"Crotch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wood in a crotch formed by a jutting rock, and built a fire where one would scarcely have believed it were possible to do so. He got water from a little spring just above them, and by the time Miss Elting had disposed of her patients for the moment the water for coffee was boiling. But there was no setting of ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... curious squawk in among her branches, and soon two robins, each with a worm in his mouth, came flying in through the thick-leaved boughs, to their nest in a crotch of the tree. ...
— The Little Brown Hen Hears the Song of the Nightingale & The Golden Harvest • Jasmine Stone Van Dresser
... time had been sitting on her eggs inside the hollow of the tree, darted out of her doorway, also shrieking. For a moment Johnny Chuck couldn't imagine what could be the trouble. Then a slight rustling drew his eyes to a crotch in the tree a little above the doorway of Skimmer's home. There, partly coiled around a branch, with head swaying to and fro, eyes glittering and forked tongue darting out and in, as he tried to look down into Skimmer's nest, ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... across the summits of the hills into the brilliant sunset that lay like a wonderful canvas in the crotch of the peaks. A troubled little frown creased her forehead. For the first time there had come home to her the injustice of the social system under which she and her friends thrived. No adequate answer came to her. Verinder and Joyce joined ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... attachment is based on the compressive and tensile stresses which come on the connection during wind storms. Rod connections are preferred, however, when rigidity is required, as in unions made close to the crotch; but for tying two branches together before they have shown signs of weakening at the fork, the chain may best be used, as the point of attachment may be placed some distance from the crotch, where the flexibility ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... left hand about twelve inches before the breast, the thumb resting on the closed third and fourth fingers; the fore and second fingers separated and extended, palm toward the breast; then pass the extended index into the crotch formed by the separated fingers of the left hand. This is an invented sign, and was given to illustrate the difference between buying and trading. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... furnishes the maximum of light and air to all parts of the tree. Three or four main branches should form the basis of the head, care being taken not to have them start from directly opposite points on the trunk, thus forming a crotch and leaving the tree liable to splitting from winds or excessive crops. If the tree is once started right, further pruning will give little trouble. Cut out limbs which cross, or are likely to rub against each other, or ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... is no longer found in England, but is still plentiful in the Scottish Highlands, where it makes its nest on some lofty ledge of rock among the mountain solitudes. Swiss naturalists state that it sometimes nests in the lofty crotch of some gigantic oak growing on the lower mountain slopes, but Audubon and other eminent ornithologists declare that an eagle's nest built in a tree has never ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... especially the post-offices, which were her greatest grievance. Her eyes were bright and quick as a bird's. She would peep and peer, and follow and watch, till at last, in some odd, unlikely place, the crotch of a tree, the middle of the asparagus bed, or, perhaps, on the very top step of the scuttle ladder, she spied the little paper box, with its load of notes, all ending with: "Be sure and not let Elsie know." Then she would seize the box, and, marching up to wherever the others ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... in putting it into practice. Involuntarily I sought that corner of the orchard in which I had seen my small friend. Mindful of his counsel, I got close to the apple blossoms and smelled them. As I did so I noticed a crumpled sheet of paper in a crotch of one of the trees. I no sooner saw it than I seized it, and, smoothing it out, read, written ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... the latter had no window, door or floor. "But the furniture, if it might be called furniture, was even worse than the house. Three-legged stools served for chairs. A bedstead was made of poles stuck in the cracks of the logs in one corner of the cabin, while the other end rested in the crotch of a forked stick stuck in the earthen floor. On these were laid some boards, and on the boards a shake-down of leaves, covered with skins and old petticoats. The table was a hewed puncheon supported by four legs. They had a few pewter and tin dishes to eat from, but the most minute inventory ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... a mere coop of bamboos, was perched upon a level part of the rock, the ridge-pole resting at one end in a crotch of the "Aoa," and the other propped by a forked bough ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... and looked, a wistful light came into the eyes of the man. It had been many years since he had found nesting birds and watched the ways of them. His memory brought old pictures back to him. The crotch in the tree, where the robin had plastered her nest, modeling the mud with her feathered breast; the brook-edge willows, where the blackbirds built; the meadow, with its hidden homes of bobolinks; and the woods where the whip-poor-wills called o' nights. His thoughts made a boy of him again, ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... slept in the crotch of a tree, as Tarzan had so often told her that he was accustomed to doing, and early the next morning was upon her way again. Late in the afternoon, as she was about to cross a little clearing, she was startled at the sight ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be at three days old: This is the robin's almanick; he knows Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows; So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, He goes to plast'rin' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... A specimen or two may dispose the reader to turn over the pages which follow in a good-natured frame of mind. "If unconverted men ever got to heaven," he said, "they would feel as uneasy as a shad up the crotch of a white-oak." Some of his ministerial associates took offence at his eccentricities, and called on a visit of admonition to the offending clergyman. "Mr. Dwight received their reproofs with great meekness, frankly acknowledged his faults, and promised amendment, but, in prayer at parting, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with the shaggy brute just as it was climbing, clumsily, a thick tree on the outskirts of one of the forest islands. In a crotch of the tree was a mass of sticks several feet across, and numbers of small, green parrots were clambering nervously over its rough exterior while others fluttered about in excitement screeching at the top of their ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... of one whose dress or manners are calculated to elicit the admiration of susceptible young women—a "masher." His suit was of a striped and crossed pattern of brown wool, new at that time, but since become familiar as a business suit. The low crotch of the vest revealed a stiff shirt bosom of white and pink stripes. From his coat sleeves protruded a pair of linen cuffs of the same pattern, fastened with large, gold plate buttons, set with the common yellow ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... out over a forked limb and let it settle in the crotch. Then he slew his head around until he gained the bead he wished. Five minutes passed before he caught sight of his man and then he fired. Jerking out the empty shell he smiled and called out to his ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... command that he separate the chaff from the kernels. The critic did the work with alacrity, and turning to Apollo for his reward, received the chaff. Nothing could show us more appositely than this what criticism should not be. A critic's duty is to separate excellence from defect, as Dr. Crotch says; to admire as well as to find fault. In the proportion that defects are apparent he should increase his efforts to discover beauties. Much flows out of this conception of his duty. Holding it the critic will bring besides all needful knowledge a fulness of love into his work. "Where sympathy ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... was fastened was not much more than a sapling, and he lay in the saddle of a crotch five feet from the ground when Metoosin led one of the dogs past him. The Airedale saw him and made a sudden spring that tore the leash from the Indian's hand. His leap carried him almost up to Muskwa. He was about to make another ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... was gone to school, she frequently ran off to the woods and played with wild squirrels on a tree that grew near his path homeward. Sometimes she took a nap in a large knot-hole, or, if the weather was very warm, made a cool bed of leaves across a crotch of the boughs, and slept there. When Isaac passed under the tree, on his way from school, he used to call "Bun! Bun! Bun!" If she was there, she would come to him immediately, run up on his shoulder, and so ride home to get ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... thrush called softly from the forest depths behind her. From the other side his mate replied in a soft twittering that told of love and confidence and comfort. A squirrel scampered up the trunk of a young beech, near by, and sat in the first crotch to look down at her, chattering. A light breeze sighed among the branches, swaying them in languorous rhythm, rustling them in soft and ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... brooding, his elbows upon the table, his inscrutable face propped in the crotch of his hand. A ruby, set quaintly in a cobra's head, gleamed from a ring upon his ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... his power, soon brings you to your senses, or rather deprives you of them, by a coup de soleil. Evading his beams you seek the covert of a grateful shade, where the spreading palm, with parasol-like leaves, forms romantic shelter, the cocoa-nut in its triple cluster hanging invitingly in its crotch; away high up upon its straight and graceful stem, birds of magnificent plumage are flitting from tree to tree, making the grove vocal with their notes; monkeys, mischievous, but not considered dangerous, dance overhead upon the boughs, and with comic antics provoke a smile. ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... devil to pay. It was a rough and tumble and no grips barred—just the kind of fight Rondeau likes. Nevertheless old Duncan floored him. While he's been away somebody taught him the hammer-lock and the crotch-hold and a few more fancy ones, and he got to work on Rondeau in a hurry. In fact, he had to, for if the tussle had gone over five minutes, Rondeau's youth ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... may be made into the form of an open Adirondack camp (Figs. 139 and 140) by resting the ties on a ridge-pole supported by a pair of "shears" at each end; the shears, as you will observe, consist of two sticks bound together near the top and then spread apart to receive the ridge-pole in the crotch. ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... immediately commenced. Near the spot selected for the mansion of the exiles there was a grove of small trees. The wood was light and soft, and Noddy found that he could fell the trees with his sharp hatchet quickly and easily. Four posts, with a crotch in the top of each, were set in the ground, forming the corners of the house. The frame was secured with nails and with ropes. The sides and the roof were then covered with the hibiscus from the grove. Noddy worked like a hero at his task, and Mollie ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... tree, well down toward its base. The jolt nearly shook the boy from his perch in a crotch of the tree. Very slowly at first, then with increasing speed the tree began to fall. It came down with a mighty crash, hurling little Lucien some distance ahead of it. He was bruised and shaken and for a few minutes he lay ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... weeks ago that I detected a boy (apparently about twelve years of age) climbing one of the willow trees in our old Schmittheimer place. I crept up on him unawares and speedily became satisfied that he was after the eggs in a bird's nest that nestled cozily in a crotch of the limbs. I shouted lustily at the young scapegrace, and his confusion convinced me that my suspicions were correct. I kept him in his uncomfortable position in the tree until I had lectured him severely for the cruelty he contemplated and until ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... Bathe the face, neck, crotch, chest, armpits (finishing if not beginning with cold water), and particularly the eyes, ears, and nose. If time and conveniences ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... first butcher catches sight of Picard's be-tufted head protruding in this strange manner from under the crotch of his fellow. The Man of Meat grasps Picard firmly by the collar and ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... to 7. President, the Right Hon. Lord Guernsey. Nearly 200 performers, including Master Buggins (a Birmingham boy alto) Mr. J.J. Goss (counter tenor), Signor Joseph Naldi (buffo), and Dr. Crotch, the conductor, organist and pianist. The last-named was a good player when only 3-1/2 years old. Receipts, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... only a few moments to reach the top of the tall elm, where Mr. Crow's bulky nest, built of sticks and lined with grass and moss, rested in a crotch formed by ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... desire to rest and swing in a hamaca. For these are not unlike the treetop couches of our arboreal ancestors, such a one as I have seen an orang-utan weave in a few minutes in the swaying crotch of a tree. At any rate, the hammock is not dependent upon four walls, upon rooms and houses, and it partakes altogether of the wilderness. Its movement is aeolian—yielding to every breath of air. It has even its own weird harmony—for ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... two lads swung themselves into the crotch of the great tree under which they stood; then climbed noiselessly higher up among the branches. Just as they had succeeded in screening themselves from possible discovery, a body of horsemen burst in among ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... she could not extricate herself without his help. Billy had to take heavy logs out of her arms, had to lay a plank across the stretch of creek she could not cross, had to help her down from the crotch of a tree with widespread ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... teamsters. At this point the roads diverge and come together again in Lexington, making two routes to Boston. It was claimed by interested persons that one was considerably shorter than the other,—though the actual difference was less than a mile. In the year 1824 a guide-board was set up at the crotch of the roads, proclaiming the fact that the distance to Lexington through Concord was two miles longer than through Carlisle. Straightway the storekeepers and innholders along the Concord road published a counter-statement, that it had been measured by sworn surveyors, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... said Brownie, contemptuously. 'Ridiculous, isn't it? Snow on the ground, and not time to build this two weeks; but you see, he wants to keep the little house on top of the pole lest some other bird should claim it, and she wants to build in the crotch of the evergreen, and the neighbors are all there taking sides. She has the right of it—the tree is much the prettier place; but dear me! she might just as well give up first as last, for he's sure to have his way—husbands are such tyrants!' said Captain Bobtail's Brownie, with ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... his young David-Keats in any way. He had already warned me what I must be to him, and I felt as I did about that heifer I let get by me the first day I went to dig Sam out of the hollow tree to which he has now had to build a new crotch in order to take in Peter. This time I would head off his calf for him, though I didn't mean to call Peter that, even in the heat of debate with myself. Oh, I could take such good care of Peter and ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... firmly in a crotch where the red fruit was thickest and picked mechanically while she unburdened her mind of the previous day's doings. She chattered about her adventures till Marian could have repeated every word of her conversation with the Captain off by heart, and might ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... a hut of boughs, making the corners of four saplings which they cut off at the proper height, where they formed a crotch supporting strong poles, across which other poles were laid, and which they covered with hemlock boughs; this again was covered with bark they had detached from fallen trees, and which made a good defence against heat or rain. The sides were fitted up the same way, with the ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... again. That was all he needed. The Pack would not go forward on Won-tolla's trail now till they had killed Mowgli or Mowgli had killed them. He saw them settle down in circles with a quiver of the haunches that meant they were going to stay, and so he climbed to a higher crotch, settled his back comfortably, and ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... well as his song, is unlike that of our wood-pewee. Instead of a delicate, lichen-covered saucer set lightly upon a horizontal crotch of a dead branch,—our bird's chosen home,—it is a deeper cup, fastened tightly upon a large living branch, and, at least in a cottonwood grove, decorated on the outside with the fluffy cotton from ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Well! what was to be done! We couldn't think of leaving the field—that would be too bad—to be driven off by a snake, and before the eyes of our Dulcineas too—it couldn't be thought of! So one of us cuts a pole with a crotch at the end—the rest of us arm ourselves with stones and sticks, and then the poleman commences his attack upon the bush. Ha! that was a thrust, well aimed! hear him rattle, hum-m-m—how the bush flutters! he sprang then! That ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... a good spot," said the little husband, whose name was Robert, perching on a limb of the old apple-tree and poking his bill into a crotch formed ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the crotch of a little tree about six feet from the ground, was Billy Manners, while at the foot of the tree was a calf a few months' old bellowing lustily and evidently calling ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... until she spoke of a stunted little pine three or four hundred feet down, in the crotch of an outcropping. Its sinking roots had split a rock, over which the other roots sprawled in gnarly persistence. Some passing bird had dropped the seed which had found a bed in a pocket of dust from the erosions of time. So it had grown and set up housekeeping in its ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... here all hope soured on me Of my fellow-critter's aid,— I jest flopped down on my marrow-bones, Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed. * * * * * By this, the torches was played out, And me and Isrul Parr Went off for some wood to a sheepfold That he said was somewhar thar. We found it at last, and a little shed Where they shut up the lambs at night. We looked in, and seen them ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... what dad seen las' night when I war down hyar afore, a-figurin' ter ketch that thar leetle owel," he said to himself when he had reached the tree and sat in a crotch, panting ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... intuition. Your counter-moves are—so—triumphant. Why, it's really an ornament!" With a little stress and strain that made her words interjectional, she had got it into place, thrusting one end up the throat of the chimney, and lodging the crotch that held the nest upon the stems of fresh pine that lay across the andirons; and the "odds and ends," in safe position, and suggesting neither harm nor unsuitableness, looked unique and curious, ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... long jaws vengefully at their adversary. They seemed prepared to stay there indefinitely, in the hope of starving out the carcajou and tearing her to pieces. Perceiving this, the carcajou turned her back upon them, climbed farther up the tree to a comfortable crotch, and settled herself indifferently for a nap. For all her voracious appetite, she knew she could go hungry longer than any wolf, and quite wear out the pack in a waiting game. Then the trapper, indignant at seeing so much good meat spoiled, but his sporting ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... no use to any one. To be sure, it had been a very good home in its time. It had been made of tiny twigs, stalks of old weeds, leaves, little fine roots and mud. It was still quite solid, and was firmly fixed in a crotch of the young tree. But Whitefoot couldn't see how it could be turned into a home for a ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... Miss Fitch's little men and women "the Green" had all the importance and excitement of a park. Each one of the trees which stood upon it possessed a name of its own. Every crotch and branch in them was known to the boys and the most daring among the girls; each had been the scene of games and adventures without number. "The Castle," a low spreading oak with wide, horizontal branches, had been the favorite tree for fights. Half the boys would garrison the boughs, the other ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... the farther end, making a double outside room there. No sheds, kitchens, or stables were attached to the premises, but an old pole-well, like some catapult, reared its long pole at half an angle between the crotch of another tree. Roads, marked by tall worm fences, crossed at the level vista where this tall house presided, and a quarter of a mile beyond the cross-roads, to the northeast, was another house, much smaller, and hip-gabled, like Twiford's, standing up a lane and surrounded ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend |
