"Tuft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man, and an Indian at that. Alfred raised his rifle to his shoulder and was in the act of pressing the trigger when he thought he heard a faint halloo. Looking closer, he found he was not covering the smooth polished head adorned with the small tuft of hair, peculiar to a redskin on the warpath, but a head from which streamed ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... where the unaided eye finds but little promise. In walking along the banks of the little stream, where, half concealed by more pretentious plants, our humble Vaucheria grows, the average passer by, if he notices it at all, sees but a tangled tuft of dark green "scum." Yet, when this is examined under the magic tube, a crystal cylinder, closely set with sparkling emeralds, is revealed. And although so transparent, so apparently simple in structure that it does not seem possible for even the finest ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... fly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... over With the Dead-man's Moccasin-leather, With the fungus white and yellow. Suddenly from the boughs above him Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: "Aim your arrows, Hiawatha, At the head of Megissogwon, Strike the tuft of hair upon it, At their roots the long black tresses; There alone can he be wounded!" Winged with feathers, tipped with jasper, Swift flew Hiawatha's arrow, Just as Megissogwon, stooping, Raised a heavy stone to throw it. Full upon the crown it struck him, At the roots of his long tresses, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... head between its horns. I was anything but pleased with these antics, fearing that this effusion was only a dodge to cut the beast's throat. Much to my astonishment, I found that the young Jogpa had seized a tuft of the yak's hair with his teeth and was trying to tear it off, while the unfortunate beast was making desperate efforts to shake off its persecutor. The hair eventually gave way, and with a mouthful of it hanging from both sides of his tightly closed lips the Jogpa now let go of the ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... at La Boisselle was a wonderful sight. One morning I was wandering about the old battlefield, and I came across a great wilderness of white chalk—not a tuft of grass, not a flower, nothing but blazing chalk; apparently a hill of chalk dotted thickly all over with bits of shrapnel. I walked up it, and suddenly found myself on the lip of the crater. I felt myself in ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... ascent being unluckily a little out of the perpendicular, he descended with a proportionate curve from the apex of his projection, and alighted not on the wall of the tower, but in an ivy-bush by its side, which, giving way beneath him, transferred him to a tuft of hazel at its base, which, after upholding him an instant, consigned him to the boughs of an ash that had rooted itself in a fissure about half way down the rock, which finally transmitted ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... Mrs. Bungay surveying mankind from her window, a magnificent vision of an enormous grey cab-horse appeared, and neared rapidly. A pair of white reins, held by small white gloves, were visible behind it; a face pale, but richly decorated with a chin-tuft, the head of an exiguous groom bobbing over the cab-head—these bright things were revealed to the delighted Mrs. Bungay. "The Honourable Percy Popjoy's quite punctual, I declare," she said, and sailed to the door to be in waiting ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Curzon-street, Mayfair, where Mrs. Campion entertains the nobility and gentry to whom her husband lends money. There, and on his glazed cards, he is Mr. Somerset Campion; here he is Campion and Co.; and the same tuft which ornaments his chin, sprouts from the under lip of the rest of the firm. It is splendid to see his cab-horse harness blazing with heraldic bearings, as the vehicle stops at the door leading to his chambers. The horse flings froth off his nostrils as ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... struck us about the man was his complete assurance, and secondly his pronounced Jewish cast of features. With an ulster and a few tall hats on his head he would have made a perfect "old clo'" man. An oldish man this, with grizzled beard brought to a point, and in the end a tuft of a rat's tall was twisted, others similarly adorning the ends of his moustache. His hair was done in a round lump at the back, held in place by a sort of net of string. His hair in front had been either pulled out or shaved off, giving him a very fine forehead. His ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Timmins was always a tuft-hunter," said Rowdy, who had been at college with the barrister, and who, for his own part, has no more objection to a lord than you or I have; and adding, "Hang him, what business has HE to be giving parties?" allowed Mrs. Rowdy, ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... head glistened in the light from a green-shaded lamp. He was not asleep, for every now and then his sanguine cheeks filled, and a sound, half sigh, half grunt, escaped his thick lips between a white moustache and the tiny tuft of white hairs above his cleft chin. Sunk in the chair, that square thick trunk of a body in short black-braided coat ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... one. Now, what remains of some of them is even with the ground; others present a stump just high enough to form a seat; and others are, perhaps, a man's height from the ground,—and all are mossy, and with grass and weeds rooted into their chinks, and here and there a tuft of flowers, giving its tender little beauty to their decay. The material of the edifice is a soft red stone, and it is now extensively overgrown with a lichen of a very light gray line, which, at a little distance, makes the walls look as if they had long ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... woman's life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband's track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces, while a false step plunged ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... the shawls of their wear, And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair, All the rest was shaven ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... Van Brunt, making a lunge at a tuft of tall grass and pulling off two or three spears of it, which he carried ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... furze of the great heath-like commons, and he saw now the object which had fallen from his pocket. His sluggish manner was cast aside, and, as if suddenly galvanised into action, he sprang forward to secure the little object lying half hidden upon a tuft of ling. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... one report, and a little tuft of white hair floated slowly to the judge's feet in the moonlight. The judge did not swerve; he still stood erect and motionless, like a statue, with his pistol-arm hanging straight down at his side. He was reserving ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 60 And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting up at the Trump of ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... was—I beg his pardon, had been—a linen-draper; neither well-educated nor well behaved; in short, an unmitigated linen-draper. Consequently the dean's adoration of the aristocracy was excessive. There are few such thorough tuft-hunters as your genuine Oxford Don; the man who, without family or station in society, often without any further general education and knowledge of the world than is to be found at a country grammar-school, is suddenly, upon the strength of some acquaintance with Latin ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... her eyes to the royal box, where sat a stout, middle-aged man, with a dull, good-humored face, a star and ribbon on his breast, and by his side a woman, ample and motherly, with an ugly tuft of feathers on her head, and a diamond tiara, which lit up her heavy Dutch features like a torch. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... summer-time, is the river's bank, but which is now nearly the centre of the stream. Our river in its present state has quite a noble breadth. The little hillock which formed the abutment of the old bridge is now an island with its tuft of trees. Along the hither shore a row of trees stand up to their knees, and the smaller ones to their middles, in the water; and afar off, on the surface of the stream, we see tufts of bushes emerging, thrusting up their heads, as it were, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... a nondescript head-dress this morning, adorned with an upright tuft of red feathers and voluminous skirts of brown net, a jacket and flounces to match—betook herself to the side ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... full-chested, though slightly stooped, with a large head heavily coated with bushy black hair, an aquiline nose, and dark gray eyes, whose mild expression added to the benignity of his face. On the end of his nose grew a tuft of long hairs, which he seemed to prize as a natural mark of royalty, or chieftainship. Indeed, there was a popular legend afloat that he was of true royal blood—a stray Bourbon, or something of the sort. His speech ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... and the 'striking and jovial personality' of Sir Morton Pippitt. And if the fact of that 'striking and jovial personality' were not properly insisted upon, Sir Morton went himself to see the editor of the 'Riversford Gazette,' an illiterate tuft-hunting little man,—and nearly frightened him into fits. He had asserted himself in this kind of autocratic fashion ever since he had purchased Badsworth, when he was still in his forties,—and it may be well imagined that at the age of sixty he was not prepared to be ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... its special show of emeralds, set off here and there by a tuft of dandelion that had escaped the watchful eye of Mr. Sam. The stone wall of the barnyard was almost hidden by the hollyhocks; they were a pretty sight, Mary thought; she ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... far better in his working-dress; the rather, because I knew he made himself so dreadfully uncomfortable, entirely on my account, and that it was for me he pulled up his shirt-collar so very high behind, that it made the hair on the crown of his head stand up like a tuft of feathers. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... concerning her future, she mechanically stretched out her hand to pluck a bunch of phlox and of lemon-hued primroses that were nodding in the sunshine close to her feet; but, as she touched the stems, a large copper-colored snake slowly uncoiled from the tuft of grass where they nestled and, gliding into the water, disappeared in the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... each other. Be particular to have a sufficiency of the flavouring and garnishing herbs always ready and near at hand. These are sometimes wanted suddenly, and in a well-ordered garden it should not be difficult to gather a tuft of Parsley in the dark. Change crops from place to place, so as to avoid growing the same things on the same plots in two successive seasons. This rule, though of great importance, cannot be strictly followed, ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the youth; "and in a few years agricultural innovation will scarcely leave, even in these wastes, a single furze-blossom for the bee or a tuft of green-sward for the grasshopper; but, however unpleasant the change may be for us foot-travellers, we must not repine at what they tell us is so sure a witness of the prosperity ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... never heard of anybody else doing it. Naturally I was considerably pleased with myself, and having again loaded up, I went on to look for the black-maned beauty who had killed Kaptein. Slowly, and with the greatest care, I proceeded up the kloof, searching every bush and tuft of grass as I went. It was wonderfully exciting work, for I never was sure from one moment to another but that he would be on me. I took comfort, however, from the reflection that a lion rarely attacks ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... sharp report, and Bosephus saw a little tuft of fur fly from one of his companion's ears. Horatio dodged frantically and dropped ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a tuft of winged seed That, from the dandelion's naked stalk, Mounted aloft, is suffered not to use Its natural gifts for purposes of rest, 140 Driven by the autumnal whirlwind to and fro Through the wide element? or have you marked The heavier substance of a leaf-clad bough, Within the vortex of a foaming ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... this time the cow had been getting more and more nervous. Every day she thought of the poor old man and his meek little legs and his sweet old smile, and just how his coat-tails looked as he went up; till at last she laid her head down on a tuft of grass by the brook, and ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... Carstairs. "He's an American and naturally a tuft-hunter. He's been making a long list of princely acquaintances recently, and he was bound to bring in the son of a field-marshal and make a friend of ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Moore. To Sir Hudson Lowe Dialogue To Miss —- To —- On being Obliged to Leave a Pleasant Party, etc. What my Thought's like? From the French A Joke Versified The Surprise On —- On a Squinting Poetess On a Tuft-hunter The Kiss Epitaph on Southey Written in a Young Lady's Common-place Book The Rabbinical Origin of Women Anacreontique On Butler's Monument Wesley On the Disappointment of the Whig Associates of the Prince Regent, etc Lamb To Professor Airey Sydney Smith On Lord ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... a person of any poetry, who came under this tree," said John Effingham, "that did not fall into this very train of thought. I once brought a man celebrated for his genius here, and, after gazing for a minute or two at the high, green tuft that tops the tree, he exclaimed, 'that mass of green waved there in the fierce light when Columbus first ventured into the unknown sea.' It is, indeed, eloquent; for it tells the same glowing tale to all who approach it—a tale ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... tree outside the door nearly bursting his throat with joy of living. He had forgotten that summer was over, that winter must ever come; and who could think of cold winds, bare boughs, or frozen streams on such a day? A painted moth came in at the open window and settled on the tuft of brilliant leaves. Aurelia heard the bird and looked from the beauty of the glowing bush to her tall, splendid daughter, standing like young Spring with golden Autumn in ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that it was always on his head; he had two, nightcaps I mean, not heads. Anthony was one of the oldest of the clerks, and just the subject for a painter. He was as thin as a lath, wrinkled round the mouth and eyes, had long, bony fingers, bushy, gray eyebrows, and over his left eye hung a thick tuft of hair, which did not look handsome, but made his appearance very remarkable. People knew that he came from Bremen; it was not exactly his home, although his master resided there. His ancestors were from Thuringia, and had lived in the town of Eisenach, close by ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... dispense hospitality to all who came. Bright and early in the morning the whole community appeared and greeted the seigneur with a salvo of blank musketry. With them they carried a tall fir-tree, pulled bare to within a few feet of the top where a tuft of green remained. Having planted this Maypole in the ground, they joined in dancing and a feu de joie in the seigneur's honor, and then adjourned for cakes and wine at his table. There is no doubt that such good things ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... a bold expressive mouth, slight of build, but muscular and supple. His dress was rustic, but simple almost to affectation; you would not have found a seal on his white bulging shirt, search as you might, and he wore his cap, with a tuft of meadow-sweet in it, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... of Abrudbanya rode two men, one of them wearing an overcoat with silver buttons over his Wallachian dress, and a tuft of heron's feathers in his cap, while at his side hung a curved sword, pistols protruded from his holsters, and a rifle lay across his saddle-bow. His face had nothing of the Wallachian peasant in its features or expression. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... which soaks up out of a white gravel in the bog, among red fly-catchers, and pink bottle-heath, and sweet white orchis; nor such a one as you may see, too, here, which bubbles up under the warm sandbank in the hollow lane, by the great tuft of lady ferns, and makes the sand dance reels at the bottom, day and night, all the year round; not such a spring as either of those; but a real North country limestone fountain, like one of those in Sicily or Greece, where the old heathen fancied the nymphs ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... an annual herb with stems radiating in all directions from a centre. The plant is fixed to the soil by a tuft of fibrous roots all springing from the bases of the stems. In addition to this crown of fibrous roots, there may be roots at the nodes of some of the prostrate branches. The stems and branches are short at first, and leaves arise on them one after the other in rapid succession. After the appearance ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... entrancing our listening ears. The bobolink never soars like the lark, as the poets would have us believe, but generally sings on the wing, flying with a peculiar self-conscious flight horizontally thirty or forty feet above the meadow grass. He also sings perched upon the fence or tuft of grass. He is one of the greatest poseurs ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the rocks that formed the base of the little island, the more we became convinced that its formation was quite recent. Not a mollusk, not a tuft of seaweed was found clinging to the sides of the rocks; not a germ had the wind carried to its surface, not a bird had taken refuge amid the crags upon its summits. To a lover of natural history, the spot did not yield a single point of interest; the geologist alone would find subject of study ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... Harry returned to the farm where he had left his horse and, early next morning, put on his disguise again, painted lines round his eyes, touched some of the hairs of his eyebrows with white paint, mixed some white horsehair with the tuft on the top of his head, and dropped a little juice of a plant resembling belladonna—used at times, by ladies in the east, to dilate the pupils of their eyes and make them dark and brilliant—in ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... No tuft of grass-green plumes for you, like Queen Guinevere's, nor yet the free flowing feather to be seen in so many beautiful old French pictures, nor the plumed hat which "my sweet Mistress Ann Dacre" wore when Constance Sherwood's loving eyes first fell upon her, but the simple jockey ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... wore close, knitted, woollen caps. They appear to have become more common in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It is related, that when Charles the Second made his public entry into Rouen, in 1449, he wore a hat lined with red velvet, surmounted with a plume or tuft of feathers; from which entry, or at least during his reign, the use of hats and caps is to be dated; and from that time they took the place of chaperons and hoods, that had ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... Bloomfield having announced his intention to stay in the neighbourhood of Maidenhead, what more probable than that the Maestro Jimson should turn his mind toward Padwick? Near this pleasant riverside village he remembered to have observed an ancient, weedy houseboat lying moored beside a tuft of willows. It had stirred in him, in his careless hours, as he pulled down the river under a more familiar name, a certain sense of the romantic; and when the nice contrivance of his story was already complete in his mind, he had come near ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... with three-partite leaves, notched at the edge with a pair of largo membraneous stipules at their base. When growing, this plant throws out two kinds of shoots—one called runners, which lie prostrate on the ground, and end in a tuft of leaves—these root into the soil, and then form new plants—and another growing nearly upright, and bearing at the end a tuft of flowers which produce the fruit. The calyx, which is flat, green, and hairy, is divided into ten parts, called sepals, and there ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... was his dress rather than his person which attracted attention. He wore the ordinary Andalucian cap—of which such hideous parodies are now making themselves common in England—but was not contented with the usual ornament of the double tuft. The cap was small, and jaunty; trimmed with silk velvet—as is common here with men careful to adorn their persons; but this man's cap was finished off with a jewelled button and golden filigree work. He was dressed in a short jacket ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... characters as Rev. Silkirk, was no evidence of God's displeasure. Men more righteous than he had been compelled to flee for their lives; yea, suffer death for truth's sake; men of whom the world was not worthy. He pillowed his head upon a tuft of wire grass, and gazed upward towards the spangled skies. "Lord, we cannot tell why this, thy people, are so severely tried; yet we believe that all things work together for good to them that trust in Thee. Strengthen our faith, Lord. Save ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... cloak was hastily unloosed, and the young page of Mad. la Tour sprang lightly from its folds. A tartan kirtle, reaching below the knees, with trews of the same material, and a Highland bonnet, adorned with a tuft of eagle feathers, gave him the appearance of a Scottish youth;—but the sparkling black eyes, the clear brunette complexion, and the jetty locks which clustered around its brow and neck, proclaimed ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... Villiers, her daughter, etc. When royal people arrive everybody rises and remains standing while they stand, and if they approach you or look at you, you must perform the lowest of "curtsies." The courtesy made to royalty is very like the one I was taught to make when a little girl at Miss Tuft's school in Plymouth. One sinks down instead of stepping back in dancing-school fashion. After dinner the Duchess was pleased to stand until the gentlemen rejoined us; of course, we must all stand. . ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... to-day was not destined to stop at partridges, for hardly had he ridden over the edge of the boulder-strewn side, and on to the flat table-top of the great hill which covered some five hundred acres of land, before he perceived, emerging from the shelter of a tuft of grass about a hundred and seventy yards away, nothing less than the tall neck and whiskered head of ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... One day, in 1628, being, as usual, at a loss for occupation, and having successfully concocted a fricandeau for dinner, he amused himself by shaving all his courtiers, leaving them only a little tuft on the chin. This, naturally, set the fashion ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... in the meantime closed his eyes and lost Canton and all else in delicate thoughts of Mian, to look up. That which met his attention on doing so filled him with an intelligent wonder, for the person before him held in his hand what had the appearance of a tuft of bright yellow hair, which shone in the light of the sun with a most engaging splendour, but which he nevertheless regarded with a most undignified expression of confusion ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... believed that the chief cause of disease and death was a monstrous serpent, that lived under the earth. By touching a tuft of hair, a feather, or a fragment of bone, with a portion of his flesh or fat, the sorcerer imparted power to it of entering the body of his victim, and gradually killing him. It was an important part of the doctor's function to extract these charms from the vitals ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... here, it is true," said Seraphitus. "These few plants and flowers are due to that sheltering rock which protects the meadow from the polar winds. Put that tuft in your bosom, Minna," he added, gathering a flower,—"that balmy creation which no eye has ever seen; keep the solitary matchless flower in memory of this one matchless morning of your life. You will find no other guide to lead ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... 