"Twig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then congratulate Solomon upon the agreement between the views of you two. However, I twig your intent: he means a wicked sinner; and of all forms of folly there is none so great as wicked sinning. For goodness is, in the end, more conducive to personal happiness—which is the sole ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... flank'd by five brave sons (such is polygamy, That she spawns warriors by the score, where none Are prosecuted for that false crime bigamy), He never would believe the city won While courage clung but to a single twig.—Am I Describing Priam's, Peleus', or Jove's son? Neither—but a good, plain, old, temperate man, Who fought with his five children in ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... was himself now. Tearing a loose shred from his tattered trousers, he soaked it in a little puddle, then stuffed it in his mouth. He clasped his jack-knife in one fist and a twig in the other. He drew up his belt. He took that precious hat off and stuffed it in his pocket, campaign buttons and all. Ah, no, he did not throw it away. He ripped off another rag and tied it fast around his neck and he bound his scarf around his forehead. ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... after a time I should wonder what event of the day would be woven into a dream; as I performed certain acts I found myself wondering, will this appear tonight, and how? One Sunday I walked across lots to church and on the way picked a twig of balm of Gilead poplar keeping it with me through service for its fragrance. That night I dream that I am in a pasture looking for fertile fronds of the cinnamon fern which I fail to find. I see cows and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... gate, and was put in a litter, carried, doubtless by the mulatto and the coachman, he understood, as he heard the gravel grate beneath their feet, why they took such minute precautions. He would have been able, had he been free, or if he had walked, to pluck a twig of laurel, to observe the nature of the soil which clung to his boots; whereas, transported, so to speak, ethereally into an inaccessible mansion, his good fortune must remain what it had been hitherto, a dream. But it is man's despair ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... flowers. First and foremost comes the primrose, and cowslips—Heaven's keys as we call them—open the gates to all the other children of the Spring. "Come forth, come forth!" the returning birds shout from out the bushes, and silver-grey catkins sprout on every twig. Beech leaves burst off their sharp, brown sheaths and open to the light, as soft as taffety and as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... screen them. We came at last to the Willoughby house, a sizable colonial residence set up on a hill. It was dark, except for one dim light in an upper story. In the shadow of the hedge, Craig silently vaulted the low fence and slipped up the terraces, as noiselessly as an Indian, scarcely crackling a twig or rustling a dead leaf on the ground. He paused as he came to a wing on the right of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... a grove of magnificent beeches, their large silvery boles rising majestically like columns into a lofty vaulting of branches, covered above with tender green foliage. Here and there the shade beneath was broken by the gilding of a ray of sunshine on a lower twig, or on a white trunk, but the floor of the vast arcades was almost entirely of the russet brown of the fallen leaves, save where a fern or holly bush made a spot of green. At the foot of the slope lay ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... were pleasantly spent in catching the flies, and trying to make them kindle a green twig or two. "It's a lie to call them fire-flies when there isn't a fire in them," Nan said, throwing one unhappy insect away with scorn, though it shone its best, and obligingly walked up and down the twigs to please the innocent ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... blossom-bells' king, A waif of the sun-beams on quivering wing! O prince of the fairies, O pygmy of fire, Will nothing those brave little wings of yours tire? You follow the flowers from southern lands sunny, You pry amid petals all summer for honey! Now rest on a twig, tiny flowerland sprite, Your dear little lady sits near in delight; In a wee felted basket she lovingly huddles— Two dots of white eggs to her warm breast she cuddles! Whiz-z! whiff! off to your flowers! Buzz mid the perfume ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... Said Pug: "they copy me and you, And clumsily. I'd like to see Them jump from forest-tree to tree; I'd like to see them, on a twig, Perform a slip-slap or a rig; And yet it pleasant is to know The ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... fruit of concentrated thought allied to a wide knowledge of war, of divining the intention of his adversary and the state of his moral. His power of drawing inferences, often from seemingly unimportant trifles, was akin to that of the hunter of his native backwoods, to whom the rustle of a twig, the note of a bird, a track upon the sand, speak more clearly than written characters. His estimate of the demoralisation of the Federal army after Bull Run, and of the ease with which Washington might have been captured, was absolutely ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... on a barberry twig, And turned at the crank of a thingum-a-jig. Needles for hornets, nippers for ants, For the bumblebee baby a new pair of pants, For the grizzled old gopher a hat and a wig, The beetle ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... forms Profusely scatter'd by autumnal storms; Ten thousand seeds each pregnant poppy sheds Profusely scatter'd from its waving heads; 350 The countless Aphides, prolific tribe, With greedy trunks the honey'd sap imbibe; Swarm on each leaf with eggs or embryons big, And pendent nations tenant every twig. Amorous with double sex, the snail and worm, Scoop'd in the soil, their cradling caverns form; Heap their white eggs, secure from frost and floods, And crowd their nurseries with uncounted broods. Ere yet with wavy tail the tadpole swims, Breathes with new lungs, or tries his ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... idea!" commented young Bawdrey. "I twig. He'll get chummy with you of course, and you can lead him on and adroitly 'pump' him regarding her, and where she keeps her keys and things like that. That's the idea, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... market-day. The dealers were arranging their commodities, consisting chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which seemed to be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there was a much greater variety of merchandise: basket-work, both for fancy and use; twig-brooms, beehives, oranges, rustic attire; all sorts of things, in short, that are commonly sold at a rural fair. I heard the lowing of cattle, too, and the bleating of sheep, and found that there was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in another part of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... having had the least trouble in training them? If you gather one of those loose branches, you will see that it has no tendril of any kind, or other apparent means of support; but this, like all others of the clematideae or clematis tribe, possesses a power of twisting the leaf-stalk round a wire, twig, or anything else that comes in its way, so as to tie the plant to the support with as firm a knot as could be made with a piece of string; and after thus encircling the wire, it returns the leaf to its former ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... happens in the case of the red coral of commerce. A minute polype, fixed to the rocky bottom of the deep sea, grows up into a branched trunk. The end of every branch and twig is terminated by a polype; and all the polypes are connected together by a fleshy substance, traversed by innumerable canals which place each polype in communication with every other, and carry nourishment ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... bronze is beginning to occur. The stone hatchets and hammers are skilfully pierced, and wooden or horn implements are often found. The vases are of various shapes, all provided with handles, and are covered with ornaments, some made with the fingers of the potter, others with the help of a twig or some fine string. On the other hand, there are no hatchets of foreign rock; commerce and intercourse with people at a distance had ceased, or at least become rarer. The tools are fixed into handles of stag horn, which are found in every stage of manufacture. The personal property ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... been directed. Mrs Reichardt had thrown a heavy stone into the water among the sharks, the loud splash of which had driven them away. Before they again made their appearance, I had caught a firm hold of the twig, and flung myself up into a position of ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... bodies lay beneath, and once more he shuddered violently. But the world was full of beauty that morning. The sun was a vast sheet of gold, giving a luminous tint to the snow, and two clusters of trees, covered to the last bough and twig with snow, were a delicate tracery of white, shot at times by the sun with a pale yellow glow like that of a rose. On the horizon a faint misty smoke, the color of silver, was rising, and he knew that it came from the ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... faces, and then flew like the wind, and left them screaming and shouting far behind. The strength of a giant comes upon me when I think of it. There—see how this iron bar bends beneath my furious wrench. I could snap it like a twig, only there are long galleries here with many doors—I don't think I could find my way along them; and even if I could, I know there are iron gates below which they keep locked and barred. They know what a clever madman I have ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... happened that none of them had mentioned, because they were not sure enough that it would. A brown thrush, catching the unusual atmosphere of the orchard that morning, selected the tallest twig of an apple tree and showed that ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... across the pond, his dog following. Near the far shore was a bare spot on the ice cut by one of the sleigh-runners. Up in the woods, opposite, was the Moss Trail. Sunlight fell on the hills above him. He halted, looking up at the tree-tops. Twig, branch, and trunk glowed with the fire of diamonds through a lacy necking of hoar frost. Every tree had put on a jacket of ice and become as a fountain of prismatic hues. Here and there a dead pine rose like ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... in other stories.] Then at last having found the track, he went in hot haste after Mr. Rabbit. And both ran hard, till, night coming on, Rabbit, to protect himself, had only just time to trample down the snow a little, and stick up a spruce twig on end and sit on it. But when Wild Cat came up he found there a fine wigwam, and put his head in. All that he saw was an old man of very grave and dignified appearance, whose hair was gray, and whose majestic ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... find them at the present day. But again, as in geology, so here, we find few traces in our own immediate neighbourhood of the earlier links in this series—the people who preceded the historic Britons. On Twig Moor, near Brigg, in the north of the county, a tract of ground very similar to our own Moor, many flint implements have been found. On an excursion of our “Naturalists’ Union” to that tract, one of the party found “a handful” of stone ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... slipped through the undergrowth, and Robert, a skillful young woodsman also, came after with such care and lightness of foot that neither made a twig or leaf rustle. Tayoga always followed the traces. The deer had nibbled tender young shoots, but he had not remained long in one place. The forest was such an abundant garden to him that, fastidious as an epicure, he required the most delicate food ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... rescuers might stumble upon them! Always she started at each unexpected shadow along the trail. Always she thrilled at a wisp of smokelike cloud beyond the canon edge. Always she felt a quiver of certainty at sudden break of twig or fall of stone. But the days passed and ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... were these words uttered when Assunta was heard running up the stairs; and the next moment she rapped. Being ordered to come in, she entered with a willow twig in her hand, from the middle of which willow twig (for she held the two ends together) hung a fish, shining ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... are drenched with moonlight and every leafs awake; The little beads of dew sit white on every twig and blade; A thousand stars are scattered thick beneath the forest lake; We pass—with only laughter for ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... along, hiding behind trees and bushes, and stepping softly so that no broken twig could tell of ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... measured by a rule on the level lands; and of the skill with which on the hilly ground Orlando and Rinaldo moved so skillfully, turning in so small a space, answering to every inflection of his voice, taking such care not to break a twig of the fruit trees, or bend a shoot of the vines, or graze a ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... slice, scale; lamina &c. 204; small part; morsel, particle &c. (smallness) 32; installment, dividend; share &c. (allotment) 786. debris, odds and ends, oddments, detritus; excerpta[obs3]; member, limb, lobe, lobule, arm, wing, scion, branch, bough, joint, link, offshoot, ramification, twig, bush, spray, sprig; runner; leaf, leaflet; stump; component part &c. 56; sarmentum[obs3]. compartment; department &c. (class) 75; county &c. (region) 181. V. part, divide, break &c. (disjoin) 44; partition &c. (apportion) 786. Adj. fractional, fragmentary; sectional, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... drive them, the carnal look at us, and we watch the heretic rending his flesh, and the glutton lashed by the rain. We break the withered branches from the tree in the grove of the Harpies, and each dull-hued poisonous twig bleeds with red blood before us, and cries aloud with bitter cries. Out of a horn of fire Odysseus speaks to us, and when from his sepulchre of flame the great Ghibelline rises, the pride that triumphs over the torture of that bed becomes ours for a moment. Through the dim purple air fly those who ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... give me, then, But one small twig from shrub or tree; And bid my home remember me Until ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... eternity. Gradually, as his soul was enriched with spiritual knowledge, he saw the whole world forming one vast symmetrical expression of God's power and love. Life became a divine gift for every moment and sensation of which, were it even the sight of a single leaf hanging on the twig of a tree, his soul should praise and thank the Giver. The world for all its solid substance and complexity no longer existed for his soul save as a theorem of divine power and love and universality. So entire and unquestionable was this sense ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... He is not in the least a creature of moods. You step out of your door some bright morning, and there he is among the shrubs, flitting from twig to twig; now hanging head down from the very tip to look into a terminal bud; now winding upward about a branch, looking industriously into every bud and crevice. An insect must hide well to escape those bright eyes. He is helping ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Bill. The thought of revenge on Mr. Harley, and a physical conquest of Dorothy the beautiful, grew and broadened and extended itself like some plant of evil in Storri's heart. It worked itself out into leaf and twig and bud of sinful detail until the execution thereof seemed the thing feasible; with that the face of Storri began to wear a look of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... an annual fete on this ground in July, which assembles all the elite of Russian society. The spacious gardens are by night illuminated with almost inconceivable splendor. The whole forest blazes with innumerable torches, and every leaf, twig and drop of spray twinkles with colored lights. Here is that famous artificial tree which has so often been described. It is so constructed with root, trunk and branch, leaf and bud as to deceive the most practiced eye. Its shade, with an inviting seat placed beneath it, lures ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... spot where the head of Fallen Leaf Lake lies, he turned to reassure himself. Away off the Evil One was advancing. A new terror filled his soul. In his hand there remained of his magic branch only one little twig with ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... farther astray—swayed alternately by the spirit of the stoic and the spirit of the little child. But little Poosk was made of sterling stuff, and the two spirits had a hard battle in him for the mastery that wintry afternoon. His chase of the rabbit was brought to an abrupt conclusion by a twig which caught one of his snow-shoes, tripped him up, and sent him headlong into the snow. When snow averages four feet in depth it affords great scope for ineffectual floundering. The snow-shoes kept his feet near the surface, and the depth ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... deal in that," commented Haigh, blinking at the shabby black steamer thoughtfully. "You'd better pop down below in case he has ventured his little self on deck, and should happen to twig you. But still it's best to be on the safe side." He chose a cigar, lighted it and puffed for a minute, and then took it out of his mouth and grinned at the glowing end. "Look here. The fellow doesn't know me from Adam. I'll ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... involving a blank space that wants occupation; but the portions left are not made discordant or disagreeable. They are absolutely and in themselves as valuable as they can be, every stem is a perfect stem, and every twig a graceful twig, or at least as perfect and as graceful as they were before the removal of the rest. But if we try the same experiment on the imaginative painter's work, and break off the merest stem or twig of it, it all goes to pieces like a Prince Rupert's ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... his assistance. According to all laws, human and divine, the King ought to punish Madame de Montespan, and, instead of censuring her, he wishes to make her a duchess! . . . Let him make her a princess, even a highness, if he likes; he has all the power in his hands. I am only a twig; he is an oak. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... is—the misdirected hard work, which has been guided by no critical faculty, and which doesn't know where to stop. I try to admire it; and I end in pitying the poor artist. Look at that leafless felled tree in the middle distance. Every little twig, on the smallest branch, is conscientiously painted—and the result is like a colored photograph. You don't look at a landscape as a series of separate parts; you don't discover every twig on a tree; you see the whole ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... which, his mother, taken suddenly on the harvest-field, had borne Zisca): a weird object, gate of Heaven and of Orcus to the superstitious populations about. At midnight on the Hallow-Eve, dark smiths would repair thither, to cut a twig of the Zisca Oak: twig of it put, at the right moment, under your stithy, insures good luck, lends pith to arm and heart, which is already good luck. So that a Bishop of those parts, being of some culture, had to cut it down, above ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... two kinds of buds on the twig of the bearing apple-tree,—the leaf-buds (sending forth leaves only), and the flower-buds (bearing both leaves and flowers). And if we wish to analyze more closely, we discover two kinds of leaf-buds,—those that send forth a rapidly growing shoot ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... Mac were beckoning to me fiercely and pointing to the green balsam top. I gripped my rifle and started to creep toward them. A little twig, about as thick as the tip of a fishing rod, cracked under my knee. There was a terrible crash behind the balsam, a plunging through the underbrush and a rattling among the branches, a lumbering gallop up the hill through ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... realize once more how good life was, and plunge forthwith upon his still sleeping brothers and sisters, tumbling them triumphantly into the midst of a new romp before they knew whether they were on their heads or their heels. A twig, a leaf, or a stone would be endowed with the attributes of some cunning and fierce quarry, to be stalked, run down, and finally torn in sunder with marvellous heroism, with reckless, noisy valour. The sun shone warm and sweetly over all, there beside the immemorial Sussex Downs; life ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... only the dropping of a twig," she whispered, after a long holding of the breath. But they went into the house and ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... Observation 23. A twig submerged in a ditch was scraped. Gemiasma verdans found abundantly with many other things, which if rehearsed would ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... grin, they shrug, They bow, they snarl, they scratch, they hug; And, just as chance or whim provoke them, They either bite their friends, or stroke them. There have I seen some active prig, To show his parts, bestride a twig: Lord! how the chatt'ring tribe admire! Not that he's wiser, but he's higher: All long to try the vent'rous thing, (For power is but to have one's swing). From side to side he springs, he spurns, And bangs his foes and friends by turns. Thus ...
— English Satires • Various
... cried Gerald, who was not so far gone as to be unable to speak; "and mighty glad I am to see you—only, as you love us, get us some grub, or we shall be after hopping the twig." ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... on a leaf or a twig, to a neighboring thicket, from which the horse and dog were not visible. He then lay down in the bushy top of a fallen pine, and without the assistance of any "call," such as hunters generally make use of, uttered the low, cautious cry of the wild turkey. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... a tree, never forgets itself. Cheat it of its root, and the stem remains faithful. The minutest twig, put out to nurse upon the arm of a foreign mother, feels the thrill of the great primal law in its filmiest fibre, and breathes in every expression of its life its fidelity. If you will walk with me into the garden, I will show you a mountain-ash in full bloom; but on the ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... but this is curiosity, needlesse, and danger with remouing, and drought,) and cut away all his twigs saue one, the most principall, which in setting you must leaue aboue the earth, burying his trunk in the crust of the earth for his root. It matters not much what part of the bough the twig growes out of. If it grow out of or neere the roote end, some say such an Apple will haue no coare nor kirnell. Or if it please the Plantor, he may let his bough be crooked, and leaue out his top end, one foote or somewhat more, wherein will be good grafting, if either you ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... he hurled his furious words. He was more angry in that moment than he had ever been in his life. The force of his anger carried him along as a twig borne on a racing current. Till that instant he had forgotten that he carried his riding-whip. The sudden remembrance of it flashed like a streak of lightning through ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Locke, and the young couple drove to their new home, the old mansion. Grandfather Locke went away in the same yellow-bottomed chaise a week after, and returned in a few days with a tall lady of fifty by his side—"Marm Tamor," a twig of the Morgeson tree, being his third cousin, whom he had married. This marriage was Grandfather Locke's last mistake. He was then near eighty, but lived long enough to fulfill his promises to father. The next year I was born, and four years after, my sister Veronica. Grandfather Locke named us, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... sconce, Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will, Nor hast thou pleasure to be crosse in talke: But thou with mildnesse entertain'st thy wooers, With gentle conference, soft, and affable. Why does the world report that Kate doth limpe? Oh sland'rous world: Kate like the hazle twig Is straight, and slender, and as browne in hue As hazle nuts, and sweeter then the kernels: Oh let me see thee walke: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... range and peak. The trees on the slopes stood out like lacework, but far down in the valley the light seemed to shimmer like waves on a sea of silver mist. It was all inexpressibly cold, and of a loneliness that was uncanny. Nothing stirred, not a twig, not a blade of grass. It seemed to Dick that if even a leaf fell on the far side of the mountain he could hear it. It was a great, primeval world, voiceless and unpeopled, brooding in ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... of a twig aroused Brady out of a dead sleep, and as he opened his eyes, he saw that it was broad daylight and that at twenty paces from him stood a huge lion. As the man sprang to his feet, his rifle ready in his ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was a Chilcote of Westmoreland; he was one of the first of his day and his class to recognize that there was a future in trade, so, breaking his own little twig from the family tree, he went south to Wark and entered a ship-owning firm. In thirty years' time he died, the owner of one of the biggest trades in England, having married the daughter of his chief. My father was twenty-four and still ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... asked that whatever he might touch should be changed into GOLD. Bacchus consented, though sorry that he had not made a better choice. Midas went his way, rejoicing in his newly acquired power, which he hastened to put to the test. He could scarce believe his eyes when he found that a twig of an oak, which he plucked from the branch, became gold in his hand. He took up a stone it changed to gold. He touched a sod it did the same. He took an apple from the tree you would have thought he had robbed the garden of the Hesperides. His joy knew no bounds, and ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... talk have had, as he lounged—so the story goes—in his dressing-gown upon the public place, picking up quaint stories from the cattle-drivers off the Cevennes, and the villagers who came in to sell their olives and their grapes, their vinegar and their vine-twig faggots, as they do unto this day. To him may be owing much of the sound respect for natural science, and much, too, of the contempt for the superstition around them, which is notable in that group ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... literature. The profound depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful, and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself that he stirred not in his chair when old Roger Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The physician advanced directly in front of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... promptly accepted it, named pistols at ten paces as the weapons, and at seven o'clock on the morning of July 11, 1804, the two men faced each other on the heights of Weehawken, overlooking New York bay. Both fired at the word; Burr's bullet passed through Hamilton's body; Hamilton's cut a twig above Burr's head. Hamilton died next day, and Burr, his political career at an end, buried himself ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... to say that after you've heard me." She had leaned forward, her arms on her knees, her eyes on the flames which leaped from dry twig to dry twig of the burning logs and on the shower of sparks which every minute or ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... myself as is your own dear Emerald Land, And that is why the Green Isle's case I've learned to understand. 'Tis the most disthressful country, yours, that ever yet was seen; But I'll right ye. Twig my glasses, dear! I'm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... still dripping with dew. We saw a great many specimens of what I was told was the "long palm;" it looked to me like a kind of brake or fern, with drooping branches twenty feet in length. There were trees with hardly a leaf; but each branch and twig crowned with orange-yellow blossoms. Again we would see a tree covered with feathery, purple flowers. Along some parts of the way, was a profusion of "Indian shot," so called, I suppose, because the seeds are black, ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... he was conscious of assistance from his ears he knew he was approaching a great gathering of men. He was picking his way as carefully as he knew how, but he was no woodsman; now and then a twig snapped and his ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... closed the door—in the instant when he lost sight of her—his disinclination to be associated with the private theatricals revived. At the foot of the house-steps he stopped again; plucked a twig from a plant near him; broke it in his hand; and looked about him uneasily, on this side and on that. The path to the left led back to his father's cottage—the way of escape lay open. Why ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... our subjeck. With our resunt grate triumps on the Mississippi, the Father of Waters (and them is waters no Father need feel 'shamed of—twig the wittikism?) and the cheerin' look of things in other places, I reckon we shan't want any Muslum of Harts. And what upon airth do the people of Concord, N.H., want a Muslum of Harts for? Hain't you got the State House now? & what more ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... stairs, no surveillance by the watching Thomas, no distant clanging of the Chapel bell. How strange they all seemed, looking back from this safe harbour. The aunts, the Warlocks, Thurston, Mr. Crashaw, Caroline—all of them. There the imagination set fire to every twig—here the imagination was not needed, because everything ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... fired, and the ball struck with a slight noise the bark of a beech tree, a step or two to the left of and above his adversary, while a small twig fell rattling from overhead. Kahle's unsteady hand had given his pistol a slight upward turn, so that he ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... every branch in the valley," he said, "every twig, every leaf, every shadow. There is some ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... through the sweet-smelling spruce woods where every branch carried a cloth of white, and the only sound heard was the swish of a blanket of snow as it fell to the ground from the wide webs of green, or a twig snapped under the load it bore. Peace brooded in the silent and comforting forest, and Jim and Arrowhead, the Indian ever ahead, swung along, mile after mile, on their snow-shoes, emerging at last upon the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the contrary, you decide to ultimately mount your specimen in a case or a shade, you had better provide yourself with some wire of a suitable strength, and some tow, which latter you will proceed to wrap round the wire to within a couple of inches of one end—forming, in fact, an artificial twig, which you may bend to any shape, riveting the unbound end through a piece of wood of sufficient weight to balance the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... angle. From the bottom of one of the heel prints a crushed leaf was slowly rising back towards its original position, telling him how new the trail was; and as if this were not enough for his trained mind he heard a twig snap sharply as he glanced along the line of prints. It sounded very close, and he dropped instantly to one knee and thought quickly. Why had the other left so plain a trail, why had he reached up ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... when it was done, and I think that I must have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig." ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... head alertly. A twig crackled under a tread, and the next moment a man came out of the bushes at the left, and without a word took the bridle of the old horse from her fingers and vaulted into the saddle. The hand that rested a moment on the cantle as he rose grasped a "navy six." He was dressed in dull ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Pour into the dish some port wine. To a dozen large pears you may allow half a pound of sugar, and a pint of wine. Cover the dish, with a large sheet of brown paper tied on; set it in a moderate oven, and let them bake till tender all through which you may ascertain by sticking a broom twig through them. They will he done in about an hour, or they may probably require more time; but you must not let them remain long enough in the oven, to break or fall to pieces. When cool, put them up in a stone jar. In cold weather they will ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... "Je twig—I tumble!" answered Milsom. "And a very pretty scheme it is, too, Jack—does you proud, old man; it ought to work like a charm. Now, before the Spanish Johnnies come aboard, I'll just hunt up Macintyre, and post him upon his share of the work, while you go and explain matters ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... away, leaving the silence more intense, while all the time the air grew colder. All at once a dead branch snapped sharply. Estein looked round keenly, but in the dusk of the pine stems his eye could pick out nothing. For a minute everything was still, and then a twig cracked again. This time he could see plainly a man come from behind a tree and stand in the outskirts of the wood. For a minute they stood looking at each other. The man, so far as he could discern in the waning light, wore the native skin coat and cap, and seemed to hold ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... you browse your way through the forest, nipping here and there a rosy leaf of young winter-green, a fragrant emerald tip of balsam-fir, a twig of spicy birch, if by chance you pluck the leaves of Wood-Magic and eat them, you will not know what you have done, but the enchantment of the tree-land will enter your heart and the charm of the wildwood will flow ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... to stay for dinner to-day," she said later, when the tangled mass of the Devoniensis had been separated, shoot from shoot, and pegged out to the last healthy-looking twig, and the two men stood, flushed but safe, on the pathway beside her. She stole a confidential little glance at Cai. "For I understand from Captain Hocken that you prefer to make your excuses separately. I have already ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... active in daily perambulating the woods, to make himself acquainted with the environs, seeking, at the same time, the best places of finding wood and timber, for the purposes of his command, brought me a twig of the Sorbus Americana, a new species of tree to him, in the American forest, of which he asked me the name. This tree is found in occasional groups extensively in the region of the upper Lake latitudes, where it is called the mountain ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... but moderately, versed in the secular arts of twig-liming, such flashes would have acted as an effective warning and deterrent. Not so upon Theresa. She barely noticed them, as blindly heroic, she pounded along leading her piteous forlorn hope. Her chance—her unique chance, in nowise to be missed—and, still more, those obscure hungers, fed by ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... gently by tickling his nose with a twig of wild honeysuckle. He said 'Bother the flies!' twice, and then opened ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... seemed awful, and the deep low sigh uttered by Breezy sounded quite startling; but there was nothing else—no sound of the powerful cats coming cautiously round, winding in and out among the rocks and bushes, and not a twig was stirred. ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... itself without props or stakes. It much resembles ivy, and in like manner creeps up and embraces such trees as it grows near. This tree, or bush rather, throws out numerous branches of two or three spans long, having leaves like those of the Syrian apple, but somewhat thicker. On every twig there hang six clusters about the size of dates, and of the colour of unripe grapes, but thicker together. These are gathered in October, while still inclining to green, and are spread out on mats in the sun to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... very shy owners of a nest I had found, when the lonely mosquito came as far as the rim of my shade hat, and hovered there, evidently meditating an attack—a mosquito hesitating! I could not stir a hand, or even shake my leafy twig; but it did not require such violent measures; a light puff of breath this side or that was enough to discourage the gentle creature, and in all the hours I sat there it never once came any nearer. The race increased, however, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... saw what the strange thing was which was coming towards them. It was Bold Walter of Buccleuch and his men, and each of them had stuck a branch of witch's hazel in his basnet, for 'tis said that a twig of hazel protects its wearer from the arts of magic, and they had no mind to be bewitched by the Lord ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... of the 'resurrection' of this superstition in our own country. It has, in fact, never died, and there is scarcely a part of the country where a 'diviner' has not tried his—or her, for it is often a woman—skill with the 'twig' from time to time. These attempts have seldom been known beyond the immediate locality and the limited circle of those interested in them, and it is only of late years, since folklore became more of a scientific and general study, that the incidents have been ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... bears the title of "Odes and Miscellaneous Poems, by a Student of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh," Edinburgh, 1790, 4to. These lucubrations, which attracted no share of public attention, were followed by "The Guinea Note, a Poem, by Timothy Twig, Esquire," Edinburgh, 1797, 4to. His next work is entitled, "An Introduction to the History of Poetry in Scotland, with Illustrations by David Allan," Edinburgh, 1798, 4to. This work, though written in a rambling style, contains a small proportion of useful materials very unskilfully digested. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... ash-tree shed Are thinly spread In the road, like little black fish, inlaid, As if they played. What hangs from the myriad branches down there So hard and bare Is twelve yellow apples lovely to see On one crab-tree. And on each twig of every tree in the dell Uncountable Crystals both dark and bright of ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... varieties of apples exhibited were: For early apples—Yellow Transparent, Red June, Benoni, Wealthy, Duchess, Maiden Blush. For fall or early winter—Grimes Golden and Jonathan. Winter varieties—Wine Sap, Willow Twig, Rome Beauty, Ben Davis. Peaches—Reeves, Elberta, Diamond. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... falling of a half charred twig, the grating of the poker with which the fire was stirred, the blow of the hammer, the flickering of the candle, the creak of the dog's collar, the round bulging spot of blackness which was the sleeping blackbird, the singing of the cover of the pot, all combined to form a sacred language easier ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... a still cold night of deep winter, a very faint crescent of a new moon was low in the sky, and a thin snowfall, slightly crisped with frost, covered the ground. Nina opened her window and looked out. All was still and quiet without—not a twig moved. She bent her ear to listen, thinking that on the frozen ground a step might perhaps be heard, and it was a relief to her anxiety when she heard nothing. The chill cold air that came in through ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... alive with music. In the fields, in the air, sound is a token of life. On high, bare, or snow-covered mountains the sense of oppression comes in great part from the absence of sound. But stand in spring under a broad, sapful Norway maple, leafless as yet, its every twig and spray clad in tender green flowerets, and listen to the musical murmur of bees above you, full of life and promise, a heavenly harmony from unseen choristers. Here is a symbol of the creative energy, unceasing, unseen, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... shanty, they descried a clean strip of white birch bark, lying conspicuously on the ground, a few feet within the entrance. On picking it up, they were soon enabled to read the following words, traced with the charred end of a twig: ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... out his supply of food concentrates, saw that he had only three capsules left, and put them away again. For a long time, he sat under the dying tree, chewing on a twig and thinking. There must be some way in which he could overcome, or even utilize, his inherent deadliness to these people. He might find some isolated community, conceal himself near it, invade it at night and infect it, and then, when ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... till blood started from my fingers, and with one eye over my shoulder for savages, I watched at the same time, and sent a bullet whistling whenever I saw a limb or a twig move; for I kept a gun always at hand, and an Indian appearing then within range would have been taken as a declaration of war. As it was, however, my own blood was all that was spilt—and from the trifling accident of sometimes ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... biscuit or pemmican. He will go right into the pemmican-bag, when you are but a few paces off, and pilfer, as it were, at the fountain-head. Or if these resources are closed against him, he will sit on a twig, within an inch of your head, and look at you as only a ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... were more or less even-minded again, and almost jolly. I only noticed that there was an undercurrent of what is best described as "jumpiness," and that the merest snapping of a twig, or plop of a fish in the lagoon, was sufficient to make us start and look over our shoulders. Pauses were rare in our talk, and the fire was never for one instant allowed to get low. The wind and rain had ceased, but the dripping of the branches still kept up an excellent imitation ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Paradise!" hummed Amy Raeburn that same Sunday morning as, the last to leave the Manse, she ran after her mother and sisters. The storm of the two previous days had newly brightened the landscape. Every twig and branch shone, and the red and yellow maple leaves, the wine-color of the oak, the burnished copper of the beech, were like jewels ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... the lad stretched out his hand and broke off a twig and put it in his bosom. Then all the trees in the garden ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... shoot, sprout, sprig, spray, twig, tiller, switch, sucker, stolen, offshoot; ramification; division, department, bureau, wing; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... on a marsh eating raspberries. When he glanced up, a big black bear stood beside him. Robber Father broke off an osier twig and struck the bear on the nose. "Keep to your own ground, you!" he said; "this is my turf." Then the huge bear turned around and lumbered ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... delight I walked softly about the grounds, taking note of every familiar tree and bush and stump. I could have sworn that not a twig, not a blade of grass, had been despoiled or had disappeared in the years that marked my absence. I paused reverently under the old willow tree and affectionately rubbed my legs, for from this tree my parents had cut the instruments of torture for purposes of castigation, and ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... here and there make out, by the aid of his light, a broken twig, trampled ferns and down-crushed grass. Once he distinguished a blood-stain on a limb—fresh blood, not coagulated. A groan burst from between ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... while; mine is the revenge. I will make the stars of the west the sun of the east; and when ye next awake, ye will find the flower of joy upon your cold bed." And the dead took the twig of cypress, the sign of resurrection, into their bony hands, and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... which the caterpillar moves; it brings the feet of both extremities close together, and the intermediate part of the body rises like an arch, giving it the appearance of measuring the distance it performs. It is said to possess great muscular powers, for it will attach its posterior feet to the twig of a tree, and erect the rest of its body in a vertical position ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... travelled through many lands a long time, and the King's daughter did not know in the least whither they went; but after a long, long time they came to a gold wood. It was so grand, the gold dropped from every twig, and all the trees, and boughs, and flowers, and leaves, were of pure gold. Here, too, the same thing happened as had happened in the silver wood and copper wood. The Bull told the King's daughter she mustn't touch it for anything, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... breathe, and none could see From whom they might have issu'd. In amaze Fast bound I stood. He, as it seem'd, believ'd, That I had thought so many voices came From some amid those thickets close conceal'd, And thus his speech resum'd: "If thou lop off A single twig from one of those ill plants, The thought thou hast ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... song-priest placed the sacred wands around the rainbow, commencing on the west side of the painting, and repeated a prayer, pointing his finger to the head of each figure. He also placed a small gourd of medicine water in the hands of the rainbow goddess and laid a small cedar twig on the gourd. The invalid upon entering the lodge was handed an Apache basket containing sacred meal, which he sprinkled over the painting and placed the basket near the feet of the rainbow goddesses; the song-priest and choir sang to the accompaniment of the rattle. A short time after the entrance ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... away the ringlet curl From the lovely lady's cheek— There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... of fairy land! The tall elms overhead just bursting into tender vivid leaf, with here and there a hoary oak or a silver-barked beech, every twig swelling with the brown buds, and yet not quite stripped of the tawny foliage of autumn; tall hollies and hawthorn beneath, with their crisp brilliant leaves mixed with the white blossoms of the sloe, and woven together ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... man who had led two horses. The two horses he found hobbled beside the spring, and with them were a tarpaulin-covered pile of provisions, bedding, and utensils, together with packsaddles. A paper impaled on a willow twig near by he pulled down, to find ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... the windows. The ice-storm occurs in midwinter, and usually its enchantments are wrought in the silence and the darkness of the night. A fine drizzling rain falls hour after hour upon the naked twigs and branches of the trees, and as it falls it freezes. In time the trunk and every branch and twig are incased in hard pure ice; so that the tree looks like a skeleton tree made all of glass—glass that is crystal-clear. All along the underside of every branch and twig is a comb of little icicles—the frozen ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... blasted by lightning, or injured by the attacks of animals at its base, it does not therefore lose all its beauty; for it becomes immediately covered with a peculiar gray lichen of great length and luxuriance; occupying every branch and twig of the dead tree, and clothing it, as it were, with a second but a new kind of foliage. This lichen will sometimes hang down from the branches in strings of weeping vegetation to the length of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... gospel over all the world, and the blessed effects it should produce on individuals, families, and nations. It closes with a view of the second coming of Jesus to conquer the last of his enemies, and take possession of the earth as his inheritance. I can only lop off a twig or two from this blessed tree of life, in the hope that the fragrance of the leaves may allure you to take up the Bible, and eat abundantly of its life-giving promises. As I have in the previous chapters abundantly ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... sleeps!" thought Jack; and at last, when a good hour had passed away, he began to wish for the return of the doctor and the men, but there was no rustle of leaves, no sound of breaking strand or twig, everything was perfectly still, and the lad shifted his position a little so as to find a place to rest his back, and as he did so a peculiar sensation came over him. It was as if a mental shadow ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... thing in the world to do the least bit of good," groaned the parson, as he broke a twig off the hedge nervously, snapped it in two, and flung away the fragments: one of them hit the donkey on the nose. If the ass could have spoken Latin he would have said, "Et tu, Brute!" As it was, he hung down his ears, and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... remembrance of his desperate situation stopped the instinctive movement, and, with grinding teeth, he held it again under the rope. The smell of the burning flesh rose to his nostrils and sickened him. He felt himself turning faint. "I can not stand it!" he groaned and flung away the burning twig. In an instant he realized what he had done, and stooping over he tried to reach it where it blazed upon the ground. But it was too far away. In an agony of hopelessness he seized the rope with his one free hand and ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... household, one saw his head droop and his eyes cloud. Jan would wag his tail while being scolded, even vehemently, and five minutes later would require a second call, and in a sharp tone, before turning aside from an interesting scent or a twig ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... plant did hold for the cat the same attraction those stimulants produced in human beings. He carefully broke off a small stem supporting three leaves and presented it to the Salarik, who stared at him and then, snatching the twig, raced from the hydro garden as if pursued ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... to pasture; then it descended into the valley of a stream, bordered with rich bottom-lands. I never saw the orange in a more flourishing state. We passed several orchards of trees thirty feet high, and every bough and twig so completely laden with fruit, that the foliage was hardly to ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... no 'giving up' in that smile of his. 'I'll tell you what I'd do: I'd begin and break it, twig by twig, till I forced my way through, and got out safe ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... too much for him; he had been keeping time with his tail to this declamatory crescendo. With the last effort he cocked it a shade too high, lost his balance, and landed, considerably ruffled, some four feet beneath his own reserved and particular twig. His eye was on me, and I felt it too serious a matter for laughter. He made what was evidently intended for a dignified ascent, choosing, with minute exactness, the steps he had originally employed on my approach. It was a full minute before he broke ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... sometimes attacked by the twig girdler[24] (Fig. 11). This beetle lays eggs in the twigs, which are girdled so as to stop the flow of sap that would normally prevent hatching. The girdled twigs usually become detached from the trees and as a result the nut-bearing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... indeed, have lost the trail, had it not been for Uncas; we took the path, however, that led into the wilderness; for we judged, and judged rightly, that the savages would hold that course with their prisoners. But when we had followed it for many miles, without finding a single twig broken, as I had advised, my mind misgave me; especially as all the footsteps had the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... fugitives up the ravine, like their dash out of the enclosed corral, was still but a doubtful effort. Neither of them had full confidence of being able eventually to escape. It was like the wounded squirrel clutching at the last tiny twig of a tree, however unable to support it. They were not quite certain that the sloping gorge would give them a path to the upper plain; for Wilder had only a doubtful recollection of what some trapper had told him. But even if it did, the Indians, expert climbers as they were, would ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... bairns are hanging at our weary backs; look that your braw cradle at home be the fairer spread up. Not that I am wishing ill to little Harry, God forbid! So ride your way, for these are the last words ye'll ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last twig that I'll ever cut in the bonny ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... Cock Robin sitting on a twig. Cock Robin looked sideways at Lucie with his bright black eye, and he flew over a ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... Seton. The track had again been lost on a hard, stony patch where Chippy had stepped very lightly and carefully. The Wolves had separated, and Billy became an easy prey. He was bending down, carefully examining every twig, every inch of soft soil, when something hit him on the right ear and dropped to the ground. For a moment Billy stared in wonder at the queer rag-ball; then the truth broke upon him—he had been knocked out. He was no longer a pursuer; he ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... had once come to the office a blind man with a knotted twig, and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cipher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds, and tried to teach ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... a chance in a thousand. Never before had he caught MacNair unprepared—and the man's blood would be upon his own head. Drawing the revolver from its holster, he timed his movements to the fraction of a second; and deliberately snapped a twig, MacNair whirled like a flash, and Lapierre fired. His bullet went an inch too high, and when Chloe insisted upon carrying the wounded man to the school, Lapierre could ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... huge rocks have fallen and block the way. Down such a one the two men start. There is a curious plant growing out from the crevices of the rock. A dozen stems will start from one root and grow to the length of eight or ten feet and not throw out a branch or twig, but these stems are thickly covered with leaves. Now and then the two men come to a bunch of dead stems and make a fire to mark for us their ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... pulling up when well out of sight of the boat-house; "we did that rather neat, eh? Hanged if Toddy wasn't smoking like a chimney. Did you twig ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... She paused, with her twig broom raised and dripping, and scanned him eagerly. "Is it anything about the ship that came yesterday? I heard among the women that it is the war-vessel of Eric's kinsman, Thorkel Farserk, just come back ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... animal, but pluck the hair as we do feathers from a chicken), and thrown on to a pile of hot wood-ashes with no further preparation, and are greedily devoured red and bloody, and but barely warm. A lizard or iguana calls for a further exercise of culinary knowledge. First, a crooked twig is forced down the throat and the inside pulled out, which dainty is thrown to any dog or child that happens to be near; the reptile is then placed on hot coals until distended to the utmost limit that the skin will bear without bursting, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... of the matches, which he transferred to the pocket containing the tobacco. Then, calmly selecting a dry twig from the pile of firewood, thrust the end through a hole in the broken stove, and after much noisy puffing at length succeeded in igniting the tightly tamped ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... "shuttle," although, strictly speaking, the Navajo has no shuttle. If the figure to be woven is a long stripe, or one where the weft must be passed through 6 inches or more of the shed at one time, the yarn is wound on a slender twig or splinter, or shoved through on the end of such a piece of wood; but where the pattern is intricate, and the weft passes at each turn through only a few inches of the shed, the yarn is wound into small skeins or balls and shoved through ...
— Navajo weavers • Washington Matthews
... sir, I assure you that in the little duchy of Nassau—where it is said the grand-duke is unable to exercise his soldiers at target-shooting without obtaining permission to place the target in some neighboring state—I found the garden-walks and public roads so fearfully clean, every leaf and twig being swept up daily, and preserved to manure the duchy, that during a pedestrian tour of three days I was absolutely ashamed to spit any where. There was no possible chance of doing it without expunging a soldier or a policeman, or disfiguring the entire province. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... protection, when he meets with an enemy, is bluff. He raises his ugly mane, lifts his ungainly shoulders and assumes the look of a Jason, while in reality he is as harmless as a mouse, and the smallest child could drive him away with a twig. His bravery is all pose—a make-believe game—which he plays over and over again with ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... was an immense pleasure to have seen the great creature like that. He was so evidently enraged and baffled by the uproar and dazzled by the floods of lightning that swept down into the deepest recesses of the forest, showing at one second every detail of twig, leaf, branch, and stone round you, and then leaving you in a sort of swirling dark until the next flash came; this, and the great conglomerate roar of the wind, rain and thunder, was enough to bewilder any ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... once or twice during the same time. I have found a very effectual preventive to thirst by drinking a large quantity of water before breakfast, and, on feeling thirsty on the march, chewing a small green twig or leaf. ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy |
