"Oak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dimpled mirth his temples twine With tendrils of the laughing vine; The manly oak, the pensive yew, To patriot and to sage be due; The myrtle bough bids lovers live But that Matilda will not give; Then, lady, twine no wreath for me, Or twine ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Edgeworth was always a very tiny person.) There is a description given of Maria at this school of hers of the little maiden absorbed in her book with all the other children at play, while she sits in her favourite place in front of a carved oak cabinet, quite unconscious of the presence of the romping ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered itself always. But the night before us is a night of victory; and, behold! to the ordinary display what a heart-shaking addition!—horses, men, carriages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and ribbons. The guards, as being officially his Majesty's servants, and of the coachmen such as are within the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal liveries of course; and, as it is summer (for all the land victories were naturally won in summer), they wear, on this fine evening, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... lying hid in a den in the mosses of Douglas Water. It was a sore business for my mother, who had the task of warding off prying eyes from our ragged household and keeping the fugitive in life. She was a Tweedside woman, as strong and staunch as an oak, and with a heart in her like Robert Bruce. And she was cheerful, too, in the worst days, and would go about the place with a bright eye and an old song on her lips. But the thing was beyond a woman's bearing; ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... my little pig's tail; to the dancers, my muscles; to the runners and hunters, my knuckles; to the hired man, my hoofs; and to the cook—though not to be named—I give and bequeath and transmit my belly and appendage which I have dragged with me from the rotten oak bottoms to the pig's sty, for him to tie around his neck and ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... glad spring months, the sun shone softly, and the bright flowers bloomed, and now and then the gentle rain fell in silver drops that made every green thing on which they rested fresher and more beautiful still. At the foot of a stately oak nestled a clump of violets, and it was there the wee fairy made her home. She wore a robe of deep violet, and her wings, which were of the most delicate gauze, glistened like dew-drops in the sun. All day long she was busy at work tending her flowers, bathing them ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... bright and cheerful, with a series of windows more beautifully designed than those of either the choir or nave. The choir stalls are of oak, carved in the best ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... wretched that I have lost the power even over my own life. What! still in suspense? Or do you think, perhaps, that I shall stand on my defence when you try to seize me? See here! I bind my right hand to this oak-branch; now I am quite defenceless, a child may overpower me. Who is the first to desert his captain in the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the chamber he had prepared; another would be Syndic and bear his wand. The years of stately plenty which he had foreseen, were already as last year's harvest. No wonder that the sheen of portrait and panel, the pride of echoing oak, were fled; or that the eyes with which he gazed on the things about him were dull ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... elm and oak about the palace there, The king came back from battle, and I stood To meet him, with my ladies, on the stair, My face made beautiful ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... a quart of meal, put in a little lard and salt, and mix it well, have an oak board with a rim of iron at the bottom, and an iron handle fastened to it that will prop it up to the fire; put some of the dough, on it, dip your hand in cold water and smooth it over; score it with a knife, and set it ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... much of the scenery has an English look. We might be in Surrey or Sussex. Lofty hedges enclosing fields and meadows, stretches of heath-covered waste, oak woods, and homesteads half hidden by orchards form the landscape. As our train crawls on, stopping at every station, we have ample time to enjoy the scenery and scrutinize the agriculture, here somewhat backward. These very slow trains ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... branches of American industry. The men of New England were famous for seamanship, and better and cheaper ships could be built in the seaports of Massachusetts than anywhere in Great Britain. An oak vessel could be built at Gloucester or Salem for twenty-four dollars per ton; a ship of live-oak or American cedar cost not more than thirty-eight dollars per ton. On the other hand, fir vessels built on the Baltic cost thirty-five dollars per ton, and nowhere in England, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... beech and the sapling oak, That grow by the shadowy rill, You may cut down both at a single stroke, You may cut ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... overwork the old fable of the oak and the ivy. Nevertheless, it is to the point to remark that this plant attaches itself to none but the most solid trunks, disdaining the Weaker saplings that will bend beneath its weight and will, after a little while, force it to return to the ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... gardens and shrubberies Nature, however, reserves the evergreen pride of firs and pines; and even flowers are left to gladden the eye of the winter observer; and the rose, that sweet emblem of our fragile and transitory state, will live and prosper during this month. In the forest, the oak, beech, and hornbeam in part retain their leaves; there, too, is the endless variety of mosses, and lichens, and ivy, spreading and clinging round aged trunks, as if to protect them with their fond warmth, or mantling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... Cottage was unpleasant. There was a blazing wood fire, the curtains were drawn, the lamp shone rosily through its red shade, and when Priscilla stood up her hair dusted the oak beams of the ceiling, it was so low. The background, you see, was perfectly satisfactory; exactly what a cottage background should be on an autumn night when outside a wet mist is hanging like a grey curtain across the window panes; and Tussie arriving at nine o'clock to help consecrate ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... interested in the other that they had seen nothing else. But now the road led through an open space where every tree was torn and broken; Mildred stopped to wonder at the splintered trunks; and out of the charred spectre of a great oak crows flew and settled among the rocks, in the ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... and help her country. She asked how she, a girl, who could not ride or use sword and lance, could be of any help? At the same time she was encouraged by one of the vague old prophecies which were common in France. A legend ran that France was to be saved by a Maiden from the Oak Wood, and there was an Oak Wood (le bois chenu) near Domremy. Some such prophecy had an influence on Joan, and probably helped people to believe in her. The Voices often commanded her to go to Vaucouleurs, a neighboring town which was loyal, and there meet ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... once, there right before her she saw the little woodland path that, slightly descending, led past a big oak she well knew, down to the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... have taken alarm at something, and thought they were being watched," Allen said to me. "That's why they've sported their oak. I expect we shall make a haul, as—for everybody's sake concerned—they wouldn't dare let their clients out, to fall into a trap. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... blacks, in large rafts, of which we constructed, for our fort, an immense pen, two hundred feet long, and sixteen feet wide, filled with sand to stop the shot. For our platforms, we had two-inch oak planks, nailed down with iron spikes. With glad hearts we then got up our carriages and mounted our guns, of which twelve were 18 pounders — twelve 24's, and twelve French 36's, equal ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... into a Cormorant, and placing himself on the Tree of Life, seems raised upon that Passage in the Iliad, where two Deities are described, as perching on the Top of an Oak ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... of grace—a prominent landmark, and one that is exceedingly pleasant to eyes surfeited with the repulsive monotony of desert Syria. We climbed the steep path to its summit, through breezy glades of thorn and oak. The view presented from its highest peak was almost beautiful. Below, was the broad, level plain of Esdraelon, checkered with fields like a chess-board, and full as smooth and level, seemingly; dotted about its borders with white, compact villages, and faintly penciled, far and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The cottages were all dark. A single faint light gleamed out from the hallway of the house. There was no sound abroad except the hooting of an old owl in the top of a water-oak, and the everlasting voice of the sea, that was not uplifted at that soft hour. It broke like a mournful lullaby ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... rose very close to the southern end; but this had been walled up. The rooms had deep mullioned windows east and west, and very handsome groined ceilings, and were entered by two steps down from the gallery round the upper part of the hall. There was a very handsome double staircase of polished oak, shaped like a Y, the stem of which began just opposite the original front door—making us wonder if people knew what draughts were in the days of Queen Anne, and remember Madame de Maintenon's complaint that health was sacrificed to symmetry. Not far from this oldest ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... how I dared say it, for her eyes were blazing in her white face, and my heart was thumping, but there was Robinson Crusoe crowing in his hooded cradle, and Robin's father was on the front step, with the old oak door shut ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... horseback. A cowskin and a hickory stick are his constant companions. The{80} cowskin is a kind of whip seldom seen in the northern states. It is made entirely of untanned, but dried, ox hide, and is about as hard as a piece of well-seasoned live oak. It is made of various sizes, but the usual length is about three feet. The part held in the hand is nearly an inch in thickness; and, from the extreme end of the butt or handle, the cowskin tapers its whole length to a point. This ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... in the great Soignies woods. They are aisles on aisles of beautiful green trees, crossing and recrossing; tunnels of dark foliage that look endless; long avenues of beech, of oak, of elm, or of fir, with the bracken and the brushwood growing dense between; a delicious forest growth everywhere, shady even at noon, and, by a little past midday, dusky as evening; with the forest fragrance, sweet ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... left behind for the purpose, was engaged in the duty of covering its front and rear. Late on the night of June 12 he, with Chapman's brigade, crossed the Chickahominy at Long Bridge, in advance of the Fifth Corps, and by 7 o'clock next morning had driven the enemy's pickets up to White Oak bridge, where he waited for our infantry. When that came up, he pushed on as far as Riddle's Shop, but late that evening the Confederate infantry forced him to withdraw to St. Mary's Church; for early in the morning General Lee had discovered the movement of our army, and promptly threw this column ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... plate. This done, I went on with my supper—it was an excellent cold capon—and all the time the flute up-stairs kept toot-tootling without stopping, except to change the tune. It gave me "Hearts of Oak," "Why, Soldiers, why?" "Like Hermit Poor," and "Come, Lasses and Lads," before I had fairly cleared ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tree for instance, they have often been called by titles equivalent to the "tree of life," and are thus connected with the nigh innumerable myths which relate to some mystic tree as the source of life. The ash Ygdrasyl of the Edda, the oak of Dordona and of the Druid, the modern Christmas tree, the sacred banyan, the holy groves, illustrate but faintly the prevalence of tree worship. Even so late as the time of Canute, it had to be forbidden in England ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... me." The phrase faithfully depicts the atheism of an unbelieving human heart; the fool hath said in his heart, "No God." He has become brutish: as swine gather the acorns from the ground, heedless of the oak from which they fell; alienated men snatch God's gifts for the gratification of their appetites, and forget the giving God. This seeing eye, and this hearing ear, and these cunning hands, the irreverent son counts his own, and determines ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... at the head of an oak table where were china platters with vari-colored pastries, an old pewter kettle under which an alcohol lamp burned, a Dresden china teapot in pale yellows and greens, and cups and saucers and plates with a double-headed eagle design in dull vermilion. "Tout ca," said Genevieve, waving her hand ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... A great oak stands in the forest. It is beautiful in its majesty; it is ornamental; it casts a pleasant shade. Under its branches the children play; among its boughs the birds sing. One day the woodman comes with his axe, and the tree quivers in all its ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... they scrupulously follow out as a religious duty. Ancient history records many such practices in detail. Thus, the Druids, a peculiar class, or order of priests, which existed among the Celtic races, attributed a sacred or mystic character to plants, and venerated the oak tree." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... description of the corach[2] or skin-boat in which they embarked. It was, it is stated, 'very light, with ribs and posts of wicker, as the use is in those parts, and they covered it with the hides of cattle, dyed reddish in oak-bark, and they smeared all the seams of the ship without; and they took provisions for forty days, and butter for dressing hides for the covering of the ship, and the other things which are useful for the life of man.' Two of the MSS. add (and are justified by subsequent passages):—'They ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... fields that separate the proud city of Hayesville and the gray and green little old hamlet of Riverfield, which nestles in a bend of the Cumberland River and sleeps time away under its huge old oak and elm and hackberry trees, kept perpetually green by the gnarled old cedars that throw blue-berried green fronds around their winter nakedness. As we rode slowly along, with a leisure I am sure all the motor-car world has forgotten exists, the two old ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... unwilling to take a final leave of my savage associates. We turned to the right, passing among the rocks and pine trees so dark that for a while we could scarcely see our way. The country in front was wild and broken, half hill, half plain, partly open and partly covered with woods of pine and oak. Barriers of lofty mountains encompassed it; the woods were fresh and cool in the early morning; the peaks of the mountains were wreathed with mist, and sluggish vapors were entangled among the forests upon their sides. At length the black pinnacle ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... have stormed the lofty gates of Troy, had not Phoebus Apollo roused Agenor, a brave and noble prince, son of Antenor. Apollo stood by this man's side, leaning on an oak, and shrouded in mist, and put courage into his heart, that he might ward off fate from the Trojans. And when Agenor saw Achilles, he stood irresolute, and said to his mighty heart, "If I too flee ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... we their rules disdain. Hark!—a shock Tears her strong bottom on the marble rock. Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries, The fated victims, shuddering, roll their eyes In wild despair—while yet another stroke With deep convulsion rends the solid oak, Till like the mine in whose infernal cell The lurking demons of destruction dwell, At length, asunder torn, her frame divides, And crushing, spreads in ruin o'er ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... 1855 Mr. W. H. Grimshaw came to live in Minneapolis where the Plaza Hotel now stands. Then Loring Park and the vicinity was farm land, and an Indian named Keg-o-ma-go-shieg had his wigwam at the corner of Oak Grove and Fifteenth streets. Mr. Grimshaw learned from him that Indians had lived on this spot for generations, but that since the land had come under government control, most of the Indians had gone. Keg-o-ma-go-shieg, because he loved so much the spot where he was born, returned every ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... by the man who had brought her there, and then consigned to the care of a respectable-looking majordomo, who preceded her up a magnificent staircase, and into a suite of rooms furnished with the utmost luxury and elegance. Passing through the first—which was enriched with fine old carvings in oak, dark with age—he left her in a spacious, admirably proportioned apartment, where a cheery wood fire was roaring up the huge chimney, and she saw a bed in a curtained alcove. She chanced to catch sight of her own face in the mirror over an elaborately furnished ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... A very large Oak was uprooted by the wind, and thrown across a stream. It fell among some Reeds, which it thus addressed: "I wonder how you, who are so light and weak, are not entirely crushed by these strong ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... grains of iron have been found in strawberries, and a twelfth of the weight of the wood of dried oak is said to consist of this metal. Blood owes its colour of redness to the quantity of iron it contains, and rain and snow are seldom perfectly free from it. In the arts it is employed in three states,—as cast iron, wrought ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... round which the hill people hold a yearly mela. The place may be described as a rough table-land, with an elevation of from 6,200 to 7,000 feet above the level of the sea. With the exception of a little land cleared on one side, the country for miles around was covered with forests of pine, oak, and rhododendron, over which the people of the valleys pastured their cattle at some seasons of the year. The attention of the Government was drawn to the place as suitable for a military Sanitarium, and engineers were sent to open ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix for ever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... one of the prettiest and best of shade trees is the laurel oak, and there will be thousands of them planted this spring. It is almost an evergreen and is a quick growing tree. The willow ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... they now call the wild-ass, is in the following form. Two axletrees of oak or box are cut out and slightly curved, so as to project in small humps, and they are fastened together like a sawing machine, being perforated with large holes on each side; and between them, through the holes, strong ropes are fastened to hold the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... that day, the first day Lancelot ever saw his beloved, was truly national. A silent, dim, distanceless, steaming, rotting day in March. The last brown oak-leaf which had stood out the winter's frost, spun and quivered plump down, and then lay; as if ashamed to have broken for a moment the ghastly stillness, like an awkward guest at a great dumb dinner-party. A cold suck of wind just ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... gold for my breast, Willie, Nay, nae gold for my hair, It's ashes o' oak and dust o' earth, That ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... panelling on the four firm walls. In one corner was an enormous stove, which nearly reached up to the ceiling. On the white tiles were painted blue pictures of old towers surrounded by high trees, and of hunters with their hounds. There also was a scene with a quiet lake, where, under shady oak-trees, a fisherman was sitting. Around the stove a bench was placed. Heidi loved to sit there, and as soon as she had entered their new abode, she began to examine the pictures. Arriving at the end of the bench, she discovered a bed, which was placed ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... is lost in oblivion, said in tones which would melt a heart of stone: "Shall an oak and a rose tree receive the same culture? Better to us is the clear, steady, softened, silvery moonlight of woman's quiet, unobtrusive influence, than the flashes of electricity showing that the true balance of nature ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... from the ground, was barked by balls. Just before night a tree six or eight inches in diameter, just behind the works, was cut down by the bullets of the enemy. We noticed at the same time a large oak hacked and torn in such a manner never before seen. Some predicted its fall before morning, but the most of us considered that out of the question. But about 10 o'clock it did fall forward on our works, wounding some men and startling ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... points in his argument. One sentence from this passage might be addressed to our Allies very appropriately to-day—"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle reposing beneath the shadow of the British oak chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... streak of silver through the lake the three crickets went "Chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp," and then out danced Dewlove and Beambright from their hiding-places. The cunning little fairy lived under the moss at the foot of the oak-tree; he was no bigger than a cambric needle,—but he had two eyes, and in this respect he had quite the advantage of the needle. As for the elf-prince, his home was in the tiny, dark subterranean passage ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... Dauphin of Thrace, which was performed entirely by forest-trees. In this whole kingdom there is no such thing as seeing a tree that is not well-behaved. They are first stripped up and then cut down; and you would as soon meet a man with his hair about his ears as an oak or ash. As the weather is very hot now, and the soil chalk, and the dust white, I assure you it is very difficult, powdered as both are all over, to distinguish a tree from a hairdresser. Lest this should sound like ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... how he could have managed to get into the wrong park; but, setting it down to his ignorance of the difference between oak and elm, he immediately retraced his steps, passing across the park again, through the gate at the end of the drive, and into the turnpike road. No other gate, park, or country seat of any description was ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... before, was the nave of the old Abbey church, and has a one-sided and unbalanced aspect, there being only a single aisle, with its row of sturdy pillars. The pavement is covered with pews of old oak, very homely and unornamental; on the side opposite the aisle there are two or three windows of modern stained glass, somewhat gaudy and impertinent; there are likewise some hatchments and escutcheons over the altar and elsewhere. On the whole, it is ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered itself always. But the night before us is a night of victory; and behold! to the ordinary display, what a heart-shaking addition!—horses, men, carriages—all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak leaves and ribbons. The guards, who are his majesty's servants, and the coachmen, who are within the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal liveries of course; and as it is summer (for all the land victories were won in summer,) they wear, on this fine evening, these ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... plain, usable boat, twenty-five feet long and ten feet wide, with bow and stern rather square in order to make more room inside. The cabin was ten feet long, with strong oak sides and brass-rimmed ports for light and ventilation. The cockpit, or outdoor sitting room, was of the same length as ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... day began to long for the same employment he had so often anathematized. In his endeavors to divert his mind, he began to collect old books, and heaped up mountains of tattered, worm-eaten volumes in immense oak bookcases. But despite this pastime to many so attractive, he could not shake off his weariness. He grew thin and yellow, and his income of forty thousand francs was literally killing him, when a sudden inspiration came to his relief. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... by the behavior of the horse indicated the near presence of a stranger; and the next moment the rider drew rein under an immense live-oak where there was a bit of paling about some graves, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... obliging gentleman pointed out everything that was grand and interesting as the steamboat plied her course up the majestic Hudson. Here the Catskill Mountains raised their lofty summit; and there the hills came sloping down to the water's edge. Here he pointed to an aged and venerable oak which, having escaped the levelling axe of man, seemed almost to defy the blasting storm and desolating hand of Time; and there he bade me observe an extended tract of wood by which I might form an idea how rich and grand the face ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... man who despises beans and bacon is uniformly a puppy. I will, therefore, now venture on the vulgar word, and say the Wilderness was used for feeding swine, and all the long days the frisky quadrupeds went wiggling their curly tails, and snorting among the oak-trees, with enormous satisfaction. On reaching the centre of this umbrageous feeding-ground, I was surprised to see my usual place of meditation occupied by a stranger. It was a young girl, exhausted apparently by the heat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... Ardennes, stretched almost without interruption from the German Ocean to the Rhine; and on the plains of Flanders and Lorraine, now so fertile, the Menapian and Treverian herdsman then fed his half-wild swine in the impenetrable oak-forest. Just as in the valley of the Po the Romans made the production of wool and the culture of corn supersede the Celtic feeding of pigs on acorns, so the rearing of sheep and the agriculture in the plains of the Scheldt and the Maas are traceable ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was there since the early fall, the dry earth cut from the bog, the turf that would make bright and pleasant fires in the open grates of Connacht for the winter months. Away from it spread the level bogland, a sweep of country that had, they said, in the infancy of the earth been a great oak forest, across which in later times had roved packs of hungry wolves, and which could at this day claim the most primitive form of industry in Western Europe. Out into this bogland in the summer had come from their cabins the peasantry, men and women, Denis Donohoe ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... were two days especially that he remembered with deepest satisfaction: one was the Saturday when Mars' Nat took him to the circus, and the other was the Fourth of July, when all the family went to the Oak Grove barbecue. ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... off a counterfeit coin. It is either a confession that one is so ashamed of one's face that one dare not let it be seen in public, or it is an attempt to deceive the world into accepting you as something other than you are. It has the same effect on the observer that those sham oak beams and uprights that are so popular on the front of suburban houses have. They are not real beams or uprights. They do not support anything, or fill any useful function. They are only a thin veneer of oak stuck on to pretend that they ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... emotion. My brain seemed oppressed, I could scarcely breathe—scarcely move. I watched the dreadful stream oozing drowsily through the crevices of the mouldy, rotting woodwork—bulging out in great beads like raindrops on the sides of the door—trickling noiselessly down the knots of the carved oak. Still I stood and watched it, and it crept on slowly, slowly, like a living thing, and growing as it came, to my very feet. I cannot say how long I might have stood there, fascinated by it, had not something suddenly occurred to startle me into my senses again; for full upon the back of my ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... under an oak, I found amongst a number of other plants of similar height one that was dark in color, with tightly closed leaves and a stalk that was very straight and stiff. When I touched it, it said to me in firm tones: Let me alone; I am not for your collection, like these plants to ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... not allow the Pope to touch the crown, but placed it on his head himself. It was a golden diadem, formed of oak and laurel leaves. His Majesty then took the crown intended for the Empress, and, having donned it himself for a few moments, placed it on the brow of his august wife, who knelt before him. Her agitation was so great that she shed tears, and, rising, fixed on the Emperor a ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... carriages of cedar," and the French colonials also used this material. British specifications in the mid-eighteenth century called for cheeks and transoms of dry elm, which was very pliable and not likely to split; but some carriages were made of young oak, and oak was standard for United States garrison carriages until it was replaced by wrought-iron after ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... dey find work some place. My mammy and me stays at de Hood place 'bout three years. When I's twenty-one I marries and come back to Harrison County. Mammy and me done farm in Louisiana up to dat. My wife and me marries under de big oak tree front of de Leigh Church. Us jus' common folks and doesn't have no infair or big to-do ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... who was evidently the chief of the establishment came in accompanied by a girl, whom Isobel recognized at once as the juggler's daughter. The latter brought with her a tray, on which were some cakes and a silver goblet. These she set down on an oak table by the couch. The girl then handed her the goblet, which, keeping up the appearance of extreme feebleness, she took languidly. She placed it to her lips, but at once took it away. It was not cool and refreshing like ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... seemed to sink out of the landscape all its reds and yellows, and with them all life; bleaching the yellowing cornfields and brown heath; but burnishing into demoniac[22] energy of color the pastures and oak woods, brilliant against the dark sky, as if filled with ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... past, See now, we swear to You, Witness of Truth, Not we have wanted it— This murder, this world-ending murder— Which now, with blood-hot sighs, Stamps o'er the shuddering earth. True to the earth, the bread-giving earth, Happy and cheery in business and trade, Peaceful we sat in the oak tree's shade, Peaceful, Though we were born ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... barrenness. When, therefore, I had come to this tree that I might pluck the fruit thereof, I discovered that it was indeed the fig tree which Our Lord cursed (Matthew xxi, 19; Mark xi, 13), or that ancient oak to which Lucan likened ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... o'erpress'd Roman and i' the consul's view Slew three opposers: Tarquin's self he met, And struck him on his knee: in that day's feats, When he might act the woman in the scene, He proved best man i' the field, and for his meed Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age Man-enter'd thus, he waxed like a sea; And in the brunt of seventeen battles since He lurch'd all swords of the garland. For this last, Before and in Corioli, let me say, I cannot speak him home: he stopp'd the ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... whereabouts of the accused at the time they were asserted by the witness on the rack to have been at the sabbath would avail. The husbands were told that they had seen or held only the devil-created semblance of their wives. The originals were with Satan under the oak. The confessions of tens of thousands of witches are to be found in Europe's judicial records of the period of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... was a long pause during which they were sauntering together under an old oak tree in the park. "Do you love me, Jack?" she then asked, standing ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... state to banish it to the floor above, where it belonged with some ugly, solid brass andirons. In the same way, faithful Mr. Hitchcock had seen no good reason why he should degrade the huge steel engraving of the Aurora, which hung prominently at the foot of the stairs, in spite of its light oak frame, which was in shocking contrast with the mahogany panels of the walls. Flanking the staircase were other engravings,—Landseer's stags and the inevitable Queen Louise. Yet through the open arch, in a pleasant study, one could ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the gray boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... a huge one made of massive, curiously shaped panels of oak studded with big iron nails and bound with great iron bars. It opened into an enormous hall, which was so dimly lighted that the faces in the portraits on the walls and the figures in the suits of armor made Mary feel that she ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... seeds of the sulla of Malta, or Spanish St. Foin. Lest they should have miscarried, I now pack with the rice a canister of the same kind of seed, raised by myself. By Colonel Franks, in the month of February last, I sent a parcel of acorns of the cork oak, which I desired him to ask the favor of the Delegates of South Carolina in ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Black Point, it was a wilderness of beauty in our eyes; a very paradise of live-oak and scrub-oak, and of oak that had gone mad in the whirlwinds and sandstorms that revelled there. Beyond Black Point we climbed a trestle and mounted a flume that was our highway to the sea. Through this flume the city ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Chase's cards on his mantel-piece and as it is her rule to bring a friend, we went. In spite of her worship of painters for Enderby's sake, Mrs. Chase really adores music and musicians. She has a Bechstein grand standing on an oak floor polished like glass, with tiger and bear-skins lying about. I am rather helpless among musicians. Mrs. Hungerford is a tall, thin girl about thirty, with curious flat, grey eyes that are most puzzling to meet unless ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... boards of the side were united by iron rivets firmly clinched. The bow and stern were similar in shape, and must have risen high out of water, but were so broken that it was impossible to tell how they originally ended. The keel was deep and made of thick oak beams, and there was no trace of any metallic sheathing; but an iron anchor was found almost rusted to pieces. There was no deck and the seats for rowers had been taken out. The oars were twenty feet long, and the oar-holes, sixteen on each side, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... was very glad to have such a pleasant letter on my birthday. I had two or three hundred others and thine was one of the most welcome of all. I must tell thee about how the day passed at Oak Knoll. Of course the sun did not shine, but we had great open wood fires in the rooms, which were all very sweet with roses and other flowers, which were sent to me from distant friends; and fruits of all kinds from ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... erected in 1840, two pews underneath it, and one elsewhere, these parts, the nave and transepts, remain, in all probability, exactly as George Herbert left them. The seats are all uniform, of oak, and of the good old open fashion made in the style of the seventeenth century. They are so arranged, both in the nave and in the transepts, that no person in service time turns his back either upon the altar or upon the minister. (See "NOTES AND QUERIES," ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... to the foot of a hemlock, up which they disappeared. They had dispossessed Downy of his house, had carried in some grass and leaves for a nest, and were as snug as a bug in a rug. Downy drilled another cell in a dead oak farther up the hill, and, I hope, passed the winter there unmolested. Such incidents, comic or tragic, as they chance to strike us, are happening all about us, if we ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... dazzling. Then he resolved to test his faculty for discovery, by seeing whether he could find his way to the breakfast-room without a guide. In this he would have succeeded without much difficulty, for it opened from the main-entrance hall, to which the huge square-turned oak staircase, by which he had ascended, led; had it not been for the somewhat intricate nature of the passages leading from the wing in which his rooms were (evidently an older and more retired portion ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... a day of physical delight, especially for riders. After a warm October, the leaves were still thick on the trees; Nature had not yet resigned herself to death and sleep. Here and there an oak stood, fully green, among the tawny reds and golds of a flaming woodland. The gorse was yellow on the commons; and in the damp woody ways through which Chloe passed, a few primroses—frail, unseasonable blooms—pushed their pale heads through the moss. The ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stronghold Olympus. A movement was next made against the Isaurians, who in the north-west corner of the Rough Cilicia, on the northern slope of Mount Taurus, inhabited a labyrinth of steep mountain ridges, jagged rocks, and deeply-cut valleys, covered with magnificent oak forests—a region which is even at the present day filled with reminiscences of the old robber times. To reduce these Isaurian fastnesses, the last and most secure retreats ofthe freebooters, Servilius led the first Roman army over the Taurus, and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... funeral car, in which they were taken to Springfield, Ill. Halting at the principal cities along the route, that appropriate honors might be paid to the deceased, the funeral cortege arrived on the 3d of May at Springfield, Ill., and the next day the remains were deposited in Oak Ridge ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... the familiar forms of the Oak, Fig, and Walnut (Quercus, Ficus, and Juglans), of the last both the nuts and leaves; also several genera of the Myrtaceae. But the predominant order is the Proteaceae, of which there are between sixty ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... his throat and a thicker doublet than his velvet. He thought of going back for his camelot cloak, but he was now outside the north-west gate, so, lighting his pipe, he trudged along the pleasant new-paved road that led betwixt the avenues of oak and lime to Scheveningen. He had little eye for the beautiful play of color-shades among the glooming green perspectives on either hand, scarcely noted the comely peasant-women with their scarlet-lined cloaks and glittering "head-irons," who rattled ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... growing thinner and the trees beginning to be taller and farther apart. At last they could see through a veil of branches the light of a fire burning on the ground not a great distance ahead of them, and soon they came close to the enormous oak tree under which this fire was kindled. Its flames were a strange bluish color, and as they shot up into the darkness which was almost complete under the shade of that great tree, the children could plainly see strange figures showing black against ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... Colonial in its style; Gables and dormer windows everywhere— Pandalan pipes, on which all winds that blew Made mournful music the whole winter through. Within, unwonted splendours met the eye, Panels, and floors of oak, and tapestry; Carved chimneypieces, where, on brazen dogs, Revelled and roared the Christmas fire of logs. Doors opening into darkness unawares, Mysterious passages and flights of stairs; And on the walls, in heavy-gilded frames, The ancestral Wentworths, ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... March was sitting in the window seat of the old inn parlor, which was oak-paneled and ordinarily rather dark; but on that occasion it was full of the white light of a curiously clear morning—the moon had shone brilliantly for the last two or three nights. He was himself somewhat in shadow in ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... unobserved from the railway coach, she followed the familiar footpath in its leisurely windings across meadow and up-hill. It led her to a tumble-down fence, surrounding a spacious, deep-turfed lawn, with native forest trees—oak, elm, and chestnut—growing where nature had set them. On the crest of the hill, rose a square, old-fashioned house, dear and familiar. Home, ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... out again, when the train had come to a stop; they wrenched at the spikes with their inadequate tools, but the oak ties held them stubbornly. The task was little more than half ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... original dedication to S. Brigid. She was Abbess of Kildare, and died Feb. 11, 523 (Feb. 1 in Irish Kalendars). She received the veil from S. Mel, nephew of S. Patrick; wore a leathern belt over a white kirtle, and had a veil over her shoulders. Her cell was under a large oak, Kildara cell of the oak, and she founded communities of women; died at the age of 70. Many miracles are ascribed to her, one of which reveals a very ancient ecclesiastical usage, parallel to the buns and ale associated with Scottish communions of three generations ago, as described ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... show that he "hit the thing hard." It could not recover from the telling stroke which rent the black oak—the Emancipation Act. ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... in locating the blazed oak which stood close to the camp. Glen had no watch, but he went early enough to be quite sure of being there by ten o'clock. Then he waited and waited. He was about to give it up as a hoax, when a man slipped quietly out of the ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... and at last lights on a ferret that will deal: the names are given in to a scrivener, who inquires whether they are good men, and finds four out of the five are wind-shaken, but the fifth is an oak that can bear the hewing. "Bonds are sealed, commodities delivered, and the tumbler fetches his second career; and their credit having obtained the purse-nets, the wares must now obtain money." The tumbler now hunts for the rabbit suckers, those who buy these purse-nets; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... is almost the same as when Ireland had her own separate legislature. The House of Lords is in precisely the condition in which it was left in 1801. It is a large oak-paneled, oblong chamber of no particular beauty, and might very well pass for the dining-hall of a London guild. There is a handsome fireplace, and the walls are in great part covered with two fine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... shoulders and steep flanks of the foothills that form the sides of the canyon, the barley fields looked down upon the meadows; and, now and then, in the whirling landscape winding side canyons—beautiful with live-oak and laurel, with greasewood and sage—led the eye away toward the pine-fringed ridges of the Galenas while above, the higher snow-clad peaks and domes of the San Bernardinos still shone coldly against ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... Charles-street, Berkeley-square, in a small house, which he fitted up after his own taste; and an odd melee of the classic and the baronial certain of the rooms presented. One of the drawing-rooms, we remember, was in the Elizabethan style, with an imitative oak ceiling, bristled with pendents; and this room opened into another apartment, a fac-simile of a chamber which Bulwer had visited at Pompeii, with vases, candelabra, and other ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... your hostess takes you into what she calls her 'den', for a long, undisturbed chat, and this room also bears the stamp of her taste and love of study. A big log fire burns merrily here, too, in the huge grate, and lights up a splendid old oak cabinet, reaching from floor to ceiling, which, with four more bookcases, seems literally crammed with dictionaries, books of reference, novels, and other light literature; but the picturesque is not wanting, and there are plenty ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... the tall Oak, the giant of the wood, Which bears Britannia's thunders on the flood; The Whale, unmeasured monster of the main, The lordly Lion, monarch of the plain, The Eagle soaring in the realms of air, Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar glare, Imperious man, who ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... whining, and was off like an arrow, his red tongue trailing after him almost to his shoulder. Herr Klueber, for his part, did everything he supposed conducive to the mirthfulness of the company; he begged them to sit down in the shade of a spreading oak-tree, and taking out of a side pocket a small booklet entitled, 'Knallerbsen; oder du sollst und wirst lachen!' (Squibs; or you must and shall laugh!) began reading the funny anecdotes of which the little book was full. He read them twelve specimens; he aroused very little ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... sheep and droves of horses. On either side of the carriage road were groves of the English walnut, orange, lemon, lime, apricot, peach, apple, cherry, the date palm and olive trees, with acres and acres of vineyards, and now and then a park of live oak. The mansion of Glen Annie was surrounded by a bower of flowers and vines. From the porch we could see the sea. This was the second time I had been at Santa Barbara and I always remember it as perhaps the most pleasing combination of scenery I have ever witnessed. We spent ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... sir; excuse me, my feelings overcame me," he said, and retiring a few steps, he leaned upon a branch of a scrub-oak and ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... point the stream, several hundred yards wide, courses in smooth, tranquil current, between banks wooded to the water's edge. The trees are chiefly cottonwoods, with oak, elm, tulip, wild China, and pecan interspersed; also the magnolia grandiflora; in short, such a forest as may be seen in many parts of the Southern States. On both sides of the river, and for some distance up and down, this timbered tract is close and continuous, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... grass about thirty yards from the first steps after the others had gone in, all but the old gentleman, who still kept with me. By-and-by, withdrawing to a stone bench under an oak-tree, he motioned to me to take a seat by his side. He said nothing, but appeared to be quietly enjoying my undisguised ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... Strange shades o'erbrow the valleys deep, And holy Genii guard the rock, Its glooms embrown, its springs unlock, 60 While on its rich ambitious head, An Eden, like his own, lies spread: I view that oak, the fancied glades among, By which, as Milton lay, his evening ear, From many a cloud that dropp'd ethereal dew, 65 Nigh sphered in heaven, its native strains could hear; On which that ancient trump he reach'd was hung: Thither oft, his glory greeting, From Waller's myrtle shades ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... that, in some occult manner, certain trees produced truffles beneath their shade. It is true that truffles are found under trees of special kinds, for Mr. Broome remarks that some trees appear more favourable to the production of truffles than others. Oak and hornbeam are specially mentioned; but, besides these, chestnut, birch, box, and hazel are alluded to. He generally found Tuber oestivum under beech-trees, but also under hazel, Tuber macrosporum under oaks, and Tuber brumale under oaks and abele. The men who collect truffles for Covent ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... gazing after her, wholly entranced with her bright beauty and her kindness. "Say, I'll bring something, too,—white-oak acorns, if you like 'em; I've got ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the stoutest and strongest trees, such as the oak, the ash, and the sycamore, do best in company. Plant those trees in groves, and guard them from the crushing steps and greedy maws of cattle, and they grow up tall, and straight, and smooth. They shield each other from the stormy winds, and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... festivities of Christmastide. The religion of the Druids, the priests of the ancient Britons, is supposed to have been somewhat similar to that of the Brahmins of India, the Magi of Persia, and the Chaldeans of Syria. They worshipped in groves, regarded the oak and mistletoe as objects of veneration, and offered sacrifices. Before Christianity came to Britain December was called "Aerra Geola," because the sun then "turns his glorious course." And under different ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... awkward infant giant, The oak by the roots uptearing; He'll beat you till your backs are sore, And crack your ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... inferior persons fed, down towards the bottom of the hall. The whole resembled the form of the letter T, or some of those ancient dinner-tables, which, arranged on the same principles, may be still seen in the antique Colleges of Oxford or Cambridge. Massive chairs and settles of carved oak were placed upon the dais, and over these seats and the more elevated table was fastened a canopy of cloth, which served in some degree to protect the dignitaries who occupied that distinguished station from the weather, and ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the wrist of the toiler. We are avaricious, we are vulgar, and we are base. We have lost the dignity of Nature that gave to a fragile lily a royalty before which Solomon's grandeur paled. We have piled stone and brick where the forest oak towered, and voice our strident city cries where the imperious roar of the forest king once startled the echoes. We have turned the oil and filth of our refineries into the streams that once crept purling and laughing ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... were approaching the stockade at the end of the road, with only one house between (which, like the Chouteaus', was set in a great yard inclosed with high stone walls), I drew rein under a wide-spreading oak and waited for the others. And as I waited I began once more to wonder what kind of creature Dr. Saugrain's ward could be: the acknowledged belle of St. Louis and now in some extreme danger from a white villain and a rascally Indian, for so I had easily ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... the heath, but it looked like a beautifully variegated carpet; the ling was in flower, the Cyprus-green juniper bushes and the fresh oak shoots seemed like bouquets among the heather. But for the many poisonous vipers, how delightful it would have been to roll about there! The party spoke of them, and of the numerous wolves that had abounded in that neighbourhood, on account of which the district was called ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... of massive oak; and the room, although in appearance but an ordinary apartment, was truly a dungeon as safe, and as difficult to break out of, as if far below the surface of the earth. Later on, when an attendant came in with the bread and water, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... cried Barney, springing away from the men approaching him. As he spoke, he seized a small oak dressing table by one of its legs, swung it round his head, dashed it to pieces on the marble floor, and, putting his foot upon the wreckage, with one mighty wrench had the leg free ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... prairie swings northward into Mississippi. The Pine Hills give way to the more level Pine Flats, which slope with a gradient of a few feet a mile to the ocean or the gulf, which usually has a narrow alluvial border. Going west from Alabama we cross the oak and hickory lands of Central Mississippi, which are separated from the alluvial district by the cane hills and yellow loam table lands. Beyond the bottom lands of the Mississippi (and Red river) we come to the oak lands of Missouri, Arkansas ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... decorative scheme is panelled oak and gilt-paint. The members' seating space spreads fanlike round the floor, with individual seats and desks exactly like those used by schoolboys, which is not an inappropriate simile. On the extreme right ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... the east entry from ten until two. He had an eye to comfort, and he kept vigil in a heavy oak chair, very large and deep. We went up-stairs rather early, and through the open door Gertrude and I kept up a running fire of conversation. Liddy was brushing my hair, and Gertrude was doing her own, with a long free sweep of her strong ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... be ten o'clock, when he said, 'You had better go to bed.' I didn't know what to do, and I went to bed. I believe he thought I fell asleep, for half an hour after that he came up and unlocked the oak chest we keep money in when we have much in the house and took out a roll of something which I believe was bank-notes, though I was not aware that he had 'em there. These he must have got from the bank when he went there the other day. What does he want bank-notes ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... properly introduced, having kept very indifferent company in her own country, and being handsome, she aspired to settling her well. She, of course, aided all in her power to promote Mrs. Rose's scheme, and, by being in a higher circle, offered to get all the Forest Trees to attend except Lord Oak; but she knew he never condescended to go to such meetings. Mrs. Larch, from her connections, promised her influence with all the Cedars and Firs, though she was sure her cousin from Lebanon would not come, but all the ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... feet diameter, though the height was not more than 130 feet. All along, the river was a roaring torrent, its fall very great; and, descending with a rapidity to which we had long been strangers, to our great pleasure oak-trees appeared on the ridge, and soon became very frequent; on these I remarked great quantities of mistletoe. Rushes began to make their appearance; and at a small creek where they were abundant, ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... late eminent American botanist, Professor Asa Gray, who calculated that a certain elm-tree offered a leaf-surface, from which active transpiration constantly went on, of some five acres in extent; while it has further been calculated that a certain oak-tree, within a period of six months, transpired during the daytime eight and a half times more water than fell as rain on an area equal in circumference to the tree-top.[36] Just as the state of the fineness of the soil-particles has an important ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... writ, in smoother cedar tree, So gentle Satires, penn'd so easily. Henceforth I write in crabbed oak-tree rynde, Search they that mean the secret meaning find. Hold out ye guilty and ye galled hides, And meet my far-fetched ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... suspicion at the approaching carriage, the long ditches, overgrown with mugwort, wormwood, and mountain ash; and as he watched the fresh fertile wilderness and solitude of this steppe country, the greenness, the long slopes, and valleys with stunted oak bushes, the grey villages, and scant birch trees,—the whole Russian landscape, so long unseen by him, stirred emotion at once pleasant, sweet and almost painful in his heart, and he felt weighed down by a kind of ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... It has steel walls and ceiling, and a granite floor. The only light that comes in passes through a slit in the door. The slit is an inch wide and five inches long. It doesn't give much light, because the door is thick. It's about four inches thick, and is made of oak and sheet-steel, bolted through. The slit runs this way,"—making a horizontal motion in the air,—"and it is four inches above my eyes when I stand on tiptoe. And I can't look out at the factory-wall forty ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... were taken from the rotunda at six o'clock on the morning of April 21st, and escorted to the train which was to convey them to Springfield. The remains of little Willie Lincoln, who died in February, 1862, and which had been placed in the vault at Oak Hill Cemetery, were removed to the depot about the same time, and placed in the same car with the remains ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... forests is the absence of oaks and hickories. These tough, hard woods would seem to have been created on purpose to stand against wind and cold. But no; the hills are covered with the fragile poplars and birches and spruces, with never an oak or hickory among them. I suspect, indeed, that it is the very softness of the former which gives them their advantage. For this, as I suppose, is correlated with rapid growth; and where the summer is very short, speed may count for more than firmness of texture, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... his contemporaries by a lavish display of mediaeval upholstery. Lockhart tells us that Scott could not bear the commonplace daubings of walls with uniform coats of white, blue, and grey. All the roofs at Abbotsford 'were, in appearance at least, of carved oak, relieved by coats-of-arms duly blazoned at the intersections of beams, and resting on cornices, to the eye of the same material, but composed of casts in plaster of Paris, after the foliage, the flowers, the grotesque monsters and dwarfs, and sometimes ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... I feel the life of the wood and the meadow Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that lift Bud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow, Deep in the oak's chill ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... tossed away his burning cigarette, and greeted them with evident pleasure, blushing like a girl. He ushered them into a small room adjoining, lighted by a single window of antique stained glass from a French church. The low ceiling was coffered in weathered oak, and the walls were panelled in wood to a height of about six feet. A heavy oak table with benches on three sides took up nearly half the length of the room. The front of the room was partially blocked up by ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a little while in the lee of a great oak to protect himself from the driving rain, and he noticed then that it was but a passing shower, sent, it seemed then to him, as a providential aid. The part of the rumble that was real thunder was dying. The yellow flare of the lightning stopped and the rain swept off to the ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... skylark's nest among the grass And waving corn is found; The robin's in a shady bank, With oak-leaves strewed around. ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... when, released from the bondage of London social life, she found herself once more at Errington Manor, then looking its loveliest, surrounded with a green girdle of oak and beech, and set off by the beauty of velvety lawns and terraces, and rose-gardens in full bloom. The depression from which she had suffered fell away from her completely—she grew light-hearted as a child, and flitted from room to room, singing ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... the season, very few from the enemy." He himself escaped more easily than most. To use his own quaint expression, "All the prevailing disorders have attacked me, but I have not strength enough for them to fasten upon. I am here the reed amongst the oaks: I bow before the storm, while the sturdy oak is laid low." The congenial moral surroundings, in short,—the atmosphere of exertion, of worthy and engrossing occupation,—the consciousness, to him delightful, of distinguished action, of heroic persistence through toil and danger,—prevailed even in his physical frame over discomfort, over the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... effect, which the affections confer upon the objects which delight and employ them. Even a temporary privation increases the loveliness of the external nature. How we linger and look. That shade seems so inviting; that old oak so venerable! That rock—how often have we sat upon it, evening and morning, and mused strange, wild, sweet fancies! It is an effort to tear one's self away—it is almost like tearing away from life itself; so many living ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... feel, in assuming the perpendicular, like the sun when sinking into his emerald bed of western waters. Overcome by emotions mighty as the impalpable beams of the harmonious moon's declining light, and forcibly impressed as the trembling oak, girt with the invisible arms of the gentle loving zephyr; the blush mantles on my cheek, deep as the unfathomed depths of the azure ocean. I say, gentlemen, impressed as I am with a sense—with a sense, I say, with a sense—" Here the hon. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the Seventeenth; and the Fifteenth on the extreme right; thus completely investing the city. Wishing to reconnoitre the place in person, I rode forward by the Louisville road, into a dense wood of oak, pine, and cypress, left the horses, and walked down to the railroad-track, at a place where there was a side-track, and a cut about four feet deep. From that point the railroad was straight, leading into Savannah, and about eight hundred yards off were a rebel parapet and battery. I could ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... brought you to Oxford?" asked Cedric in rather an uneasy tone. "I thought it was one of our fellows, and was just swearing to myself for forgetting to sport the oak. I suppose you are staying ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... thought about it, how drearily the afternoon had passed. First he had opened the street door, and stood in it. There was nothing alive to be seen, except a sparrow picking up crumbs, and he would not stop till he was tired of him. The Royal Oak, down the street to the right, had not even a horseless gig or cart standing before it; and King Charles, grinning awfully in its branches on the signboard, was invisible from the distance at which he stood. In at the other end of ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... was a solemn and ceremonious function. In accordance with the time-honoured tradition of the family, it was served at the early hour of seven o'clock in the big dining-room, an ancient chamber panelled with oak to the ceiling, with a carved buffet, an open fireplace, Jacobean mantelpiece, and old family portraits on the walls. There were sconces on the walls, and a crystal chandelier for wax candles was suspended from the centre of the ceiling above the table. The chandelier was never lit, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees |
