"Fern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ne'er own'd her ava, Though rear'd by the fremmit for fee unco sma', She grew in the shade like a young lady-fern, For Nature was ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... mountain country as the tropic sun shines on. It has mountains up which one may climb from tropic forest jungles into open, pine-forested parks, and up again into the dense tropic forest, with its drapery of vines, its varied hanging orchids, and its graceful, lilting fern trees. It has mountains forested to the upper rim on one side with tropic jungle and on the other with sturdy pine trees; at the crest line the children of the Tropics meet and intermingle with those of the temperate zone. There ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... drop down upon La Bresse after our climb of two hours and more, we seem to be at the world's end. Our road has led us higher and higher by dense forests and wild granite parapets, tasselled with fern and foxglove, till we suddenly wheel round upon a little straggling town marvellously placed. Deep down it lies, amid fairy-like greenery and silvery streams, whilst high above tower the rugged forest peaks and far-off blue mountains, in ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... some trouble in procuring coolies, we started at eleven in a shower of rain, and found ourselves gradually passing into the valley, and exchanging rocks and firs for groves of walnut; and moss and fern for the more civilized strawberry and the wild carnation. The strawberries, though small, had a delicious flavour, and we whiled away the time by gathering them as we passed. About two o'clock we reached the village of Shupayon, and here began to perceive a considerable ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... by her house. Yes, there she was at the window, attending to her flowers and carefully shielding a much-prized little maidenhair fern with a bell glass from the rays of the sun, which beamed as though Phoebus had mistaken the season and thought it ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... sylvatica), and its weeping, purple-leaved, and fern-leaved varieties, are frequently met with in parks and may be told from the native species by its darker bark. The weeping form may, of course, be told readily by its drooping branches. The leaves of ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... entire diagonal length of the table. In the centre was a large cut-glass bowl of pink roses, and at each corner slender vases of a single rose in each. Also single roses with long stems and leaves were laid at intervals on the cloth. Asparagus fern was lavishly used, and pink-shaded candles in silver candlesticks adorned the table. Small silver dishes of almonds, olives, and confectionery were dotted about, and finger-bowls with plates were set out on ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... down upon the sleeping earth, while far away from mortal eyes danced the Fairy folk. Fire-flies hung in bright clusters on the dewy leaves, that waved in the cool night-wind; and the flowers stood gazing, in very wonder, at the little Elves, who lay among the fern-leaves, swung in the vine-boughs, sailed on the lake in lily cups, or danced on the mossy ground, to the music of the hare-bells, who rung out their merriest peal in honor ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... and went outside it towards comparatively open ground. Having looked round about, they were intending to re-enter the copse when a fox quietly emerged with a dragging brush, trotted past them tamely as a domestic cat, and disappeared amid some dead fern. They walked on, her father merely observing, after watching the animal, "They ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... rival merits of a scarlet japonica and a double fuchsia, giving the palm of merit to the former, though the latter had some wondrous lobes; and I was also asked my opinion whether her favourite maidenhair fern would survive a sudden and unaccountable blight which had fallen upon it a ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 'I come to a wood about a mile from this 'ere village, and I says to myself, "I'll stay here and go on in the morning." So I began looking about and found some fern and cut an armful and made a bed under a oak-tree. I slep' there till about three this morning. When I opened my eyes, what should I see but a bird sitting on the ground close to me? I no sooner see it than I says to myself, "That bird is as good as a breakfast," I says. So I just ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... lowering, seemed uninviting, these were occasionally broken into charmingly alluring coves floored with golden sand, clad with evergreen shrubbery, and adorned with every variety of indigenous wattle, she-oak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful 'maiden-hair' to the palm-like 'old man'; while the majestic gum-tree, clean and smooth as the mast of 'some tall admiral' pierces the clear air to the height of 230 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... our raking. Above us, among the stones of the slope, hang bunches of Christmas fern; around the foot of the trees we uncover trailing clusters of gray-green partridge vine, glowing with crimson berries; we rake up the prince's-pine, pipsissewa, creeping-Jennie, and wintergreen red with ripe ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... the rich moss. She inhaled the delicious smell of the beech-trees, that light odour of the northern forest which is almost imperceptible, and yet so fresh, so pungent. It is made up of the smell of earth, of moss, of fern, of grass and leaves, and the resinous health of young pine. As Wilhelmine walked, she whispered a melody half in greeting to the trees, half mechanically. She found a shallow bank, and, seating herself on the ground, she supported her shoulders against the slope. She ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... me of any kind. The lesson learned, I used the knowledge certainly; but it did not take me into the region which he knew best. His grove of philosophy was close to the school, in K—— Park, which is a fine enclosure of forest trees, glades, brake-fern and deer. Here, in complete solitude, for we never saw a soul, my sentimental education was begun by this self-appointed professor. As I remember, he was a good-looking lad enough, with a round and merry face, high colour, bright eyes, a moist and laughing mouth. Had he known the ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... quarrel to notice anything—took the Lamb in his arms, and, still stooping, carried the sleeping baby a dozen yards along the road to where a stile led into a wood. The others followed, and there among the hazels and young oaks and sweet chestnuts, covered by high strong-scented brake-fern, they all lay hidden till the angry voices of the men were hushed at the angry voice of the red-and-white lady, and, after a long and anxious search, the carriage at last ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... as Fife, and Allermuir the tallest on this side: with wood and tilled field running high up on their borders, and haunches all moulded into innumerable glens and shelvings and variegated with heather and fern. The air comes briskly and sweetly off the hills, pure from the elevation, and rustically scented by the upland plants; and even at the toll, you may hear the curlew calling on its mate. At certain seasons, when the gulls desert their surfy forelands, the birds of sea and mountain hunt and scream ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sweet with birch and fern A sweeter memory blow; And there in spring the veeries sing ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... the uncomfortable sounding Akenside (oak), Fearenside (fern), but Heaviside appears to be a nickname. Handyside may mean "gracious manner," from Mid. Eng. side, cognate with Ger. Sitte, custom. See Hendy (Chapter XXII). The simple end survives as Ind or Nind (Chapter III) and in Overend (Chapter XII), Townsend. Edge appears also in the older form Egg, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... elf, appearing suddenly again. "Lend my cap, indeed! Why it wouldn't stay on the very tip of your ear, it's so small. As for nice, that depends. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. No, the only way for mortal people to be invisible is to gather the fern-seed and put it ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the fluid turned blue, and a gelatinous dark-blue precipitate appeared and adhered to the sides of the vessel. In a few days moss-like forms were seen on the surface of the precipitate, presumably approximating to what we know as dendroidal gold—that is, having the appearance of moss, fern, or twigs. After allowing the precipitate to remain undisturbed under water for a month or two a decomposition took place, and in the silicate of gold specks of metallic gold appeared. From this, the Professor ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... come up to breathe, or to play upon the surface. One of the largest of these is a very fine black beetle, a vegetable-feeding creature. It is most interesting to see two of them—they generally live in pairs—browsing on one of the fern-like plants of the Thames. This plant has leaves like fern blades, each having in turn its own small spikelets. The big beetles work along the leaf like a cow in a cabbage yard, biting off, chewing, and swallowing ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... the hill. I was particularly struck, during the walk, with the richness of the undergrowth in most places, and recognised many berries and plants that resembled those of my native land, especially a tall, elegantly formed fern, which emitted an agreeable perfume. There were several kinds of flowers, too; but I did not see so many of these as I should have expected in such a climate. We also saw a great variety of small birds of bright plumage, and many paroquets similar ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... pleasantly to interrupt my little wilderness) sat on two stones, and smoked, and plucked grass and talked to the tune of the brown water. His children were mere whelps, they fought and bit among the fern like vermin. His wife was a mere squaw; I saw her gather brush and tend the kettle, but she never ventured to address her lord while I was present. The tent was a mere gipsy hovel, like a sty for pigs. But the grinder himself had the fine self-sufficiency and grave politeness of the hunter and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... world. But ah! this other, this that never ends, Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, As full of morals, half divined, as life, Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise Of hazardous caprices, sure to please, Heavy as nightmare, airy light as fern, Imagination's very self ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... fowl-house—upstairs, formed by the roof and gable walls, and hung with strings of apples and chestnuts. It was a poor sleeping-place—rough, chilly, and unclean. I ascended to it by a ladder; my cloak and a little fern formed my only bed. But I was glad to accept it, for it enabled me to be alone and to ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... native Humming bird of eastern North America, where it is a common summer resident from May to October, breeding from Florida to Labrador. The nest is a circle an inch and a half in diameter, made of fern wood, plant down, and so forth, shingled with lichens to match the color of the branch on which it rests. Its only note is ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... work with such united energy—aided by Polly herself—that a very comfortable habitation of boughs and large leaves was finished before the day closed. It resembled a large beehive, was overshadowed by dense foliage of a tropical kind, and carpeted with a species of fern. ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... one, under a strong blue sky, Turnbull got up out of the grass and fern in which he had been lying, and his still intermittent laughter ended in a ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... order book, which was overflowing with requisitions for spring garments. "I bet yer, Mawruss! You take my Rosie for instance: at her age you got no idee what a sport she is. Yesterday afternoon she went to a bridge-whist party by Mrs. Koblin's and she won a sterling solid-silver fern dish. And mind you, Mawruss, she only just found out how to play ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... recovering from the drastic visit of years before was rough, weedy, shaggy, unkempt, and worn. The very face of the land showed decadence, and, in the wake of the witches, white top, dockweed, ragweed, cockle burr, and sweet fern had up- leaped like some joyous swarm of criminals unleashed from the hand of the law, while the beautiful pastures and grassy woodlands, their dignity outraged, were stretched here and there between them, helpless, but breathing in the ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... place, Fern Hill, near Charmouth, in Dorsetshire, on the borders of Devon, and there she lived for some five years, a centre of beneficence in the district. She started a Sunday-school, and a Bible-class after a while for the lads too old for the school, who clamored for admission to her ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... their sweet faces, and their mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the transparent waters—far into the depths of the great forest speeds the glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern-and soft velvet moss, and-white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and wreck of last year's autumn in one great sea of foliage. There are many landscapes which can never be painted, photographed, or described, but which the mind carries away instinctively to look at again ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... our national estate. Our poets have preserved for us in ballads our homespun legends. They have imaged in verse the beauty of New England's hills and waters. As we read there comes the whiff of fragrance which transports us to the hillside pasture where the sweet fern and sorrel grow, or the salt breeze of the sea blows again on our cheeks, or the rippling Merrimac sings in our ears, or the heights of Katahdin or Wachusett, lift our eyes upward. Finally, our poets, in their characters, disprove the reproach that a democracy can ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... woodland berries. But a soil that's rich, In moisture sweet exulting, and the plain That teems with grasses on its fruitful breast, Such as full oft in hollow mountain-dell We view beneath us- from the craggy heights Streams thither flow with fertilizing mud- A plain which southward rising feeds the fern By curved ploughs detested, this one day Shall yield thee store of vines full strong to gush In torrents of the wine-god; this shall be Fruitful of grapes and flowing juice like that We pour to heaven from bowls ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... cells of the sporophyte generation of the higher plants exhibit a double number of chromosomes, while the dividing nuclei of the cells of the gametophyte generation exhibit the single number. In a fern-plant, for example, which is a sporophyte, every karyokinesis divulges the double number, while in the prothallium, which is the gametophyte generation, the single number appears. The doubling process is provided by the act of fertilization, where ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... majority and development of the race.—Considering which—the apparently cruel paradox and irony of it—Honoria swung down past the scattered hawthorns, thick with ruddy fruit, across the fragrant herbs and short, sweet turf, through the straggling fern-brakes, which impeded her progress, plucking at her skirts, careless of the rich colour and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... perceive or hear anywhere around. She returned to where she had stood when first beholding it, and looked in the same direction, but nothing reappeared. The only object at all resembling a little boy or girl was the upper tuft of a bunch of fern, which had prematurely yellowed to about the colour of a fair child's hair, and waved occasionally in the breeze. This, however, did not sufficiently explain the phenomenon, and she returned to make inquiries of the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... not! I like the woods at night. Don't the fern and the needles smell fine? Lyd, what're you going to do after you finish ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... pleasure. I miss the deer; and when the first park that one ever knew was Buxted, with its moving antlers above the brake fern, one almost is compelled to withhold the word park from any enclosure without them. It is impossible to lose the feeling that the right place for cattle—even for Alderneys—is the meadow. Cows in a park are a poor makeshift; ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... on a table in front of the pulpit. It seemed to be resting on an altar of cedar and ferns. Mercy had brought from her old haunts in the woods masses of the glossy evergreen fern, and interwoven them with the boughs of cedar. At the end of the services, it was announced that all who wished could pass by the coffin and take one last look ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the magician, Came on flying fins to listen To the harp of Wainamoinen. Came the trout with graceful motions, Water-dogs with awkward movements, From the water-cliffs the salmon, From the sea-caves came the whiting, From the deeper caves the bill-fish; Came the pike from beds of sea-fern, Little fish with eyes of scarlet, Leaning on the reeds and rushes, With their heads above the surface; Came to bear the harp of joyance, Hear the songs of the enchanter. Ahto, king of all the waters, Ancient king with beard of sea-grass, Raised his head above the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... her to tug Jonathan across to the other bars which guarded Cap'n Moseby's berry pasture; he could only toddle feebly when led by a strong hand. It was quite a puzzle for six-year-old Mirandy, but she got him across and under the other bars; then she set him down in a sweet-fern thicket, and bade him keep still; ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... ensconced themselves comfortably on the steps of the cottage when a distressing accent struck upon their ears, and simultaneously they turned in the direction of the sound. There on a tiny verandah, almost hidden behind a large fern growth, a little girl sat on a low chair crying softly and pathetically as though her small heart were broken. The children stood for a moment not knowing just what to do. Then Maizie, the same one, thought Peter satirically ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... saw me he stopped full in the path. There was a growth of fern on either side. I approached slowly, and, as he did not move, paused, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... the primeval trees. And surely would have had I not seen close to me a vast and smoothly slanting ledge of rock which the stars shining on made silvery, and on which no tree could grow, scarce even a tuft of fern, so like a floor it lay in a wide oval ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... blood, an infinitesimal particle of which is sufficient to inclose several of the disease "germs," and these are then transferred to the blood of the next man or animal which the fly happens to bite. The disease is reproduced as simply and certainly as the spores of some species of fern give rise to their like if scattered upon soil suitable for their growth. But flies which do not bite may transfer infection. Every one must know that if blood be spilt upon the ground a crowd of flies will settle upon and eagerly absorb it. Animals suffering from splenic fever in the later ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... you want an interesting and delightful nature lesson that is a little out of the ordinary, get, if you can, a fossil fern. If you are in the city, doubtless you can get one from the museum, or, better yet, you may find that among your pupils there is someone who has such a specimen carefully treasured away. In some localities where the limestone rock comes to the surface, especially in the coal measures, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... She often went thither to wash the linen of the family beneath the shade of the two cocoa-trees, and thither too she sometimes led her goats to graze. While she was making cheeses of their milk, she loved to see them browse on the maiden-hair fern which clothes the steep sides of the rock, and hung suspended by one of its cornices, as on a pedestal. Paul, observing that Virginia was fond of this spot, brought thither, from the neighbouring forest, a great variety of bird's nests. ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... you into our fern-house, which is just beyond here," she said. "We have got such exquisite maidenhairs and such a splendid Killarney fern. Come; you ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... Fly—dubbed with the blackish brown hair of a cow, warp some red silk in for the tag of the tail, the wings from a woodcock. 2. The Fern Fly—dubbed with the fur from a hare's neck, which is of a fern colour, wings dark grey feather of mallard. 3. The White Palmer—dubbed with white peacock's harl, and a black hackle over it. 4. The Pale Blue—dubbed ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... in the autumn, because teacher told me about the autumn leaves while we walked in the woods at Fern Quarry. I thought fairies must have painted them because they are so wonderful, and I thought, too, that King Frost must have jars and vases containing precious treasures, because I knew that other kings long ago ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... taste, with a faint smell like that of a mushroom. With the exception of a few berries, chiefly of a dwarf arbutus, the natives eat no vegetable food besides this fungus. In New Zealand, before the introduction of the potato, the roots of the fern were largely consumed; at the present time, I believe, Tierra del Fuego is the only country in the world where a cryptogamic plant affords a staple article ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... you between two and three hours, sir, in this heat. But oh, I am so tired, I will just creep into the fern there while you are away, and go to sleep. Give me that book and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hard," said my mother, "not to have shone a—little! To brood a baby forest in one's arms—if only for a single day—? Think of the experience!" Even at the very thought of it she began to shine all over again! "Funny little fluff o' green," she laughed, "no fatter than a fern!" Her voice went suddenly all wabbly like a preacher's. "But, oh, the glory of it!" she said. "The potential majesty! Great sweeping branches—! Nests for birds, shade for lovers, masts for ships to plow the great world's waters—timbers ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... enjoying the hospitality of nature. The atmosphere is so equitably warm that one would gladly dispense with all clothing except a sun-hat and a pair of light shoes. Should one be tempted to pass the night in the open air, the construction of a hut from the leaves of the palm and the fern is the work of a few minutes; [Village rest houses.] but in even the smallest village the traveller finds a "common house" (casa real), in which he can take up his quarters and be supplied with the necessaries of life at the market price. There ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... his knife, and with Catharine's assistance drove into the ground, arranging them in such a way as to make the upturned oak, with its roots and the earth which adhered to them, form the back part of the hut, which, when completed, formed by no means a contemptible shelter. Catharine then cut fern and deer grass with Louis's couteau-de-chasse, which he always carried in a sheath at his girdle, and spread two beds, one, parted off by dry boughs and bark, for herself in the interior of the wigwam, and one for her brother and cousin ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... large park, studded with stately trees; here and there an avenue of Spanish chestnuts or a grove of oaks; sometimes a gorsy dell, and sometimes a so great spread of antlered fern, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... yet but slightly attended. Caroline passed through the wide avenue without stopping, but sometimes recognising with bow and smile a flitting friend. They came to a wilder and woodier part of the park, the road lined on each side with linden trees, and in the distance were vast beds of tall fern, tinged with the first ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... cried in the uneasy air. With the wind behind her Mrs. Morran breasted the ascent till she had on her right the moorland running south to the Lochan valley and on her left Garple chafing in its deep forested gorges. Her eyes were quick and she noted with interest a weasel creeping from a fern-clad cairn. A little way on she passed an old ewe in difficulties and assisted it to rise. "But for me, my wumman, ye'd hae been braxy ere nicht," she told it as it departed bleating. Then she realized that she had come a certain distance. "Losh, I maun be gettin' back ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... long, low, octagonal apartment, with a small conservatory opening out at the lower end. There were numerous small alcoves in the wall, and in the recesses of each of these were huge pots of maidenhair fern. ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... great event—the opening of the Taraha—small parties waited on visitors, formed in procession before and behind, and escorted them round, explaining all mysteries, and insisting upon due admiration. Everything had to be interviewed, from teaspoons to pots of fern. This concluded, the guests were politely dismissed, and departed, let us hope, properly penetrated with a sense of ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... received from the little stock which remained alive; the owners, not having wherewith to feed them, were obliged to turn them loose to browse among the grass and shrubs, or turn up the ground for the fern-root; and as they wandered without any one to prevent their doing mischief, they but too often found an easy passage over fences and through barriers which were now grown weak and perishing. It was however ordered, that the stock should be kept up during the night, and every damage that could be ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... therefore nature study is fundamental in the new curriculum. Careful observation of natural objects comes first, until the child is able to identify bird and bee and flower. To knowledge is added appreciation. The beauty of fern and leaf, of brookside and hillside, of star-dotted and cloud-dappled sky, is not appreciated by mere observation, but waits on the education of the mind. This is part of the task of the teacher. The economic use of natural objects and natural forces is secondary, and ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... forest of his demesne, and in the midst of which, covered with ivy and tufted plants, now ruddy with autumnal tints, stood the ruined walls of a little chapel. In the dilapidated vault close by lay buried many of his ancestors, and under the little wavy hillocks of fern and nettles, slept many an humble villager. He sat down upon a worn tombstone in this lowly ruin, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground, he surrendered his spirit to the stormy and evil thoughts which he had ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... The firs on the summit grew out to the very edge and stretched their dark arms over us. Every cranny of the rock was filled with tufts of white and pink flowers, and the moisture, trickling from above, betrayed itself in long lines of moss and fern. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... a moulder'd Abbey's broadest wall, Where ruining ivies propp'd the ruins steep— Her folded arms wrapping her tatter'd pall, [73:2]Had Melancholy mus'd herself to sleep. The fern was press'd beneath her hair, The dark green Adder's Tongue[74:1] was there; And still as pass'd the flagging sea-gale weak, The long lank leaf ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... remind Jacob, if the larder was for many days deficient in that meat. Jacob had gone out accordingly; he had gained his leeward position of a fine buck, and was gradually nearing him by stealth—now behind a huge oak tree, and then crawling through the high fern, so as to get within shot unperceived, when on a sudden the animal, which had been quietly feeding, bounded away and disappeared in the thicket. At the same time Jacob perceived a small body of horse galloping through the glen in which the buck had ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... not unkindly that a traveller (though less wide a wanderer than thou) dissuadeth thee from a new-found novelty—the wanton misuse, or rather the misuseful wantonness, of the Indian herb. It is a blind goose that knoweth not a fox from a fern-bush, and a strange temerity that mistaketh smoke for provender. The sow, when she is sick, eateth the sea-crab and is immediately recovered: why, then, should man, being whole and sound, haste to that which maketh many sick? The lobster flieth not in the air, ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... went on a fern hunt with Professor Keith. It was getting near the end of her vacation and she had only two weeks more. They were sitting down to rest on the side of the road when she mentioned this fact inconsequently. The professor ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... paints with such detailed fidelity both the inner and the outward life of a typical Westmoreland "statesman." And the upper road from Grasmere to Rydal, superseded now by the road along the lake side, and left as a winding footpath among rock and fern, was one of his most habitual haunts. Of another such haunt his friend Lady Richardson says, "The Prelude was chiefly composed in a green mountain terrace, on the Easdale side of Helm Crag, known by the name of Under ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... delighted spectators and announcing Act II of the play. It is a night scene in a wood near Athens; mossy banks and green trees; clouds and twinkling stars in the heavens; forms of fairies sitting about like humming birds, or resting in nodding fern leaves. They sing in quick, short rhymes, suiting the ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... weapons, while the huntsmen brought their pikes, and spears, and javelins, and such other projectiles as were employed in those days in hunting wild beasts. The troop was divided into companies of one hundred, and for banners they bore tufts of grass on wisps of straw, or fern, or other herbage, tied at the top of a pole. The armament was rude, but the men were resolute and determined, and they made their appearance at the gates of the city upon the outside, just in time to co-operate with Remus in the rebellion ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... mines of carbon once abstracted from the atmosphere by plants. In these coal-beds are often found fern leaves, toads, whole trees, and in short all forms of organized matter. These all existed as living things before the great floods, and at the breaking away of the barriers of the immense lakes, of which our present lakes were merely the deep holes in their beds, they were washed away and deposited ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... beg to answer most decidedly in the affirmative. It is well known that these Aborigines in no instance cultivate the soil, but subsist entirely by hunting and fishing, and on the wild roots they find in certain localities (especially the common fern), with occasionally a little wild honey; indigenous fruits being exceedingly rare. The whole race is divided into tribes, more or less numerous, according to circumstances, and designated from the localities they inhabit; for although universally a wandering race with respect ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... if she had liked the chaunt of the choristers better than the cry of the hounds: yet I know not; for they were companions from the cradle, and reciprocally fashioned each other to the love of the fern and the foxglove. Had either been less sylvan, the other might have been more saintly; but they will now never hear matins but those of the lark, nor reverence vaulted aisle but that of the greenwood canopy. They ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... of the observations made during his stay at Rio, when tropical nature was still a fresh and unexplored page to the young observer, are wonderful. Cabbage palms, liana creepers, luxuriant fern leaves—roads, bridges, and soil—planarian worms, frogs which climbed perpendicular sheets of glass, the light of fireflies, brilliant butterflies, fights between spiders and wasps, the victories of ants over difficulties, the habits of monkeys, the little ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... of sunshine and a bower of spring freshness and fragrance, for here Rose had let her fancy have free play, and each garland, fern, and flower had its meaning. Mac seemed to have been reading this sweet language of symbols, to have guessed why Charlie's little picture was framed in white roses, why pansies hung about his own, why Psyche ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... some hundred feet square, and from fifteen to twenty high. When lighted up by the torches, it had a very wild and picturesque appearance. The horses were tethered in one part, while we all went out and collected grass and fern leaves for our beds, and a good supply of fuel for our fire. Having cooked our supper, we sat round the fire, while one of the natives, who spoke English very well, told us some of the wonderful tales about Pele, the goddess of the burning mountain, and her ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... of isinglass, dissolved in water, to the whole surface, and when that is dry, three coats of copal varnish, allowing each to dry before the next is put on. The effect is very handsome. And, even without painting the objects black, this same style of leaf and fern-work can be applied to earthen vases, wooden boxes, trays and saucers, for card-receivers. For these, you may get some good hints from the illustrations on subsequent pages. The same illustrations will apply to the "novelties in fern-work" given ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... the last hundred yards and never shook a fern, moved a leaf, or broke a twig. Having reached the brink of the low precipice, they saw the grassy meadow below, the straggling trees, the brook, the group of Indians ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... my ancient kindred spoke,— Grotesque and monstrous voices, heard afar Down ocean caves when behemoth awoke, Or through fern forests roared the plesiosaur Locked with the ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... sought high and low for the missing child, and then, on the morning of the third day, to the delight of the distracted parents, their boy was found sleeping peacefully upon a bed of fern within a few yards of the place where his mother had last seen him. He was perfectly well, quite happy, and entirely ignorant of the length of time that had elapsed. And he had a wonderful story ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... stalks, at eve, The level sunshine glimmers with green light. Oh! 'tis a quiet spirit-healing nook! Which all, methinks, would love; but chiefly he, The humble man, who, in his youthful years, Knew just so much of folly, as had made His early manhood more securely wise! Here he might lie on fern or withered heath, While from the singing lark (that sings unseen The minstrelsy that solitude loves best), And from the sun, and from the breezy air, Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame; And he, with many feelings, many thoughts, Made up a meditative ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... Broom Road, which curved and twisted through a lush growth of flowers and fern-like algarobas. The warm air was rich with perfume, and overhead, outlined against the stars, were fruit-burdened mangoes, stately avocado trees, and slender-tufted palms. Every here and there were ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... flowers and shrubbery, for in such matters my mother was very strict and particular: Abeleia grandiflora, Laurestinus, Olea fragrans, Ligustrum napalense, Rosa watsoniana—— Now really could that thing be a rose? It looked more like a cross between a fern and an ostrich plume. I looked closer. Each slender light green leaf was mottled with lighter green, a miracle of exquisite tracing, and the thing was in bud, millions and millions of buds no bigger ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... plants carry a small grain, of the same colour, and almost the same shape, with mustard. The Arabians call it Avezoud: they gather it and make it up into a paste, on which they feast. We observed that the distant hills were covered with a species of wild fern, which bore the ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... SK[^U]['][n]TAG[)I]"crow shin"—Adiantum pedatum—Maidenhair Fern: Used either in decoction or poultice for rheumatism and chills, generally in connection with some other fern. The doctors explain that the fronds of the different varieties of fern are curled up in the young plant, but unroll and straighten out as it grows, and ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... place lay bathed in a calm light, all unutterably beautiful. I wandered long by streams and wood-ends, every corner that I turned revealing new prospects of delight. I came at last to the edge of the forest, the mouths of little open glades running up into it, with fern and thorn-thickets. There were deer here browsing about the dingles, which let me come close to them and touch them, raising their heads from the grass, and regarding me with gentle and fearless eyes. Birds sang softly among the boughs, and even ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... There creep the various species of heath-berries, cranberries, bilberries, &c., furnishing the poor with a source of profit, and the rich of luxury. What a pleasure it is to throw ourselves down beneath the verdant screen of the beautiful fern, or the shade of a venerable oak, in such a scene, and listen to the summer sounds of bees, grasshoppers, and ten thousand other insects, mingled with the more remote and solitary cries of the pewit and the curlew! Then, to think of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... he was called, the gossoon, ran across some fields where there was abundance of fern and of rabbits. The rabbits, sitting quietly at the entrance of their holes, seemed to consider themselves as proprietors of the soil, and me and my horse as intruders. The boy apologized for the number of rabbit-holes ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... table stood an exqusite black-and-gilt Etruscan patera filled with white anemones; on another table near by stood a silver one filled with the same flowers, pink and yellow. Each was circled round the edge with fringing masses of maiden-hair fern. Every lounge and chair had a low, broad foot-stool before it, ruffled with the chintz; and in one corner of the room were a square pink and white and green Moorish rug, with ten or a dozen chintz-covered pillows, piled ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... eyes of fancy turn Where the tumbled pippins burn Like embers in the orchard's lap of tangled grass and fern,— There let the old path wind In and out and on behind The cider-press that chuckles as ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... leaves into the grass slip, one by one,— The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white, Harebell and scabious and tormentil, That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun, Bow down to; and the wind travels too light To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern; The gossamers wander at their own will. At heavier steps ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... to say. If any of the class to whom I appeal incline to let "I dare not wait upon I would," hear the experience of a bold enthusiast, as recounted by Mr. Castle in his small brochure, "Orchids." This gentleman had a fern-case outside his sitting-room window, six feet long by three wide. He ran pipes through it, warmed presumably by gas. More ambitious than I venture to recommend, "in this miniature structure," says Mr. Castle, "with liberal supplies of water, the owner succeeded ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... the fern leaves and pointed to the lank figure of the tall Alphian, who lay curled up on the grass as if asleep. "He brought me in that flying-machine there; but he has spent all his strength in trying to manage ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... cat-tail flag (haw-kwee-usqu', Passamaquoddy), while a handful of bird's down is the bane of Malsum the Wolf. The termination sis is a diminutive, here meaning the younger.] though this was not true. And Malsumsis said, "I can only die by a blow from a fern-root." ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... of September, 1793, when he was surprised to see a cat and a hare playing together in the hay. He stood more than ten minutes gratified at the unusual sight, when the hare, alarmed at seeing a stranger approach, ran into a thicket of fern, and was followed ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... heart is devoid of emotion, Because of a countenance rugged and stern, The bosom may hide the most fervent devotion, As shadowy forests hide floweret and fern; As the pearls which are down in the depths of the ocean, The heart may have ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... laughed at, and watched the precision and power of the Jacks as they clove, swung, and lopped. From the cliff he looked down at the long bunk-house, saw the blue smoke rising straight, curled at the top like the uncoiling frond of a new fern-leaf. Saw the Chinese cook, in his wadded coat of blue, disappear into the snow-covered mound that hid the provision shack, and watched the bounding pups refusing to be broken into harness by Siwash George. It was all very simple, very real, and the twists of his tired mind relaxed; his nervous ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... speech, indolent but handy, far from speculative, and yet good at succedaneum: when his anger is kindled, it descends like lightning: unlike his dog, his wrath gives no notice by grumbling: he blazes up like one of his own fires of dried fern. Quarrels do not often take place among them, but when they do, they are dreadful. The laws of the country in which they sojourn have so far banished the use of knives from among them that they only grind ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... eatin' these here little plates of cut-up things and waiting for the real stuff, and first thing I know I get a spoonful of coffee in something like you put eye medicine into, and I know it's all over. Last time I was out I hid up a dish of these here salted almuns under a fern and et the whole lot from time to time, kind of absent like. It helped some, ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... perhaps, unreasonably irritating to him. He could not bear to hear him speak with trembling voice and gleaming eyes of the grand mountains and the silent corries around Ben-Nevis, the red deer trooping over the misty steeps, and the brown hinds lying among the green plumes of fern, and the wren and the thrush ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... arrived from Brighton, to find that it was superfluous to look any further or inquire any more concerning the whereabouts of the missing man. All that was mortal of him was here, the head covered with a cloth, and bits of the fresh summer growth of fern and frond sticking to ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... her fern-seed doth bestow, The kernel of the mistletoe; And here and there as Puck should go, With terror to affright him, She night-shade strews to work him ill, Therewith her vervain and her dill, That hindreth witches of their will, Of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... of foreigners, surcharges of commoners, trespasses in the fence month and winter haining, and in the enclosures; keeping hogs, sheep, goats, and geese, being uncommonable animals, in the Forest; cutting and burning the nether vert, furze, and fern; gathering and taking away the crabs, acorns, and mast; and other purprestures and offences; carrying away such timber trees as were covertly cut down in the night time; by which practices several hundred fine oaks were yearly destroyed, and ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... here," and Friedel sprang to withhold Koppel, who had lighted a bundle of dried fern ready to thrust ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... its decaying stumps, its rounded hillocks, its patches of withering fern and harsh dwarf juniper, was bathed in all the colours of the autumn sunset, while the farmyard down in the valley was already in the first purple of the twilight. The centre of the pasture was the hilltop, roughly rounded, and naked save for one maple-tree, now ablaze with ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... clover carried the day, though one or two did speak for the daisy, the maiden-hair fern and the pussy willow. All this was before the subject of the national ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... Always stuck out of the way! Shall be late again now, and get bad marks. Not my fault. Horrid old servants! Wish they'd do their own work, and leave my things alone." So on, and so on, until at last the missing article was found, folded up in a magazine, or thrust beneath a fern-pot, when Kitty would seize it resentfully, and stalk down the garden-path on her long brown legs, puffing and fuming, and feeling herself the most ill- used of mortals. On the present occasion Elsie and Agatha entered the room as she finished undressing, and the former immediately ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the flat top of a high hill. The sands were covered with a growth of weeds so gorgeously colored that one who had never peered beneath the surface of the sea would scarcely believe they were not the product of a dye shop. Every known hue seemed represented in the delicate, fern-like leaves that swayed softly to and fro as the current moved them. They were not set close together, these branches of magnificent hues, but were scattered sparsely over the sandy bottom of the sea so that while from a distance ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... ago a beautiful fern grew in a deep vale, nodding in the breeze. One day it fell, complaining as it sank away that no one would remember its grace and beauty. The other day a geologist went out with his hammer in the interest of his science. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... to try to comply with the request of the National Suffrage Association to secure 100,000 names to a nation-wide petition to be presented to Congress for a Federal Suffrage Amendment. Mrs. Fern Richardson Rowe, Grand Rapids, was chairman of the work, which took up the greater part of the year 1909 and went over into 1910. This last year the State association obtained the consent of the Hon. Levi L. Barbour, former U. S. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... sources of poetical thought and feeling that I know. It is impossible, I think, to find a truer expression of passion, anguish, tenderness, and supernatural terror, than those poems contain. The dew of heaven on the mountain fern is not more limpid than the simplicity of their diction, nor the heart's blood of a lover more fervid than the throbbing intensity of their passion. Misery, love, longing, and despair have found no finer poetical utterance out of Shakespeare; and the deepest chords of woe and tenderness ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... St. James, Victoria, and Albert houses, Tank Villa, Poplar Villa, Rose, Brake, and Thorn Villas, as well as Hawthorn, Gorse, Fern, Shrubbery, and Providence Cottages. All had apartments, but many were taken, and many more had rooms either dark and stuffy or without view. Holly House was my first stopping-place. Why will a woman voluntarily call her place by a name which she can never ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... moved his position, carelessly, noiselessly, yet quickly, until he leaned on the rail close to the ferns and could overhear every word the bushies said. He had dropped his cigar overboard, and his scented handkerchief behind a fern-pot ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... when it was repeated with tenfold fierceness; the bushes and fern leaves shook violently, and an enormous and beautifully spotted jaguar shot through the air as if it had been discharged from a cannon's mouth. The hermit's eye wavered not; he bent forward a hair's-breadth; the glittering spear-point touched the ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... fearing to hesitate, the boy got over the low wall and stood on the narrow edge of the old, crumbling, fern-hung shaft, and the next moment he was being lowered down, Joe turning a little faint from excitement as the upturned face disappeared, and he watched the rope glide through the ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... feet again. We crept through this queer tunnel for a long time and then I felt that we were ascending gradually and that the air was growing purer. In a few moments more, we emerged from another narrow crevice hidden under the gnarled roots of a live-oak. Moss, lichen and fern covered this opening so completely that no one would have dreamed there was an entrance ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... shady knoll o'erlooks a dale Where Earn meanders down the vale; A knoll enwreathed in oak and fern, The sweetest nook in all Strathearn. The morn there breaks with earliest ray, Here latest shines the lingering day, There summer reigns supremely fair, And winter ev'n is lovely there. Its eastern prospect looks entire Along the glades of Ochtertyre; ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide. I found the water's bed. The watercourses were my guide; I traveled grateful by their side, Or through their channel dry; They led me through the thicket damp, Through brake and fern, the beaver's camp, Through beds of granite cut my road, And their resistless friendship showed: The falling waters led me, The foodful waters fed me, And brought me to the lowest land, Unerring to the ocean sand. The moss upon the forest bark Was pole-star when the night was dark; The purple ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... beginner at piracy, he was very glad to get the aid of such an old hand at the game as John Archer, whom he promptly appointed to the office of quartermaster in the pirate ship. This quick promotion caused some murmuring amongst Phillips's original crew, the carpenter, Fern, being ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... but they lay so far on the one side or the other that no stranger could have found them from the track. A large part of the Ross is covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger than a two-roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather in between them where the vipers breed. Anyway the wind was, it was always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sallied forth to see how nature looked decked in her robe of virgin white. Hill and valley were one sheet of 'innocent snow;' and every twig, leaf, and blade of grass; every spray of the furze and heath; and every broad, drooping leaf of that beautiful fern the hart's tongue (Scolopendrium vulgare), was coated with hoar-frost, and sparkling in the rosy sunbeams like the flowers in a magic garden. At Sherbrook Lake, where a rivulet of clear water usually flows along the bottom of the ravine down to the sea, there was ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... whose name I have forgotten, sent me a collection of fossils—tiny mollusk shells beautifully marked, and bits of sandstone with the print of birds' claws, and a lovely fern in bas-relief. These were the keys which unlocked the treasures of the antediluvian world for me. With trembling fingers I listened to Miss Sullivan's descriptions of the terrible beasts, with uncouth, unpronounceable names, which once went tramping ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... pale orange with centres of deep maroon, the wild galliardia, and the wild peony with its variegated leaves. Many other delicate blossoms which we cannot stop to describe are there too. And the ferns! All kinds may be found by the initiated, and many are close at hand. The fern lined with gold or with silver, the running ferns, the ferns of lace-like fineness, the ferns as soft as velvet, all growing in the greatest profusion. And each day of the week a ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... had found a dark, narrow crack, full of green stalked fern, such as hangs in the basket in the drawing-room, and had crawled down through it, with knees and elbows, as he would down a chimney, there was another grass slope, and another step, and so on, till—oh, dear me! I wish it was all over; and so did he. And yet he thought he could ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of the season at any watering-place depresses me. If I could wear fern seed in my shoes to make me invisible, and sit on the piazza railing in a shirt-waist and a short skirt, I would love it. But both Bee and Mrs. Jimmie, with the light of heaven in their eyes, pulled out and put on their most be-yew-tiful Paris clothes, and if I do say it of ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... I daur say it's nonsense, but they say she has gathered the fern-seed, and can gang ony gate she likes, like Jock-the-Giant-killer in the ballant, wi' his coat o'darkness and his shoon o' swiftness. Ony way she's a kind o' queen amang the gipsies; she is mair than ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... said to be the same as those used for this belt, said that the split cane-like material is a strip from the periphery of the petiole or stem of a palm, and that the other material is sclerenchyma fibre from the petiole or rhizome of a fern, and not that of a creeping plant. I may say that I felt a doubt at the time as to the complete accuracy of the information given to me concerning the vegetable materials used for the manufacture of various articles, and there may well ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... to the drawing-room, Fanny retired again for a few moments, to fetch the fern of which she had spoken, leaving Peak in conversation with little Miss Lilywhite. Bertha was a rather shy girl of fifteen, not easily induced, under circumstances such as these, to utter more than monosyllables, and Godwin, occupied with the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... They consisted of two metal disks, suspended by silk threads from the ends of a fern stem. He balanced this stem upon the edge of a knife, fixed above his table. In one of the pans he placed a weight, stamped with Arabic characters. The pan fell to the table. Hassan produced a horn spoon, which he blew upon and then carefully wiped with the hem of his burnoose. He ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... the interior are stated to live on grubs, insects, ants and their eggs, kangaroos, when they can catch them, fern roots, various kinds of berries, and honey; caterpillars and worms also ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... and while it lasted it deadened the jarring discord of the human tones. She sat quite motionless upon the log, not lifting a finger nor speaking a word, as she had promised, and her gaze was fixed steadily upon a bit of dried fern growing between the roots of a ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... journal, suited to the comprehension and tastes of the masses, who cared nothing for the higher class periodicals. He proceeded very cautiously, however, and it was not until some time after that he made the Ledger entirely a literary paper, and issued it in its present form. He induced Fanny Fern, who was then in the flush of the reputation gained for her by her "Ruth Hall," to write him a story, ten columns long, and paid her one thousand dollars in cash for it. He double-leaded the story, and made it twenty columns in length, and advertised in ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... lights of the villages in the valley. Forty miles away, untouched by cloud or storm, the white shoulder of Donga Pa—the Mountain of the Council of the Gods—upheld the Evening Star. The monkeys sang sorrowfully to each other as they hunted for dry roosts in the fern-wreathed trees, and the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... that's done,' said Reggie, pressing the earth round the roots of the last fern and then rising; 'it's a jolly long time it has taken us. What ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... not saying as much as was his custom, but peeking a deal with head cocked from side to side. "No," said Eleanor, "I have no camp crumbs: you go back." The little red crested cross bill twittered in front of her from spray to spray of the purple fire weed and fern fronds; then, concluded that she was only a part of this out door world, anyway, and went back about his business on the trail behind. Two or three times, there was a vague rustle in the leaves that she couldn't localize—water ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... lilac and with the blackbird's song; and when the curtain fell into its trench of flowers, and the play commenced, we saw before us a real forest, and we knew it to be Arden. For with whoop and shout, up through the rustling fern came the foresters trooping, the banished Duke took his seat beneath the tall elm, and as his lords lay around him on the grass, the rich melody of Shakespeare's blank verse began to reach our ears. And all through the performance this delightful sense of joyous woodland life was sustained, and ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... propriety. To remove this stigma of mauvais ton, and establish our fair name in opposition to the mal-impressions which have gained currency respecting the Australian colonists, I have been induced to add another to the tales of Australian life, and to lay "Fern Vale" ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... the stream, she came at last to another wood—not a wild wood like the first, but a tame, domesticated wood. The dead limbs were cut away, and the ground was neatly brushed up under the trees. The brook flowed sedately between fern-bordered banks, under rustic bridges, and widened occasionally into pools carpeted with lily pads. Mossy paths set with stepping-stones led off into mysterious depths that the eye could not penetrate: the leaves were just out enough to half hide and to ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... "for the next carriage will not only stop, but come over;" and Bessie suffered herself to be led through the little tangle of brier and fern, past the gray old gravestones with "Miss Faith" and "Miss Mehitable" carved upon them, and into the leafy ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... sand and gravel, and they continue so to Bordeaux. Where they are capable of any thing, they are in vines, which are in rows, four, five, or six feet apart, and sometimes more. Near Langon is Sauterne, where the best white wines of Bordeaux are made. The waste lands are in fern, furze, shrubbery, and dwarf trees. The farmers live on their farms. At Agen, Castres, Bordeaux, strawberries and pease are now brought to table; so that the country on the canal of Languedoc seems to have later seasons than that east and west of it. What can be the cause? To the eastward, the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... fern-wove mattress lay No weary guest. St. Colum kneeled, And found no trace; but, ashen-grey, Far off he heard ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... collegiate church, and at first contended vigorously for the scholastic theology as against the doctrines of the Reformers. His views were entirely changed, however, on the execution of Patrick Hamilton, abbot of Fern, in 1528. He had been chosen to meet Hamilton in controversy, with a view to convincing him of his errors, but the arguments of the Scottish proto-martyr, and above all the spectacle of his heroism at the stake, impressed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... down and let us talk," said she, as if we hadn't uttered a word hitherto. So willy-nilly down I sat facing her amid the fern and very ill at ease. "Poor young man," said she again, "don't go for to look so downcast over so small a matter. Here's you and here's me; what's done is done! Treat me fair and you'll find me faithful, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... still in his tall silk hat and his knickerbockers. He had been standing alone among the dead brown fern, the withering gorse, and the hanging brambles, gripping the apple-tree and swallowing the cry that was bubbling up to his throat, but forcing himself to look upon Pete's happiness, which was his own calamity, though it was tearing his heart out, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... peace and refinement, gave him a foretaste of the restfuluess that made Honor Desmond's companionship a growing necessity to this man, whose heart and brain were in a state of civil war. It was filled with afternoon sunlight, with the faint, clean fragrance of violets, wild roses, and maiden-hair fern, and its emptiness was informed and pervaded by countless suggestions of a woman's presence; a woman versed in that finest of all fine arts, the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... way was very pleasant; the rock out of which the road was cut was covered with birch trees, fern, and heath. The lake below was beating its bank by a gentle wind.... In one part of the way we had trees on both sides for perhaps half a mile. Such a length of shade, perhaps, Scotland cannot shew in any other place.' Piozzi Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of the usual track, across a portion of waste land, the utmost verge of which skirted the toppling cliffs; and making for himself a way through tangled fern, long grass, and prickly furze, he strode on in a more direct line towards the dwelling of Robin Hays, pursuing his course, heedless of the petty annoyances he encountered, although his feet were frequently entangled among the stunts and stubs that opposed his progress, with ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... hoar Frost, and the Vortices on windows: several Observations on the branched Figures of Urine: the Figures of Regulus Martis stellatus, and of Fern. Of the Figures ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke |
