"Birch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... full of signs and the man must be deaf and blind that does not believe in them. I have seen just round Hatton that the whole bird world is ruled by the signs that the trees hang out.' And she asked me what they were, and I told her to notice next spring that as soon as the birch-leaves opened, the pheasant began to crow and the thrush to sing and the blackbird to whistle; and when the oak-leaves looked their reddest, and not a day before, the whole tribe ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of a Triptolemus Yellowlee would have found exceedingly little to gratify it in the parish of Lairg thirty years ago. The parish had its bare hills, its wide, dark moors, its old doddered woods of birch and hazel, its extensive lake, its headlong river, and its roaring cataract. Nature had imparted to it much of a wild and savage beauty; but art had done nothing for it. To reverse the well-known antithesis in which Goldsmith ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the leafy covering of a young birch when the sun broods over the forest. Often I visit that cold, cruel mistress of mine by night and lie on my knees before her, with the face pressed against the cold pedestal on which her feet rest, and my prayers go ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... body had retained most of the lines and slender curves of childhood; and she was long of limb and broad of shoulder. Her head was poised alertly above her strong young throat, and she was as straight as a fir-tree and as supple as a birch. A life out-of-doors had given to her skin a tone of warm brown, which, in a land that expected women to be lily-fair, was like a mask added to her disguise. The blackness of her hair was equally unconnected with Northern dreams of beautiful maidens. "Dark-haired ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild woods, thickening green; The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar Twined amorous round the raptured scene: The flowers sprang wanton to be pressed, The birds sang love on every spray, Till too, too soon the glowing west Proclaimed the speed ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... very simple fashion, in two birch-bark canoes, with five white voyageurs and a moderate supply of smoked meat and Indian corn, the two travelers set out to solve a perplexing problem, by tracing the course of the great river. ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... to be trusted with a birch. I'm glad they look at things that way. If you're satisfied with yourself, I suppose I ought to be, though I did look forward once to seeing a nephew of mine famous. You've 'ad all your fame at Cambridge, with your ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... doubted not he could reconcile Patty's parents to the long hoped-for marriage, and deliver his mistress from anxieties which had for some time made life almost intolerable. He dined in the servants' hall. About the same time Clare also visited by invitation General Birch Reynardson, of Holywell Park—a visit full of romance, as narrated by Mr. Martin, a beautiful young lady, governess to the General's children, having to all appearances fallen desperately in love with the poet at first sight. The only unromantic incident of the day ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... parcel of mail, and a huge bundle of newspapers were deposited in the bow. Holliday waved his hand. The Druro churned the water and swung out into midstream again. Bennie looked curiously after her. To the north lay a sandy shore dotted by a scraggy forest of dwarf spruce and birch. A few fishing huts and a mass of wooden shanties fringed the forest. To the east, seaward, many miles down that great stretch of treacherous, sullen river waited a gray bank of fog. But overhead the air was crystalline with ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... formerly had graced his master's shoulders, and possessed of a nose and a pair of lips whose coarseness communicated to his face rather a sullen expression. Behind the portmanteau came a small dispatch-box of redwood, lined with birch bark, a boot-case, and (wrapped in blue paper) a roast fowl; all of which having been deposited, the coachman departed to look after his horses, and the valet to establish himself in the little dark anteroom or kennel where already he ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... which there are many. I also gave orders to the people who were with me, to take an exact account of the canoes which were hauled up to convey their forces down in the spring. This they did, and told fifty of birch bark, and an hundred and seventy of pine; besides many others which were blocked out, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... English should not disturb the women cooking their rice at Rangoon; and now that they had not only been disturbed, but driven from their homes, he resolved to be revenged on them. The first conflict took place on the 16th of May, when Captain Birch dislodged the enemy from the village of Kemmendine, a war-boat station three miles above Rangoon. Nothing daunted, however, the enemy, as their numbers increased, gradually approached the British position, and threw up stockades in the jungle within hearing of our advanced posts. Of this work the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... destroy. Then we turned away to the glen down which the torrent plunged. And there, at the foot of the fall, in the midst of the boiling water, the foam, and spray, rose a tall crag crowned with silver birch, and hung with moss and creeping vines, bearing on its gray, weather-beaten face: "Rotterdam Schnapps." Bah! it made us sick. The caldron looked like a punch-bowl, and the breath of the zephyrs smelt of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... it is," said Bob. "I ran the car right up under that big birch tree so that I could ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... hundred and thirty paces west of the house in which I live stand two birch trees. One windy winter day I made some fresh tracks in the snow near my house, and within a few minutes the cavities looked as though some one had sprinkled wheat bran in them, on account of the many birch seeds ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... his father and Mr. Croyden go off on the long tramps they had each season been accustomed to take together, and during their absence he remained with Franz, who was very kind to him. The Indian had a great many devices for entertaining him. Now he fashioned for the boy's amusement a miniature birch-bark canoe; now he showed him how to weave baskets from lithe twigs of alder. Sometimes he whittled wonderful whistles and toys from bits of wood; sometimes made tiny bows and arrows or snowshoes. His resources seemed ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... order of fine or entertainment. The formal method of outcasting consists in seating the culprit on the ground and drawing the tribal mat over his head, from which the turban is removed; after this the messengers of the eight companies inflict a few taps with slippers and birch brooms. It is alleged that unfaithful women were formerly tied naked to trees and flogged with birch brooms, but that owing to the fatal results that occasionally followed such punishment, as in the case of the five kicks among Chamars (tanners) and the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... great use and of considerable value on some estates for making brooms, and the timber for all purposes of turnery-ware and carving. The sap of the Birch-tree is drawn by perforating the bark in the early state of vegetation. It is fermented, and makes a very pleasant and potent ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... that idea of its rending around the tree's stem having been, in the very earliest human efforts at botanical description, {172} attached to it by the pure Aryan race, watching the strips of rosy satin break from the birch stems, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Benjamin Bigelow Oliver Bigelow Thomas Biggs Jean Bilarie Charles Bill (2) Garden Bill John Bill (2) Pierre Bill John Billard James Biller Samuel Billing Benjamin Billings Bradford Billings Ezekiel Billings Robert Billings David Billows Frarey Binnen Cirretto Biola Pierre Biran Alexander Birch Nathaniel Birch Joseph Bird Weldon Bird Thomas Birket Samuel Birmingham Ezekiel Bishop Israel Bishop John Bishop (2) John Bissell Jack Bissick Osee Bissole Pierre Bitgayse Peter Bitton Daniel Black James Black (3) John Black Joseph Black Robert N Black Samuel Black (2) Timothy ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... impatient, and thought her as big an imposter as the Indian woman whom she called her mother. He finally gave them each a loaf of bread, and told them they could go back to their lodge. This lodge consisted of a few poles set up in wigwam fashion, and covered with skins and old blankets and birch. A foul, ugly place it was, but in this wigwam lived two Indian women and ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... night he had been exceedingly put out by little cold wet dabs which kept continually falling on his back. The Blackbird had changed his position—he had done it several times: he had moved from a birch to an elm, and then to a beech-tree. But it was of no avail, the little cold droppings seemed to pursue him wherever he went, and it was not till quite late in the night that he found real shelter, and got a little rest in a thick mantle of ivy which completely ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... larks sang loud in the blue clear air; the birch-wood clothed itself in tender green; the stream, with its melting snow-drifts, wound down the mountains singing on its way; but no plough furrowed the loosened earth, and from the heights was heard no wood-horn calling the cattle at feeding time. All ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... stage), we find far more of hope and promise in the broad free stretches of the flagellant head-master of Eton and the bibulous Bishop of Bath and Wells; and must admit that hands used to wield the crosier or the birch proved themselves more skilful at the lighter labours of the stage, more successful even in the secular and bloodless business of a field neither clerical nor scholastic, than any tragic rival of the opposite party to that so jovially headed by Orbilius Udall ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... indefinable delicacy, charm, and perfection of the Celt's touch in the pieces I just now quoted, or of Shakespeare's touch in his daffodil,[278] Wordsworth's in his cuckoo,[279] Keats's in his Autumn, Obermann's in his mountain birch-tree, or his Easter-daisy among the Swiss farms.[280] To decide where the gift for natural magic originally lies, whether it is properly Celtic or Germanic, we ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... it sang I always Till my songs grew poor and poorer, Till the dells alone would hear me, Only the deaf fir-trees listen? Not in life is she, my mother, She no longer is aboveground; She, the golden, cannot hear me, 'T is the fir-trees now that hear me, 'T is the pine-tops understand me, And the birch-crowns full of goodness, And the ash-trees now that love me! Small and weak my mother left me, Like a lark upon the cliff-top, Like a young thrush 'mid the flintstones In the guardianship of strangers, In the keeping ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... wild and rugged. It is a lofty eminence covered with huge boulders of sandstone, between which rise birch trees and oaks, their foliage already yellowed by autumn. These tall trees stand out from the background of red light, which the sun has left in the west, resembling the reflection of a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... did not come home for some hours. When they did, Esdras slunk up the ladder, his garments being in a state which, as Silas had just kindly informed him, "smelt of the birch," and not desiring the application of that remedy sooner than could be helped. Silas flung his cap into the furthest corner, with a shout of "Hooray!" which sent his mother's ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... had roared and crashed among Its branches, breaking here and there a limb; But every now and then broad sunlit days Lovingly lingered, caught among the leaves. Yes, it had known all this, and yet to us It does not speak of mossy forest ways, Of whispering pine trees or the shimmering birch; But of quick winds, and the salt, stinging sea! An artist once, with patient, careful knife, Had fashioned it like to the untamed sea. Here waves uprear themselves, their tops blown back By the gay, sunny wind, which whips the blue And breaks it into gleams and sparks of light. Among the flashing ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... frozen solitude long after all other birds have retired from the desolate scenery. Their food consists of the tender shoots of pines, the seeds of plants, the berries of the arbutus and bilberry, the buds of the birch and alder, the buds of the heather, leaves, and grain. The nest is very simply constructed, consisting of dried grasses placed upon the ground and ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... of Le Brun stood in a birch-grown hollow, not far off, where a stream cascaded into the St. Lawrence, and had worn down the precipitous bank of earth. It was a wild picture. The gable of the cot was stained Indian red down to the eaves, and a stone chimney was embedded irregularly in its log side. The ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... kisses me!' Eagerness, and a sort of languor, were running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her shady hat. Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage; made the greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the ferns; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads of ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... excited by the unswathing of an Egyptian mummy at the residence of Lord Londesborough, at which Mr. Birch of the British Museum, describing the embalming process, and following in this the narrative of Herodotus, said the subject had evidently suffered from the use of bitumen and the application of heat, as the bones were charred and the muscles ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... at a farm house, some miles north of the town, got a job on the woodpile, and astonished the farmer by the amount of birch he could saw in an hour. He took his pay in the shape of a bountiful dinner, and—after half an hour's smoke and talk with the farmer, to whom he gave a few pamphlets from the store in his knapsack—said good-bye to all hands and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... Persian Gulf. In May, 1880, on a dark night, about 11:30 P.M., there suddenly appeared on each side of the ship an enormous luminous wheel, whirling around, the spokes of which seemed to brush the ship along. The spokes would be 200 or 300 yards long, and resembled the birch rods of the dames' schools. Each wheel contained about sixteen spokes, and, although the wheels must have been some 500 or 600 yards in diameter, the spokes could be distinctly seen all the way round. The phosphorescent ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... America. Had he not changed the course of his vessel by reason of the mysterious conduct of that man-of-war hawk, not a soul would probably have survived the night. It was stated by the rescued passengers, among whom was Billy Birch, that the Central America had sailed from Aspinwall with the passengers and freight which left San Francisco on the 1st of September, and encountered the gale in the Gulf Stream somewhere off Savannah, in which she sprung ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... daring a rampageous river that runs the devil knows where; My hand is athrill on the paddle, the birch-bark bounds like a bird. Hark to the rumble of rapids! Here in my morris chair Eager and tense I'm straining — isn't it most absurd? Now in the churn and the lather, foam that hisses and stings, Leap I, keyed for the struggle, fury and fume ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... "Mr. Birch," said Mrs. Van Kirk, "this is my daughter Miss Edith," and as Halfdan sprang to his feet and bowed with visible embarrassment, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?— By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch tree! The Oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year; And whistled and roar'd in the winter alone, Is gone,—and the birch in its stead is grown.— The Knight's bones are dust, And his good sword rust;— ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... he muttered, "this is my wife."' She refuses to eat the beavers he has shot, but at night he hears a noise, 'krch, krch, as if beavers were gnawing wood.' He sees, by the glimmer of the fire, his wife nibbling birch twigs. In fact, the good little wife is a beaver, as the pretty Indian girl was a frog. The pair lived happily till spring came and the snow melted and the streams ran full. Then his wife implored the hunter to build her a bridge over every stream and river, that she might cross dry-footed. 'For,' ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Mr. Birch has contributed a number of spirited illustrations that bring clearly before the eye the forms of Roland and his friend Oliver, of Ogier, the Dane, and other famous knights and paladins, as well as the scenes of their ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... birch logs ready to be kindled. At her suggestion he put a match to them for the cheeriness they gave while she lighted a green shaded lamp which radiated a soft glow over the heavy mahogany library table upon which ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... of Gallatin, though more tempered in tone, reveal quiet content with the simple life and a thorough enjoyment of nature in its original wildness. In the summer they followed the tracks of the moose and deer through the primitive forests, and explored the streams and lakes in the light birch canoe, with a woodsman or savage for their guide. In the winter they made long journeys over land and water on snowshoes or on skates, occasionally visiting the villages of the Indians, with whom the Lesderniers were on the best of terms, studying their habits and witnessing their feasts. Occasional ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... the most beautiful, picturesque, and romantic country that I ever saw, alternately presenting to the eye wood, water, and pasture fields, interspersed with the majestic oak, the lofty beech, the trembling birch, the lime, the ash, and every other species of beautiful forest tree. There were nearly five hundred acres of woodland upon this estate, and it was well stocked with game and fish of every description; but the whole country was congenial ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... Newton, Botta, Rassam, Schliemann, Birch, G. Smith, and a crowd of archaeologists, and even unscientific explorers, are collecting the materials from which the history of ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... to punish a child for a misdeed, than to explain and argue. But the gentler method is better. Yet we all admit that the birch must be used sometimes. However, if it is used only for serious trangressions, the child will have a sense of proportion regarding what offenses are grave. But for ordinary small misdemeanors I think we need a new motto: Spoil the rod ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... themselves together, both men, women, and children, olde and young, all indifferently, and goe into the woodes and groves, hilles and mountaines, where they spend the night in pastyme, and in the morning they returne, bringing with them birch bowes and braunches of trees to deck their assembly withal. . . . They have twentie or fourtie yoke of oxen, every oxe having a sweete nosegay of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these draw home this Maypole (this stincking idol rather) which is covered ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... an hour later, we had got down to the table-land, I found myself suddenly in front of a long, quaint, double log cottage, set between two immense bowlders, and roofed with layers of birch bark, covered with turf, which was blue with wild pansies. It was as if it were built under a bed of heart's-ease. It was very old, and had evidently been a house of some pretension, for there was much curious ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Chat Moss rises above the level of the surrounding country. Like a turtle's back, it declines from the summit in every direction, having from thirty to forty feet gradual slope to the solid land on all sides. From the remains of trees, chiefly alder and birch, which have been dug out of it, and which must have previously flourished upon the surface of soil now deeply submerged, it is probable that the sand and clay base on which the bog rests is saucer-shaped, and so retains the entire mass in position. In rainy weather, such ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch-bark, and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sled—blankets, ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... Howland continued slowly between the thick forest walls, one hand clutching the butt of the revolver in his coat pocket. Where the trail twisted abruptly into the north he found the charred remains of a camp-fire in a small open, and just beyond it a number of birch toggles, which had undoubtedly been used in place of tent-stakes. With the toe of his boot he kicked among the ashes and half-burned bits of wood. There was no sign of smoke, not a living spark to give evidence that human presence ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... squirrel, to study its mode of flight, but quickly carried it back to the wood. He possessed true instincts of topography, and could conceal choice things in the bush and find them again.... If Thoreau needed a box in his walk, he would strip a piece of birch bark off the tree, fold it, when cut straightly, together, and put his tender lichen or ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... of about five miles on the left of the town the course of the river was interrupted by a small and thickly wooded island, along whose sandy beach occasionally rose the low cabin or wigwam which the birch canoe, carefully upturned and left to dry upon the sands, attested to be the temporary habitation of the wandering Indian. That branch of the river which swept by the shores of Canada was (as at this day) the only navigable one for vessels ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... strange people, all of whom were laughing and applauding his words, from the German Princess in the Royal box to the straight-backed Tommy in the pit. Instead of the painted scene before her, she saw the birch-trees by the river at home, where he had first read her the speech to which they were now listening so intensely—the speech in which the hero tells the girl he loves her. She remembered that at the time she had thought how wonderful it would be if some day some one made such a speech ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... equipment than he was able to furnish. The old English schoolmasters were 'bruisers.' They had thick skins, hard heads, and solid fists. The symbols of their office were a Greek grammar and a flexible rod. They were skillful either with the book or the birch. It has taken many years to convince the world that the short road to the moods and tenses does not necessarily lie through the valley of the shadow of flogging. Perhaps Priestley objected to school-mastering because it was laborious. It was indeed ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... by school and church, A pencilled shadow, nothing more, That parted from the silver birch And ended ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... built a house of birch bark under the trees. But it hasn't any stove-pipe!" said Flaxie, who had never forgotten that unfortunate house that ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... and raised her to my arms: spiling thereby a new weskit and a pair of crimson smalcloes. I rushed forrard. I say, very nearly knocking down the old sweeper who was hobbling away as fast as posibil. We took her to Birch's; we provided her with a hackney-coach and every lucksury, and carried her home ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... employed by some of the Ojibways and Swampy Crees of Canada. A small cavity is scooped out, the body deposited therein, covered with a little dirt, the mound thus formed being covered either with split planks, poles, or birch bark. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... length, and, at half way from the mouth, full a mile wide. Into this main river run innumerable smaller rivers, there called CREEKS. On the sides of these creeks the land is, in places, clear of rocks; it is, in these places, generally good and productive; the trees that grow here are the birch, the maple, and others of the deciduous class; natural meadows here and there present themselves; and some of these spots far surpass in rural beauty any other that my eyes ever beheld; the creeks, abounding towards their sources in water-falls of endless variety, as well ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... occasionally, to examine whether any of the Sioux had recently visited that quarter. In one of these excursions, there was found, suspended to a tree, in an exposed situation, a piece of birch-bark, made flat, by being fastened between two sticks, about eighteen inches long by fifteen broad. This bark contained the answer of the Sioux nation, to overtures which the Chippeways had made, on Governor Cass' offer of mediation:—which overtures had been found and ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... and thought, "Those were quite merry days. But they may come again. Klumpey-Dumpey fell downstairs, and yet he married the princess. Perhaps I may marry a princess, too!" And then the Fir Tree thought of a pretty little Birch Tree that grew out in the forest; for the Fir Tree, that ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Thomas Birch, in a letter dated June 15, 1764, says that this letter was by Mr. Philip Yorke, afterwards Earl of Hardwicke, who was author also of another piece in the Spectator, but his son could not remember ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... too bad," she cried, hastening toward him sympathetically, "but see, there is a redbird on the top of that old birch tree. Try again! You will have better success this time, I am sure ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... fell in with Blount, who had been separated from the rest; and, with some difficulty, I induced him to return. We had got back to our rooms, when one of the ushers discovered the whole party. The master was called up, and, with birch in hand, went round the room, and inflicted summary punishment on all offenders. The next morning they were called up by name, their crime announced, and severe tasks being inflicted, they were all sent to Coventry ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... paper, and taken Master B.'s bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no better behaviour than would most unquestionably have brought him and the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?—I ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... we two together again at last. What a week of weeks we spent, pacing back and forth on the veranda of our log cabin, where we overlooked the pleasant sinuosities of the Sebois and gazed out together over golden beech and ghostly birch and blood-red maple banners to the far violet mountains of the Aroostook! And how we did take stock of the immediate past, chuckling to find that it had not been a quarter so bad as I had stupidly supposed. What ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... of discovering some short cut to the high road of mental acquirement. The toilsome learner's "Progress" through the barren outset of the alphabet; the slough of despond of seven syllables, endangered as they both are by the frequent appearance of the compulsive birch of the Mr. Worldly-wisemen who teach the young idea how to shoot, must ever be looked upon as a probation, the power of avoiding which is "a consummation devoutly to be wished." Imbued with this feeling, the more speculative ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... removed a part of the weight from their young hearts, which were saddened by the sight of so much wretchedness. Perceiving a pure and bright little fountain at a short distance from the cottage, they approached it, and, using the bark of a birch-tree as a cup, partook of its cool waters. They then pursued their homeward ride with such diligence, that, just as the sun was setting, they came in sight of the humble wooden edifice which was ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a roar of voices. "Let anyone come my way now," thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a full gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep over the squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at that instant the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away from him, and Rostov felt as in a dream that he continued to be carried forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... collection—part of the Medici collection, and contains some of the finest Italian and Spanish specimens," remarked the blind connoisseur. "Birch of the British Museum is quite right in declaring that the seal, portable and abounding in detail, not difficult of acquisition nor hard to read if we set about deciphering the story it has to tell, takes us back as we look upon it to the very time of its ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... painter. It was a magnificent sweep of landscape that lay before them—a glen glowing with purple and green, alive with flickering sunlight and shadow, with richest browns and reds and coolest greys in the foreground; precipices, crags, verdant slopes of bracken, pine and birch woods hanging on the hillsides, in the middle distance, and blue mountains mingling with orange skies in the background, with MacRummle's favourite stream appearing here and there like a silver thread, running through it all. But Barret saw nothing ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ample and long and low, with elm-trees feather- ing over them: Borders of box in the yard, and lilacs, and old- fashioned flowers, A fan-light above the door, and little square panes in the windows, The wood-shed piled with maple and birch and hickory ready for winter, The gambrel-roof with its garret crowded with household relics,— All the tokens of prudent thrift and ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... time that we did. Red flannel shirts should be worn in the woods, if only for the fine contrast which this color makes with the evergreens and the water. Thus I thought when I saw the forms of the explorers in their birch, poling up the rapids before us, far off against the forest. It is the surveyor's color also, most distinctly seen under all circumstances. We stopped to dine at Ragmuff, as before. My companion it was who wandered up the stream to look for moose this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... manner improved the tone of the English court, and, after the first flush of welcome from his subjects, surprised and delighted to have an Englishman and a gentleman once more upon the throne, was getting over his early lessons in adversity from the birch of Wilkes and Junius, and entering upon a second series from that of Washington, all preparatory to the longest and most brilliant reign in British annals. Frederick II. was an old man, occupied with assuring to the power he had created the position it now holds as the first ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... his way from Birch Grove to Rathnllan House the next day when he was met by Barney Casey, who had been on the lookout for him. Barney, who knew not his person, was not capable of determining whether he was the individual whom he wanted or ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Captain Calver devised an arrangement not unlike that employed by the coral- fishers. He fastened half a dozen swabs, such as are used for drying decks, to the dredge. A swab is something like what a birch-broom would be if its twigs were made of long, coarse, hempen yarns. These dragged along after the dredge over the surface of the mud, and entangled the creatures living there—multitudes of which, twisted up in the strands of the swabs, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... some miles from the place where they lit their fire, when a somewhat unmistakable sound made Rodriguez look ahead of him. An arrow had struck a birch tree on the right side, ten or twelve paces in front of him; and as he looked up another struck it from the opposite side just level with the first; the two were sticking in it ten feet or so from the ground. Rodriguez drew his sword. ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... history lesson one day, Nejdanov wandered out into the garden, and from thence into a birch wood adjoining it on one side. Certain parts of this wood had been cleared by merchants about fifteen years ago, but these clearings were already densely overgrown by young birches, whose soft silver trunks encircled by grey rings rose as straight as pillars, and whose bright green leaves ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... for a great part of the way up the valley of a stream, a favourite with anglers and with midges, full of falls and pools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch. Here and there, but at great distances, a byway branches off, and a gaunt farmhouse may be descried above in a fold of the hill; but the more part of the time, the road would be quite empty of passage and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... birches—the crimson ray would often rest on the end of his long nose, and the word "rum" be passed tittering along the benches. For some men are born to the mill, and others to the mitre, and still others to the sceptre; but Mr. Daaken was born to the birch. His long, lanky legs were made for striding after culprits, and his arms for caning them. He taught, among other things, the classics, of course, the English language grammatically, arithmetic in all its branches, book-keeping in the Italian manner, and the elements ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Foot, and some more; and those Oaks very common in the upper Parts of both Rivers; also a very tall large Tree of great Bigness, which some call Cyprus, the right Name we know not, growing in Swamps. Likewise Walnut, Birch, Beech, Maple, Ash, Bay, Willow, Alder, and Holly; and in the lowermost Parts innumerable Pines, tall and good for Boards or Masts, growing, for the most part, in barren and sandy, but in some Places up the River, in good Ground, being mixt amongst Oaks and other Timbers. We saw Mulberry-Trees, Multitudes ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... parts of speech, Who sweep'st with birch a youngster's breech, Oh! now awhile withhold your hand! So may the trembling crop-hair'd band Around your desk attentive hear, And pay you love instead of fear; So may yours ever be as full, As writing or as dancing school. The ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... more than twenty inches. The frozen substratum does not of itself destroy vegetation, for forests flourish on the surface, at a distance from the coast.") In a like manner, in Siberia, we have woods of birch, fir, aspen, and larch, growing in a latitude (64 degrees) where the mean temperature of the air falls below the freezing point, and where the earth is so completely frozen, that the carcass of an animal embedded in it is perfectly ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... be there, Master Julius, to the third seat from the front; but it ain't becoming for a woman of my age, seventy-nine come Christmas, to sit under a slip of a lad as hasn't got the taste of the birch off his back." ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... In the background a pool, bordered by reeds and dotted by water plants, lies in a grove of alder trees and bushes of hazelnut, willow and beech. The meadows extend on either side encircled by immemorial oaks, elms, beeches and birch trees. Between the foliage of the trees and bushes the church spires of distant villages are visible. To the left, behind the bushes, arise the thatched roofs of the ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... plainly he remembered all himself; and he thought: "That was a merry time! But it can come! it can come! Klumpy-Dumpy fell down stairs, and yet he got a princess! Maybe I can get a princess too!" And all of a sudden he thought of a nice little Birch Tree growing out in the woods: to the Pine, that would be a ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Ottawa, reached Lake Nipissing, and passed by way of Georgian Bay to the islands of Lake Huron. As late as the nineteenth century this was the common route of the fur trade, for it was more certain for the birch canoes than the tempestuous route of the lakes. At the Huron islands two ways opened before their canoes. The straits of Michillimackinac[63] permitted them to enter Lake Michigan, and from this led the two routes to the Mississippi: one by way of Green bay and the Fox and Wisconsin, and ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... know that whenever you want anything for the Church from a hymn book or a hassock or a pew to a pulpit or a screen or a spire you go to Fortune, East and Sabre, Tidborough. Similarly in the scholastic line, anything from a birch rod to a desk—Fortune, East and Sabre, by return and the best. No, they're the great, the great, church and school-furnishing people. 'Ecclesiastical and Scholastic Furnishers and Designers' they call themselves. And ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... which single-stick possesses is that you may learn to play fairly well even if you take it up as late in life as at five and twenty; whereas I understand that, though many of my fencing friends were introduced to the foil almost as soon as to the corrective birch, and though their heads are now growing grey, they still consider themselves mere tyros ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... right of the lady-birch to grow, To grow as the Lord shall please, By never a sturdy oak rebuked, Denied nor sun nor breeze, For all its pliant slenderness, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... Samson and the Philistines, of David and Goliath, of the prophets Elijah and Elisha; and after these came the New Testament stories and parables. Assisted by my uncles, I began to collect a library in a box of birch-bark about nine inches square, which I found quite large enough to contain a great many immortal works,—Jack the Giant-Killer, and Jack and the Bean-Stalk, and the Yellow Dwarf, and Blue Beard, and Sinbad the Sailor, and Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, with several others ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... he again headed them off by hiding in the stalks of a large yucca.[10] The sheep passed within five steps of him, and again when the time to pull the bow came his arm stiffened. The crow people were watching him all the time. He again followed the sheep and got ahead of them and hid behind a birch tree in bloom; he had his bow ready, but as the sheep approached him they became gods. The first one was Hasjelti, the second was Hostjoghon, the third was Naaskiddi, the fourth one was Hadatchishi. At ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... deny that in clothes the Squire was all consequence; and when he loomed into 'Court,' all over the steel chain, believe it, there were bows and servilities without stint. Taking his seat on a high birch block, the plank table being set before him, on which to spread his inseparable law-book, the plaintiffs and defendants assembled, and took seats on a wooded bench in front. 'All persons whatsoever havin' any business whatever with this 'ere court—Squire Belhash sitting—must come for'ard now or ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the Apostle's voice was wont to sound, had fallen an immemorial time ago. But the soil, being of the rudest and most broken surface, had apparently never been brought under tillage; other growths, maple and beech and birch, had succeeded to the primeval trees; so that it was still as wild a tract of woodland as the great-great-great-great grandson of one of Eliot's Indians (had any such posterity been in existence) could have desired for the site and shelter of his wigwam. These after-growths, indeed, lose ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... himself as clad in a scant piece of cloth made of grass or as totally nude or as robed in silk or in skin of the black antelope or in cloth made of flax or in sheep-skin or in tiger-skin or in lion-skin or in fabric of hemp, or in barks of birch or in cloths made of the produce of prickly plants, or in vestures made of threads woven by worms or of torn rags or in diverse other kinds of cloth too numerous to mention. The soul regards himself also as wearing diverse kinds ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... year, when just eighteen years old, P. Henry, Junior, got married—married a rollicking country lass, as foolish as himself—done in bravado, going home from a dance, calling a minister out on his porch, in a crazy-quilt, to perform the ceremony. John Henry would have applied the birch to this hare-brained bridegroom, and the father of the girl would have stung her pink-and-white anatomy, but Patrick coolly explained that the matter could not be undone—they were duly married for better or for worse, and so the less fuss the better. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... carefully back on the returning flood. But most of them were lying where they had been built, or left by the preceding tide, along high-water mark, as hopelessly stranded, for the next two hours, as a birch log after a freshet. As the old women with children arrived, Bawr rushed them down the wet beach to the rafts which were afloat, appointing to each clumsy raft four men, with long, rough flattened poles, to manage it. For the moment, all these ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... which flowed a limpid, gurgling stream. On a log beside him sat a girl of perhaps eighteen years, exceedingly handsome with the flaming kind of beauty like a poppy's, striking to the eye, shallow-petaled. She was vividly effective against the background of deep green spruces and white birch in her bright pink dress and large drooping black hat. Her coloring was brilliant, her lips full, scarlet, ripely sensuous. Beneath her straight black brows her sparkling, black eyes gleamed with restless eagerness. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... 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 that seem so plain to us to-day. Whitman himself, writing about "Drum Taps" before its publication, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... deep breath. The safe disappearances he had read about flashed through his mind. But he didn't believe it. It couldn't be! Yet, there was the empty corner with the birch panels forming the back of the show-windows, and no safe. In a daze, he walked over to the corner, intending to feel about with his hands and make sure the safe was really gone. Before he got there, there flashed into sight ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... after went away, and in the evening Yeobright strolled as far as Fairway's cottage. It was a lovely May sunset, and the birch trees which grew on this margin of the vast Egdon wilderness had put on their new leaves, delicate as butterflies' wings, and diaphanous as amber. Beside Fairway's dwelling was an open space recessed from the road, and here were now collected all the young people from ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... frying-pan out upon the bow, and was in reality rather a fire of pine-knots than a 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 ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... He also knew where the great peel rested, on their annual migration from sea to moor; where the kingfisher's nest of fish-bones lay hidden; where the otter had her home beneath the bank, and its inland vent-hole behind a silver birch. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... company! he got Taliesin—Owen Glyndwr—Iolo Morganwg and all the rest of them! and he's quite happy in their company. But once he comes down to live with us he's as rough and prickly as a birch-broom. Indeed he wass nevver used to be like this whatever; 'tis ever since his brother John die, and leave ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... woman to be proud of; for today after three vargs of marriage the memory of her trim trunk with four pairs of eyes laughing mischievously, filled his five brains with flame. Slim as a birch she stood in his memory, and eight eyes whispered lovers' thoughts across space ...
— Solar Stiff • Chas. A. Stopher
... I learned to paddle a canoe pretty well. I'd rather have a good row-boat, though, than any birch I ever saw. If you run one of them on a sharp stone, it may be cut ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to a safe distance while Billy secured the clothes and went into the timber. From a birch tree he pulled off a pile of bark, and as he stripped he put his old clothes on it. McTabb could hear the crackling and snapping of the fire when Billy reappeared arrayed in Indian Joe's "second best"— buckskin trousers, ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... tossed aside her hat. She sat leaning against the crisp trunk of a silver birch. Her hands were in her lap. Her dress was crumpled up, displaying her crossed feet and the tantalizing line of her slim ankles. Against the copper green of the tree trunk the mass of her hair was pressed, gold upon the shadow of gold. Her moist lips were half open. Her eyes were away, playing ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... determined to proceed, no matter whither. Be with me therefore all ye troops of conjugations and declensions, dread spectres, and approach thou chiefest, Shade and Phantom of the disused (thank Heaven) Birch, at whose entry to my imagination a sudden shiver takes my rump, and a trifle then more would make me begin to let down my breeches to my calves, and turning boy, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... but you are mistaken, you lazy, ill-behaved wench. The new frock I had bought 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 before ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of glory over, it now lies grilling in the sun between cool groves, and only at intervals the vehicle of the cruising tourist is seen far away and faintly audible along its ample sweep. A little upon one side, and you find a district of sand and birch and boulder; a little upon the other lies the valley of Apremont, all juniper and heather; and close beyond that you may walk into a zone of pine trees. So artfully are the ingredients mingled. Nor must it be forgotten that, in ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tropical forest and that of our temperate zone, which at once challenges the notice of the traveler, is that trees of the same families do not characterize any particular spot. We have pine forests, oak forests, cedar, birch, and maple woods, and the like; but a tropical forest contains specimens of the most widely different classes, with every possible variety of family; and the same may be said of the countless climbing plants which cling ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... bits and curbs to headstrong steeds,— Which for this fourteen years we have let sleep, Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave, That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers, Having bound up the threat'ning twigs of birch, Only to stick it in their children's sight For terror, not to use, in time the rod Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees, Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; And liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... probably belongs to a much more recent period, a fish-hook in reindeer horn, now in the Christiania Museum. It was found in a tomb in the island of Kjelnoe, not far from the Russian frontier. Numerous skeletons, wrapped up in swathings of birch-bark, repose in this tomb. All around lay fragments of pottery, lance- and arrow-heads,[69] and combs of reindeer horn, the date of which it ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... at their sewing in what had been known, since his accident, as Bressant's room. There was no stove; but a rustling, tapering fire was living its ardent, yellow, wavering life upon the brick hearth, and four or five logs of birch and elm were reddening and crackling into embers beneath its intangible intensity. It made a grateful contrast to the soft, cold bank of snow that lay, light and round, upon the outside sill and the slighter ridges ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... daintily spread for them under a birch-tree near the keeper's lodge. The keeper's wife served them with smiles and curtsies, and then discreetly disappeared. Falloden waited on Constance as a squire on his princess; and all round them lay the ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... happened the next day, at least, not till two o'clock, when I went with Mr. Bowman to Birch's eating-house (it is not Birch's now, but this was the name of the original founder, who became an alderman, and has long been dead) for a basin of turtle-soup. It was very rich, very good, better than we had at the Lord Mayor's, and the best I ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for the moment disappeared in the deep fringe of evergreens which lined the shore. Fairly in the twinkling of an eye a rude frame of bent poles was made, above which were spread strips of unrolled birch bark from the cargo of the canoe. Over the spaces left uncovered by the supply of bark sheets there were laid down long mats made by Indian hands from dried reeds and bulrushes, affording no inconsiderable protection against the weather. Inside the lodge, bales of goods and ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... in the market-place about a hundred yards, leaving an open space or lane between them of about five yards' distance; then the offender, being naked to the waist, was brought to one end of the lane or open place. The people had rods or switches of birch given to as many as would take them; the offender was to run or go, as he pleased (and one of them walked but a Spanish pace), from one end of the lane of people to the other, twice or thrice forward and backward; and all ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... a tenacious, semi-transparent substance, having a balsamic odour; which the bees gather from the buds of certain trees in the spring, such as the horse-chestnut, the willow, the poplar, and the birch. ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... surrounded with its patch of cleared land, were sadly distant from one another. Behind the clearings, and on either side of them to the river's bank, it was always forest: a dark green background of cypress against which a lonely birch tree stood out here and there, its bole naked and white as the column ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... wood, either green or dry, the latter lying along the shore on both sides the straits, which are almost covered with the trees, that, having grown on the banks, have been blown down by the high winds. These trees are somewhat like our birch, but are of so considerable a size, that the trunks of some of them are two feet (surely an error, yards must be intended) and a half in diameter, and sixty feet in length. Many of these we cut down for our carpenters ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... color may likewise be obtained from birch-bark, set with alum. The bark should be covered with water, and boiled thoroughly in brass or tin. A bit of alum half as big as a hen's egg is sufficient. If copperas be used instead of alum, slate color ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... 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 ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... that is concerned, you need not be disappointed. Not in Van Huyn's time, nor for nearly two centuries later, could the meaning of that engraving have been understood. It was only when the work was taken up and followed by Young and Champollion, by Birch and Lepsius and Rosellini and Salvolini, by Mariette Bey and by Wallis Budge and Flinders Petrie and the other scholars of their times that great results ensued, and that the true ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... on its way by now—though Gwendolyn could not recall the moment of starting. The Piper had not waited to be invited, but strolled along with the others, his birch-stemmed tobacco-pipe in a corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets, and the ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... will burn all right, but it is a good thing to have the birch. We shall have a supper worth while in a few minutes. Stacy, get ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... the hill, or that Tytler had worked round to the village in the rear. Some attacks, however, were made upon the Afghan intrenchments. These, however, were unsuccessful, and some valuable lives were lost. Major Birch and Lieutenant Fitzgerald, both of the 27th Native Infantry, were killed; Captain Maclean, of the 14th Sikhs, was wounded; and between thirty and forty rank and ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... yung men and maides, old men and wives, run gadding over the night to the woods, groves, hils, and mountains, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return, bringing with them birch and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withall; and no meruaile, for there is a great Lord present amongst them as superintendent and Lord of their sports, namely, Sathan prince of hel. But the chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their May-pole, (say rather their stinking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... quickly good-night came—that sad, that dreaded good-night. But sadness may be of such a kind as to give rise to the happiest, the purest feelings—and such was this.... He and I sat in the Moss house. Never saw the glen more beautiful; the birch glittering in the sun and waving its feathery boughs; the burn murmuring more gently than usual; the wood-pigeons answering one another from tree to tree. Had not courage ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell |