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 man whom ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... male lions stood in awe of him. He looked what he was—a very king of lions, when, after a long sleep, he rose up in all his majesty of strength, shook his magnificent mane and lashed his tail, with its curious little black tuft, to and fro as ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... eyes were still considering Rosamund somewhat searchingly, his fingers tugging thoughtfully at his short tuft of ashen-coloured beard. Then he turned to the door. "Come in, gentlemen," he said, "and bid ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... first sight of the Ghaza, after he has sojourned for a time away from his wilds. Mr. Palgrave (i. 38) describes the "Ghada" as an Euphorbia with a woody stem often 5-6 feet high and slender, flexible green twigs (?), "forming a feathery tuft, not ungraceful to the eye, while it affords some shelter to the traveller, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... A tuft of grass, a thistle green, Or cabbage-leaf so sweet, Were all the dainties, he was seen For twenty years ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Corgo Fundo (elev. 1,250 ft.), along the banks of which the laminae of red-baked rock could be observed with thin white layers between. Above was a lovely green pasture with a tuft of deep green trees, which looked exactly like a bit of a well-kept English park. We mounted up again to 1,430 ft., then went down another descent into a large plain with campos, upon which grew merely a few ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... loudly. And before he could say "Jack Robinson" a tuft of the wiry stuff covered his eyebrow. "Keep your face still!" And, to his horror, the gum was daubed from the borders of the beard, halfway up to his eyes, and little prickly ends of hair were held in Peggy's palm and pressed against his cheeks ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... bottom; all of them except Elsa, who remained on the boat to keep watch. Following otter-paths through the thick rushes they came to the centre of the islet, some thirty yards away. Here, at a spot which Martha ascertained by a few hurried pacings, grew a dense tuft of reeds. In the midst of these reeds was a duck's nest with the young just hatching out, off which the old ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... why certain weapons dangling at their sides should not be made to perform, and that without delay, an incision in the cranium of their proprietor. True, there was a difficulty. The veteran Major was partially bald, and wanted the top knot or scalping tuft, which to a true warrior was indispensable; not that we mean to insinuate that either of these chiefs would so far have forgotten the position in which that gentleman stood, as to have been tempted into any practical demonstration of their hostility: ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... enough to be caught by the wind. It strayed out in tattered yellowish streamers toward the English lines, half dissipating itself in twenty yards, until the steady outpour of the green smoke gave it reinforcement and it made headway. Then, creeping forward from tuft to tuft, and preceded by an acrid and parching whiff, the curling and tumbling vapor reached the English lines in a wall ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... like a rich banker. Only hear him! His very chirp has in it something aristocratic and supercilious. He looks upon this crumb-scattering as a duty society owes him, and determines generously to leave for the others all he can not eat up himself. But I think I see a tuft ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... palm is not a true palm, though it looks like one. It has not the least resemblance to a cabbage. It has a tuft of green leaves, which are rather palmy-looking at a distance, and which springs from the top of a pithy, worthless stem, varying from one to twenty or thirty feet in height. Sometimes the stem is branched ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... two they explored the ground inch by inch, crawling round in the long grass upon their hands and knees, until a little tuft of brown earth sticking up through a piece of turf, like the upturned corner of a rug, showed them what they were looking for. With infinite care Cleek lifted up the square of turf and set it upon one side. The sight of the flat dark surface of the trap-door rewarded them. He ran his fingers ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... soft grass. All day she lies chewing the cud in her fashion, and moving her delicate ears hither and thither, lest fox or stoat or dog should come upon her unawares; and at nightfall she steals away once more. Every run, every tuft of grass, every rising of the ground is known to her; and, when at last the tramp of the approaching beaters rouses her, she rushes away with a distinct advantage over the dogs. She knows exactly whither to go; the other animals do not, and usually, on open ground, the quarry escapes. I do ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... conning-tower and survey the horizon in every direction, in an effort to sight the vessel that had sent out that mysterious radio, but though he cast his good brown eyes diligently through those strong lenses, he saw not so much as a smoke tuft upon the broad, gray-blue surface of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... further; but she saw a pond in the distance, a large pond whose stagnant water looked like blood under the reflection of this new day, and she limped on with short steps and with her hand on her heart, in order to dip both her legs in it. She sat down on a tuft of grass, took off her heavy shoes, which were full of dust, pulled off her stockings and plunged her legs into the still water, from which bubbles ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... an ox could, in fairness, be made to do. A ride-ox can be tied up by his nose-bridle; but, if wild or frightened, he will assuredly struggle till the nose-stick be torn out of his nose, and he becomes free. It is, therefore, better to tie the bridle to a tuft of grass, or a slender twig, rather than to a tree or to the saddle-bags. Mounting an ox is usually a troublesome business, on account of his horns. To make ride-oxen quiet and tame, scratch their backs and tails—they dearly love it—and ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Pastor Tuft was walking up and down his study, composing his Sunday sermon. He was a handsome man, with a long, fair face, and dreamy eyes; his wife, Josephine, in the days when she thought she was in love with him, used to call him Melanchthon—that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... a tourist reach up and pull off the little tuft of breath feathers from the mid-rafter of the little house he had rented for the night. Naturally he replaced it when the enormity of his ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... thing to deal with the rich and great. If you treat them as the rest of the world does, you are a tuft-hunter; if you treat them as the rest of the world pretends to, you are a hypocrite; whereas, if you deal with them truly, it is hard not to seem, even to yourself, a bumptious person. I remember trying to tell myself on the launch-trip that I was not in the least excited; and then, standing ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... draw some flowers in a glass before her-a little purple, green-winged orchis, a cowslip, and a quivering dark-brown tuft of quaking grass. He came and stood ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forward from the impulse of his unchecked blow, the Indian swept sternly at him with the full force of his extended arm. The caution of the chief, and the luck of a little thing, each in turn prevented the ending of the combat at its outset. Half falling onward, the Mexican slipped upon a tuft of the hard gray grass and went down headlong. A murmur arose from the Indians, who thought at first that their leader's blow had proved fatal. A sharp call from Curly seemed to bring the Mexican to his feet ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... and went cheerfully ahead of us, as I was very glad to see. Dennis saw it too, but only to relapse into mischief. He held me back, as Alister strode in front, and putting out his thumb and finger, so close to a tuft of hay-coloured hair that stood cocked defiantly up on the Scotchman's crown that I was in all the agony he meant me to be for fear of detection, he chattered in my ear, "Jack, did ye ever study physiognomy, or any of the science of externals? ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... TUFT HUNTER. A it anniversary parasite, one who courts the acquaintance of nobility, whose caps are adorned with ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... side. Moreover the sage is what is called in the books a social plant; where there is one there may be a thousand, as like each other as so, many peas. The particular bush that hid my chewink babies had to be marked, as one would mark the special tuft of grass that hides a ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... from fighting, in a brauerie bringing in his hand foure or fiue mens heads, carying them by the haire of the head: for although they shaue their heads most commonly twise a weeke, yet leaue they a tuft of haire vpon their heads about 2. foote long. I haue enquired why they leaue the tuft of haire vpon their heads. They answered that thereby they may easiler be carried vp into heauen when they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... indeed, ma belle," said Louis, stooping as he spoke to gather up, not the fruit, but a dozen fresh partridge's eggs from the inner shade of a thick tuft of grass and herbs that grew beside a fallen tree. Catharine's voice and sudden movements had startled the ruffed grouse [Footnote: The Canadian partridge is a species of grouse, larger than the English or French partridge. We refer our young readers to the finely arranged specimens in the ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... short, round-bellied, dust-colored man, with gray hair and a tuft upon his chin. He was the same color as his house and his sign and gave Markham the impression of having sat upon this same door-sill since the years of a remote antiquity. But he got up blithely enough when the painter announced the object of his visit ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... purple robes, descended from the chariot, followed by servants carrying a seat of ivory inlaid with silver, a tuft of peacock feathers to brush away the insects, and a golden box filled with perfumes. It was Chrysippus, prince of Clazomenae, the nephew of Anaxagoras. He had neglected and despised the old man in his poverty, ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... Come, come, come and help!" till the people came running to see what was the matter. They frightened the hawk so that he let go the Hen, and had to be satisfied with her tuft and her finest feathers, which he had plucked from her. And then, you may be sure, she lost no time in running-home; she stretched her neck, and tripped ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... time too large to be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were not favorably situated for clear views. After cautiously casting about, I made choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it. Though comparatively young, they were about a hundred feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... water. Now it became the object of each to drown his antagonist, and the efforts to accomplish this were continued for some time with alternate success;—first one and then the other, being under water. At length, catching hold of the long tuft of hair which had been suffered to grow on the head of the chief, Poe held him under water, until he supposed him dead; but relaxing his hold too soon, the gigantic savage was again on his feet and ready for another grapple. In this both ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... not be indifferent to the reader to know that the Highland cattle are peculiarly liable to be TAKEN, or infected, by spells and witchcraft, which judicious people guard against by knitting knots of peculiar complexity on the tuft of hair which terminates ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... with yellow breast and a black crescent on his throat. The meadow-lark is about the size of a quail. He stands erect when he sings, and he has a rather long beak. The nest can be found, if you look for it, but is generally out of sight under a loosened clod of earth or tuft ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... corners of the cap are an addition, which is not an improvement; the old cap drooped gracefully from its tuft in the centre, as can still be seen in the portraits of seventeenth-century divines, e.g. in Vandyck's 'Archbishop Laud', so familiar from its many replicas and copies. Later usage has specialized the round cap of velvet ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... drooping from the tuft of long, fringed leaves which crown the branchless trunk of the stately palm. The cocoanut as found in commerce is the nut divested of its outer sheath, and is much smaller in size than when seen upon the tree. Picked fresh from the tree, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... beside him. As the question was put by the interpreter the boy muttered that he knew the way. The man turned to translate his answer to Beorn, when there was a sudden shout. At the moment that Osgod was making a long step from one tuft to another the boy stooped and caught his foot, and with a roar of surprise and fury Osgod fell head-foremost into the morass. At the same moment the lad darted away with a yell of defiance, leaping from ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... "a Jacobin," though his own letters show that he was as far as the most insolent young "tuft" from relishing doctrines of human equality. He had the reputation, however, of being not only a Jacobin, but "a mad Jacobin"; too mad for Southey, who was then young, and a Liberal. "Landor was obliged to leave ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... the nest of Formica rufa in the Jewish cemetery in Leadville. Furnished with wings, it does not remain in the nest, but is forced to return thither by the strange incapacity to feed itself. Like the Claviger, it repays its kind nurses by the sweet liquid it exudes, and which is retained by a tuft of hair on either side of the abdomen beneath the wings, which the creature lifts in order that the ant may get at its honeyed recompense. Such mutual services between creatures in no way allied is a most curious fact in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... his breast pocket a little sixpenny looking-glass, and hung it on one of the roots that stuck out from the bank. Then he dressed himself in one of the old-fashioned gowns and a great pinked-out collar. Then he took out a razor. Tuft by tuft the soft brown beard fell down into the sand, and the little ants took it to line their nests with. Then the glass showed a face surrounded by a frilled cap, white as a woman's, with a little mouth, a very short upper lip, and ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... sea-weeds or on floating logs, there may often be observed a growth of exquisitely delicate branches, looking at first sight more like a small bunch of moss than anything else. But gather such a mossy tuft and place it in a glass bowl filled with sea-water, and you will presently find that it is full of life and activity. Every branch of this miniature shrub terminates in a little club-shaped head, upon which are scattered a number of tentacles. They are in constant motion, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... chronicles, which opened into the inner towers of the ancient castle of the Herons. He found himself among rugged, heathy ground, the hollow palm of the island, now suffused with milky opalescence, for the sun was setting. Hardly could Stair see from one tuft to another, but out of the tinted mist swooped first two and then three birds like angels appearing out of a white heaven. Magnified by the mist Stair hardly recognized the green and black summer uniform of the golden plover, but he heard their softly ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... eyes. She seized the kettle, and hastening to the lake laved her face and head in the cooling water. Then, from a buckskin pouch at her belt, she drew a neat birch-bark case, decorated with porcupine quills, and from the case a rudely fashioned comb, from which dangled by a buckskin thong a tuft of porcupine tail. The lake was her mirror, as she smoothed and rebraided her hair. This done, she ran the comb several times through the tuft of porcupine tail before ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... centre of the plain. The trunk was, indeed, exceedingly slender, and, as the guide informed them, the wood was of so very brittle a nature that if the tree had not been protected from the winds by the high hills which encircled it, it would have been snapped off ages ago. Under the broad tuft of leaves that formed its top, the boys saw hanging large clusters of the precious fruit; great nuts as big as ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... broad, and slouching; his eyes are small; and his muzzle square, with a deep sulcus in the middle, which gives it the appearance of being bifid. The upper lip overhangs the under by several inches, and is highly prehensile. A long tuft of coarse hair grows out of an excrescence on the throat, in the angle between the head and neck. This tuft is observed both in the male and female, though only when full-grown. In the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... a frenzied manner, when I tried to raise her from the ground—she looked at me with such a fearful wildness in her eyes—that I felt absolutely terrified at the sight of her. To my relief, the paroxysm left her as suddenly as it had come. She thrust away the tuft of grass into the bosom of her dress, and took my arm and hurried with me out of the churchyard. I asked her why she had gone back—I asked what those words were which she had spoken at the grave. 'A promise ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... deal too much flurried to speak. This shabby-looking buck was—was her father. The Captain was perfumed with the recollections of the last night's cigars, and pulled and twisted the tuft on his chin as jauntily as ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heart, That gladlier turns to eye the shuddering start Of Passion in her might, Than marks the silent growth of grace and light; - Pleased in the cheerless tomb To linger, while the morning rays illume Green lake, and cedar tuft, and spicy glade, Shaking their dewy tresses now the ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... "Upon yon tuft of hazel trees, That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perched in ecstasies, Yet seeming still to hover; There! where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows and sunny glimmerings, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... have been beaten these two hours; that is to say, hopeless these two hours, and getting beaten worse and worse. The Saxons cannot stand, but neither generally will they run; they dispute every ditch, morass and tuft of wood, especially every village. Wrecks of the muddy desperate business last, hour after hour. "I gave my men a little rest under the garden walls," says one Saxon Gentleman, "or they would have died, in the heat and thirst and extreme fatigue: I would have given 100 gulden [10 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... den, and sits on his tail, gravely surveying the great landscape with a comical little air of importance, as if he owned it all. When called to come down he is afraid, and makes a great to-do about it. Another has been crouching for five minutes behind a tuft of grass, watching like a cat at a rat-hole for some one to come by and be pounced upon. Another is worrying something on the ground, a cricket perhaps, or a doodle-bug; and the fourth never ceases to worry the patient old mother, till she moves away and lies down by ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the hau sticks, but fearing the bird was not telling the truth, he rubbed its head with one of the sticks until a drop of blood trickled out, staining the tuft of feathers on its crest. But the bird persisted in this statement, so Maui began rubbing the sticks together. Little sparks appeared and caught fire to the dead ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... in the recesses of the sides were marble vases, and tanks, with taps for hot and cold water, and channels in the floor to carry off the suds. Two savage, unearthly boys, their heads all shaved, with the exception of a tuft on the top, and in their scant costume of a towel only, looking more like wild Indians than Turks, now seized hold of me, and forcing me back upon the hot marble floor commenced a dreadful series of tortures, such as I had only read of as pertaining to the dark ages. It was of no use ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... rustling and swaying in the now boisterous wind, took all flickering tints of color on their trunks and leaves,—the grey stones and pebbles turned to lumps of gold and heaps of diamonds, and on the other side of the rapids, a large tuft of heather in a cleft of the rocks glowed with extraordinary vividness and warmth, like a suddenly kindled fire. A troop of witches dancing wildly on the sward,—a ring of fairies,—kelpies tripping from crag to crag,—a sudden chorus of ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... was at least four feet, out of the sum total of six, composed of blue cotton net, which fitted very close to a very spare figure. He wore no cravat, but a turn-down collar with a black ribbon, his hair very long, with a very puny pair of moustachios on his upper lip, and something like a tuft on his chin. Altogether, he was a strange-looking being, especially when he had substituted for his long coat a short nankeen jacket, which was the case at the time I am ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... an excellent swordsman, and had fought several duels; but he was quite disconcerted by the deadly reality of Neil's attack. In the second thrust, his foot got entangled in a tuft of grass; and, in evading a lunge aimed at his heart, he fell on his right side. Supporting himself, however, on his sword hand, he sprang backwards with great dexterity, and thus escaped the probable death-blow. But, as he was bleeding ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... firing of guns, some fifty large ones appeared. They were all painted with red clay, and averaged from ten to thirty paddles, with long prows standing out like the neck of a syphon or swan, decorated on the head with the horns of the Nsunnu (lencotis) antelope, between which was stuck upright a tuft of feathers exactly like a grenadier's plume. These arrived to convey us across the mouth of a deep rushy swamp to the royal yachting establishment, the Cowes of Uganda, distant five hours' travelling from the palace. We reached the Cowes by torchlight at 9 p.m., ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Boy hasn't come back?" called out Mac. He leaned Elephas primigenius against a tuft of willow banked round with snow, and turned gloomily as if to go back down the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... a true lover of the open. Born in a mountain town in the Pyrenees he would rather camp on a bed of pine needles in the forest than lie on a tuft of down. He preferred his beloved Bayonne ham, spiced with garlic, to a sumptuous dinner in Jarnet house, a famous Paris tavern of the day; and had rather quench his thirst with a quaff of the wine of Jurancon than the finest ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... has been partly plucked of its rush fringe; you have the atoll of Kauehi. And for either shore of it at closer quarters, conceive the line of some old Roman highway traversing a wet morass, and here sunk out of view and there re-arising, crowned with a green tuft of thicket; only instead of the stagnant waters of a marsh, the live ocean now boiled against, now buried the frail barrier. Last night's impression in the dark was thus confirmed by day, and not corrected. We sailed indeed by a mere causeway in the sea, of nature's handiwork, yet of no ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anthracite; every hair in place, and not a white hair showing except the tuft at ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... palmers, red, grizzled, and coch-a-bonddhu, each with a tuft of red floss silk at the tail. These are enough to show sport from March to October; and also like enough to certain natural flies to satisfy the somewhat dull ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Plyncks; about the size of a small peacock. Of course you would know without being told that her plumage was of a delicate rose color, except for the lyre-shaped tuft on the top of her head, which was of the exact color and texture of Bavarian cream. Her beak and feet were golden, and her eyes were golden, too, and very bright and wild. The wildness and brightness of her eyes would have ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... of a garden door under a tuft of chestnuts, it was suddenly drawn back, and he could see inside, upon a garden path, the figure of a butcher's boy with his tray upon his arm. He had hardly recognized the fact before he was some steps beyond upon the other side. But the fellow had had ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... daylight began to make its appearance in the east, he began gradually to work his noiseless way into the mouth of the gorge, and then up over the steeps and ragged ledges, till he had gained a stand under cover of a tuft of clinging evergreens, where he could obtain an unobstructed view of the mouth of the cavern, some six rods above. Here, low crouched behind his bushy screen, with rifle cocked and levelled at the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... to be surprised, as he did not know Natural History. But, by their barking, these foxes, with reddish-gray hair, black tails terminating in a white tuft, had betrayed their origin. So Herbert was able, without hesitating, to give them their real name of "Arctic foxes." They are frequently met with in Chile, in the Falkland Islands, and in all parts of America traversed by the thirtieth and ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... of issue is opened and left gaping, like a hole made with an augur. For some little time the larva wanders about the neighbourhood of its burrow, seeking an eyrie on some low-growing bush or tuft of thyme, on a stem of grass or grain, or the twig of a shrub. Once found, it climbs and firmly clasps its support, the head upwards, while the talons of the fore feet close with an unyielding grip. The other claws, if the direction of the twig is convenient, assist in supporting it; otherwise the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... sole and grizzled tuft, That hangs upon his bald and barren crown; And we will sing to see him so rebuff'd, And lend our little mights to pull him down, And make brave sport of his malicious frown, For all his boastful mockery o'er ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... and said she had made up her mind and would not change; and while he was presiding over Honora's black lace, she was beforehand with him, and her bill was being made out for her white muslin worked mantle, white bonnet with a tuft of lady grass, white evening dress, and wreath of lilies of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and fragrant,—roses, with so rich and delicate a blush,—such superb hyacinths and such aromatic pinks,—and many others, some of which seemed to be of new shapes and colors. Two or three times, moreover, she could not help thinking that a tuft of most splendid flowers had suddenly sprouted out of the earth before her very eyes, as if on purpose to tempt her a few steps farther. Proserpina's apron was soon filled and brimming over with delightful blossoms. ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... questions to the oracle, a spacious temple of marble was erected over the spot. But in the days of Cadmus, as I have told you, there was only this rustic bower, with its abundance of green foliage, and a tuft of shrubbery, that ran wild over the mysterious hole in ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... yet Nature intended horns to defend themselves: under Aquarius, cooks and paunch-bellies: under Pisces, caterers and orators: And so the world goes round like a mill, and is never without its mischief; that men be either born or perish. But for that tuft of herbs in the middle, and the honey-comb upon it, I do nothing without just reason for it: Our mother the earth is in the middle, made round like an egg, and has all good things in her self, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... waist, in which were two table-forks and a wooden sword, the latter article interfering sadly with his knees when he walked. On his head he wore a huge paper cap that had been painted red, white, and blue, and ornamented with a tuft of feathers that had once done service in a dusting-brush. He also had a gun, and the weight of it was about as much as he could stagger under when he tried to carry it over his shoulder, so he dragged it along behind him, very much as a person of Hamlet's melancholy ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... celebrated white asses are Albinos. All have a short black mane, a dark streak upon the back; and their tail, which so particularly distinguishes them from horses, is covered with short hair, except at the tip, which is adorned with a tuft, generally dark in color. Their peculiar cry or bray, is produced by two small cavities in their windpipes; their hoofs are, in Damascus, made into rings, which the lower classes wear under their armpits, or round their thumbs, to save them from the rheumatism; their ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... necks to stare into the shed as if they had just seen a ghost there. Mrs. Gammit ran in to discover what all the fuss was about. The place was empty; but a smashed egg lay just outside one of the nests, and a generous tuft of fresh feathers showed her that there had been a tussle of some kind. Indignant but curious, Mrs. Gammit picked up the feathers, and examined them with discriminating eyes to see which hen had ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... me, and took my hand. O! said she, I cannot tell your fortune: your hand is so white and fine, I cannot see the lines: but, said she, and, stooping, pulled up a little tuft of grass, I have a way for that; and so rubbed my hand with the mould part of the tuft: Now, said she, I can see ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... snobbishness, and mean tuft-hunting so common, are due to the same desire to make use of people in some way or other. It is an abuse of the word friendship to apply it to such social scrambling. Of course, even tuft-hunting may be only a perverted desire after what we think the best, a longing to get near those we consider ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... the skin, before he could recollect himself so far as to quit the road, and seek for shelter among the thickets that surrounded him. Having rode some furlongs into the forest, he took his station under a tuft of tall trees, that screened him from the storm, and in that situation called a council within himself, to deliberate upon his next excursion. He persuaded himself that his guide had deserted him for the present, in order to give intelligence of a traveller to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... their leaves, too, are never left without verdure of some sort. Late in October you may see the yellow or brown foliage of the pines, then ready to fall, surrounding the branches of the previous year's growth, forming a whorl of brown fringe surmounted by a tuft of green leaves of the present year's growth. Their leaves always turn yellow before ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... nightcap came over his forehead, down to his eyebrows, and he said to me, pressing my hand; "At last, Valentine; you are mine; do you love me? oh! tell me, do you love me?" And as his head moved as he uttered these words, the horrible tuft at the end of his nightcap waggled as ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... him in blue and silver, with a rich turban; then appears in purple satin, fringed and looped with gold, with white feathers in her hair; next, in green silk and emeralds; anon, in pale straw-color, with a tuft of flowers; next, in pink and silver, with varied plumes, white, carnation, and blue; then, in brown, with a splendid crescent. As the fortunate Prince beholds each transformation, he is bewildered (as well he may be) to choose which array ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... trumpet- shaped blossom of a rich scarlet. The sassafras is a beautiful shrub, and I cannot imagine why it has not been naturalized in England, for it has every appearance of being extremely hardy. The leaves grow in tufts, and every tuft contains leaves of five or six different forms. The fruit is singularly beautiful; it resembles in form a small acorn, and is jet black; the cup and stem looking as if they were made of red coral. The ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... worthy of the attention of the tasteful. The shaggy beard and mustachios, especially, if aided by the effect of a ferocious scowl, will admirably suit those who would wish to have an imposing appearance; the chin, with its pointed tuft a la capricorne, will, at all events, ensure distinction from the human herd; and the decorated upper lip, with its downy growth dyed black, and gummed (the cheek at the same time having been faintly tinged with rouge, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... enchanted vision. A Carnarvonshire story, probably incomplete, makes no mention of the ointment conferring supernatural sight; but when the midwife is to be dismissed she is told to rub her eyes with a certain salve, whereupon she at once finds herself sitting on a tuft of rushes, and not in a palace: baby and all had disappeared. The sequel, however, shows that by some means she had retained the power of seeing fairies, at least with one eye; for when she next went to the town, lo and behold! busily buying was the elf whose wife she had attended. He betrayed ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... growing to the height of some forty feet, with straight, branchless trunks, terminated at the top with ten or twelve pinnated leaves, each of which is full five feet long. The fruit grows in clusters immediately below the tuft of leaves. The outer shell is of a bright golden hue, that gradually deepens to crimson as the fruit matures, and when opened shows a brown, astringent nut about the size of a nutmeg. This is the portion chewed with chunam and tobacco all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... he crept and he crept across that absolutely bare, flat ground, with never a tuft of fur or a feather of a single live thing upon it to be seen, till one might have thought that he had gone mad, and was stalking an illusion—as many, not beasts, have done before him; only they were men, and blew their brains out—or ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... blurred and bloodshot, twitched involuntarily. For a long time he had driven through grass and snow from this solitary station to the Indian village. His weather-stained clothes fitted badly his warped shoulders. He was stooped, and his protruding chin, with its tuft of dry flax, nodded as monotonously as did the ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... mycelium or roots, stem, branches, and at length capsules bearing sporidia, which correspond to seeds. It is true that leaves are absent, but these are sometimes compensated by lateral processes or abortive branchlets. A tuft of mould is in miniature a forest of trees. Although such a definition may be deemed more poetic than accurate, more figurative than literal, yet few could believe in the marvellous beauty of a tuft of mould if they never saw it as exhibited under the microscope. ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... that they are ripe. The most certain way of determining this fact is to pull out the center leaves of each pineapple that is chosen. As shown in Fig. 16, grasp the pineapple with one hand and then with the other pull out, one at a time, several of the center leaves of the tuft at the top. If the fruit is ripe a sharp jerk will usually remove each leaf readily, but the harder the leaves pull, the greener the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... thanks, and dropped into the chair, his thin, wrinkled face drawing into a queer smile. He let the package fall across his knees, and his hat dropped from his trembling fingers. He stroked a tuft of whisker under ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... soil and darting to and fro with the quickness of a hare. He was always of an ingratiating humorousness and endeared himself by an apparent readiness to enter into any joke that was going, especially that of startling the pedestrian by his own sudden apparition from behind a tuft of grass or withered stalk. I will not be sure, but I think we began to see his kind as soon as we got out of Yalladolid, when we began running through a country wooded with heavy, low-crowned pines that looked ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... on the roof and went hissing along the soaked ground; it sprayed out as the grass bent and parted under it; every hollow tuft was a water spout. The fields were dim behind the shining, glassy ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... Prince's Hill, clad in undergrowth with a topping tuft of tall figs. At its eastern base lies the townlet, showing more whitewash than usual; and, nearer still, the narrow mouth of the fiery little Yenna, Prince's or St. John's River. The view is backed by the tall and wooded ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... great day for me, but I don't remember that the oxen cared much about it. They sagged along in their great clumsy way, switching their tails in my face occasionally, and now and then giving a lurch to this or that side of the road, attracted by a choice tuft of grass. And then I "came the Julius Caesar" over them, if you will allow me to use such a slang expression, a liberty I never should permit you. I don't know that Julius Caesar ever drove cattle, though he must often have seen the peasants from the Campagna "haw" and "gee" them round ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... for some of his readers he leaves his index an index of names only, neglecting things. And thus I have had to extemporise an index for myself under such sad heads as those of Brodie's 'passionateness,' his 'covetousness,' his 'time-serving' and 'tuft-hunting,' and suchlike. And I am compelled in truth to say that the entries in my index under 'covetousness' and under 'time-serving' and 'tergiversation' is a long and yet far from exhaustive list. And now, acting, I hope, on the Scriptural ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... observed, was slightly built, rather short, and had scanty whiskers which developed into a little thicker tuft on his chin. His eyes were pure blue, like the blue of the speedwell. They were not piercing, but perfectly transparent, indicative of a character which, if it possessed no particular creative power, would not permit self-deception. They were not the eyes of a prophet, but of a man ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... put forward, as involving a nice question in the treatment of an animal, is that of going toward a loose horse with a proffered tuft of grass in one hand, and a halter for his capture concealed behind the back in the other hand. It is right to conceal the halter, and to proffer the grass, provided they are used severally in their proper relations. If the grass be held forth as an assurance of the readiness of the ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... Plinlimmon, concerning whom would to heaven I had the space to tell you all here, for he knows the legends of the mountain), while it is public that barbers are garrulous and servile, that millers are cheats (we say in Sussex that every honest miller has a large tuft of hair on the palm of his hand), yet—with every trade in the world having some bad quality attached to it—bakers alone are exempt, and every one takes it for granted that they are sterling: indeed, there are ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... not thought of going to the station to meet Aunt Maria, but when the cab stopped before the house he hurried out at once. Aunt Maria was dressed wholly in black—a black mohair, a little black silk cape, and a black bonnet, from which nodded a jetted tuft. "How is she?" Maria heard her say, in a hushed voice, to her father. Maria stood in the door. Maria heard her father say something in a hushed tone about an operation. Aunt Maria came up the steps with her travelling-bag. Harry forgot to take it. She greeted Mrs. White, whom she had met on ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hold, till finally it lets go completely and down comes the painted sphere with a mellow thump to the earth, toward which it has been nodding so long. It bounds away to seek its bed, to hide under a leaf, or in a tuft of grass. It will now take time to meditate and ripen! What delicious thoughts it has there nestled with its fellows under the fence, turning acid into sugar, and sugar ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs |
