"Fir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boughs, and from it a dead deer suspended, with white filmed eyes, and the firelight warm on its dun flank; behind, the black deep of the forest, sounded, if at all, by the cry of a lonely wolf. These sights he recalled, with the scent of green fir burning and the smart of ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. And instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and man shall nowhere crush man on all the holy earth. Tomorrow's sun shall rise," said the stranger, "and it shall flood these dark kopjes with light, and ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... distance along this gorge that I found myself sitting the next morning: and how, and in what trance, I passed that whole blank night is obliterated from my consciousness. When I looked about with the return of light I saw majestic fir-grown mountains on either hand, almost meeting overhead at some points, deeply shading the mossy gorge. I rose, and careless of direction, went still onward, and walked and walked for hours, unconscious of hunger; there was a profusion of wild mountain-strawberries, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... infrequently some one wanders up to ask what news there is in the last paper I have received, or to make inquiries about the American war. If no one comes I prop my book open with stones touched by the Fir-bolgs, and sleep for hours in the delicious warmth of the sun. The last few days I have almost lived on the round walls, for, by some miscalculation, our turf has come to an end, and the fires are kept up with dried cow-dung—a ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... of a relation there was a large and extremely barren heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man, but several hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five years previously and planted with Scotch fir. The change in the native vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable—more than is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not only the proportional numbers of the heath-plants were wholly changed, but TWELVE SPECIES of plants (not counting grasses ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... backsliding, I will love them freely; for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard him, and observed him. I am like a green fir-tree; from me is thy ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... a sledge to take him across the forest, and he and his driver had pushed their way under a sky of lead and through whirling clouds of fresh sleet past the central beechwood, where the great boles stood straight and bare amid fantastic masses of drift; through the rock and fir region, where all was white, and the trees drooped under their wintry load; and beneath withered and leaning oaks, throwing gaunt limbs here and there from out the softening effacing mantle of the snow. Night fell when the journey was half over, and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... beyond them. Wild sweeps of fell and field faded on the sight to those dim and remote hues of distance only visible upon days of exceeding aerial brilliancy. Immediately beneath the eminence subtended ragged expanses of rainbow-colored heath and fern and furze spotted with small fir trees which showed blue against the tones of the moor. The heather's pink clearly contrasted with the paler shades of the ling, and an additional silvery twinkle of light inhabited the latter plant, its cause last year's dead white branches and twigs ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... highway are shunned by the rural Pan, who chooses rather to foot it along the sheep track on the limitless downs or the thwart-leading footpath through copse and spinney, not without pleasant fellowship with feather and fir. Nor does it follow from all this that the god is unsocial. Albeit shy of the company of his more showy brother-deities, he loveth the more unpretentious humankind, especially them that are adscripti ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... the mound, Pencroft and his two companions set to work, with no other tools than their hands, to despoil of its principal branches a rather sickly tree, a sort of marine fir; with these branches they made a litter, on which, covered with grass and leaves, they could carry ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... into a scanty plantation of straight-limbed fir-trees, that grew in rows and shook their sturdy winter foliage defiantly in the very teeth of the frosty breeze. A straight graveled carriage-drive ran between these straight trees across a smoothly kept lawn to a square red-brick mansion, every window of which winked and glittered in the January ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... no one could think of finding such trees here. The seeds are produced in cones; but we could find none that had any in them, or that were in a proper state for vegetation or botanical examination. Besides these, there was another tree or shrub of the spruce-fir kind, but it was very small. We also found on the isle a sort of scurvy-grass, and a plant, called by us Lamb's Quarters, which, when boiled, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... a stately fir, in which there sits a fairy maiden waited on by dwarfs, rewarding the innocent and plaguing the guilty; and there is the German song of the maiden in the pine, whose bark the boy splits with a gold and silver horn. Stories again are circulated in Sweden, among the peasantry, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... blushing new-made bride, Clustering, empurples all the mountain's side; The yew, which, in the place of sculptured stone, Marks out the resting-place of men unknown; The hedge-row elm; the pine, of mountain race; The fir, the Scotch fir, never out of place; The cedar, whose top mates the highest cloud, Whilst his old father Lebanon grows proud 300 Of such a child, and his vast body laid Out many a mile, enjoys the filial shade; The oak, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... gone up the river nearly two miles when, coming to a little stream which empties into the larger, I turned in to explore its course. Fir and hemlock of a century's growth met overhead, and formed an archway radiant with frost-work. All was dark within, but I was young and fearless, and as I peered into an unbroken forest that reared itself on ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... guide, and mounted on a mule, slowly and painfully ascended a steep and rugged path, now crossing a narrow bridge, spanning a fathomless abyss, again creeping along the edge of a precipice, where the eagle soared and screamed over the fir tops in the abyss below, and where a perpendicular wall rose to giddy heights in the clouds above. The path at times was so narrow, that it seemed that the mountain goat could with difficulty find a foothold for its slender hoof. ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... You do not see the fly? I mean a flight. What is that bust to flin-ders? That is a stim-boat was carryin' on too much stim, and the stim, which is made of coal, goes, off like gun-pow-dair if you put lights onto it. This is a fir-ful and awe-fool sight. The other stim-boat is not bustin', it is sailin'. What is that man behind the whil-house with the cards while another signer kicks into him on his coat-tails, I do not know. It is steel ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... of the valley bordering on the cave, shaded by fir and other trees, was thoroughly explored, and on turning the point of the southwestern spur, the colonists entered a narrower gorge similar to the picturesque columns of basalt on the coast. Here the trees were fewer. Stones took the place of grass. Goats and musmons gambolled among ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... a nice little Fir-tree. The place he had was a very good one; the sun shone on him; as to fresh air, there was enough of that, and round him grew many large-sized comrades, pines as well as firs. But the little Fir wanted so very much to be a ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... lay, is the paradise of Sweden. As its name imports, it is "the land of valleys." The whole province stands high above the sea, rising higher as we travel farther north. The hills which separate the valleys are mostly crowned with pine and fir, and down their sides run broad and gently sloping fields. Here and there the scenery is varied by a little hamlet nestling along the hillside. Little lakes, too, dot the surface of the land, and tiny brooks go babbling across the fields. One stream, famous in Swedish history, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... and linnet sung their gladsome summer-lay; Through the fir trees' cooling vista rose the cataract's white spray; And the light blue smoke of even o'er the darksome forests fell— Rose and lingered like a lover loath to bid his love farewell; And in silence, Wistful silence, Shed its peace o'er ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... freezing, whispering silence. The moon rose mysteriously behind a line of black fir-trees, sending shafts of blue light into the hollow cup of mountain gorges. It was a poet's world, Blake or Shelley could have made it, it was too cold for Keats. Winn had not read these poets. It reminded him of a particularly good chamois hunt, in which he had bagged a splendid fellow, after ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... lakes of various sizes, some of which are connected by fine water courses, while others are entirely isolated. The wooded country is undulating, the elevated portions being covered chiefly with pine, fir, spruce, and other coniferous trees, and the lowest depressions being occupied by lakes, ponds, or marshes, around which occur the tamarack, willow, and other trees which thrive in moist ground, while the regions between these extremes are covered with oak, poplar, ash, birch, maple, and many ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... day nor night: that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea those nations shall be utterly wasted. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box-tree together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary: and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee: and all they that despised thee shall ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... when Spring comes gaily in. Spring is the very Saviour, as it were, of all the numberless folk, great and small, which grow green and blossom there, wherefore the forest holds festival for his birthday and cradle feast as is but fitting! The fir-tree lights up brighter tips to its boughs, as children do with tapers at Christmastide. Then comes the largesse. It lasts much more than one evening, and the gifts bestowed on all are without number, and bright and various ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the dark grayness of a moonless night. The cliff here was not more than twenty feet above the high tide, which surged and swept deep at its base. The grass upon the top was short; young fir-trees stood here and there. All this Caius saw. The woman he could not see at first. Then, in a minute, he did see her—standing on the edge of the bank, her form outlined against what light there was in sea and sky. He saw her swing something ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... this tree as it bears on the question of the greater variability of our hedgerow trees compared with those under strictly natural conditions. A well-informed writer (10/160. 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1849?, page 822.) states that the Scotch fir presents few varieties in its native Scotch forests; but that it "varies much in figure and foliage, and in the size, shape, and colour of its cones, when several generations have been produced away from its native locality." There is little doubt that the highland and lowland varieties ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... on the sight, Nature's volcanic amphitheatre, Chimera's alps extend from left to right: Beneath, a living valley seems to stir; Flocks play, trees wave, streams flow, the mountain fir Nodding above; behold black Acheron! Once consecrated to the sepulchre. Pluto! if this be hell I look upon, Close shamed Elysium's gates, my shade shall seek ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... earn our dollars easily, but it's very wrong. We'll take that man's case as an example. He has a little, desolate holding up in the bush of Ontario, a hole chopped out of the forest studded all over with sawn-off fir-stumps, with a little, two-roomed log shack on it. In all probability there isn't a settlement within two or three leagues of the spot. Now, as a rule, a place of that kind won't produce enough to keep a ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... with fatal love to frenzy fir'd, But how much happier, liv'd he now, were he, Pierced with whatever pangs for love of Thee! Since could he hear that heavenly voice of thine, With Adriana's lute2 of sound divine, Fiercer than Pentheus'3 ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... days spent in Devonshire dales. From the lawns sweet-smelling violets perfumed the air. Matchless orchids clung to the trees, and the delicate maiden-hair fern held its own with the hardier varieties. Dusky fir-trees, groups of Australian araucarias, and Japanese oak trees and chestnuts set off the brightness of the flower beds. In the park there is a beautiful pond, from the centre of which a fountain throws a crystal spray to catch the sun's rays and ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... the remarkable grandeur around us. Near by was a side canyon of the most picturesque type, down which a clear little brook danced from ledge to ledge and from pool to pool, twenty to thirty feet at a time. We named it Leaping Brook. The rocks were mossy, and fir trees, pines, cedars, and cottonwoods added the charm of foliage to the brilliant colours of the rocks and the sheen of falling water, here and there lost in the most profound shadows. Beaman made a number of views while the rest of the men climbed for various purposes. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the Naze, with directions to take all the men out of Oyster Vessels and others that were not Exempted. The project succeeded, and they are return'd with fourteen men, all fit, and but one has ever been in the Service. The coast was Alarm'd, and the country people came downe and fir'd from the Shore upon the Smacks, and no doubt but they doe still take 'em to be privateers." [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1470—Capt. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... traced without break of continuity from the base of the toadstool into the soil and tree (Fig. 16). I have several times followed these dark mycelial cords into the timber of old beeches and spruce fir stumps, but they are also to be found in oaks, plums, various conifers, and probably may occur in most of our timber trees if ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... put in hand, to be divided into a dispensary, (all the hospital stores being at that time under tents,) a ward for the troops, and another for the convicts. It was to be built of wood, and the roof to be covered in with shingles, made from a species of fir that is found here. The heavy rains also pointed out the necessity of sheltering the detachment, and until barracks could be built, most of them covered their tents with thatch, or erected for themselves temporary clay huts. The barracks were begun early in March; but ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... description we all became eager to try to catch fish in the way he spoke of. We soon found the wood he mentioned, a species of fir which contained a large amount of resin, and split up into small pieces it emitted ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... crowns, with her enclosure green, As with a rural mound, the champaign head Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides, With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, Access denied; and overhead up grew Insuperable height of loftiest shade, Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,— A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend, Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops The verd'rous wall of Paradise up sprung; Which to our ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... to prove it. In all these narrow streets a great multitude of people were passing us; some were laden with vines, others with young forest trees, and still others with rude garlands of flowers. The peasant women's faces, as the bent figures staggered beneath a young fir-tree, were purple, but their smiles were as gay as the wild flowers with which the stones were thickly strewn. Their ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... of fir trees lay quite beyond the meadow. It was a silent, evocative spot, unfrequented except for a peasant now and then trudging along under a bundle of wood or a weather-beaten basket of provisions. Kirtley had managed to stray that far once ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... fir and the pine, flourish most in the mountains on account of the eager air, while in this region where it is more temperate the poplars and the willows thrive best. Again the arbute and the oak prefer the more fertile lands, while the almond and the fig trees love the lowlands.[61] ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... lying through waist-high fir scrub, was pretty bad underfoot, but beyond was a stretch of fine timber, where the trees had done much to arrest the snow, and the going was not so severe. Aladdin calculated that he should make the distance in an hour and a half; and ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... smiling at himself. He remembered he was young; the funeral curtains rose, and he saw his life shine and broaden and flow out majestically, like a river sunward. The smile still on his lips, he lit a second candle and a third; a fire stood ready built in a chimney, he lit that also; and the fir-cones and the gnarled olive billets were swift to break in flame and to crackle on the hearth, and the room brightened and enlarged about him like his hopes. To and fro, to and fro, he went, his hands lightly clasped, his breath ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rattled through the trees to vary the crackle of the fire with a "siss" as they fell on the embers. The low monotony of sound was lulling in its evenness, when a faint crunch of a foot on the snow was heard. Rolf reached for his gun, the fir tree screen was shaken a little, and a minute later there bounded in upon them the snow covered form of little dog Skookum, expressing his good-will by excessive sign talk in which every limb and member had a part. They had left him behind, indeed, but not with ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of the forests we came—the rain having ceased—into a strange-looking landscape, whose japanesiness is equalled possibly only by Japan itself. There were the queer rounded hills, the gnarled and twisted little pines and dim fir-clad slopes cutting the ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... ordinarily as beef here, and is excellent sweet meat. They tell us that beares there do never hurt any body, but fly away from you, unless you pursue and set upon them; but wolves do much mischief. Mr. Harrington told us how they do to get so much honey as they send abroad. They make hollow a great fir-tree, leaving only a small slitt down straight in one place, and this they close up again, only leave a little hole, and there the bees go in and fill the bodys of those trees as full of wax and honey as they can hold; and the inhabitants at times ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... paradox, will soon dissolve. Hear first, Burgoyne, the valour of these men, Fir'd with the zeal, of fiercest liberty, No fear of death, so terrible to all, Can stop their rage. Grey-headed clergymen, With holy bible, and continual prayer, Bear up their fortitude—and talk of heav'n, And tell them, that sweet soul, who dies ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... should represent the ancient ideas in a decorous manner. The old belief was retained, but in a mysterious or sublimated form. As symbols of the male, or active element in creation, the sun, light, fire, a torch, the phallus or lingam, an erect serpent, a tall straight tree, especially the palm or fir or pine, were adopted. Equally useful for symbolism were a tall upright stone (menhir), a cone, a pyramid, a thumb or finger pointed straight, a mask, a rod, a trident, a narrow bottle or amphora, a bow, an arrow, a lance, a horse, a bull, a lion, and many other animals conspicuous ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... the trees their greenness, even to those Cedars in Lebanon, in whose thick boughs The birds their nests build; though the stork doth choose The fir-trees for ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... old Dog Lion. I was on my Favorite Horse Old Gotch. He feared Lions equally as great as I hated Squaws, They followed me for about three miles and when I reached an open space in the woods I halted near an old fir stub, I dismounted cautiously I could hear the old Dog growl and the whelps squeal like a flock of young pups. I found some dry leaves and struck a fire breaking off the limbs of the old stub for fuel, After an hour these limbs were all burned up and I had to go about thirty feet ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... that body laid the measure aside for the present. Meanwhile the conditions of future trouble were preparing in the Ohio Valley, where French and English were making conflicting claims and planting rival stations; and in Nova Scotia, where the town of Halifax was founded in an uninviting fir forest, and the project was mooted of transporting the French Acadians to some place or places where they would cease to constitute a peril by serving as a stage for French machinations ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... but still at a very rapid rate; and if I at all showed signs of flagging, two of the huge Indians would lift me up by the shoulders and help me along, scarcely allowing my feet to touch the ground. We camped in a wood for a short time, making an arbour with fir branches to keep off the cold, and then on we went. My heart beat quick as, soon after daylight, we approached the height whence we could look down, I knew, on my tent. We reached the spot—the one where I had been standing when ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... although he sat close to the speakers. The waiters and hotel guests looked odd, and seemed to swim in a kind of rosy twilight. In the sky there seemed to be three times as many stars as usual. When the Ellrichs had withdrawn he went toward midnight alone into the fir woods, and heard unknown birds sing, caught strange and magic harmonies in the rustling of the branches, and felt as if he walked on air. He went to bed in the gray of early dawn, after writing from his overflowing ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Fleet should go by them; and about four days after, towards evening, it appear'd in sight, being convoy'd by one English and one Dutch Man-of-War. Kid soon fell in with them, and getting into the midst of them, fir'd at a Moorish ship which was next him; but the Men-of-War taking the Alarm, bore down upon Kid, and firing upon him, obliged him to sheer off, he not being strong enough to contend with them. Now he had begun hostilities, he resolv'd to go on, and therefore he went and cruis'd along ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... vigorous hand if the trees are to be saved, and it is important that every scrap should be burned. There is almost certain to be a further appearance of the Blight, which should be destroyed by one of the many remedies known to be effectual. Fir Tree Oil Insecticide has proved to be an excellent remedy. Gishurst Compound, in the proportion of eight ounces to a gallon of water, with sufficient clay added to render it adhesive, makes a capital winter paint for Apple trees. But there is no cheap remedy equal to soft soap ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... chopped down a small fir that had adorned the front yard and had set it up as a Christmas tree—an attention that was not lost upon Billie. The Hopper had brought some mechanical toys from town, and Humpy essayed the agreeable task of teaching the youngster how to operate them. Mary produced coffee and pound cake for the ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... any of these books I am filled with a curious melancholy. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire means more to me than to some: I hear the whirr of the buzz-saw as I open it; even in its driest page I smell the resin of fir and spruce; Locke's Human Understanding recalls things no man can understand if he has not worked alongside Indians and next to Chinamen. As for Carlyle, I never hear him mentioned without seeing the mountains and glaciers of the Selkirks; in his pages is the sound ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... discoveries of the ruins at Nimroud show that the same precious wood was used in Assyrian edifices; and the king of Nineveh, as we learn from the inscriptions, sent men, precisely as Solomon had done, to cut it in Mount Lebanon. Fir was also employed in the Jewish buildings, and probably ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... second field, lusty horses and stout country-folk a-ploughing. The way I followed took me through many fields thus occupied, and through many strips of plantation, and then over a little space of smooth turf, very pleasant to the feet, set with tall fir-trees and clamorous with rooks, making ready for the winter, and so back again into the quiet road. I was now not far from the end of my day's journey. A few hundred yards farther, and, passing through a gap in the hedge, I began to go down hill through a pretty ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... The magic spirit of the woods, with its sense of peace and freedom, enfolded his very soul. Those things of earth, the sordid meannesses of his everyday life, faded away; they were as far removed as that diamond star he was watching twinkling on the sharp peak of a dark fir. He lay on his back, his hands clasped beneath his head, and gazed up into the tender blue of heaven until the night began to deepen. The crackling embers of the fire slowly smouldered down, the chorus in the treetops began to subside. Gradually a great stillness ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... on before me went; I sole pursued, List'ning their speech, that to my thoughts convey'd Mysterious lessons of sweet poesy. But soon they ceas'd; for midway of the road A tree we found, with goodly fruitage hung, And pleasant to the smell: and as a fir Upward from bough to bough less ample spreads, So downward this less ample spread, that none. Methinks, aloft may climb. Upon the side, That clos'd our path, a liquid crystal fell From the steep rock, and through the sprays above Stream'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... being excessively anxious to get as far as possible beyond the circle enclosed by our foes, we descended several miles along the Kilworth mountains. Towards the close of evening we crossed the River Funcheon, near Kilworth, by means of a fir-tree, the roots of which had been undermined by the rapid flood. We had spent the whole day in wet clothes. We mounted this tree, Indian-like, in the midst of rain, and dropped in the shallow part of the river from the branches. We were unable to procure lodgings afterwards ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... the course of true love ran no smoother for her Than the Pas de Calais or the bark of a fir, The defendant discovered a widow with gold In the bank and the plaintiff ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... one can easily be the first down in any hotel—save for a sleepy boots or waiter. Not so in Holland. It was so early that I am able to say nothing of the country between Groningen and Meppel, the capital of the peat trade, save that it was peaty: heather and fir trees, shallow lakes and men cutting peat, as far as eye could reach ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... lad, dessay; but it's werry wonderful here. Look along that hollow place where the big fir ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... when Charles had been expelled from Harrow for some boyish freak in his vengeance against a neighbouring farmer, who had reported to the school authorities the doings of a few beagles upon his land, Charles had cut off the heads of all the trees in a young fir plantation his father was proud of the exploit. When he was rusticated a second time from Trinity, and when the father received an intimation that his son's name had better be taken from the College books, the squire was not so well pleased; but even then ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... in the scene to justify an average amount of enthusiasm. Those steep broken hills in the background form the frontier fortress of the maritime Alps, the last outwork of which is the rocky spur on which Molyneux and his companion are lying. Fir woods feather the sky-line; and from among these, here and there, the tall stone pines stand up alone, like sentinels—steady, upright, and unwearied, though their guard has not been relieved for centuries. All around, wild myrtle, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... water be absolutely pure; and if brought from the sea, care must be exercised about the vessel containing it. Salt acts upon the glazing of earthen ware of some kinds. Stone or glass jars are safest. New oak casks are fatal from the tannin which soaks out; fir casks are safe and good. So delicate and sensitive are the minute creatures which people the sea, that they have been found dead on opening a cask in which a new oak bung was the only source of poison. And no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... mountain girls from the fir-dark valleys away up at their highest part, and with sunburned plains-women and agile foresters, all over the country, as well as those in the towns, and everywhere there was the same high level of intelligence. Some ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... then drawing his body slightly backward, with the velocity of lightning he struck the coachman full in the mouth, and the last blow was the severest of all, for it cut the coachman's lips nearly through; blows so quickly and sharply dealt I had never seen. The coachman reeled like a fir-tree in a gale, and seemed nearly unsensed. "Ho! what's this? a fight! a fight!" sounded from a dozen voices, and people came running from all directions to see what was going on. The coachman, coming somewhat to himself, disencumbered himself of his coat and hat; and, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... base, was a dream of beauty, green as an English lawn, starred with white lilies, and dotted with clumps of trees which were festooned with red and white roses, clematis, and white jasmine. Above the hardier deciduous trees appeared the Pinus excelsa, the silver fir, and the spruce; higher yet the stately grace of the deodar clothed the hillsides; and above the forests rose the snow mountains of Tilail, pink in the sunrise. High above the Zoji, itself 11,500 feet in altitude, a mass of grey and red mountains, snow-slashed and snow- ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... grass which, being no more regularly grazed upon by sheep, as was once the case, grew thick and tangled. Furze, too, and heath covered the slopes, and in places vast quantities of fern. There had always been copses of fir and beech and nut-tree covers, and these increased and spread, while bramble, briar, and hawthorn extended ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... the right is a wooden fence which we can easily climb. From there we can run all the way up through the meadows to a thick hawthorn hedge; on the other side of that begin the bushes and behind that the woods with the old fir and pine trees, but we can't climb over it. We could easily enough get to the castle from ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... those lofty outposts of Dartmoor, named respectively Nattadown and Middledown. The first lies nearer to the village, and upon its side, beneath a fir wood which crowns one spur, spread steep wastes of fern and furze. This spot was a favourite one with Clement Hicks, and a fortnight after the incidents last related he sat there smoking his pipe, while his eyes roved upon the scene subtended before him. The hill ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... butter had all to be fetched from it, the milk twice a day, whether the sun blazed, or the chilly Scottish drizzle blotted out the hills in a misty haze, or the north wind swept across it, and shook the gaunt fir-trees to and fro in ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... peaks inaccessible to man. Beside the road, a stout parapet of boulders covered by ferns and lichen, stood, in places, between the passengers and certain death, a thousand feet below; while up the steep banks rose forests of sal and fir, climbing towards ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... few unhealthy fir-trees and cottage where the path joined the highway he hastened along, and struck away to the left, descending the steep side of the country to the west of the Brown House. Here at the base of the chalk formation he neared the brook that oozed ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... for you," said the Spirit, "enough to last you till your strength enables you to beat up the haunts of the deer and the moose. And here is the bow and arrow—the heart of the fir supplies the one, the other is the thigh-bone of the buck. Son of the mighty river, you are naked and must be clothed. The winter is coming; the snows will descend, and the winds will leave their caverns in the mountains towards ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... only;—'tis too late to praise. If want of skill or want of care appear, Forbear to hiss;—the poet cannot hear. By all, like him, must praise and blame be found, At last, a fleeting gleam, or empty sound; Yet then shall calm reflection bless the night, When liberal pity dignified delight; When pleasure fir'd her torch at virtue's flame, And mirth was bounty with an ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so wed examined, that none has been found of late.** Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil-wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which the inhabitants called fir: but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them; and therefore rather suppose that they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic tree. (* See his Hist. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... acquaintance. It keeps, too, all that half century, a virginal grace of outline, but having once flowered, begins quietly to put away the things of its youth. Years by year the lower rounds of boughs are shed, leaving no scar; year by year the star-branched minarets approach the sky. A fir-tree loves a water border, loves a long wind in a draughty canon, loves to spend itself secretly on the inner finishings of its burnished, shapely cones. Broken open in mid-season the petal-shaped scales show a crimson satin surface, perfect ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... 2) represent a fire-engine of 7-inch barrels and 8-inch stroke.[L] The cistern marked A is made of mahogany or oak. The upper work, B, and side-boxes or pockets, C, are of Baltic fir. The sole, D, upon which the barrels stand, and which also contains the valves, is of cast-iron, with covers of the same material, which are screwed down, and the joints made good with leather or india-rubber. The pieces E, ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... canoe, except in the two extreme projections, bends downward a little from the centre towards the head and stern, giving it the appearance of what in ships is called "broken-backed." The gunwales are of fir, in some instances of one piece, three or four inches broad in the centre, and tapering gradually away towards the ends. The timbers, as well as the fore-and-aft connecting pieces, are of the same material, the former ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... and fertile, covered with fields of Indian corn, flax, and hemp; here and there are large plantations of fir-trees; the chestnut-trees we observed were very luxuriant, loaded with fruit; the apples thickly clustered in the numerous orchards, and everything ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... April, And the snow lingers on the dark sides of evergreens; The grass is brown and soggy With only a faint, occasional overwash of green. But under the leafless branches The white bells of snowdrops are nodding and shaking Above their green sheaths. Snow, fir-trees, snowdrops—stem and flower— Nature offers us only white and green At this so early ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... rough affair, made of logs and chinked with fir boughs, and having an earthen floor. A bunk made of rough timbers and mattressed with twigs of fur was covered with some blankets and clothing, tossed into heaps. Under the blankets at the head of the bunk I found a little pile of books—a Shakespeare, a volume of Emerson's essays, Thoreau's ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to fragments in its descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder, caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... place where we can stop for a rest," and Jet halted in front of a thick clump of fir bushes. "By crawling in there we shall soon be out of sight, and I'll start back for the depot as soon as you think it ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... occasionally a sweet music heard, too soft for even the listening ear to catch by day. Every breath of summer wind that steals through the pine-forests wakes this music as it goes. The stiff spiny leaves of the fir and pine vibrate with the breeze, like the strings of a musical instrument, so that every breath of the night-wind, in a Norwegian forest, wakens a myriad of tiny harps; and this gentle and mournful music may be heard in gushes the whole night through. This ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... Salamander, Aneides hardii (Taylor), is a plethodontid of relict distribution in the spruce-fir vegetational formation from 8500 to 9600 feet elevation in Otero and Lincoln counties, New Mexico. The salamanders on which most of this report is based were collected three, four, and six miles northeast of Cloudcroft in the Sacramento Mountains. Additional individuals were collected on the eastern ...
— Natural History of the Salamander, Aneides hardii • Richard F. Johnston
... coming down the cliffs have cut many canyons or canyon valleys, by which the traveler may pass from the plain below to the terrace above. By these gigantic stairways he may ascend to high plateaus, covered with forests of pine and fir. ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... is fain to hear the soft wind blowing, Soughing through the fir-tops up on northern fells! Oh, my eye's an ache to see the brown burns flowing Through the peaty soil and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Quaker persecution of New England, let us open The Twice-Told Tales and read the story of The Gentle Boy, a Quaker child of six, found sobbing on his father's newly-made grave beside the scaffold under the fir tree. Let us enter the solemn meeting house, hear the clergyman inveigh against the Quakers, and sit petrified when, at the end of the sermon, that boy's mother, like a Daniel entering the lion's den, ascends the pulpit, and ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... domestic, yet partly warlike, and seems to be of some antiquity; and an undulation, or rounded hilly surface of the landscape, sometimes affording wide vistas between the slopes. These hills, which, I suppose, are some of them on the Abbotsford estate, are partly covered with woods, but of Scotch fir, or some tree of that species, which creates no softened undulation, but overspreads the hill like a tightly fitting wig. It is a cold, dreary, disheartening neighborhood, that of Abbotsford; at least, it has appeared so to me at both of my visits,—one of which was on a bleak and windy May morning, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... arrogance to boast of this super-abundance of water in my old home, where, between ourselves, a wholly dry day was rather a notable rarity. Where the aridity is most noticeable is in the great oak and fir woods at Groote Schuur, the lordly pleasure-house which Cecil Rhodes built for himself at Rondebosch, under the slopes of the Devil's Peak. Here, under the trees, the ground is absolutely bare; not ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... very tree where Frederick and Catherine were. Frederick slipped down on the other side, and picked up some stones. Then he climbed up again, and tried to hit the thieves on the head with them: but they only said, 'It must be near morning, for the wind shakes the fir-apples down.' ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... which we mounted with some Difficulty and Loss; all our Batteries firing at the same instant to keep our Action in countenance, and favour our Design. When we were in Possession of the Bastion, the Enemy fir'd most furiously upon us with their small Cannon through a thin brick Wall, by which, and their hand Grenadoes, we lost more Men than we did in the Attack ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... of quarrels impinging upon stout oak; the Doomsmen, hitherto in hiding, were making a diversion, in answer, doubtless, to a signal from their leader. A hundred gray-garbed men showed themselves in the open, coming from the shelter of the fir plantation back of the rickyards; they ran towards the open water gate, exposing themselves recklessly in ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end. Over the hedge on one side we looked into a plowed field, and on the other we looked over a gate at our master's house, which stood by the roadside; at the top of the meadow was a grove of fir trees, and at the bottom a running brook ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted, where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... immense that the wooded plains of the Amazon shrink into comparative insignificance. For the most part these great forests are composed of evergreen trees, the fir, pine, larch, and pitch-pine predominating. In many localities there are hundreds of square miles of perfectly straight pine trees of great height, where neither man nor beast could find the way out. Even experienced trappers dare not enter these forests without blazing trees along their pathway, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... spire; an immense yew-tree, with a kind of friendly gloom, overshadowing, in the little churchyard, nearly half the graves. Rather in the rear of the church is the vicarage-house, snug and sheltered by a line of fir-trees. After walking on about eighty yards, you come to high park-gates, and see a lodge just within, on the left hand side, sheltered by an elm-tree. Having passed through these gates, you wind your way for about two-thirds of a mile ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... more away. But he well knew that between it and Island Lake was a large stretch of blueberry plains. When the fire reached this, it would travel rapidly, devouring everything in its way. Then it would sweep through a thicket of fir and spruce trees on the shore of the lake, and the flames would be sure to leap to the island, which here was but a short distance across. And Jess and his mother were there! They could not escape, for they had no boat. ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... the tree, a big, bushy-branched fir, lay waiting to be carried into the front hall. The lower floor was filled with mysterious packages, so disguised by bulky wrappings that their contents could not even be surmised, and all over the house, from the attic where the tree decorations were stored, to the holly-trimmed ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... "Spruce, fir, pine," growled the bear. His voice was very gruff. But all these were only different names of ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... Boeotian helmets out of the cases which they carried behind their saddles. Some remained with the camels, while the others resumed their march. At last the ensigns of the Republic appeared, that is to say, staves of blue wood terminated in horses' heads or fir cones. The Barbarians all rose with applause; the women rushed towards the guards of the Legion ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... to please me—entirely against his own wishes. Oh, how is it that such a good son cannot get a good wife! He would make any woman happy. I wonder whether I have done right in sending him away? The wind is moaning in the fir plantation at the back of the house. Is there a storm at sea? I forgot to ask Sir James how big the vessel was. The 'Guide to Scotland' says the coast is rugged; and there is a wild sea between the north shore and the Orkney Islands. I almost regret ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... the sun had either risen or was just about to rise. Springing out of bed and drawing up the blind of one of the three tall, narrow windows of my room, I saw him mounting behind a belt of pine and fir which stretched along a bluff of land that ran down to the open sea. And I saw, too, that it was high tide—the sea had stolen up the creek which ran right to the foot of the park, and the wide expanse ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... her as she spoke. Her look and her voice carried him back to the Valley of Trient; he heard the foaming torrent; saw the dark fir-woods, felt a cool breath from the glacier. Thus had Rosamund been wont to talk; then, as now, touching his elementary emotions, but moving his ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... confirmation of the views suggested in the preceding question, my friend Captain Thomas pointed out to me, after the Address was given, that the name of the fort in St. Kilda was, as stated by Martin and Macaulay, "Dun Fir-bholg."] ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... Harding said, taking a few bits of resin out of a bag. "It's common fir gum, such as I could gather a carload of in the forests of Michigan. Guess there's something wrong with my theory about the effects of extreme cold." He took a larger lump from a neat leather case. "This is the genuine article, and it's certainly ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... sunlight, the islands mirrored in the waveless sea, the aromatic breath of the spruce and fir, the salty scent of the tidal shore—this physical world in which they lay—and that other more remote physical world of men and cities—all, all was but the pictured drama of man's inner life. As he lived, each day ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... have to wait and let patience have her perfect work, but we shall surely find at last the stone rolled away, and the Lord waiting to render unto us double for our time of testing, and fulfil the promise, "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, instead of the brier the myrtle tree, and it shall be to the Lord for an everlasting sign that shall not be ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... round a prickly fir-tree at the end of the lawn. Jim stood in the background vaguely staring. The bicycle lamp sent a beam of strong white light deep into the uncanny foliage, heads clustered and hands worked. The night above was silent, dim. There was no wind. In the near distance they could hear ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... That last gun"—for a third was now heard booming over the mingled roar of the sea and the wind—"that last gun came frae the very rock edge. Wae's me, wae's me! maun they perish, an' sae near!" Helen hastily lighted a bundle of more fir, that threw up its red, sputtering blaze half-way to the roof, and, dropping the covering, continued to wave it opposite the window. Guns were still heard at measured intervals, but apparently from a safer ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... doon here a meenit, Teen; the sun's fine an' warm,' said Liz, and plumped down among the bracken, while Teen stood still under the jagged branches of an old fir tree, and looked 'her fill,' as she expressed it, of the lovely world at her feet. It was still a spring world, clothed in a most delicate and exquisite garb of green, waiting only for the touch of later summer to give it a deeper hue. There were ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... plains which stretch stretching towards Archangel and towards Archangel and the shores towards the shores of the White of the White Sea are (48) covered Sea, and covered with immense with immense forests of fir and forests of oak and fir, furnish oak, furnishing at once (54)[40] materials for shipbuilding and inexhaustible materials for supplies of fuel that will for shipbuilding and supplies of fuel. many generations supersede the (54) These ample stores for many necessity of searching ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... sun's brightness looked eternal. The sky was never so blue. Great fleecy clouds rolled and frolicked in well-nigh human abandon. Almost everywhere, when looking upward, the eyes rested against snow-white hills with their black reaching spars of sparse fir trees; while below and stretching away for miles—winding and twisting between the hills—the flat, solidly-frozen Kalamalka Lake, with its fresh, white coating, caught the sun's rays and threw them back in a defiant and blinding dazzle. At intervals, ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... army of anonymous desires and pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we proceed in quest of it. And many of the happiest hours of life fleet by us in this vain attendance on the genius of the place and moment. It is thus that tracts of young fir, and low rocks that reach into deep soundings, particularly torture and delight me. Something must have happened in such places, and perhaps ages back, to members of my race; when I was a child I tried in vain to invent appropriate ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... itself an embodiment of cheer, and when the sixteen chairs were filled and ranged in a circle round the blaze, there was a Christmas picture complete, and as goodly and cheery a picture as one need wish to see. A basket of fir-cones stood at either side of the grate, and the order of proceedings was that each guest in turn should drop a cone into the heart of the fire, and relate an amusing story or coincidence the while it burned. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... hours, when the cypress trees rustle in the breeze, so lonely, that no human step dared to disturb the solemn silence which reigned there at night, became on a sudden, animated, noisy, riotous, and resplendent with light. By the smoky flames of torches, which threw a red glare upon the dark fir-trees, and the white tombstones, many grave-diggers worked merrily, humming snatches of some favorite tune. Their laborious and hazardous industry then commanded a very high price; they were in such request that it was necessary to humor them. They drank often and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of Cape Cod as we look back upon them in that distant November day, and the harbor lies like a great crystal gem on the bosom of a virgin wilderness. The "fir trees, the pine trees, and the bay," rejoice together in freedom, for as yet the axe has spared them; in the noble bay no shipping has found shelter; no voice or sound of civilized man has broken the sweet calm of the forest. The oak ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wider path, create more force and a better current. It's the same way with men and women. Oh, Rose, there is n't a man in the world that's loved you as long, or knows how to love you any better than I do. You're just like a white birch sapling, and I'm a great, clumsy fir tree; but if you 'll only trust yourself to me, Rose, I'll take you ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... stars come falling, while the lights of London shine far away in the valley. Years after Mrs. Barbauld wrote, one man, pre-eminent amongst poets, used to stand upon this hill-top, and lo! as Turner gazed, a whole generation gazed with him. For him Italy gleamed from behind the crimson stems of the fir-trees; the spirit of loveliest mythology floated upon the clouds, upon the many changing tints of the plains; and, as the painter watched the lights upon the distant hills, they sank into his soul, and he painted them ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... of Susy Parlin on a New Year's day, only it is so hard to skip over Christmas. There is such a charm about Christmas! It makes you think at once of a fir tree shining with little candles and sparkling with toys, or of a droll Santa Claus with a pack full of presents, or of a waxen ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... arabesque, half intellectual, half physical. Thus the screen of roses[7] behind certain of his Madonnas, forming an exquisite Morris pattern with the greenish-blue sky interlaced; and those beautiful, carefully-drawn branches of spruce-fir and cypress, lace-like in his Primavera; above all, that fan-like growth of myrtles, delicately cut out against the evening sky, which not merely print themselves as shapes upon the mind, but seem to fill it with a scent ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... certain Aryan languages we find words meaning fir, assuming the meaning of oak; and words meaning oak, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller |
