"Birch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... put the yeast in when the dough is hot, as it will scald it, and prevents its rising. Most ovens require heating an hour and a half for bread. A brisk fire should be kept up, and the doors of the room should be kept shut, if the weather is cold. Pine and ash, mixed together, or birch-wood, is the best for heating an oven. To ascertain if your oven is of the right temperature, when cleaned, throw in a little flour; if it browns in the course of a minute, it is sufficiently hot; if it turns black directly, wait several minutes, before putting in the things that ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... he remembers his own youth, and also considers the special joys of childhood. For it is not Nature lessons that come into his calculations but "the mere association of plants and children." So the birch tree is chosen, partly for its grace and beauty, but also because of its bark, for one can scribble on its papery surface; the hazel, because children delight in the catkins with their showers of golden dust, and the ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... afternoon, stopped for a half hour at sunset, when the sky, for a few moments, showed streaks of red, then closed in for a night's drizzle. I had built what shelter I could for the woman out of boughs covered with sheets of paper birch and elm. I had made a similar shelter for myself that I might not seem to discriminate too much in favor of the Englishman, and had told the men to do the same. But they were indolent, and stopped at chopping a few hemlock boughs, which they laid across crotched aspens. In truth, our shelters accomplished ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... I see fear prohibit glands from secreting, hope bring back colour to the face and tone to the blood. I see something not material make Jekyl into Hyde; and thank God, make Hyde over into Jekyl again, when birch rods and iron bars have no effect whatever. I have seen love do physical things which the mere intellectual convictions cannot—make hearts beat and eyes sparkle, that would not respond even to digitalis and strychnine. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... information, how to load and discharge a gun. One day when all were away I stole my fathers gun. It was a double barreled muzzle loader, one barrel shot and the other rifle. I had quite an experience—I saw a partridge just as I entered the woods budding in the top of an old birch tree. I leveled the gun up against an old ash tree and fired I had never before fired a gun, I held it rather loosely aginst my shoulder and the recoil lamed my arm and bloodeyed my pug noose. But this was soon forgotten when I saw I had plugged my meat. In haste I began to load to prepare ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... Diana. Ye have the cat show and the horse show and the military tournaments where the privates look grand as generals and the generals try to look grand as floor-walkers. And ye have the Sportsmen's Show, where the girl that measures 36, 19, 45 cooks breakfast food in a birch-bark wigwam on the banks of the Grand Canal of Venice conducted by one of the Vanderbilts, Bernard McFadden, and the Reverends Dowie and Duss. And ye have the French ball, where the original Cohens and the Robert Emmet-Sangerbund Society dance the Highland ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... king gave to Dr. Juxon, on the scaffold, the regicides took away, so that they were, at least, the publishers of this prayer; and Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great care, was inclined to think them the forgers. The use of it, by adaptation, was innocent; and they who could so noisily censure it, with a little extension of their malice, could contrive what they ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... despair. A little crisp rustle ran along the bushes; the leaves fluttered, then hung quite still. And he heard a voice—Alicia's—speaking. "My lovely, lovely world!" And moving forward a step, he saw her standing on the river-bank, braced against the trunk of a birch-tree, her head thrown back, and her arms stretched wide apart as though to clasp the lovely world she had apostrophised. To have gone up to her would have been like breaking up a lovers' interview, and he turned ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... they had long before this been compelled to build up the entrance with a wall of firewood, the interstices being stuffed with moss; the hut was lighted by lamps of bear and deer fat melted down and poured into tin drinking-cups, the wicks being composed of strips of birch bark. A watch was regularly kept all day, two always remaining in the hut, one keeping watch through a small slip cut in the curtain before the narrow orifice in the log wall, that served as a door, the other ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... for the sake of another five minutes with her beloved Emma, she very agreeably persuaded to walk in the train of Lord Larrian, and forth they trooped down a pathway of nodding heads and curtsies, resembling oak and birch-trees under a tempered gale, even to the shedding of leaves, for here a turban was picked up by Sir Lukin, there a jewelled ear-ring by the self-constituted attendant, Mr. Thomas Redworth. At the portico rang a wakening cheer, really worth hearing. The rain it rained, and hats were formless,' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and very well, was the moment when the bird fluttered towards the window; he could see it resting on the sill, hesitating a moment, doubting its power of flight. But it had ventured out in the air and had reached a birch, on which it alighted. There had been a rush downstairs and out of the house, but the hawk was no longer in the birch, and was never seen by him again, yet it persisted in ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... You climb the inviting hills and woods day by day, week after week, ever to find fresh enchantment. Not a bend of road or winding mountain-path but discloses a new scene—here a fairy glen, with graceful birch or alder breaking the expanse of dimpled green; there a spinny of larch or of Scotch fir cresting a verdant monticule; now we come upon a little Arcadian home nestled on the hill-side, the spinning-wheel hushed whilst the housewife turns her hay or cuts her patch of rye or wheat growing just outside ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... over six weeks, during which the labour was continued without intermission, and the house was raised of logs, squared and well fitted; the windows and doors were also put in, and the roof well covered in with large squares of birch-bark, firmly fixed on the rafters. The house consisted of one large room, as a dining-room, and the kitchen, with a floor of well-beaten clay, a smaller room, as a sitting-room, and three bed-rooms, all ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... beginning to feel that I am at home alone quite too much. Faye was in Washington two months, and almost immediately after he got back he was ordered to command the paymaster's escort from Helena here, and now he is off again for the summer! The camp is on Birch Creek not far from the Piegan Agency. The agents become frightened every now and then, and ask for troops, more because they know the Indians would be justified in giving trouble than because ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... two as evidence of the shabby treatment she had met with; but when she got home these two were nothing less than precious stones. She at once ran back to where she had shaken out the supposed coals; but they were all gone. So a recompense of straws, dust, birch leaves, or shavings becomes, as elsewhere told, pure gold, pure silver, or thalers. Nor is the story confined to Europe. In Dardistan it is related that a boy, taken down by a Yatsh, or demon, into an underground palace, is allowed to be present ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... in it; and it has birthdays. Thoreau, the man who loved Nature so much that the birds and the fishes took care of him and were never afraid of their master, used to visit certain trees on certain days in the year. The pine has a birthday worth celebrating in December, the maple in October, and the birch in May. You think this is all fancy, and believe persons must be very imaginative to find such friends in Nature? Oh, no; along with fancy Nature tucks very real things into our thoughts about her. You only ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... again, and after that, for an hour or more, something lived for him in the glow of the fire which Olaf kept burning. It was the memory of Mary Standish, her quiet, beautiful eyes gazing at him, her pale face taking form in the lacy wisps of birch-smoke. His mind pictured her in the flame-glow as she had listened to him that day in Skagway, when he had told her of this fight that was ahead. And it pleased him to think she would have made this same fight for Alaska if she had lived. It was a thought which brought a painful thickening ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... he waited till the deer came, Till he saw two antlers lifted, Saw two eyes look from the thicket, Saw two nostrils point to windward, And a deer came down the pathway, Flecked with leafy light and shadow. And his heart within him fluttered Trembled like the leaves above him, Like the birch-leaf palpitated, As the deer ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... to the beholder from more easy-going conditions. Everything is kept up with a strenuous virtue that imparts an air of self-respect to the landscape, which the bleaching and blackening stone walls, wandering over the hill-slopes, divide into wood lots of white birch and pine, stony pastures, and little patches of potatoes and corn. The mowing-lands alone are rich; and if the New England year is in the glory of the latest June, the breath of the clover blows honey—sweet into the car windows, and the fragrance of the new-cut ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... trees and palms growing almost side by side with the birch, the pine, and the spruce. Among other things, their attention was attracted to some beautiful fern trees, which were fully twenty feet high, and there were climbing plants in great profusion, some of them clinging to the trees, and ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... him, but one golden feather only fell down, and the bird flew away. The man took the feather and carried it to his brother, who looked at it and said, "It is pure gold!" and gave him a great deal of money for it. Next day the man climbed into a birch-tree, and was about to cut off a couple of branches when the same bird flew out, and when the man searched he found a nest, and an egg lay inside it, which was of gold. He took the egg home with him, and ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... "cart whips," etc., when I say flogging is not the most degrading punishment in the world. It may be so to a white man in most countries, but how is it to the white boy? That necessary coadjutor of the schoolmaster, the "birch," is never thought to have rendered infamous the unfortunate victim of pedagogue ire; nor did Solomon in his wisdom dream that he was counseling parents to debase their offspring, when he exhorted them not to spoil the child by sparing the rod. Pardon me for recurring ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... and a round shield of dressed leather, made (wrote Champlain) "from the skin of an animal like the buffalo".[26] The chief of the party explained many things to the white man by drawing with a piece of charcoal on the white bark of the birch tree. He gave him to understand that the present occupation of his band of warriors was the gathering of blueberries, which would be dried in the sun, and could then be preserved for ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... successful novel was The Spy, 1821, a tale of the Revolutionary War, the scene of which was laid in Westchester County, N. Y., where the author was then residing. The hero of this story, Harvey Birch, was one of the most skillfully drawn figures on his canvas. In 1823 he published the Pioneers, a work somewhat overladen with description, in which he drew for material upon his boyish recollections of frontier life at Cooperstown. This was the first of the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... flame. Song birds, the glory of the St. Lawrence valley, were no longer to be heard, but the waters literally swarmed with duck and the forests were alive with partridge. Where to-day nestle church spires and whitewashed hamlets were the birch wigwams and night camp fires of Indian hunters. Wherever Cartier went ashore, Indians rushed knee-deep to carry him from the river; and one old chief at Richelieu signified his pleasure by presenting the whites with two Indian children. Zigzagging leisurely, now along the north shore, now ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... upon them might last for days—they set about preparing a shelter. With a little search, whooping to each other lest they stray away, they found a big dry stub that some gale had snapped off a few feet above the snow. While Mooka scurried about, collecting birch bark and armfuls of dry branches, Noel took off his snow-shoes and began with one of them to shovel away the snow in a semicircle around the base of the stub. In a short half-hour he had a deep hole there, with the snow banked up around it to the ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... bark, used for tanning Boughs for bed Wood for rubbing-sticks Illustration of Banshee Basswood Usually hollow Leaf illustration Beavering Bear hunt Beaver River Beech Illustration of Blue, illustration of Biddy Birch— White Black Canoe Dishes Mahogany Sweet Black Illustration of Blackbirds, Red-winged Blackbird, purple (Jack) Black Cherry Lung balm As a remedy Blaze— Special Road Blood Robin Blood Root Bloody-Thundercloud-in-the-Afternoon Bluebird Blue-bottle ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... part of himself. This has to be done daily, hourly, momently, in order that the draught of life may steadily increase. And to do this unflinchingly, a man must be his own schoolmaster, must recognise that he is always in need of wisdom, must be ready to practise any austerities, to use the birch-rod unhesitatingly against himself, in order to gain his end. It becomes evident to any one who regards the subject seriously, that only a man who has the potentialities in him both of the voluptuary and ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... glanced round him uneasily. It was only the moonlight on the bark of a silver birch. Conscious of having betrayed weakness, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Birch trees, little trees, dwarfed by sharp winds and poor soil, encircled a level space perhaps ten feet across, carpeted with new soft grass, reindeer moss and cupped lichens. Here sat seven or eight children eagerly listening to a story told by an older child as she divided the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... topmost source—fons et origo—of our chosen river. This single spring, crystal-clear and ice-cold, gushing out of the hillside in a forest of spruce and yellow birch and sugar maple, gave us the clue that we must follow for a week ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... met with. The aristocratic elegant Rumohr was obliged to put up with the following from her: "Why are you not willing to exchange your boredom, your melancholy caprices, for a rifle? With your figure, slender as a birch, you could leap over abysses and spring from rock to rock; but you are lazy and infected with the disease of neutrality. You cannot hear the voices saying: 'Where is the enemy? On, on, for God, the Kaiser, and the Fatherland!'" Even Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, who ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... reached the place of many pines, God's country, that no white man yet had named— They beached their birch canoe 'neath swinging vines, For here, the Indian read by many signs, Lay the wild land the tribe ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... Betulina, from betula, a birch. This has a somewhat corky, leathery cap, firm and without zones, woolly, sessile, deeply grooved concentrically, margin of the ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... nearly so incapable as they let men make them out to be. I never built a house before, but I am sure this one of mine is going to be a success. After we have eaten I am going to look for birch-bark to make the covering, but there's one thing ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... cannot make it enter the pores of the leather; the black colour is produced by rubbing it over with a solution of green vitriol, the sulphate of iron. Russian leather is tanned in an infusion of birch bark, and is said to be afterwards mixed with a quantity of birch tar, to give it that odour for which it is peculiar, which renders it valuable for book-binding, on account of preventing it from being attacked by insects. Tawed leather, used for gloves, is made by impregnating ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... Dolls Molly gone A Backward Spring Looking Across At a Seaside Town in 1869 The Glimpse The Pedestrian "Who's in the next room?" At a Country Fair The Memorial Brass: 186- Her Love-birds Paying Calls The Upper Birch-Leaves "It never looks like summer" Everything comes The Man with a Past He fears his Good Fortune He wonders about Himself Jubilate He revisits his First School "I thought, my heart" Fragment Midnight on the Great Western Honeymoon Time at an Inn The Robin "I rose and ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... many who didn't. Henry James, for instance, wrote a review of "Drum Taps" in the Nation, November 16, 1865. In the lusty heyday and assurance of twenty-two years, he laid the birch on smartly. It is just a little saddening to find that even so clear-sighted an observer as Henry James could not see through the chaotic form of Whitman to the great vision and throbbing music ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... had been the scene of incessant nautical exploits. Stilling had rowed, sailed, paddled indefatigably, and all Highfield had been impressed to bear him company, and to admire his versatility. Then motors had come in, and he had forsaken aquatic sports for the flying chariot. The canoes of birch-bark and canvas had been hoisted to the roof, the sail-boat had rotted at her moorings, and the movable floor of the boat-house, ingeniously contrived to slide back on noiseless runners, had lain undisturbed through several seasons. Even the key of the boat-house had been mislaid—by Isabel's ...
— The Choice - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... life. But Colonel Zane's house proved an exception to this. Most interesting was the large room. The chinks between the logs had been plastered up with clay and then the walls covered with white birch bark; trophies of the chase, Indian bows and arrows, pipes and tomahawks hung upon them; the wide spreading antlers of a noble buck adorned the space above the mantel piece; buffalo robes covered the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... a little woodland glen, with a streamlet tumbling through it. She sat with her back to a snowy birch-tree, gazing into the eddies of a pool below; and he lay beside her, upon the soft, mossy ground, reading out of a book of poems. Images of joy were passing before them; and there came four lines ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... you shall be given to Nannie Cameron, and you shall wear your old one to the kirk. How will that suit your vanity? And you may be off to bed now directly, without any supper. There are twigs enough for a birch rod, my lady, if bed does not bring you to a better frame of mind. Run in now, and don't let me see your face ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... wildly about the wide expanse of water for his lost mother, he had run his canoe violently against the top rail of a fence. The delicate birch bark was ripped off. In another minute it sank and turned bottom up. It was a canoe of the smallest size, Winklemann having preferred to continue his search alone rather than with an unwilling companion. The German was a good swimmer; a mere upset might not have been serious. ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... made earth and heaven: but they found nothing which they thought would suit the blessed St. Boniface, save that they stayed a little at the place which is called Ruohen-bah, 'the rough brook,' to see if it would suit; but it would not. So they went back to their birch huts to ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... thought I, why should not others be amused also? In a few days Dr. Birch's young friends will be expected to reassemble at Rodwell Regis, where they will learn everything that is useful, and under the eyes of careful ushers continue the business of ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and his father's young seignior, Jacques de Repentigny, stepped from a birch canoe on the bank near the fort, two Chippewa Indians following with their game. Hunting furnished no small addition to the food supply of the settlement, for the English conquest had brought about scarcity at this as well as other Western posts. Peace was ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of its forms, and of the names of its gods, than they had before. It is impossible, and probably always will be, to state with precision the theology on which it rested. It is impossible, because that theology was different in one time and with one school from what it was at other times. Mr. S. Birch, of the British Museum, says, "The religion of the Egyptians consisted of an extended polytheism represented by a system of local groups." But Mr. Pierret says, "The polytheism of the monuments is but an outward show. The innumerable gods of the Pantheon are ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... parted, the latter keeping to the sunny thoroughfare, the former plunging into the narrow, heavily shaded track that ran through ravine and over ridge, now beside the water and now in close woods of birch and hemlock. The road was bad, but Selim and his master bent to it grimly, with no nice avoidance of rut or stone or sunken place. To the horse there was before him food and rest, to the man his home. They took at the same pace the much of ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... tried to think of another way to accomplish his purpose. None presented itself; so with glowing words he appealed to their nobler selves, telling them all the great need of the travelers who were obliged to pass that way. First he appealed to a fine birch which ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... them,' cried Grania, 'one on each side of the stream, and we will travel on foot.' So they went on till they reached Galway, and there Diarmid cut down a grove, and made a palisade with seven doors of wattles, and gathered together the tops of the birch trees and soft rushes for a bed ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... suddenly lifted his eyes and gazed at the Pearl, who sat almost the length of the room away from him. The cabin was lighted only by the great log fire, and the leaping, ardent flames of the pine, mingled with the soft, glowing radiance of burning birch, invested the room and its occupants with that atmosphere of mystery and glamour, essential in flame-illumined shadow. And Hugh was playing the music the masters dreamed in the twilight hours when silence and shadow permitted them, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... one were a novelist, one could weave several pages of valuable copy out of the stalk. The stag made for the strath here, and Dick, who had no gillie, but was an independent sportsman of the old school, pursued on foot. Plunging down the low, birch-clad hills, the stag found the flooded river before him, black and swollen with rain. He took the water, crossing by the big pool, which looked almost like a little loch, tempestuous under a north wind blowing up stream, and covered with small white, vicious crests. The stag crossed and staggered ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... pond; and there it might have stood erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off, if I had not disturbed it. Making another hole directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so pulled ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... took the towel and comb and ran away as fast as their feet could possibly carry them. The dogs were after them, but they threw them the cookies that were left; the gates did not open themselves, but the children smoothed them with oil; the birch tree near the path almost scratched their eyes out, but the gentle girl fastened a pretty ribbon to it. So they went farther and farther and ran out of the dark forest into the wide, ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... of hundreds for every franc that they advanced towards the expenses of the undertaking. With cheerful haste, therefore, they agreed to pay the cost of the expedition. La Verendrye was delighted and lost no time in employing such persons as he needed—soldiers, canoe-men, and hunters. Birch-bark canoes were procured and laden with provisions, equipment, and packages of goods to trade with the Indians; and in the early summer of 1731 all was ready for the great western journey. With La ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... than the drive to Strathfield-saye, passing, as we do, through a great part of Heckfield Heath,* a tract of wild woodland, a forest, or rather a chase, full of fine sylvan beauty—thickets of fern and holly, and hawthorn and birch, surmounted by oaks and beeches, and interspersed with lawny glades and deep pools, letting light into the picture. Nothing can be prettier than the approach to the duke's lodge. And the entrance to the demesne, ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... arranged, Piskaret drew a long breath, grasped his war-club, and stealthily pushing aside the loose birch-bark door-flap of the nearest lodge, peeped inside. By the ember light he saw that every Iroquois, man and woman, was fast asleep, under furs, on spruce ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... worked since Tudor days, by sloping desks with safety inkpots and scientifically adjustable seats, "with grave misgivings." And though he never birched a boy in his life, and was, I am convinced, morally incapable of such a scuffle, he retained the block and birch in the school through all his term of office, and spoke at the Headmasters' Conference in temperate approval of corporal chastisement, comparing it, dear soul! to the power of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... appearance there my tale has nothing to do; the Doomster, as I have said, had the handling of them with birch. What I have described of this kirk-session's cognisance of those rough fellows' ill behaviour is designed ingeniously to convey a notion of its strict ceremony and its wide dominion,—to show that even in the heart of Arraghael we were not beasts in that year when the red flash of the sword ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... me. I sent my card to Professor Fries, and he entirely devoted himself to me: but imagine our conversation—he spoke in Latin and I in French: however we understood each other very well. It is on the whole a dreary country except where enlivened by lakes: some parts are pine forests and birch forests, but others are featureless ground with boulder stones, like the worst part of ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... red ochre, which they use to colour their bodies, bows, arrows, and canoes. The canoes are built in shape like wherries on the river Thames, but that they are much longer, made with the rinds of birch trees, which they sew very artificially and close together, and overlay every seam with turpentine. In like manner they sew the rinds of birch trees round and deep in proportion like a brass kettle, to boil their meat in; which hath been proved to me by three mariners ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad
... lakes, rivers, springs, and fountains, are held in high reverence. In the Kalevala the oak is called Pun Jumalan (God's tree). The mountain-ash even to this day, and the birch-tree, are held sacred, and peasants plant them by ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... Inch-Worm, was measuring his way carefully around a birch tree. Since Toadie Todson's death, he spent a large part of every day looking at trees and measuring distances, so that Stingy could spin his webs in the ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... cedar trees and chestnut trees and birch trees of three kinds; and there were white pine trees and pitch pine trees, and the pitch pine trees ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... every well-instructed angler knows. The bright emerald tips that break from the hemlock and the balsam like verdant flames have a pleasant savour to the tongue. The leaves of the sassafras are full of spice, and the bark of the black-birch twigs holds a fine cordial. Crinkle-root is spicy, but you must partake of it delicately, or it will bite your tongue. Spearmint and peppermint never lose their charm for the palate that still remembers the delights ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... end of the table, whispering and shivering, debarred the vent of all natural spirits, for fear of making a noise; and strangely uniting the idea of the domestic hearth with that of a hobgoblin, and the association of dear papa with that of a birch rod." ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Hudson, with name, derived from the Indian word Apokeepsing, signifying "safe harbor." Near the landing a bold headland juts out into the river, known as Kaal Rock, and no doubt this sheltering rock was a safe harbor in days of birch canoes. It has been recently claimed that the word signifies "muddy pond," which is neither true, appropriate or poetic. Poughkeepsie does not propose to give up her old-time "harbor name," particularly ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... The birch-bark canoe is the boat of the North American Indians, and our modern canvas canoes are made, with some {174} variations, on the Indian model. With the possible exception of the Venetian gondola, the motion of a canoe is more graceful than that of any other boat propelled by ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... warm spring rain had fallen the day before, and now wherever the ground was not paved the grass shone green. The birch trees in the gardens looked as if they were strewn with green fluff, the wild cherry and the poplars unrolled their long, balmy buds, and in shops and dwelling-houses the double window-frames were being removed and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... aisy to catch a 'coon, Uncle Zack,' was the lad's rejoinder from the fork of a birch where he had taken refuge, and sucked his stolen goods at ease. Similar raids harassed the long line of cooling tins, and not all the efforts of the sugar-makers at mounting guard could protect them, until the guerilla corps of youngsters became in some degree surfeited, and slid away through the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... I readily entered into an alliance with her, for I found nothing at Tunbridge half so entertaining, except, indeed, Miss Birch, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... in a much later stage. She must take heart—there may yet be a round dozen of little Joe Taylors to look after—run after—to sort and switch and train up in the way they should go—that is, with a generous use of pickled birch. From whom do you think I have received a couple of notes lately? From Alice. They are returned from the Continent, it seems, and are now at Torquay. The first note touched me a little by what I thought its subdued tone; I trusted her character might be greatly improved. There ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... retention. The Ephemerides contains examples of extrauterine pregnancy remaining in the abdomen forty-six years; Hannaeus mentioned an instance remaining ten years, the mother being pregnant in the meantime; Primperosius speaks of a similar instance; de Blegny, one of twenty-five years in the abdomen; Birch, a case of eighteen years in the abdomen, the woman bearing in the meantime; Bayle, one of twenty-six years, and the Ephemerides, another. In a woman of forty-six, the labor pains intervened without expulsion of the fetus. Impregnation ensued twice afterward, each followed ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Hassell, had arrived many hours before them, and to excuse his flight told so frightful a story of the fate of his comrades that his hearers were seized with a panic, shamefully abandoned their post, and set out for the settlements, leaving a writing on a piece of birch-bark to the effect that all the rest were killed. They had left a supply of bread and pork, and while the famished eleven rested and refreshed themselves they were joined by Solomon Keyes, the man who, after being thrice wounded, had floated away in a canoe ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... left the road by school and church, A pencilled shadow, nothing more, That parted from the silver birch And ended at the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... cannot be glad even in sunshine. Some of them are like gigantic wildernesses of upheaved pudding stone. Then, as the voyage progresses, the hillsides put on greenery, sombre when it is pine, cheerful when the hangings are supplied by the silver birch, and bright ever when the emerald patches bear testimony to the industry of the farmer, winning his scanty harvests against heavy odds. The calling places are numerous, but often consist of some half a dozen houses of the usual weatherboard, red and ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... were tolerably inured to the vicissitudes of traveling. We had experienced them under various forms, and a birch canoe was as familiar to us as a steamboat. The restlessness, the love of wilds and hatred of cities, natural perhaps in early years to every unperverted son of Adam, was not our only motive for undertaking the present journey. My companion hoped ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... she disappeared from view behind a clump of birch trees. Then leaving the highway he walked slowly along the trail leading ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... material and direction available, for she was the best ship which His Majesty's representative had at his disposal. The Supply was pretty well beyond renovation. She was American built, and her timbers of black birch were never suitable for service in warm waters. Shortly after the discovery of Port Hacking, Hunter set about the overhauling of the vessel that was at once his principal means of naval defence, his saluting battery, his official inspecting ship, his transport, and his craft of all work. He wanted ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... birch canoe had glided Down the swift Powow, Dark and gloomy bridges strided Those clear waters now; And where once the beaver swam, Jarred the wheel and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... if not, e'en turn aside your heads, and let the wanton youngling laugh by itself. If it speak like a sensible child, prithee, pat its cheek, and say so; but if it be ridiculous when it would be serious, smile, and permit the foolish attempt to pass. But do not, O goody critic, apply the birch, because its unpractised tongue cannot lisp the language of Shakspeare, nor be very much enraged, if you find it has to creep before it ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... into explicit directions, and Max pinned them in his memory. In fact, Obed simply told them to follow the stream up three miles until they came to a bunch of seven birch trees on the right-hand bank. There they were to pick up a trail they would find, follow it half a mile, and at that they would see a cabin under the hemlocks and pines, which would be his humble ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... every child seen speaking to another child with a lower-class badge, or any child wearing a higher badge than that allotted to it by, say, the College of Heralds, should immediately be skinned alive with a birch rod. It might even be insisted that girls with high-class badges should be attended by footmen, grooms, or even military escorts. In short, there is hardly any limit to the follies with which our Commercialism would infect any system that it would tolerate at all. But ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... There were birch twigs caught in the straps of the digger's "swag," and he had a bit of rata flower stuck in the band of his hat. "That's where he's come from!" Tresco pointed in the direction of the great range of mountains which could be seen distinctly through ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... that they might become flexible to wear. And begging her sisters for a few wampum shells, the eldest did but call her "a lying little pest," but the other gave her a few. And having no clothes beyond a few paltry rags, the poor creature went forth and got herself from the woods a few sheets of birch bark, of which she made a dress, putting some figures on the bark. [Footnote: Probably by scraping. Birch bark (moskwe) peeled in winter can have the thin dark brown coat scraped away, leaving a very light yellowish-brown ground. Tornah Josephs and his niece Susan, of Princeton, Maine, are ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... ache's goin' on," sez he, "So 'elp me, it'll spoil the war!" Five collared Trigger on his perch, They wired his molar to a bough, Then give the anguished one a lurch, 'N' down he pitches. From that birch His ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... wife—and in some instances where there were families by four or five. Some of them who had finished their houses earlier than the rest, had already commenced gathering their provisions for the winter. These consisted of the leaves and soft twigs of several species of trees—such as willow, birch, and mulberry—and we saw collections of these floating in the water in front of several of ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... neighbouring rath. The bilingual Ogham was found at St. Dogmael's, near Cardiganshire. The Ogham alphabet is called beithluisnion, from the name of its two first letters, beith, which signifies a birch-tree, and luis, the mountain-ash. If this kind of writing had been introduced in Christian times, it is quite unlikely that such names would have been chosen. They are manifestly referable to a time when a tree had some significance beyond the useful or the ornamental. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... at twilight? Have you heard the birch log burning? Are you quick to read the noises of the night? You must follow with the others for the young men's feet are turning To the camps of ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... outside the forest. She sat on the bank of a narrow stream; she had a red handkerchief on her head and a small basket was lying on the ground near her hand. At a little distance could be seen a cluster of log cabins, with a water-mill over a dammed pool shaded by birch trees and looking bright as glass in the twilight. He approached her silently, his hatchet stuck in his iron belt, a thick cudgel in his hand; there were leaves and bits of twig in his tangled hair, in his matted beard; bunches of rags he had wound round the links fluttered from his ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... come back to her memory as a riot of roses. The frocks of the people on the lawn looked as though they were made of the petals of flowers, and a mad little haunting waltz was being played by the band, and there under a great copper birch on the green velvet turf near her stood Jem, looking at her with dark, liquid, slanting eyes! They were only a few feet from each other,—and he looked, and she looked, and the haunting, mad little waltz played on, and it was as though they had been standing there since ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... they went on to Doire-da-Bhoth, the Wood of the Two Huts. And Diarmuid cut down the wood round about them, and he made a fence having seven doors of woven twigs, and he set out a bed of soft rushes and of the tops of the birch-tree for Grania in the very middle of ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the most part level, with little variation of surface; chiefly overspread with tracts of thick forest; where open, the distant horizon was always skirted with wood (chiefly pines and firs, intermixed with beech, birch, and small oaks). The occasional breaks presented some pasture- ground, with here and there a few meagre crops of corn. The natives were poorer, humbler, and more miserable than any people we had yet observed in the course of our travels: whenever we stopped they flocked around us in crowds; ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... luminous as though promising snow—careered out of the north and followed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen and such-like sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few naked cottages and bleak fields,—these were the characters of the country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and stony cattle-tracks wandered in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He watched his father, Puckeshinwau, make the flint arrow-head and split the wooden shaft to receive it, bind it firmly with a thong, and tip the other end of the shaft with a feather to wing it on its flight; and saw the men build the birch canoe, so light that one man could shoulder it, yet strong enough to carry ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... With pine trees lining all their sides like hair, Or as their own straight needles clothe their boughs; Until at length in broader light it ran, With more articulate sounds amid the stones, In the slight shadow of the maiden birch, And the stream-loving willow; and ere long Great blossoming trees dropt flowers upon its breast; Chiefly the crimson-spotted, cream-white flowers, Heaped up in cones amid cone-drooping leaves; Green hanging leaf-cones, towering white flower-cones Upon the great cone-fashioned ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... bark is very rough and shaggy looking, as on the oak, ash, walnut, and pine; on others, the bark is smooth, as on the beech, apple, and birch. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... had from his youth stalked the wary stag, and every saugh and birch and alder in our course was made to yield us its cover. Once a muircock whirred from my very feet and brought my heart to my mouth. Presently we topped the bluff and disappeared over its crest. Another hour of steady tramping down hill and the blue waters ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... stupid suspicion at the approaching carriage, the long ditches, overgrown with mugwort, wormwood, and mountain ash; and as he watched the fresh fertile wilderness and solitude of this steppe country, the greenness, the long slopes, and valleys with stunted oak bushes, the grey villages, and scant birch trees,—the whole Russian landscape, so long unseen by him, stirred emotion at once pleasant, sweet and almost painful in his heart, and he felt weighed down by a kind of pleasant oppression. Slowly his thoughts wandered; their outlines were as vague and indistinct as the outlines ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... torch. It blazed up brightly, throwing a glare over the surface of the stream, and reflecting in red light every object upon both banks. We, on the other hand, were completely hidden from view by means of the birch-bark screen, which stood up between us ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid |
