"Weeds" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was gray, and a chill wind crept over the brown earth, rustling the dead stalks of the weeds and curling little spirals of dust in the road which rose no more than a foot or two, then fell again, despairingly. In any event the young shipmaster must have felt the oppression of the day and the lingering season. His spirits fell lower, and he came ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... No, one little frog failed to hear his mother's voice and, piping in his little shrill tone: "Who's afraid! Who's afraid! Who's afraid!" he swam straight on. Suddenly one of his hind legs got tangled among the weeds at the bottom of the pond; and, though he pulled and jerked with all his little might, he could not free himself. At last, after a long struggle, he gave it up and called loudly: ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... perfection, but now brought back as it were to their first vnshapelines, being fallen and cast downe, some heere, some there, vpon the earth from the which they were taken. Among the broken and decayed places, wherof great sundrie wall weeds and hearbes, especially the vnshaking Anagyre, the Lentise of both kindes, beares foote, dogges head, Gladen greene, spotted Iuie, Centarie, and diuers suchlike. And in the myldered places of broken walles grew Howslike, and the hanging Cymbalaria bryers, and ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... before than after they had sown the land, since their habits would do little good to the farmer, and other animals would answer as well for "treading in the grain;" but they may have been used before for clearing the fields of the roots and weeds encouraged by the inundation; and this seems to be confirmed by the herd of pigs with water ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... run to waste, Or water but the desert; whence arise But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, Flowers whose wild odors breathe but agonies, And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants Which spring beneath her steps, as Passion flies O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rampart has been bombarded into ruins, runs down to seaward in imminent and shattered crags, and presents the one practicable breach of the blue bay. The interior of this vessel is crowded with lovely and valuable trees,—orange, breadfruit, mummy-apple, coco, the island chestnut, and for weeds, the pine and the banana. Four perennial streams water and keep it green; and along the dell, first of one, then of another, of these, the road, for a considerable distance, descends into this fortunate valley. The song of the waters and the familiar disarray of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... across the soft loam of the garden-patch into a little woody thicket beside it. He penetrated deeply between the trees and underbrush, and at last flung himself down on his face among the soft young flowers and weeds. "Oh, Charlotte!" he groaned out. "Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!" Barney began sobbing and crying like a child as he lay there; he moved his arms convulsively, and tore up handfuls of young grass and leaves, and flung them away in the unconscious gesturing ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... which often the trees overspread with outstretched boughs. Entranced, we paddle on until we leave behind all trace of ocean swell, and if the tide be low so that old sea-soaked snags are seen upon the shore, and boulders thick with barnacles and varied coloured sea-weeds in shades of brown and red, and here and there great clusters of blue mussel shells, these all, if the water be calm and undisturbed by wind, are mirrored on the surface of the stream, forming pictures most rare ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... great rocket: spurning the watery turnings and doublings with ineffable contempt, and going straight to its end, as Father Time goes to his. To whom it is no matter what living waters run high or low, reflect the heavenly lights and darknesses, produce their little growth of weeds and flowers, turn here, turn there, are noisy or still, are troubled or at rest, for their course has one sure termination, though their ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... interest him more than the village; the woods spoke no language which his heart could understand; he could not distinguish an ash from an oak, and all the different plants were included by him under one general term of "weeds"; but he needed bodily fatigue and violent physical agitation to dissipate the overpowering feeling of discouragement that weighed down his spirits. He walked for several hours without seeing anything, nearly got ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... slowly to and fro like a flame. June was working in her garden. Hale thought he would halloo to her, and then he decided to surprise her, and he went on down, hitched his horse and stole up to the garden fence. On the way he pulled up a bunch of weeds by the roots and with them in his arms he noiselessly climbed the fence. June neither heard nor saw him. Her underlip was clenched tight between her teeth, the little cross swung violently at her throat and she was so savagely wielding the light hoe he had given ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... classical, strong and copious, reflecting, in the most conspicuous point of view, the subjects over which it rolled, and sweeping before it all the slime of formal hesitation, and all the entangling weeds of chicanery. Yet the servants of the crown were not so implicitly attached to the first minister as to acquiesce in all his plans, and dedicate their time and talents to the support of every court measure indiscriminately. This ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... before her, wet and dripping, covered with weeds and mud. "I do not feel cold," cried he, but his ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... into the garden, and the gardener gave them each a hoe and a rake, and told them to hoe up the weeds on the flower borders, and then rake them neatly over, and promised if they worked well he would ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... great poppy-heads into her garden was objected to. She would squander her care on poppies, and she had been heard to say that, while she lived, her children should be fully fed. The encouragement of flaunting weeds in a decent garden was indicative of a moral twist that the expressed resolution to supply her table with plentiful nourishment, no matter whence it came, or how provided, sufficiently confirmed. The reason with which she was stated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The rod seems to know that I rely upon it. I don't cast, so to speak; simply give the rod its head, as it were, and there you are. (Fly alights on opposite bank, drops gently, with upstanding wings; is seized with a flourish; trout is brought firmly and rapidly over a bed of weeds, never permitted to twist or turn, and attendant boy nets him out with a grin on his chubby face.) Dip the net a little more, Tommy; you don't want to assault a fish, only to lift him out. How many is that? Eight do you say? Then I ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... I'm glad I come. Man, that was some farm! Miles of level blue-grass pasture, with white fences cuttin' it up into squares, barns 'n' paddocks 'n' sheds, all painted white, just scattered around by the dozen. There's a track to work hosses on, too, but it's pretty much growed up with weeds. The main house is back in some big trees. It's brick 'n' has two porches, one on top of the other, all the ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... kicking up the dust until he marched, soldier-wise, in a cloud of it, that rose and grimed his moist face and added to the heavy, brown powder upon the wayside weeds and flowers, whistling a queer, tuneless thing, which yet contained definite sequences—the whistle of a bird rather than a boy—approached Johnny Trumbull, aged ten, small of his age, but accounted by his ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bottom, so that I was literally clutching a straw to keep myself up. As the footsteps passed I kept my face and head under the surface, and trusted to Providence. When all the sounds died away, it took me some time struggling with mud, weeds and water, before I could extricate myself from that confounded ditch. I do not make a good water-rat; I would therefore suggest to the German authorities that they should train water spaniels, and not police dogs, for pursuit of prisoners ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... round the weedy paths, she pointed out how different it would look when the lawn was mown, and all the weeds and oyster-shells removed, and the box and yews clipped, and a little paint put on ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... than we have ever tackled before," he answered. "It will mean millions of money and millions of men. I don't see much down here, grubbing about among my plants and weeds, but I have kept an eye on Germany." A most unusual excitement was shaking him. "In my young days it was a myth, 'one day Germany will declare war on us.' It has come true too late for me. I'd give everything I possess to get back ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... bishops' wives and deans' daughters. Two years of retreat from the world is generally thought to be the proper thing for a widow. Lizzie had not quite accomplished her two years before she re-opened the campaign in Mount Street with very small remnants of weeds, and with her crape brought down to a minimum;—but she was young and rich, and the world is aware that a woman of twenty-two can hardly afford to sacrifice two whole years. In the matter of her widowhood Lizzie did not encounter very much reproach. She was not shunned, or so ill spoken ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... here am I in my widow's mourning, The weeds I've really no right to wear; And women fix me with eyes of scorning, Call me "cocotte", but I do not care. And men look at me with eyes that borrow The brightness of love, but I turn away; Alone, say I, I will live with Sorrow, In my little ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... years the ocean had never for an instant ceased from its labours. The waves transmitted from one to another the floating bottle. The shelving rocks had shunned the brittle glass; no crack had yawned in the flask; no friction had displaced the cork; the sea-weeds had not rotted the osier; the shells had not eaten out the word "Hardquanonne;" the water had not penetrated into the waif; the mould had not rotted the parchment; the wet had hot effaced the writing. What trouble the abyss must have taken! Thus that which Gernardus had flung into darkness, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... weather-blackened skylights were scattered about the court. Near the concierge's room was the dyeing establishment responsible for the pink streamlet. Puddles of water infested the courtyard, along with wood shavings and coal cinders. Grass and weeds grew between the paving stones. The unforgiving sunlight seemed to cut the court into two parts. On the shady side was a dripping water tap with three small hens scratching for worms with ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... And Crop-full out of dores he flings, Ere the first Cock his Mattin rings. Thus don the Tales, to bed they creep, By whispering Windes soon lull'd asleep. Towred Cities please us then, And the busie humm of men, Where throngs of Knights and Barons bold, In weeds of Peace high triumphs hold, 120 With store of Ladies, whose bright eies Rain influence, and judge the prise Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend To win her Grace, whom all commend. There let Hymen ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Satellite,[83] though he till now had sat still, Made up to the Seraph[84] to dance a quadrille. The Quakers,[85] who ne'er had been seen at a ball, With the Coronets[86] galloped around the great hall, And the sad Mourning Widow,[87] her weeds put away, To waltz with the lustrous Japan,[88] now quite gay; While the Magpie[89] obtained universal applause, By fluttering a hornpipe upon his hind claws. The Vapourer[90] came not, but ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... refreshing, and so I strolled on and on till I was only a short distance from the cottage, which was separated from me by a couple of fields, when I turned slowly toward a corner of the enclosure I was in, where there was a pond and a patch of moist land where weeds never noticed towered up in abundance, and, to my surprise, I caught sight of Magglin seated on the bank of the pond, with his feet hanging close to the water, and apparently engaged in his evening toilet. It seemed to me that he must have been washing his face, and that he was now ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... that their hearts should have remained untouched by the contagion of universal depravity. The soil to which any seed, however good, is to be committed, would never respond to the expectations of the husbandman, if it were not cleared from weeds and thistles. Those individuals had, therefore, to be drawn aside from the general society of men; and from their infancy educated and prepared, so as to receive within their virgin souls the seeds that were afterwards to produce in them, and through them, the spiritual ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... china and silver were old and good. Beyond the belt of wavering shade, the recently mown grass gave out a moist smell in the hot sun. The grass grew fine and close, for the turf was old, but there were patches of ugly weeds. The borders by the house were thinly planted and the color plan was rude, but one could not do much with a rheumatic gardener and a boy. There used to be two men, but Mrs. Osborn had insisted on cutting ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... really king of all the insects, and my people obey my slightest wish. Living, as they do, close to the ground, the insects often come across gold and other pieces of money which have been lost by men and have fallen into cracks or crevasses or become covered with earth or hidden by grass or weeds. Whenever my people find money in this way they report the fact to me; but I have always let it lie, because it could be of no possible ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... discernible. But, though only thirty-five years have elapsed since the fall of the city, the palace is in the condition of Tintern Abbey and Melrose Abbey. The courts, which bear a great resemblance to those of the Oxford Colleges, are completely overrun with weeds and flowers. The Hall of Audience, once considered the finest in India, still retains some very faint traces of its old magnificence. It is supported on a great number of light and lofty wooden ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... where shudders through the weeds The dull, mean-headed, silent snake, Like voiceless doubt that creeps and breeds; From swamps where sluggish waters take, As lives unblest a passing love, The flag-flower's image in the spring, Or seem, when flits the bird above, To stir within ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... philistine phrases about the conspiracy of silence. The decision to be silent was a solemn pledge to the historic spirit of human progress, which demands its symbols, its conventions, and its beliefs. To destroy the harvest of these ideal values, because some weeds have grown up with them, by breaking down the dams and allowing the flood of truth-talk to burst in is the great psychological crime of our day. There is only one hope and salvation: let us build up the dam again to protect our field for a ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... with the same bewildering perfection of design and the same mysterious, vital force as the good and beautiful creatures which they infest? Why were exquisite flowers and fruit-bearing trees allowed to be overcome by foul fungus and poisonous weeds? ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... Hiawatha Go to wait and watch beside it; Kept the dark mould soft above it, Kept it clean from weeds and insects, Drove away, with scoffs and shoutings, Kahgahgee, the ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... whether the Fungi ought not to be removed into his Protista. If they are not, indeed, the Myxomycetes render the drawing of every line of demarcation between Protista and Plants impossible. But if they are, who is to define the Fungi from the Algae? Yet the sea-weeds are surely, in every respect, plants. On the other hand, Professor Haeckel puts the sponges among the Coelenterata (or polypes and corals), with the double inconvenience, as it appears to me, of separating the sponges from their immediate kindred, the Protoplasta, and destroying the definition ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... or gritty, may also be used with good results. If free from weeds, sticks, stones and rough drift, it may be used at once, but it is much better to stack it in a pile to rot for ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... perseverance of your Acadian fathers to settle there. Although beautiful and picturesque, it was a wild region inhabited, mostly, by Indians and by a few white men, trappers and hunters by occupation. Its immense prairies, covered with weeds as tall as you, were the commons where herds of cattle and of deer roamed unmolested, save by the hunter and the panther. Such was the region your ancestors settled, and which, by their energy, they have transformed into a garden ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... of life and lent it additional charms, had gone down in darkness, yes, set behind the shadow of a thousand clouds. Innocent and unoffending childhood was robbed of a father's care, and a once happy wife, and joyful mother sat down in her widow's weeds with the mantle of a gloomier sorrow around her heart. And all for what? Oh who will justify the ways of God to man? Who will impress upon the mind of youth with its impulsiveness that it is a privilege as well as a duty to present the body to God, as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable in ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... some good directions to Daisy F. for pressing sea-weeds. The implements used are a dish of water, a camel's-hair brush, sheets of paper, blotting-paper, and linen or cotton rags. After cleaning all the sand and dirt from the weeds, put one in a dish of water, and slip a sheet ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Rebecca, who rapidly calculated that with this sum, and the sale of the residue of Rawdon's effects, and her pension as a widow should he fall, she would now be absolutely independent of the world, and might look her weeds steadily in ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... It was midsummer, and the famine in the beleaguered town had become horrible. The same hideous spectacle was exhibited as on all occasions where thousands of human beings are penned together without food. They ate dogs, cats, and rats, the weeds from the churchyards, old saddles, and old shoes, and, when all was gone, they began to eat each other. The small children diminished rapidly in numbers, while beacons and signals of distress were fired day and night, that the obdurate Spinola, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... where the gaunt chimneys of the deserted mill rise from a growth of pine-trees. But I knew before I reached her what she would find; knew that her short dream of love was over, and that stretched amongst the weeds which choked the entrance to the old mill lay the dead form of the revered young minister, who, by his precept and example, had won not only the heart of this young maiden, but that of the whole community in which ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... thousand years later I passed that way, and there was nothing, even among the weeds, of what had been ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... is necessary there. Garden fruits succeed very well, yet are drier, sweeter, and more agreeable than in the Netherlands; for proof of which we may easily instance musk-melons, citrons or watermelons,(2) which in New Netherland grow right in the open fields, if the briars and weeds are kept from them, while in the Netherlands they require the close care of amateurs, or those who cultivate them for profit in gardens, and then they are neither so perfect by far, nor so palatable, as they are in New Netherland. ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... the fever. The sickness, apparently, had run its course, and the people were beginning to take heart; and the men were overhauling their nets and making ready for their summer's work. There had been a heavy storm on the previous evening, and Noll found quantities of brilliant sea-weeds and curious shells and pebbles on his walk along the beach, and lingered long to search for treasures and enjoy the bright loveliness of the day. Culm Rock and the great sea had never looked fairer to him than on this afternoon,—the one lying warm and silent, its great stone ribs ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... things it be most profitable, then of all things it must needs be most necessary, sith next vnto heauenly things, profit is the whole aime of our liues in this world: besides it is most necessary for keeping the earth in order, which else would grow wilde, and like a wildernesse, brambles and weeds choaking vp better Plants, and nothing remayning but a Chaos of confusednesse. And thus much of the ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould!—painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their last resting-place, light and frisky. They put on no weeds, but merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting the spot, choosing a lot, ordering no iron fence, whispering all through the woods about it,—some choosing the spot where the bodies of men are mouldering beneath, and meeting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... singing of birds, and the whistling of the breeze among the wild flowers, the people of our nation were much terrified at seeing a strange creature, much resembling a man, riding along the adjacent waves upon the back of a fish. He had upon his head long green hair, much resembling the coarse weeds which the mighty storms of the month of falling leaves root up from the bottom of the ocean, and scatter along the margin of the feathery strand where we now dwell. Upon his face, which was shaped like that of a porpoise, he had a beard of the colour of ooze. Around his neck hung a string ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... regular stampede back over the brow of the hill. My party had taken cover in the scrub on the left, and I crawled on hands and knees in their direction. I found a deep dyke at the foot of the cutting covered with high weeds, and into this I rolled. Gradually raising my head over the thistles, I potted rapidly at the gunner, and my party ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... all went to Newquay to visit Aunt Pike and Anna, and spent a long, glorious day on the beautiful sands, paddling in and out of the rock pools in search of rare sea-weeds, ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... grass springs up most industriously, especially in sheltered and sunny angles of the buildings, or round the door-steps,—a locality which seems particularly favorable to its growth; for it is already high enough to bend over and wave in the wind. I was surprised to observe that some weeds (especially a plant that stains the fingers with its yellow juice) had lived, and retained their freshness and sap as perfectly as in summer, through all the frosts and snows of last winter. I saw them, the last ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... seventeen beautiful Engravings of Cattle, Horses, Sheep, the varieties of Wheat, Barley, Oats, Grasses, the Weeds of Agriculture. &c.; besides numerous Engravings on wood of the most ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... feet, The animal man in his warmth and vigour, sound, and hard, and complete. And all summer long, round the lonely hut, the black earth burgeons and breeds, Till the spaces are filled with the tall-plumed ferns and the triumphing forest-weeds; The thick wild raspberries hem its walls, and, stretching on either hand, The red-ribbed stems and the giant-leaves of the sovereign spikenard stand. So lonely and silent it is, so withered and warped with the sun and snow, You would think it the fruit of some ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... say anything. What was the use? He put his hands against the weeds and pushed his body up. He looked into the silent mouth of a .38 automatic. It told him his running days were over. You didn't talk back to ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... out of doors, tag and Uncle John and Scotland's burning, and Lady Jane, and Ring around a Rosy; and then in summer you had to pull weeds in the garden. When it rained you had to march in doors, but if you tried to dance a little you had to go and sit down. Oh, they were ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... glance that kept the person under her spell. The 'evil word,' as it was called, and by which the use of certain magic formulas was meant, was another effective means at her command for inflicting all manner of evil. Magical potions, too, compounded of poisonous weeds, appear to have been prepared by them, and which, entering the body of those whom they desired to punish, had a disastrous effect. Such means might be denominated as direct. There were others indirect which were even ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... something personal. He got sore. No thoroughbred kidder would have grown personal, but I couldn't think of anything else at the time. There was nothing stirring in the duck line, and for two hours we sat all hunched up in a little boat among a lot of weeds. It was getting to be a sad affair for me, and I was thinking of Atlantic City, and the bands of music, and the swell dances, and trying to figure where these hunters have the fun they are always coming home and talking about, ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... men rustling through the weeds and switch willows of the boatmen's pathway, and she hailed; she was now a true river woman, though she did ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... saw great craters in the fields, and villages shot to ribbons, and farms abandoned; and the wild dogs fought for the wild cattle; and thistles grew deep on acres where wheat had been planted, and weeds sprouted thickly in the orchards, and blight and mildew competed for the crops. But though here and there I could see a dugout, with traces of fire and abandoned tools flung about at random, nowhere in all that dismal world did I observe a ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... needful work. The memory languidly revolved, the heart Reposed in noontide rest, the inner pulse Of contemplation almost failed to beat. Such life might not inaptly be compared 335 To a floating island, an amphibious spot Unsound, of spongy texture, yet withal Not wanting a fair face of water weeds And pleasant flowers. [G] The thirst of living praise, Fit reverence for the glorious Dead, the sight 340 Of those long vistas, sacred catacombs, Where mighty minds lie visibly entombed, Have often stirred the heart of youth, and bred A fervent ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... he had made at college and elsewhere, with WORTH and not BIRTH for a text: but Tom Tusher to take the place of the noble Castlewood—faugh! 'twas as monstrous as King Hamlet's widow taking off her weeds for Claudius. Esmond laughed at all widows, all wives, all women; and were the banns about to be published, as no doubt they were, that very next Sunday at Walcote Church, Esmond swore that he would be present to shout No! in the face of the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... dismantled of its meagre furniture, the rug was rolled up and tied, and a trunk strapped with rope was in the middle of the floor. Her next remark brought home to him the full responsibility of his situation. She led him to the window, and pointed to a spot among the drenched weeds and rubbish in the yard next door. "Do you see that bottle? That's the first thing I did—flung it out there. It didn't break," she added significantly, "and there are three drinks in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... somethin in that too. David's dreadful fond of old stones, and old bones, and tumble-down edifices, and old sticks an weeds. Why, he's all the time collectin; an if he keeps on, his baggage'll become nothin else ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... but weeds and Trash he brings, Ile giue thee solid, costly things, His will wither and be gone Before thou well canst put them on; With Currall I will haue thee Crown'd, Whose Branches intricatly wound Shall girt thy Temples euery way; And on the top of euery Spray ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... be so, sir Rowland. We were boy and girl together—fed rabbits, flew kites, planted weeds to make flowers of them, played at marbles; she may love me a little, roundhead ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... on the distant waters, which girdled the golden sands with a zone of blue and silver. The air was fresh and elastic, and diffused a spirit of life and joyousness around. Flora, as she followed the footsteps of her young agile conductor, felt like a child again; and began to collect shells and sea-weeds, with as much zest as she had done along her native coast, in those far-off happy days, which at times returned to her memory like ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... that they were more or less sinks of iniquity. A flirtation between drawing-master and pupil would be a small thing in such a pernicious atmosphere. Even amidst the Arcadian innocence of native academies such weeds have flourished This flirtation, springing up in foreign soil, would be of course ten times more desperate, secret, jesuitical in fact, than any purely ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... his service as an acknowledged minister, known to and accepted by the Church. Even while many of the apostles lived and labored, the seed of apostasy had taken root in the Church and had grown with the rankness of pernicious weeds. This condition had been predicted, both by Old Testament prophets[1449] and by the Lord Jesus.[1450] The apostles also spake in plain prediction of the growth of the apostasy all too grievously apparent to them as then ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... mountains and the Great Plains; now I am a scarecrow and despised. These piteous wrecks that are my comrades here say we have reached the bottom of the scale, the final humiliation; they say that when a horse is no longer worth the weeds and discarded rubbish they feed to him, they sell him to the bull-ring for a glass of brandy, to make sport for the people ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... third constantly whisks a yak's tail over the King's head; a fourth carries my Lord's sword; a fifth his handkerchief; and so on. Where is he going? He dawdles up a narrow staircase, through a dark corridor, down half-a-dozen steep steps, across a courtyard overgrown with weeds, up another staircase, along another passage, and so to a range of heavy quilted red screens that conceal doors leading into the female penetralia. Here we must leave him. Two servants disappear behind the parda with their master, the others promptly lie down where they are, draw the sheets or ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... same in literature as in life. Wherever one goes one immediately comes upon the incorrigible mob of humanity. It exists everywhere in legions; crowding, soiling everything, like flies in summer. Hence the numberless bad books, those rank weeds of literature which extract nourishment from the ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... limbs, I had no difficulty in keeping afloat, and eventually reached the land in safety. The scene of my next miraculous rescue from drowning was a river. In diving into the water off a boat, I got my legs entangled in a thick undergrowth of weeds. Frantically struggling to get free and realising only too acutely the seriousness of my position, for my lungs were on the verge of bursting, I fervently solicited the succour of my guardian spirit, and had no sooner done so, than I fancied I felt soft ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... of the house had long been a widow; but the residence, in former times, had been made beautiful for the pleasure of her only daughter. Now, bereaved of this daughter, she dwelt alone; and the grounds were overgrown with weeds, which here and there lay prostrated by the violence of the winds; while over them, fair as elsewhere, gleamed the mild lustre of the impartial moon. The Miobu entered, and was led into a front room in the southern part of the building. At first ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... brief statement of the higher stages of theism. The apparent and easily accessible is studied first. In botany, the trees and the conspicuous flowering plants of garden, field, and plain were first known, and then all other plants were vaguely grouped as weeds; but, since the most conspicuous phenogamous plants were first studied, what vast numbers of new orders, new genera, and new species have been discovered, in the progress of research, to ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... many paths, Hard by the basin wherein treasured lie Pledges of Theseus and Pirithous. Midway from this to the Thorician rock, The hollow pear-tree and the marble tomb, He took his seat and disarrayed himself Of his soiled weeds; then to his daughters called Water to bring that he might cleanse himself. They to a knoll that rose above the fane Of boon Demeter, hastening, did with speed That which their sire commanded,—bathed his limbs, And in new garments seemly him arrayed. When thus his heart's desire ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... Well—it has made me doubly a boy then; in my eagerness to put myself to school, on the one hand, and my desire to see something new on the other. Miss Powle, have you ever studied the invisible inhabitants of pools, and ponds, and sea-weeds?" ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... gone some distance the little Half-Chick came to a little brook that was caught in the weeds and ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... place we want, Ned, is a good harbour where the ship can ride it out safely in all weathers, where we can heave her down, if need be, to clear the weeds and barnacles off her bottom, and where we can build ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... In the bottom of a valley, an old park-wall, full of cracks and covered with moss and weeds, revealed the ball-turret of a chateau and a few windows with closed shutters. This was ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... why sleeps thy favored son In wilds, in woods, in weeds? And shall he ever thus sleep on— Interred his valiant deeds? 'Tis strange New York should thus forget Its "bravest of the brave," And in the wilds of Oregon ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... Tom Lindfield had, after this stipulation, gone down to the river. They had taken a punt, and pushed out from the hot, reeking boathouse that smelt strongly of the tar that was growing soft and viscous on its roof beneath the heat of the day, and slid down the backwater towards the river. The weeds here wanted cutting, and they wrapped themselves affectionately round the punt-pole, and dragged their green slender fingers along the bottom of the punt as if seeking to delay its passage. Then for a moment they ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... old Portuguese maps and voyages, this part of the Atlantic is called Mar de Sargasso, or the Sea of Cresses; Sargasso signifying water-cresses, which these weeds which spread over ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... field year after year for twenty or thirty seasons. On the other hand, down in the barrancas, a field cannot be used more than two years in succession, because the corn-plants in that time are already suffocated with weeds. The planting is done from the middle of April to the first week in July, and the harvest begins about the first week in October and lasts until ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... which were of very large grain, and so loose that they had to wade nearly knee deep through them. The country back of the shore seemed very rocky and rough, and here and there were trees of an enormous magnitude. Every thing seemed on a gigantic scale, even to the weeds and grasses that grew on the edge of the beach, where it sloped up to join the main land. And they could see, by mounting on a stone, the same great gloomy cliffs which they saw before the ship struck, but some miles inland. But what most attracted their attention, was the enormous and beautiful ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... abuses as soon as they are dead, and often to help them to die. To quarrel with them because they are beetles, and not butterflies, is natural, but far from profitable. They grow none the less vigorously for being trodden upon, like those tough weeds that love to nestle between the stones of court-yard pavements. If you strike at one of their heads with the bludgeon of the law, or of violence, it flies open like the seedcapsule of a snap-weed, and fills the whole region with seminal thoughts which will ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... proves to us that a naturally noble nature, if it be not properly disciplined, will produce many good and bad qualities together, just as a rich field, if not properly tilled, will produce both weeds and good fruit. The immense energy and courage of his mind used to urge him to attempt and to perform great exploits, but his harsh and ambitious temper made it difficult for him to live on friendly terms with his companions. They used to admire his indifference to pleasure and pain, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... well with those who are thy enemies and grievous for them that love thee. What then will be our fate who love thee best of all? Amongst the wives of our brethren thou wilt find more than one in grey mourning weeds. Look, I prythee, at the face of Ummettulah; look at the eyes of Sabiha, and the appearance of Ezma. They are all of them widows and orphans, and it is thou who hast caused their fathers and ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose business it was to devour that particular part, and help order the whole attempt at vegetation. Such experiences must influence a child born to them. A sandy soil, where nothing flourishes but weeds and evil beasts of small dimensions, must breed different qualities in its human offspring from one of those fat and fertile spots which the wit whom I have once before noted described so happily that, if I ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... by dykes or levees, the soil would be perfectly dry. Most of the small lakes on the American bottom disappear in the summer, and leave a deposit of vegetable matter undergoing decomposition, or a luxuriant coat of weeds and grass. ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... of Kent had put over him to' take care of him in his lunacy, was found by some of Cordelia's train, wandering about the fields near Dover, in a pitiable condition, stark mad, and singing aloud to himself with a crown upon his head which he had made of straw, and nettles, and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the corn-fields. By the advice of the physicians, Cordelia, though earnestly desirous of seeing her father, was prevailed upon to put off the meeting, till by sleep and the operation of herbs which they gave him, he should be restored to greater composure. By the aid of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... swelling for the last time on his ear! Alas! those chaunted masses were not for his conflicting soul; yea, it would have a strange comfort to feel that passing bell was proclaiming to the world that his spirit was parting from its scarcely worn weeds! But no! even that miserable solace was prohibited to him; he was to be obliterated from society, and his inexorable judges had decreed that society was not to know that he was gone. No grave for his dust; no monument for his name, to palliate his faults ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... was left there for a few minutes without notice. For this she was very thankful, and by degrees was able to fix her eyes on the face of the woman whom she so feared to see, and yet on whom she so desired to look. Lady Clavering was a mass of ill-arranged widow's weeds. She had assumed in all its grotesque ugliness those paraphernalia of outward woe which women have been condemned to wear, in order that for a time they may be shorn of all the charms of their sex. Nothing could be more proper or unbecoming than the heavy, drooping, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... extensive meadows watered by the Nemahaw, and enlivened by the few trees and shrubs skirting the borders of the river and its tributary streams—the lowland of the Missouri covered with undulating grass, nearly five feet high, gradually rising into a second plain, where rich weeds and flowers are interspersed with copses of the Osage plum; further back are seen small groves of trees; an abundance of grapes; the wild cherry of the Missouri, resembling our own, but larger, and growing on a small bush; and ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... weather usually setting in towards the end of November and continuing till the end of March. The three different modes of sowing grain, by drilling, dibbling, and broadcast, are all in use but chiefly the first, as being the most expeditious and the crop most easy to be kept free from weeds; the last is rarely practised on account of the great waste of seed; and dibbling is used only in small patches of ground near the houses when they aim at neatness. The soil, being in general loose and sandy and free from stones, is worked without much difficulty, but it ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the convenience of the mowers. It was thus that the discovery was made. A man, stooping low with his scythe, caught a view of the culvert lengthwise, and saw something entangled in the recently bared weeds of its bed. A day or two after there was an inquest; but the body was unrecognizable. Fish and flood had been busy with the millwright; he had no watch or marked article which could be identified; and a verdict of the accidental drowning of a ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... clad in mourning weeds, upon a mangy jade unmeetly set, with a lewd fool called Disdain" (canto 6). Timias and Serena, after quitting the hermit's cell, meet her. Though so sorely clad and mounted, the maiden was "a lady of great dignity and honor, but ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the mat riel, and my lyrical composition clothed this with so fresh a green, that people appeared satisfied. The piece was sent in, and was rejected by Molbeck. It was sufficiently known that what he cherished for the boards, withered there the first evening; but what he cast away as weeds were flowers for the garden—a real consolation for me. The assistant-manager, Privy Counsellor of State, Adler, a man of taste and liberality, became the patron of my work; and since a very favorable opinion of it ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... sackcloth, and ashes. The prisoners also, when the time was come for them to go down before the Prince, dressed themselves in mourning attire, with ropes upon their heads.[198] The whole town of Mansoul also showed themselves upon the wall, all clad in mourning weeds, if, perhaps, the Prince, with the sight thereof, might be moved with compassion. But O how the busy-bodies [vain thoughts] that were in the town of Mansoul did now concern themselves! They did run here and there through the streets of the town by companies, crying out as they ran in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the early morning, I was cast out at Westfield, on Lake Erie,—a town that looked like the back-yard of civilization, with weeds growing in it. Thence a trolley car, climbing over heightening hills that became progressively more beautiful, hauled me ultimately to the entrance of what the cynical conductor called "The Holy City." A fence of insurmountable palings stretched away on either hand; and, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... a wooer or of a saint in wooer's weeds? I know not, and do you know yourself? But you say you love me and that you would wed me, and I believe it; also that the woman whom Godwin weds will be fortunate, since such men are rare. But I am forbid to answer till to-morrow. ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... in slowly darkening blue. The sea was perfectly and utterly still. It seemed to sleep, but in its sleep it still waxed with the rising tide. The eye could not mark its slow increase, but Beatrice, standing upon the farthest point of the Dog Rocks, idly noted that the long brown weeds which clung about their sides began to lift as the water took their weight, till at last the delicate pattern floated out and lay like a woman's hair upon the green depth of sea. Meanwhile a mist was growing dense and soft ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... will say, this bishop was not a good Catholic.[2] I cannot answer for that. The course of Christianity and the Christian church may not unaptly be likened to a mighty river, which filled a wide channel, and bore along with its waters mud, and gravel, and weeds, till it met a great rock in the middle of its stream. By some means or other, the water flows purely, and separated from the filth, in a deeper and narrower course on one side of the rock, and the refuse of the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... was only at rare intervals that he found time, after the day's work was done, to take a little pasear in the mission garden in front of the monastery. But this garden was a poor makeshift; the plants were of the commonest kinds, and were choked with weeds. Still, the Father found comfort in it, and with his oversight it was soon a fairly respectable garden. So the months ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... spot is on the face of this Diana. Nothing short of infatuation could have driven Fletcher upon mixing with this "blessedness" such an ugly deformity as Chloe, the wanton shepherdess! If Chloe was meant to set off Clorin by contrast, Fletcher should have known that such weeds by juxtaposition do not set off, but kill ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... great distances. Some of our elves find it so difficult that they beg for other work, and many run off altogether and live above-ground, inhabiting the regions of springs and brooks, and so muddying them and filling them up with weeds that men let them alone, which is just what ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... schoolhouse squats dour and silent in its acre of weeds. A little to the rear stand two wretched outbuildings. Upon its gray clapboarded sides, window blinds hang loose and window sashes sag away from their frames. Groaning upon one hinge the vestibule door turns away from lopsided steps, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... they advanced they saw strange lean figures scraping and scratching amid the weeds and thistles, who, on sight of the band of horsemen, threw up their arms and dived in among the brushwood, as shy and as swift as wild animals. More than once, however, they came on families by the wayside, who were too weak from hunger and disease to fly, so that they could but ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... later in the day, as he was taking a short cut through a field, he passed a stream. Now, the stream was all choked up and overgrown with weeds and water-plants, so that its waters could ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... if I was likely to miss my way in two hundred yards. But I listened to him, for I was glad of the delay, to screw up my courage for the effort of facing unknown people and introducing myself. I went along the lane, I recollect, switching at all the taller roadside weeds, till, after a turn or two, I found myself close in front of the Hope Farm. There was a garden between the house and the shady, grassy lane; I afterwards found that this garden was called the court; perhaps because ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... into upper air. We talk of the increase of the wealth of nations—it may be attended by an increase of misery and mortality, and the production of additional thousands of unhealthy, parentless, neglected human beings. It may only lead to a larger growth of human weeds. The explanation of the matter is simple. Dr. Southwood Smith tells us that "Fever is the disease of adolescence and manhood." Now, wretched as the dwelling houses of the poor are, their places of work are frequently still ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... water, formed chiefly of its own debris, of Coral sand, Coral fragments, even large masses of Coral rock, mingled with the remains of the animals that have had their home about the Reef, with sea-weeds, with mud from the neighboring land, and with the thousand loose substances always floating about in the vicinity of a coast and thrown upon the rocks or shore with every wave that breaks against them. Add to this the presence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... different cultural treatment for their crops. In their most common method, that of hill planting, the soil in the intervening spaces was not broken. The hills, two to four feet apart, were from 12 to 20 or more inches in diameter. The soil in these hills was all that was stirred or loosened. All weeds, both in the hills and the intervals between them, were kept cut or pulled out. Four to six grains of maize and two or three beans were seeded in each hill, separately spaced. Squashes and pumpkins were sometimes seeded with the corn and beans. This mixed ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... of gold, interwoven with the crown of thorns; not dead thorns, but now bearing soft leaves, for the healing of the nations.... The lantern carried in Christ's left hand is the light of conscience.... Its fire is red and fierce; it falls only on the closed door, on the weeds that encumber it, and on an apple shaken from one of the trees of the orchard, thus marking that the entire awakening of the conscience is not to one's own guilt alone, but to the guilt of the world, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... Wild weeds grow rank about the place, A dark, cold spot, and drear; The dull neglect that marked his life Has followed ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... Rank weeds and tall nettles Disfigur'd his beds, Nor cabbage nor lettuce was seen, The slug and the snail Show'd their mischievous heads, And eat ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole |
