"Midwinter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... One midwinter day, Father Champreau, a Jesuit missionary, pulled into Twenty Mile. Bonner fell upon him and dragged him into the post, and clung to him and wept, until the priest wept with him from sheer compassion. Then Bonner became madly hilarious and made lavish entertainment, swearing valiantly that his ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... civil and religious capital of these rude islands—is called Tai-o-hae, and lies strung along the beach of a precipitous green bay in Nuka-hiva. It was midwinter when we came thither, and the weather was sultry, boisterous, and inconstant. Now the wind blew squally from the land down gaps of splintered precipice; now, between the sentinel islets of the entry, it came in gusts from seaward. Heavy and dark clouds impended on the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were meetings held four times a year— in October, midwinter, spring, and midsummer—at which all the justices of the peace of the county were supposed to be present. There were, besides, occasional irregular sessions, or meetings of the regular sessions adjourned from one time to another. In ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... other public-spirited Jewish citizens into closer touch with the activities and aspirations of the students. At the fourth annual Convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association to be held during the coming midwinter recess, the idea of graduate Menorah committees and other forms of possible graduate association with the Menorah movement ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... briefly, as was the Indian way, yet with the pictured phrasing which caused each scene to spring into vivid life before the young girl's eyes, he told her of the day, already more than eighteen years gone by, when, in the wake of a long midwinter storm, the first sailing vessel ever beheld by his people had fled for refuge to their bay; and of the little girl carefully brought to shore by her old nurse in the first boat to touch the beach. A mere baby she was, too young to know aught ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... of Peter the Great passed from this life, in 1725, when Bering's forces were travelling in midwinter from St. Petersburg to cross Siberia to the Pacific, on what is known as the First Expedition.[6] {11} Three years it took him to go from the west coast of Europe to the east coast of Asia, crossing from Okhotsk to Kamchatka, whence he sailed on the 9th of July, 1728, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the city editor, dryly, "that Gallegher's reasoning has impressed you; and I also see that before the week is out all of my young men will be under bonds for assaulting innocent pedestrians whose only offense is that they wear gloves in midwinter." ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... aera, and commenced in different places at four different periods of the year! But it is very remarkable that, whatever was the commencement of the year in the early part of the "Saxon Chronicle", in the latter part the year invariably opens with Midwinter-day or the Nativity. Gervase of Canterbury, whose Latin chronicle ends in 1199, the aera of "legal" memory, had formed a design, as he tells us, of regulating his chronology by the Annunciation; but from an honest fear of falsifying ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... houses by reminding her that pecuniary loss is not the sole objection to being burned out of house and home whenever the fire fiend happens to crave a flaming sacrifice, in the daytime or in the night, in summer or in midwinter, in sickness or in health; that not only heir-looms, but hearthstones and door posts, endeared by long associations, have a value beyond the power of insurance companies to restore, and that protection against ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... the winter aspect of these wastes can be imagined. The Northern forests are silent enough in winter time, but the silence of the Barren Grounds is far more profound. Even in the depths of midwinter the North-Western bush has voices and is full of animal life. The barking cry of the crows (these birds are the greatest imaginable nuisance to the trapper, whose baits they steal even before his back is turned) is still heard; the snow-birds ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... delay. "I'll speak to Mrs. Richie about it, and get the thing settled," she said to herself; "no use dawdling along this way!" But just the day before she found time to speak to Mrs. Richie—it was in David's midwinter ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... westwards, I was at Colac. It was the month of June (midwinter), but the country, with its lake, was not the less beautiful in the universal green. Excepting the partial post-and-rail barricade of my friend William Robertson's 5,000 acres of purchased land, there was nothing all around but free and open squatting. ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... the bleak promontory, cholera-stricken, mocked rather than sustained during their benumbing toil with rations of uncooked meat and green coffee-berries, the British soldiery wasted away. Their effective force sank at midwinter to eleven thousand men. In the hospitals, which even at Scutari were more deadly to those who passed within them than the fiercest fire of the enemy, nine thousand men perished before the end of February. The time ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... must be somewhere in the solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own. Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the midnight sky was a darker blue even than our midwinter sky, and that the sun seemed a little smaller. And there were two small moons! "like our moon but smaller, and quite differently marked," one of which moved so rapidly that its motion was clearly visible as ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... 38. Midwinter, and provisions low. Seven already buried in the ocean. Sickness setting in with more severity, women and children to be somehow cared for, two tiny babies to be shielded from all harm, their only home the inhospitable shore. No time to lose! The 16th they began to build the first house, and so ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... two brigs were freed off Cape Walsingham, June 5, 1851, after drifting in eight and a half months a distance of ten hundred and fifty miles. It is impossible to adequately describe their physical discomforts and dangers, the mental depression of the sunless midwinter of eight weeks, and the even harder experiences of the Arctic spring-tide, when excessive cold and increasing lassitude made steady inroads on their impaired constitutions. Kane tells us they were continually ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... heavy knife at the short grass. The mottled crotons, the yellow allamanda and pink hibiscus bushes, the clump of Eucharist lilies, the great trailing masses of orchids that hung among the red flowers of the stately flamboyant tree by the green hedge, joined to make me forget the midwinter date on the calendar. The time seemed in my half-dream July in New York or ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... trundling, ain't you?" I admitted that I was. A good many years later, after I had been elected Vice-President, I went on a cougar hunt in northwestern Colorado with Johnny Goff, a famous hunter and mountain man. It was midwinter. I was rather proud of my achievements, and pictured myself as being known to the few settlers in the neighborhood as a successful mountain-lion hunter. I could not help grinning when I found out that ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... powerful fleet to held the English. William bribed the Danish commanders and they "sailed away without striking a blow." Then, little by little, he brought the land to obedience. By forced marches in midwinter, by roads cast up through bogs, and by sudden night attacks William ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... food. In some towns every family had a flock, and their clanking was heard all day and sometimes all night. They roamed the streets all summer, eating grass by the highways and wallowing in the puddles. Sometimes they were yoked with a goose-yoke made of a shingle with a hole in it. In midwinter they were kept in barnyards, but the rest of the year they spent the night in the street, each flock near the home of its owner. It is said that one old goose of each flock always kept awake and stood watch; and it was told in Hadley, Massachusetts, that if a young man chanced ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... bright, is the tracery of the illuminated streets, through which the people go to and fro. Save for an occasional stirring, or a passing voice speaking out of the dimness beneath me, the night is very still. Not a cloud is to be seen in the dark midwinter sky to hide one speck of its broad smears of star dust and its ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... this summer of prosecutions; and they seem very well inclined to get up enough of them (laughter). Well, gentlemen, I'm not complaining of that, but I will tell you who complain loudly—the "outs," with whom it is midwinter, while the solicitor-general and his friends are enjoying this summer (renewed laughter). Well, gentlemen, some time last September two prominent leaders of the Fenian movement—alleged to be so at least—named Kelly and Deasy, were arrested in ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... however; but after that, short spells of illness, mostly heavy colds, were the rule. He was a strong man and had taken pride in being able to do things which few other men could do without harm coming to them; for instance, to chop a hole in the ice and go swimming in midwinter. But exposure to the chill, damp air of that North Sea country and the heavy fogs that drifted in from the ocean at night, when he rode alone, often many miles over the moor on his tours of inspection, had undermined ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... try it for a month. And she thought how delicious it would be in midwinter, just at the time her quarter's rent was due. But, alas, this was not possible! The rest and the sleep must be eternal; this thought chilled her, and her longing for death faded away before the unrelenting severity of the bonds ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Mahtigwess, the Rabbit, who is called in the Micmac tongue Ableegumooch, lived with his grandmother, waiting for better times; and truly he found it a hard matter in midwinter, when ice was on the river and snow was on the plain, to provide even for his small household. And running through the forest one day he found a lonely wigwam, and he that dwelt therein was Keeoony, the Otter. The lodge was on the bank of a river, and a smooth road of ice slanted ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... effect was of brownness. Midwinter never saw the passing of the tan from her cheek; her vigorous young fists were always brown; when permitted a choice she chose brown clothes: she was a ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... friends; told them to go on, thanking them, and saying he would ask their aid at some future day. For upwards of a year, alone in the wilds, he watched the crew. Once, what he thought a favorable chance having occurred—it being midwinter, and the savages encamped, apparently to remain so—he anew mustered his friends, and marched against them; but, getting wind of his coming, the enemy fled, and in such panic that everything was left behind but their weapons. During the winter, much the same ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... alder copse and juniper jungle—hard indeed, and terribly vexatious—and he saw with delight the great open slope, covered with an unbroken surface of glittering snow. The sun (which at midwinter is but a few hours above the horizon) had set; and the stars were flashing forth with dazzling brilliancy. Ralph stopped, as he reached the clearing, to give Biceps an opportunity to overtake him; for Biceps, like all marine animals, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... have expected adequate wages of superintendence—compensation, in other words, for his skill and judgment in navigating the venture through the stormy waters of the business sea, compared with which, as it was in that day, the North Atlantic in midwinter is a mill pond. For this service he would be considered justified in making a large addition to the margin of ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... enough. With apparent indifference he crosses your path, or walks in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks and remote barns. Carry the carcass of a pig, or a fowl, or a dog, to a distant field in midwinter, and in a few nights his tracks cover the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... others the reaper who cuts the last ear is said to have killed the "wolf" or the "dog," and sometimes receives the name of "wolf" or "dog" and retains it till the next harvest. The corn spirit is also said to be hiding in the barn till the corn is threshed, or it may be said to reappear at midwinter, when the farmer begins to think of his new year of labour and harvest. Side by side with the conception of the corn spirit as an animal is the anthropomorphic view of it; and this element must have predominated in the evolution of the cereal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... he was "quick on the draw" and because he never missed anything that he shot at. But at sixty, when he was still hated by many, loved by a very few and feared by every one, he died,—crushed under his horse when it fell on the Devil's Tooth trail one sleety day in midwinter. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... our young men was born under a star in the midwinter.... His name is written on the sun and it is frosted on the moon.... Earth breathes him like an eternal spring: he is a second ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Exercising Helmer Hanssen on a Seal-hunt Hanssen and Wisting Lashing the New Sledges Passage in the Ice Johansen Packing Provisions in the "Crystal Palace" A Corner of the Kitchen Stubberud Taking it Easy Johansen Packing Biscuits in the "Crystal Palace" Hassel and the Vapour-bath Midwinter Day, June, 1911 Our Ski-binding in its Final Form At Work on Personal Outfit Trying on Patent Goggles Hassel in the Oil-store Deep in Thought Funcho The Loaded Sledges in the Clothing Store Sledges Ready for Use Being Hauled Out of the Store-room At the Depot in ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... It was midwinter when the Ten Thousand Greeks who had followed their leader so loyally through the plains of Asia Minor found themselves friendless and in great danger in the very heart of ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... almanac, it was the last day but one of the old year, midwinter, a time of frost and snow, and surely these brilliant oleanders, these great scarlet geraniums, these bright hedges of the many-colored Lantana were but a fairy scene which might vanish any moment and leave the trees bare and the flowers withered. But when we entered the charming ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... day after that upon which Sir John had come to his death, Cicely Foterell sat at her meal in Shefton Hall. Not much of the rough midwinter fare passed her lips, for she was ill at ease. The man she loved had been dismissed from her because his fortunes were on the wane, and her father had gone upon a journey which she felt, rather than knew, to be very dangerous. The great old hall was lonesome, also, for a young girl who ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... hands folded on her knees, her face set as though it were cast in bronze. The great bedchamber, with its hangings of pale blue plush and its silver-mounted furniture, was dim and shadowy in the greyness of a midwinter afternoon. Doors opened, here to the bath and dressing chambers, there to the oratory, yonder to the apartments of Sabran. She looked across to the last, and a shudder passed over her; a sense of sickness and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... such a bounty stimulated Captain John Lovewell, of Dunstable, who started with eight men. It was midwinter, but the snow, cold, and hardship did not deter the intrepid men, who made their way up the valley of the Merrimac, and eastward to the country of the Pigwackets. The sun was going down, on the 20th of February, when Captain Lovewell discovered a smoke rising above ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... at midnight and in midwinter, thrown from a frail raft into the deep and angry waters of a wide and rushing Western river, thus separated from his only companion through the wilderness with no aid for miles and leagues about him, buffeting the rapid current and struggling ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... it,—a mere wraith of the clamorous existence that inflicts itself on our ears when the ground is bare." After the storm is fairly launched the winds not infrequently awake, and, seeing their opportunity, pipe the flakes a lively dance. I am speaking now of the typical, full-born midwinter storm that comes to us from the North or N. N. E., and that piles the landscape knee-deep with snow. Such a storm once came to us the last day of January,—the master-storm of the winter. Previous to that date, we had had but light snow. The spruces had been able to catch ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... talked, and baked and scrubbed, and mended socks and saved kerosene. The doctors said it was the shoddy underwear that did for him, pursuing as always the high-mountain Nahala waters in the drenching storms of midwinter. ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... fresh wind; it rattles and pipes in the rigging aloft. An enlivening change and no mistake! The snow drifts as if it were midwinter. Fine August weather! But we are bearing north again, and we have need to! Yesterday our latitude was 80 deg. 53.5'. This evening I was standing in the hold at work on my new bamboo kayak, which will be the very acme of lightness. Pettersen ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... of 1873-74," says McNeill, was one of extreme suffering. Midwinter found tens of thousands of people on the verge of starvation, suffering for food, for the need of proper clothing, and for medical attendance. Meetings of the unemployed were held in many places, and public attention called to the needs of the poor. The men asked for work ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... at Monterey, but, with the few soldiers, we had next to nothing to do. In midwinter we heard of the approach of a battalion of the Second Dragoons, under Major Lawrence Pike Graham, with Captains Rucker, Coutts, Campbell, and others, along. So exhausted were they by their long march from Upper Mexico that we had to send relief to meet them as they approached. When this command ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the houses. Strong poles were extended from side to side, and on these sat or perched the company, party facing party, while two players struck the bowl on the ground between. Bets ran high; and Brbeuf relates, that once, in midwinter, with the snow nearly three feet deep, the men of his village returned from a gambling visit, bereft of their leggins, and barefoot, yet in excellent humor. [ Brbeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 113.—This game is still a favorite among ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... midwinter. The owner of Willow Creek stood at his parlour window, smoking and gazing. There was not much to look at, for snow had overwhelmed and buried the landscape, fringed every twig of the willows, ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... a bitter night in midwinter; and between every two or three makings of the bed in the overheated room slip out of a linen coat and into a fairly thin serge one and go and stand outside the door from three to ten minutes in the snow and cold. In some ways this is one of the hardest ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Fair Maid of Perth." I used to wonder at their folly, when I was stumbling over the rough hassocks, and sinking knee-deep in the black mire, raking the sharp sickle-edged grass which we used to feed out to the young cattle in midwinter when the bitter cold gave them appetite for even such fodder. I had an almost Irish hatred of snakes, and these meadows were full of them,—striped, green, dingy water- snakes, and now and then an ugly spotted adder by no means pleasant to touch with bare feet. There were great black ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... several years—the torpedoing of passenger-vessels with women and children on board. Somehow Jimmie found it a different proposition when he heard of particular women and children, how they looked and what they said, and what happened when they took to open boats in midwinter, and the boats filled up with water, and the children turned blue and then white, and were rescued with noses and ears and hands ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... are never out of sight as you saunter among the yellow pines. Their bright brown shafts and towers of flat, frondlike branches make a striking feature of the landscapes throughout all the seasons. In midwinter, when most of the other trees are asleep, this cedar puts forth its flowers in millions,—the pistillate pale green and inconspicuous, but the staminate bright yellow, tingeing all the branches and making the trees as they stand ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... up for the midwinter prom at New Haven," she announced, imparting her delightful secret. Though she must have been older then than any of the boys in college, she managed always to secure some sort of invitation, imagining vaguely that at the next ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... for extending the line through the Rockies to meet the rival railroad heading east from California, spurred the builders to every effort to lengthen their mileage, and something unheard of was attempted, namely, mountain railroad-building in midwinter. ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... early start which the chauffeur wanted, and the sun was nearly overhead when many a huge shoulder of glittering marble still walled us away from our journey's end. The cold was the pitiless cold of northern midwinter, and I remembered with a shiver that Millau and Clermont-Ferrand were separated from one another by nearly two hundred and fifty kilometres of such mountain roads as these. Oh yes, it was an experience, a splendid, dazzling experience; nevertheless, my cowardly thoughts would ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till midwinter was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son's handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm and haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... appearance but in odor. In sweetness it excels even sweet peas and roses. Mixed with the brilliant red berries of barberry and multiflora rose, and the dark-green branches of the hardy thyme, which continues fresh and sweet through the year, a handsome and lasting bouquet may be made for a midwinter table decoration, a fragrant reminder of Shakespeare's lines ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... much larger forces than Clark's. Much credit belongs to Clark's men, but most belongs to their leader. The boldness of his plan and the resolute skill with which he followed it out, his perseverance through the intense hardships of the midwinter march, the address with which he kept the French and Indians neutral, and the masterful way in which he controlled his own troops, together with the ability and courage he displayed in the actual attack, combined to make his feat the most memorable of all ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... flowing draperies or contracted into an easy working dress by a few artful twitches. It can be nicely adjusted to meet the inevitable sense of "beauty" bred in the bone of every Athenian. True, on the cold days of midwinter the wearers will go about shivering; but cold days are the exception, warm days ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... futile attempt to keep up a showy establishment with only half the hands needed for the purpose. Another family will give brilliant parties, have a gay season every year at the first hotels at Newport, and not be able to afford the wife a fire in her chamber in midwinter, or the servants enough food to keep them from constantly deserting. The damp, mouldy, dingy cellar-kitchen, the cold, windy, desolate attic, devoid of any comfort, where the domestics are doomed to pass their whole time, are witnesses to what such families consider economy. Economy in the view of ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... peaks!" burst forth Ardan; "how I should like to catch even a faint echo of the chorus you could chant, if a wild storm roared over your beetling summits! The pine forests of Norwegian mountains howling in midwinter would not be an accordeon ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... midwinter one morning the housewife fared to the byre to milk the cows after the wonted time; by then was it broad daylight, for none other than the neatherd would trust themselves out before day; but he went out at dawn. She heard ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... arrives, in the gayest midwinter of a rejuvenated Paris. The time for decisive action has arrived. Natalie revolves every clause of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... otherwise irreproachable conduct will lose all sense of truthfulness when they speak of physical culture and fresh air. They will exaggerate the number of inches they keep their bedroom windows raised in midwinter; they will quote ridiculous estimates of the doctors' bills they have saved; they will represent themselves as being in the most incredibly perfect health. I know one sober, intelligent business-man who not only habitually understates, by ten degrees, the temperature ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... city home with no self-sacrificing purpose to become a martyr for the sake of country relatives. She had wearied of the familiar round of metropolitan gayety; but life on the Hudson during midwinter was an entire novelty. Therefore, as her little brother had been included in the invitation, they had started on what was emphatically ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... from temporal vicissitudes. Joy and prosperity are as sure to occasion them as are sorrows, for to Paul the 'evil day' is that which especially threatens moral and spiritual character, and these may be as much damaged by the bright sunshine of prosperity as by the midwinter of adversity, just as fierce sunshine may be as fatal as killing frost. They may also arise, without any such change in circumstances, from some temptation coming with more than ordinary force, and directed with terrible accuracy to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... in the winter—Philip's first winter with the Faringfields—that the next outbreak came, between him and Master Edward. If ever the broad mansion of the Faringfields looked warm and welcoming, it was in midwinter. The great front doorway, with its fanlight above, and its panel windows at each side, through which the light shone during the long evenings, and with its broad stone steps and out-curving iron railings, had then its most hospitable aspect. ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... thousand of whom were brought to Canada at the instance of Tolstoy and some English Quakers to escape persecution for their refusal to undertake military service. The religious fanaticism of the Doukhobors, particularly when it took the form of midwinter pilgrimages in nature's garb, and the clannishness of the Ruthenians, who settled in solid blocks, gave rise to many problems of government and assimilation which taught Canadians the unwisdom of inviting immigration from eastern or southern Europe. Ruthenians and Poles, however, continued ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... according to the season of the year, the hours vary of course, and the same period of the day that is indicated by the twelfth hour at the time of equinox, is indicated by the eleventh hour in midsummer, and the thirteenth hour in midwinter. This is very annoying to travellers from the north of Europe. "What o'clock is it?" you ask; and are told in reply, "It is the eighteenth hour and three quarters." To find the time of day from this answer, you must calculate from Ave Maria, with reference to the time of sunset at that ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... and there was no need for guards, so each man of our squad was assigned a six mule team to drive up to the fort. If anyone thinks it is all pleasure driving and caring for a six mule team from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie, one hundred and seventy miles, in midwinter, with nothing to protect him from the cold but an ordinary army uniform, including an unlined tight blue overcoat, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... a house that Cardailhac, a declared enemy of nature and the country, endeavouring always to keep Parisians in Paris till the latest possible date, has succeeded in crowding and making as brilliant as in midwinter. Fifteen hundred heads are swarming beneath the great central chandelier, erect—bent forward—turning round—questioning amid a great play of shadows and reflections; some massed in the obscure corners of the floor, others in a bright light ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... third Tom Thumb, says he, the actions of the other two were attributed. Now, though I know that this opinion is supported by an assertion of Justus Lipsius, "Thomam illum Thumbum non alium quam Herculem fuisse satis constat," yet shall I venture to oppose one line of Mr Midwinter against them all: ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Friu'li, but amorously loved by Ansaldo. In order to rid herself of his importunities, she vowed never to yield to his suit till he could "make her garden at midwinter as gay with flowers as it was in summer" (meaning never). Ansaldo, by the aid of a magician, accomplished the appointed task; but when the lady told him that her husband insisted on her keeping her promise, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... afterward a solitary dinner at the Marlboro. But the real object of the town trip disclosed itself when he took an electric car for the foot of Lebanon on the line connecting with the inclined railway running up the mountain to Crestcliffe Inn. He had not seen Ardea since the midwinter night of soul-awakenings; and Alecto's finger was still pressing on the wound inflicted by the closed doors of Mountain View Avenue and his father's ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... greenest. Others may find the chief beauty of the hill in the bronze and yellow of the changing leaves of October; there are no hills where the beech glows with a deeper fire than over Albury and the Tillingbourne. Others even might ask for the vague, wet airs of midwinter, with the shouldering hilltops east and south and west faint and mysterious in the clinging mist, and never a house-roof to be seen. That is an effect of strange loneliness; but the abiding charm of St. Martha's is the peace of clear air, in ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... midwinter of 1856 or 1857—I think it was 1856—I was coming along the main street of Keokuk in the middle of the forenoon. It was bitter weather—so bitter that that street was deserted, almost. A light dry snow was blowing here and there on ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... centre aisle of Hillford Church, the Tinleys (late as usual) were seen trooping for morning service in midwinter. There was a man in the rear known to be a man by the sound of his boots and measure of his stride, for the ladies of Brookfield, having rejected the absurd pretensions of Albert Tinley, could not permit curiosity to encounter the risk of meeting his gaze by turning their heads. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... token of a healthy youth and a glorious March morning, Johnnie's thoughts should have been light, fanciful, and centred round the fair image of Mistress Dorothy Dawe. Alas! they were dark as a midwinter night, and as ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... steamer, which was overloaded, and in midwinter, I had crossed to America for the first time. What we experienced of the western ocean during that passage gave me so much respect for it that the prospect of the return journey, three thousand miles ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... the preceding autumn a prospector had come up to Fort Smith, on the Slave River, with a pickle bottle filled with gold dust and nuggets. He had made the find on the McFarlane. The first mails had taken the news to the outside world, and by midwinter the earliest members of a treasure-hunting horde were rushing into the country by snow-shoe and dog-sledge. Other finds came thick and fast. The McFarlane was rich in free gold, and miners by the score staked out their claims along it and began work. Latecomers swung to new fields farther north ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... emblems of pure pleasures flown, I scarce can think of pleasure without these. Even to dream of them is to disown The cold forlorn midwinter reveries, Lulled with the perfume of old hopes new-blown, No ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... January and continued into February, the animals ceased to venture far from their lairs in search of food, and the harvest of the trails was therefore light. With the disappearance of rabbits, the fox and lynx had also disappeared. The rabbit is the chief prey of these animals during the tight midwinter months, and as the wolf follows the caribou, so the fox follows ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... and carried off the women and children as captives. Vsevelod was, at the time, absent in the extreme northern portion of his territory, but he turned upon his enemies with the heart and with the strength of a lion. It was midwinter. Regardless of storms, and snow and cold, he pursued the foe like the north wind, and crushed them as with an iron hand. With a large number of prisoners he returned to ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... addressed his wife and their two guests, his nieces, Roberta and Ruth Gray. It was the midwinter vacation at the school where Roberta taught and at the equally desirable establishment where Ruth was taking a carefully selected course of study. Uncle Rufus and Aunt Ruth had invited them to spend the four days of this vacation at their ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... fourth year in the month of July. Athletic contests and poetical recitations, sacrifices, feasts, and processions honored the goddess Athena, who presided over the Athenian city. Even more interesting, perhaps, were the dramatic performances held in midwinter and in spring, at the festivals of Dionysus. The tragedies and comedies composed for these entertainments took their place among the masterpieces ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... evenings in midwinter we sat on our vine-clad piazza, enjoying the balmy breezes, perfumed with the delicious orange blossoms, looking at the stately pines glorified by moonlight and starlight; listening to the songs of these dark-faced but white-souled serenaders, the whites of whose eyes and perfect ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... the swimmer's standpoint, it is wonderful water. It is cool enough to be comfortable, while it is warm enough to permit a swimmer to stay in all day without experiencing a chill. Under the sun or the stars, at high noon or at midnight, in midwinter or in midsummer, it does not matter when, it is always the same temperature—not too warm, not too cold, just right. It is wonderful water, salt as old ocean itself, pure and crystal-clear. When the nature of the water is considered, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... In midwinter Evan's employer left a couple of axes with the blacksmith for repairs, the job to be done within a week. At this time the weather was what is termed "settled," with deep snow, and good "slipping" along the ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... the midwinter holidays, she was promoted to the second class; she began Latin; and as a reward was allowed by Mother to wear her dresses an inch below her knees. She became a quick, adaptable pupil, with a parrot-like memory, and at the end of the school year delighted Mother's ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... see a thunder-storm almost in midwinter?" said Mr. Clifford, with a smile. "This unusual sultriness is ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... ores, cinnabar, a sulphate of the metal, of a red colour, and indeed identical with the richly prepared paint vermilion. A thousand workmen are employed in the Spanish mines, above or under ground. It freezes at an exceedingly low temperature, and was found solid during midwinter by the traveller Pallas. Of the other metals, some used as medicines, or pigments, or to form alloys, we have not time ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... these midwinter afternoons the cafe is filled with its habitues—distinguished old Frenchmen, who sip their absinthe leisurely enough to glance over the leading articles in the conservative Temps or the slightly gayer Figaro. Upstairs, by means of a spiral stairway, is ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the shadow fall upon them too and with what change of countenance would they look up! To him the joyousness seemed almost childish and yet he bathed his fagged spirit in it. How high the white clouds sailed, how blue was the midwinter sky! How the buildings towered, how quickly the people stepped! Here were the pretty painted faces, the absurd silk stockings, the tripping, exquisitely booted feet, the swinging walk, the tall, up-springing bodies ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... as many of the books for children published by John Newbery as I could procure (and they are as scarce as blackberries in midwinter, for what among books has so brief a life as a nursery book?), I was struck while perusing them with a certain distinct literary flavour, so to speak, which appeared to be common to a group of little volumes, all published about the same period. These were: ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... France: flooding; avalanches; midwinter windstorms; drought; forest fires in south near the Mediterranean overseas departments: hurricanes (cyclones), flooding, volcanic activity ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... foreign borrowers in Rome, and thus was enabled to lend to the miserable Salaminians of Cyprus at 48 per cent, and to recover his money under the bond.[187] Writing to his brother in December 57, Cicero speaks of business done in a senate full for the time of year, which was midwinter, just before the Saturnalia, when only two hundred were present out of about six hundred. In February 54, a month when the senate had always much business to get through, it was so cold one day that the few members present ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... nothing but sober tints and quiet duties. What chance for any one, and a woman especially, to make a career for herself, tied down to a lot of precious babies, or lassooed by ten thousand galloping cares! As well expect a rose to blossom in midwinter hedges, or a lark to sing in a snowstorm, as to look for bloom and song in such a life! But just bend down your ear a minute, poor, tired, overworked and troubled sister, I have a special word for you. It is simply impossible for circumstances of any sort to ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... now bloomed in spring, but now in midwinter we have opened our crimson cups, smiling in delight on this thy birthday morning, that brings thee so nigh the bridal bed: better for us to be wreathed on the brows of so fair a woman than wait ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... cold and looks blue as a midwinter icicle. She must have some tea to warm her up. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... others, white and all edged with white. Wings brown, white, and gray. Plumage unusually variable. In summer dress (in arctic regions) the bird is almost white. Range — Circumpolar regions to Kentucky (in winter only). Migrations — Midwinter visitor; rarely, if ever, resident south ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... was really at home. The woods where I do not find him seem to want something, as if suffering from some neglect of Nature. And then he is such a splendid success, so hardy and vigorous. I think he enjoys the cold and the snow. His wings seem to rustle with more fervency in midwinter. If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm he will complacently sit down allow himself to be snowed under. Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... ship was to be at flood-tide, eleven o'clock in the forenoon. Though in midwinter, the air was mild, as if a warm breath had been wafted landward from the Gulf Stream. There was a fever of excitement and preparation in the Brandon home. Dinah in the kitchen was taking pots of baked beans and loaves of brown bread smoking hot from ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... their straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare acres dotted with sheaves. He talked of the reddening apples around, of the browning nuts, of jams and preserves and the distilling of cordials; till by easy stages such as these he reached midwinter, its hearty joys and its snug home life, and ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... on the electric under the square copper shade, and began to figure up his accounts. But a little social problem kept revolving in his head. It was suggested by Mrs. Van Dorn and by something she had said. Beside Mrs. Van Dorn in her tailored gown and seal-skin, with her spanking new midwinter hat to match her coat, dragging the useless dog after her, he saw the picture of another woman who had come in the day before—a woman no older than Margaret Van Dorn—yet a broken woman, with rounded shoulders who rarely smiled, wishing to hide her broken teeth, who wheeled one baby ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... It was midwinter, and the river was frozen over. The boats had not been running for many days, and the happiest time of all the happy days for the young people of the river towns had come. The ponds and creeks were forgotten in the great event of skating on ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... that there were only the wages of Ona and the pittance of the little boy. There was the rent to pay, and still some on the furniture; there was the insurance just due, and every month there was sack after sack of coal. It was January, midwinter, an awful time to have to face privation. Deep snows would come again, and who would carry Ona to her work now? She might lose her place—she was almost certain to lose it. And then little Stanislovas began to whimper—who ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... tend to split: Certain species of trees, like the linden and elm, often tend to split, generally in the crotch of several limbs and sometimes in a fissure along the trunk of the tree. Midwinter is the period when this usually occurs and timely action will save the tree. The remedy lies in fastening together the various parts of the tree by means of ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... seasons being reversed in Australia, Christmas occurs in the middle of summer. The English word Midsummer has thus dropped out of use, and "Christmas," or Christmas-time, is its Australian substitute, whilst Midwinter is the word used to denote the Australian winter-time of late June and early ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... was truly according to and in fulfillment of prophecy, thus showing that God had foreordained and prepared the conditions for his birth. (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:4-6) Jesus was not born on December 25, as is generally supposed; but his birth occurred about the first of October. Midwinter would have been a very inopportune time for the shepherds to be watching their sheep in the fields and sleeping in the open. In addition to this circumstantial evidence, all the facts show that the birth of Jesus was in October, and that December 25, nine months previous, was probably the date ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... It was midwinter when Dame Gossip, who keeps the exotic world alive with her fanning whispers, related that the lovely Mrs. Warwick had left England on board the schooner-yacht Clarissa, with Lord and Lady Esquart, for a voyage in the Mediterranean: and (behind her hand) that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rest, All sense of the soul's life rapture, a passionate peace in its blindness blest. So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of the water unfathomed of man, The darkness unplummeted, icier than seas in midwinter, for blessing or ban; And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall short, and the dive is done, Shoots up as a shaft from the dark depth shot, sped straight into sight of the sun; And sheer ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... look lovelier than the naked house left out on its naked white lawn like an unclaimed trunk on a way-station platform. I would not, for anything, offend the reader's dignity, but I must think that this midwinter garden may be made at least as much lovelier than no garden as Alice's Cheshire cat was lovelier—with or without its grin—than the grin ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... aged five, at an early hour on a bright, cold morning in June—midwinter in that southern country of great plains or pampas; impatiently waiting for the loading and harnessing to be finished; then the being lifted to the top with the other little ones —at that time we were ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... took place when he was about eighteen years old, was the result, under God, of the mere sight in midwinter, of a dry and leafless tree, and of the reflections it stirred respecting the change the coming spring would bring. From that time he grew eminently in the knowledge and love of GOD, endeavoring constantly ...
— The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule of a Holy Life • Herman Nicholas
... one amusement that they used greatly to enjoy during the cold bright days and moonlight nights of midwinter. This was gliding down the frozen snow on the steep side of the dell near the spring, seated on small hand-sleighs, which carried them down with great velocity. Wrapped in their warm furs, with caps fastened closely over their ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... points on the earth's orbit, which are therefore at a distance of one hundred and eighty-six million miles. Imagine that on Midsummer Day, when standing on the earth here, I measure with a piece of card the angle between the star and the sun. Six months later, on Midwinter Day, when the earth is at the opposite point of its orbit, I again measure the angle between the same star and the sun, and we can now determine the star's distance by making a triangle. I draw a line a foot long, and we will take this foot ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... obstinately, "what have you been doing in the country in midwinter, Saint Remy? that ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... "It was a midwinter day, cold and clear and piercing." Miss Salisbury shivered a bit, and drew the shawl put across the back of her stone seat, closer around her. "Mrs. Ferguson—that was the name of the principal—had given the girls a holiday to take them to a neighboring ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... of our journey a Shinto priest was pointed out to me as observing the priestly taboo by refusing tea and cake. I noticed, however, that he smoked. I was told that when he was in Tokyo he purified himself in the sea even in midwinter. I did not like his appearance. Nor for the matter of that was I impressed by the countenances of some Buddhist priests I encountered in the train from time to time. "Thinking always of money," someone said. But every now and again I saw ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... worse than all. Our quarters close beneath the enemy's wall; And rain—and from the ground the river dew—Wet, always wet! Into our clothes it grew, Plague-like, and bred foul beasts in every hair. Would I could tell how ghastly midwinter Stole down from Ida till the birds dropped dead! Or the still heat, when on his noonday bed The breathless blue sea sank without a wave!.... Why think of it? They are past and in the grave, All those long troubles. For I think the slain Care little if they sleep or rise ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... old in story, that had sustained the surge of unnumbered hordes from East and West and South and North; in whose grapes were the bloods of Roman, Teuton, Slav, Mongol, and Frank; that had been the source and shelter of a race's song, science, and story—lay in silent slumber, muffled in midwinter's snows. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... whitish ashes, and here and there some shrubs, and a few big trees, blackened by the flames, and entirely stripped of their leaves, still stood erect—though life had long since departed out of them. The sight of a burned maquis is enough to make a man fancy he has been transported into midwinter in some northern clime, and the contrast between the barrenness of the ground over which the flames have passed, with the luxuriant vegetation round about it, heightens this appearance of sadness and desolation. But at that moment the only thing that struck Orso in this particular landscape ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... to profit, however, by a phenomenon which he could not comprehend, so he lay close, and restrained his impatient appetite, and kept his white fur dry and warmly fluffy. Had the night been fine, he would have been leaping gaily hither and thither over the deep, midwinter snow, and browsing on the tender, aromatic shoots of the young birches which dotted ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... asserted Patsy's father, moodily, "for such delicate flowers to be growing out of doors in midwinter. And look at the grass! Why, the seasons are changed about. It's ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... brush over the spaded ground, then the sweet, clean smell of its burning, and, hanging everywhere throughout the clearing, its thin blue smoke. The little frogs began to pipe to each other again in every wet place, the grass began to freshen, and almost in the calendar's midwinter the smiles of ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... now Colonel, March soon after repeated the attempt, killing six Indians, and capturing as many more. The General Court offered L40 for every Indian scalp, and one Captain Tyng, in consequence, surprised an Indian village in midwinter and brought back five of these disgusting trophies. In the spring of 1704 word came from Albany that a band of French Indians had built a fort and planted corn at Coos meadows, high up the river Connecticut. On this, one Caleb Lyman with five friendly ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... siege-guns before the walls of the temple of the priestess, and prepared for business. The first manoeuver made by the beleaguered one was to give a luncheon in the mosque, at which, though it was midwinter, fresh tomatoes and fresh strawberries were served, and a real authoress from Boston talked upon John Fiske's philosophy and, in the presence of the admiring guests, made a new kind of salad dressing for the fresh lettuce and tomatoes. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... with his companion and pass on without recognition. He proposed to Miss Burgoyne that they should walk home, by way of Piccadilly and Park Lane, and that young lady cheerfully assented. It was quite a pleasant afternoon, for London in midwinter. The setting sun shone with a dull-copper lustre along the fronts of the tall buildings, and over the trees of the Green Park hung clouds that were glorified by the intervening red-hued mists. The air was crisp and cold—what a blessing it was ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... family behind him, he started for New Orleans on a flatboat. He tarried long at Natchez, and did not reach the Crescent City till midwinter. Again he found himself destitute of means, and compelled to resort to portrait painting. He went on with his bird collecting and bird painting; in the meantime penetrating the swamps and ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs |
