slow and heavy from every leaf and twig. There was a dank, rich smell of wet mould and rotting leaves, and rain-bruised fern. The denizens of the woodland were all astir. Birds sang, squirrels chattered, the insect world whirred around the yellow autumn blooms and the purpling ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... drenched with moonlight and every leafs awake; The little beads of dew sit white on every twig and blade; A thousand stars are scattered thick beneath the forest lake; We pass—with only laughter for the havoc we ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... lightning: Jupiter chose the first, Augustus Caesar the second, and Tiberius never failed to wear a wreath of the third when the sky threatened a thunder-storm.[592] These superstitions may be received without a sneer in a country where the magical properties of the hazel twig have not lost all their credit; and perhaps the reader may not be much surprised that a commentator on Suetonius has taken upon himself gravely to disprove the imputed virtues of the crown of Tiberius, by mentioning that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... camp-fire one afternoon looking out over the lake, I was the only one to see a little commotion in the water, half hidden by the near branches, as of some tiny swimmer struggling to reach the shore. Rushing to its rescue in the canoe, I found a yellow-rumped warbler, quite exhausted, clinging to a twig that hung down into the water. I brought the drenched and helpless thing to camp, and, putting it into a basket, hung it up to dry. An hour or two afterward I heard it fluttering in its prison, and cautiously lifted the lid to get a better glimpse of the lucky ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... cried Lucilla, by way of braving her own emotion; 'little Miss Phoebe gone into the heroics!' and she caught her two hands, and holding her fast, kissed her on both cheeks; 'a gone coon, am I, Phoebe, no better than one of the wicked; and Robin, he grew angry, hopped upon a twig, did he! I beg your pardon, my dear, but it makes me laugh to think of his dignified settling of his mind. Oh! how soon it could be unsettled again! Come, I won't have any more of this; let it alone, Phoebe, and trust me that things will adjust themselves all ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as he thought of their manoeuvrings, and putting his hand to his holster, where hung a pair of silver-mounted pistols marked with his initial, he drew out one and took flying aim at a bird on a twig, pleasing himself with the foolish fancy that 'twas Ignatius Loyola. But though a sure marksman, he had not the heart to hurt any living thing, and changing with the swiftness of a flash he shot at the twig instead, snapping ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... two men coming toward him. They were outlined against the radiance from the motor-cars. Cautiously he stepped toward the south, hoping that they would pass him in the darkness, but he dared not move rapidly, lest a stumble or the breaking of a twig betray him. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... 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
... masters. And under that roof he had made his first feeble protest against life; he had dreamed those valiant dreams of youth that never come true, no matter how successful one may become in after life. Every waking means an illusion gone, another twig pruned from the tree of ardent fancy; and when one is old there ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... 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 ...
— The Little Brown Hen Hears the Song of the Nightingale & The Golden Harvest • Jasmine Stone Van Dresser
... me not to make a mistake!" Mr. Frog chuckled happily. And then he withdrew. But he could not help pausing for a moment, to look back and watch, while Kiddie sprang down from his tree and took his new coat from the twig on which the tailor ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... number of its inmates. He now goes to work to set his trap; planting it upon the shore, in some chosen place, two or three inches below the surface of the water, and secures it by a chain to a pole set deep in the mud. A small twig is then stripped of its bark, and one end is dipped in the "medicine," as the trappers term the peculiar bait which they employ. This end of the stick rises about four inches above the surface of the water, the other end is planted between the jaws of the trap. The beaver, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... stalking through the woods, silent as an Indian, stealthy of foot, with eyes that glanced sharply in all directions. Once a twig snapped under foot, and after that he remained motionless through a long moment, shrinking against the trunk of a tree and scanning the forest anxiously in all directions. At length he ventured out again, grown doubly cautious. In this manner he worked ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... her flying visit to town. It was a pleasant room, with book-cases all round it filled with green glass in a lattice of brass-work. The books were hidden by the glass, but it reflected every movement of a bird or a twig or a cloud outside like green waters. The ceiling was domed like a sky and painted in sunny Italian scenery. It was not dull in the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... well under way I went out and searched in the loose dirt and leaves of the old heap and found another hybrid chestnut scion that presented the allusive emblem of a canary bird. This one had a shoot of about half of one inch in length and it burst completely through the wax, to make a fine little twig. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... side, found it bleeding. He bound his handkerchief round him, and, fastening the lash of Sim's whip to his collar that he might not go too fast for them, told him to find Theodora. Instantly he pulled away through the brushwood, giving a little yelp now and then as the stiff remnant of some broken twig or stem hurt his ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... of his fright, quickly obeyed the caliph's orders. He drew out five or six very large fishes; and the caliph choosing the two biggest, tied them together by the head, with the twig of a tree. "After this," said he to the fisherman, "give me thy clothes, and take mine." The exchange was soon made; and the caliph being dressed like a fisherman, even to his boots and turban, "Take thy nets," said he to the fisherman, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... been found in a grave in Ithaka. Other specimens from Greek and Roman graves are preserved in our museums. A golden crown of Greek workmanship, found at Armento, a village of the Basilicata (at present in Munich), is particularly remarkable. A twig of oak forms the ground, from among the thin golden leaves of which spring forth asters with chalices of blue enamel, convolvulus, narcissus, ivy, roses, and myrtle, gracefully intertwined. On the upper bend of the crown is the image of a winged goddess, from the head of which, among pieces ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... in the bush beyond moved. There came no sound, and the waiting man wondered if his eyes deceived him. No cat could have moved more silently upon its prey. Not a twig creaked. It moved on stealthily, inexorably, till it paused at ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... her chair and went to her favourite tree; Merrill followed her with a ready penknife. They came back with a fine half-blown rose on a leafy twig about nine inches long. As she held it out to Phadrig he declined it with a bow and a wave of ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... fours and crawled laboriously toward a concealing bank covered thick with brush. A third bullet clipped a twig of sage just about three inches above the middle of his back, and Casey flattened on his stomach and swore. Some one on the peak of the hill had good eyesight, he decided. Neither spoke, other than to swear in undertones; for voices ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... 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
... to and fro, while a bright-eyed robin watched her from a hazel twig; for other words besides David's were haunting her, and had been haunting her for two years, thought she had vainly tried to forget them. Sometimes she would wake from sleep with her heart beating, and those sad, reproachful words ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... wrinkles his face in great anger. The jackal's greatest asset and protection, when he meets with an 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 ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... dragged into the crowded room Between supporters; and once seated, sit Through downright inability to rise, Till the stout bearers lift the corpse again. These speak a loud memento. Yet even these Themselves love life, and cling to it as he, That overhangs a torrent, to a twig. They love it, and yet loathe it; fear to die, Yet scorn the purposes for which they live. Then wherefore not renounce them? No—the dread, The slavish dread of solitude, that breeds Reflection and remorse, the fear of shame, And their ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... ownerless island into a silver wood; continuous mists had hung every twig with flowers of rime. Then came bright sunny days; they melted the rime into ice: every branch received a crystal cloak, as if the whole island were of glass. This glistening load bent down the boughs like those of a weeping-willow, and when the wind stirred the wood, the icicles struck together ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... his eldest daughter who asked him for a leaf of the lime-tree, which she wanted for a sunshade for her doll. He stepped on the seat and raised his hand to break off a little twig, when a constable appeared and rudely ordered him not to touch the trees. A fresh humiliation. At the same time the constable requested him not to allow his children to play on the graves, which ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... weeks, more and more wrinkled by abstinence, the little Spider never relaxes her position. Then comes the hatching. The youngsters stretch a few threads in swing-like curves from twig to twig. The tiny rope-dancers practise for some days in the sun; then they disperse, each intent upon ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... out to tickle Whiskers' neck with a twig and laughed lightly. "I don' know wot they'll say, an' I don' care, but I know wot they'll do. They'll take hold o' my hands an'—an'—Gor-swizzle! I shud oughta know the Sergeant. . . . No more I ain't skeered ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... swept along the line of shrubs which fringed the open space. A twig, snapped near the stem, dangled, its leaves brown and withered. It was a finger pointing where someone had forced ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... the Kaffirs with awe and admiration as the "Wolf that never Sleeps." Silent in his movements, with eyes that can detect and distinguish suspicious objects where the ordinary man sees nothing at all, with ears as quick as a hare's to catch the swish of grass or the cracking of a twig, he goes alone in and out of the mountains where the savages who have marked him down are asleep by the side of their assegais, or repeating stories of the dreadful Wolf over their bivouac fires. This is the life which has ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... rather from our own desperate methods to hold tight, to place our meaning in safety, somewhere where, even if not recognized, it will at least not be mauled.... Such are the scuffles and scrimmages of the most temperate, intellectual conversations, leaving behind them for the moment not a twig, not a blade of the decent vegetation of the human soul. Cannot we get some great beneficent mechanic to invent some spiritual cement, some asphalt and gravel of nothingness, some thoroughly pneumatic intellectual balls, whereon, and also wherewith, we privileged creatures may harmlessly expend our ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... road in the deeper gloom that dyed the valley and spilt over its banks, a head rustled in the ragged border of twig and reed, and eyes watched the brightly-lighted meal which seemed to hang suspended above the vague ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... not successful. When within a few feet of the summit, the adventurer grasped at a twig too slenderly rooted to sustain his weight. It gave way in his hand, and he fell backward down the precipice. His head struck against the less perpendicular part of the rock, whence the body rolled heavily down to the detached fragment, of which mention has heretofore been made. ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the stranger raise his own bow. Nor did he seem to take aim but let the arrow fly. And the arrow carried the twig and leaf with it to ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... 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
... a blank space that wants occupation; but the portions left are not made discordant or disagreeable. They are absolutely and in themselves as valuable as they can be, every stem is a perfect stem, and every twig a graceful twig, or at least as perfect and as graceful as they were before the removal of the rest. But if we try the same experiment on the imaginative painter's work, and break off the merest stem or twig of it, it all goes to pieces like a Prince Rupert's drop. There ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries—the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top—ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... want to say that after you've heard me." She had leaned forward, her arms on her knees, her eyes on the flames which leaped from dry twig to dry twig of the burning logs and on the shower of sparks which every minute or so swept ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... accomplished with a finish and spirit that distinguished her performance as a title on a reputation distinguishes common clay. She threw over it the faithful ardor which is akin to miracle: the simplest twig in her hand budded; her dewdrops were filled with all the colors of the rainbow, because with her the sun always shone. She writes a description of our happy first Christmas in England, in which are these passages: "We had no St. Nicholas or Christmas-tree; and so, after all ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the bushes on the left hand side; then he made his way forward, and joined Harry, telling the men to pull the boat forward by means of the branches overhead which were well within reach, but to avoid breaking even a twig. ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... hurt her. Just twig the cushioned seats in the stern, and see all the brass work round the sides! My eyes, how it shines!" exclaimed Charles, holding up both ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic |
