"Mimosa" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beautiful cool shade fell like a blessing on their scorched faces. There was wild hemp {dagga} for the Kafirs to smoke; and wild apricots running over the stones; water splashing, clear and fresh, beside the way; mimosa-trees to give wood for the fires; and everywhere they saw the spoor of every kind of buck. The Burghers were overwhelmed with ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the heaven and changed, as if into silvery feathers, the mimosa and acacia twigs. In the dense jungles resounded here and there the shrill and, at the same time, mockingly mirthful laugh of the hyenas, which in that gory region found far too many corpses. From time to time the detachment conducting the caravan encountered other patrols ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... quietly pursuing his way through his favorite glades of mimosa bushes (which his hooked upper lip enables him readily to seize, and his powerful grinders to masticate), his horns, fixed loosely in his skin, make a clapping noise by striking one against the other; ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... her head to the south; she listened intently. There was a sound,—a distant, prolonged note, bell-toned, pervading the woods, shaking the air in smooth vibrations. It was repeated. The doe had no doubt now. She shook like the sensitive mimosa when a footstep approaches. It was the baying of a hound! It was far off,—at the foot of the mountain. Time enough to fly; time enough to put miles between her and the hound, before he should come upon her fresh trail; time enough to escape away through the dense forest, and hide in the recesses ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... nothing to be done. When Nature takes things into her own hands, men can only stand by and look. Denise was perhaps more shaken than the smaller, tougher woman. She made no attempt to accompany mademoiselle, but sat in the shade of a mimosa tree, and watched her descend into the valley, now appearing, now ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Central Australian native believes bushes to be the abode of spirits which leap into the bodies of passing women and are the cause of the conception of children; Moses saw in the desert a bush (perhaps the mimosa) like a flame of fire, with Jehovah dwelling in the midst of it, and he put off his shoes for he felt that the place was holy; Osiris was at times regarded as a Tree-spirit (1); and in inscriptions is referred to as "the solitary one in the acacia"—which reminds us curiously of the "burning ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... reaching a height of from twelve to eighteen feet, they move about in small herds on the open plains of Africa, eating the tender twigs and leaves of the mimosa and other trees. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... mimosa trees, I shall compose a poem. It will be addressed to Irena, the dancing-girl. She is like the little moon when it first comes ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... it—his pony picking its way carefully between the stones, and the dog Pontac ranging about two or three hundred yards off, for in this sort of country it is necessary to have a dog with a wide range. Presently seeing him stop under a mimosa thorn and suddenly stiffen out as if he had been petrified, John made the best of his way towards him. Pontac stood still for a few seconds, and then slowly and deliberately veered his head round as though it worked on a hinge to see if his master was coming. John knew his ways. Three ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... guides were treacherous, the troops grew exhausted, the supply of water gave out. He pressed on, and at last, on November 5th, not far from El Obeid, the harassed, fainting, almost desperate army plunged into a vast forest of gumtrees and mimosa scrub. There was a sudden, appalling yell; the Mahdi, with 40,000 of his finest men, sprang from their ambush. The Egyptians were surrounded, and immediately overpowered. It was not a defeat, but an annihilation. Hicks and his European staff were slaughtered; the whole ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... and the brilliant sky, with the golden light and the purple shadows, and the cypresses and olives, with the river gleaming below there amongst the peach-blossoms, and—isn't that a blackcap singing in the mimosa? It only needs a pair of lovers to be perfect—it cries for a pair of lovers. And instead of them, I find—what? A hermit and celibate. Look here. Make a clean breast of it. Are you cold-blooded?" she asked from over ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... to exchange specimens of woods indigenous to this climate for those of other climates, specimens to be about three inches long by three-quarters of an inch thick, and to have a knot in them if possible. I have cypress, magnolia, mimosa, Cottonwood, althea, prickly ash, fig, crepe myrtle, sweet-gum, and black-gum. Correspondents willing to exchange will please send me a list of what woods they can obtain, and their ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... interested, or he might have been reminded of the Island of Flowers in Tennyson's "Voyage of Maeldive." Violets, pinks, crocuses, yellow and purple mesembryanthemum, lavender, myrtle, and rosemary ... his two-mile view contained them all. The hillside below him was all aglow with the yellow fire of the mimosa. But his was not one of those emotional natures to which the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. A primrose by the river's brim a simple primrose was to him—or not so much a simple primrose, perhaps, as a basis for a possible Primrosina, the Soap ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... irritable; mimosa, dionaea muscipula. Vegetable secretions. 2. Vegetable buds are inferior animals, are liable to greater or less irritability. II. Stamens and pistils of plants shew marks of sensibility. III. Vegetables possess some degree of volition. IV. Motions of plants are associated like those ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... rocking himself to and fro, then he spoke: "You have a farm, White Man, down near Pine Town, is it not? Ah! I thought so—and an hour's ride from your farm lives a Boer with four fingers only on his right hand. There is a kloof on the Boer's farm where mimosa-trees grow. There, in the kloof, you shall find your oxen—yes, five days' journey from here you will find them all. I say all, my father, except three only—the big black Africander ox, the little red Zulu ox ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... enough to choose for the place of his indwelling the costliest tulip of the woods. I have already casually mentioned the fact that the tulip-tree's bloom is scarcely known to exist by even intelligent and well-informed Americans. Every one has heard of the mimosa, the dogwood, the red-bud, and the magnolia, but not of the tulip-bearing tree, with its incomparably bold, dashing, giantesque flower, once so common in the great woods of our Western and Middle States. I have not been able to formulate a good ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... eggs. The syndicate was sick, weak, and emaciated almost beyond recognition, and on the twenty-fifth day Captain Scraggs fainted twice. On the twenty-sixth day McGuffey crawled into the shadow of a stunted mimosa bush and ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... dignified villa, noncommittal in appearance, like a hundred others. Clean windows blinked in the sunshine, the doorstep was chalky white, the brass plate on the lintel glittered with the inscription, "Gregory Sartorius, M.D." Beside the gate a mimosa shook out its yellow plumage against the sky. Mimosa—in February! ... New York, reflected Esther, was in the clutch of a blizzard. She could picture it now, with its stark ice-ribbed streets, its towering buildings, a mausoleum of frozen stone and dirty snow. As for flowers—why, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... to her confusion and terror that the long lithe tongue of the giraffe had whisked off her Leghorn, flowers and all, and had begun leisurely to munch it with somewhat of the same gusto with which it would have eaten the branch of a graceful mimosa. ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Aspendia Canal, where the fog hung over the water like white smoke, hiding the figure of the tutelary goddess of the town on the parapet of the bridge from those who crossed by the roadway. The leaves of the mimosa-trees by the quay—nay, the very stones of the houses and the statues, wet with the morning dew—looked revived and newly washed; and a light breeze brought up from the Serapeum broken tones of the chant, sung there every morning by a choir of priests, to hail ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... giraffe is the leaves, tender shoots, and blossoms of a singular species of mimosa, called by the colonists kameel doorn, or giraffe thorn, which is found chiefly on dry plains and sandy deserts. The great size of this tree, together with its thick and spreading top, shaped like an umbrella, distinguish it at once from all others. The wood, of a dark ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... growing downwards to the stream, resembled a cordwainer's walk set on end. A bush of yellow-flowered hibiscus clothes the banks that are less level; and, higher still, grows a tall and beautiful mimosa with feathery web and pendent pods of brightest green and yellow. Then came the brabs and palms, fan-, cocoa-, oil-, and bamboo-, with their trunks turned to nurseries of epiphytes and air-plants. The parasites are clematis and a ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... a certain grandeur. But here, at the ford of Agate's Drift, it is decidedly unimpressive. Scant greenery ornaments its banks. In fact, at most places they run hard and baked to a sheer drop-off of ten or fifteen feet. Scattered mimosa trees and aloes mark its course. The earth for a mile or so is trampled by thousands of Masai cattle that at certain seasons pass through the funnel of this, the only ford for miles. Apparently insignificant, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... of a bush-clad hill lay a dry river-bed, in which, however, were to be found pools of crystal water all trodden round with the hoof-prints of game. Facing this hill was a park-like plain, where grew clumps of flat-topped mimosa, varied with occasional glossy-leaved machabells, and all round stretched the sea of ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... it. Travelling over lightly-timbered sandy ridges, barren and scrubby, but without stone, at 9 or 10 miles they crossed the head of a sandy creek, rising in a spring, about 60 yards wide, having about 5 or 6 inches of water in it. The creek runs through mimosa and garrawon scrub for 5 miles, and the spring occurs on the side of a scrubby ridge, running into the creek from the west. At 18 miles they struck an ana-branch having some fine lagoons in it, and half-a-mile further on a river 100 yards wide, waterless, and the channels filled up ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... the room look pretty with that mimosa?" asked Mrs. Courteville, vivaciously. People did not know how matters stood between Joan Ferriby and Tony Cornish, and always wanted to know. That is why Mrs. Courteville said "he" only when she drew ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... few girls together. She's not what you'd call quick. I've misjudged her. Here she comes with half a dozen at least—and, oh, no, Sheila! You don't mean to say you've brought candy? Well, you are a sport! Let's squat under the mimosa tree and hand ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... of acacia and mimosa is now conspicuous on the banks of the river, which is very high. The grey gunboats pass slowly up the Nile in the blazing sun, and the troops push on as steadily and as surely as they have from the start of the expedition. Small parties of mounted dervishes are seen in the far distance. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... elephants, I mean—just loped along in that swinging way they do; I think it must make anyone sea-sick to be on their backs. We stared at them till they got far away. Then I discovered that the little trees were mimosa, which shrivel up when you touch them. They had dropped seeds on the ground, I suppose, for under them were tiny little mimosas, not trees but scrub stuff. Joyce had never seen any, and when I rubbed my hand across ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... smoking cigarettes and dropping ink; kindly observe my carpet. Notice the piano—it has a look of coming and going, according to the exchequer. This very deep-cushioned sofa is permanent, however; the water-colours on the walls are safe, too—they're by herself. Mark the scent of mimosa—she likes flowers, and likes them strong. No clock, of course. Examine the bureau—she is obviously always ringing for "the drumstick," and saying: "Where's this, Ellen, and where's that? You naughty gairl, you've been tidying." Cast an eye on that pile of manuscript—she has evidently ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... took the place of flags and spy-glasses; in the dark gusty hours we heard the "all's well" of a sentry as the visiting patrol went by, much as one hears the cry of the watch on board ship; and down below, the mimosa-trees sighed like surges against the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... grassy slope dotted over with mimosa thorns, and close to a gushing stream of water, stands a house, or rather a hut, built of green brick and thatched with grass. Behind this hut is a fence of thorns, rough but strong, designed to protect all within it from the attacks of ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... nesting habits and eggs are very similar to the last species, although the eggs average a trifle smaller. Size 1.75 x 1.25. Data.—Avery's Island, Louisiana, April 21, 1896. 5 eggs. Nest a flat and frail platform of twigs in a Mimosa tree growing in floating turf, over deep water in a large swamp. Collector, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... now through tambouki grass higher than the oxen, and now through dense bush, till at length, one day, we said good-bye to the Olifants' just where the Elands' River flows into it, and turned our faces eastward. This course soon brought us on to higher ground and away from the mimosa, which loves the low, hot valleys, into the region of the sugar bush, which thrives upon the hill-sides. This sugar bush is a very handsome and peculiar plant, with soft thick leaves, standing about twenty feet high. It bears a ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... therefore, that extraordinary virtues were ascribed to these lightning plants, qualities which, in no small degree, distinguish their representatives at the present day. Thus we are told how in India the mimosa is known as the imperial tree on account of its remarkable properties, being credited as an efficacious charm against all sorts of malignant influences, such as the evil eye. Not unlike in colour to the blossom of the Indian palasa ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... spirits, which was perhaps increased by the loveliness of the spot where we now pitched our tents for the evening. It was at the foot of the Gap. The stately gum-tree, the shea-oak, with its gracefully drooping foliage, the perfumed yellow blossom of the mimosa, the richly-wooded mountain in the background, united to form a picture too magnificent to describe. The ground was carpeted with wild flowers; the sarsaparilla blossoms creeping everywhere; before us slowly rippled a clear streamlet, reflecting a thousand times the deepening tints which ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... another time, And over shaft and architrave The green luxuriant ivy climb;— And far towards the rising sun The palm may shake its leaves on high, Where flowers are opening one by one, Like stars upon the twilight sky, And breezes soft as sighs of love Above the rich mimosa stray, And through the Brahmin's sacred grove A ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... cloud o'er face of flower, Nodding plumes where she alights, In the white hibiscus bower She lingers through the soft spring nights — Nights too short, though wearing late Till the mimosa days are born. Never more affairs of State Wake them in the early morn. Wine-stained moments on the wing, Moonlit hours go luting by, She who leads the flight of Spring Leads the midnight revelry. Flawless beauties, thousands three, Deck the Imperial harem,* Yet the monarch's eyes ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... many of the trees, some like large wild pine-apples, swinging in the air. There were climbing arums, with dark-green arrow-head shaped leaves; huge ferns shot out here and there up the stems to the topmost branches. Many of the trees had leaves as delicately cut as those of the graceful mimosa, while others had large palmate leaves, and others, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... the banks of the river like rows of columns, symmetrically arranged in plantations,—these are the invariable background against which other trees are grouped, diversifying the landscape. The feathery tamarisk[*] and the nabk, the moringa, the carob, or locust tree several varieties of acacia and mimosa-the sont, the mimosa habbas, the white acacia, the Acacia Parnesxana—and the pomegranate tree, increase in number with the distance ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... July, Antonia said, the house was buried in them; the Bohemians, I remembered, always planted hollyhocks. The front yard was enclosed by a thorny locust hedge, and at the gate grew two silvery, moth-like trees of the mimosa family. From here one looked down over the cattle-yards, with their two long ponds, and over a wide stretch of stubble which they told me was a ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... Antelope was lying with her fawn at the foot of the flowering Mimosa. The weather was intensely sultry, and a Dove, who had sought shelter from the heat among the leaves, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... series of wedge-shaped clefts, or notches, and through the openings thus made in the rocky wall one may catch brief glimpses of deep, wild ravines down which mountain torrents from the higher peaks tumble to the sea under the dense concealing shade of mango-and mimosa-trees, vines, flowering shrubs, and the feathery foliage of cocoanut ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... num deserto 545 denfindo vinho & p[a]o, & a fonte muyto perto & longe a contempla[c,][a]o. [p] Muyta ca[c,]a & pescaria que podesse eu ter coutada 550 & a casa temperada: no veram que fosse fria & quente na inuernada. A cama muyto mimosa & hum crauo aa cabeceyra, 555 de cedro a sua madeyra; porque a vida religiosa queria eu desta maneyra. [p] E fosse o meu repousar & dormir atee tais horas 560 que nam podesse rezar por ouuir cantar pastoras & outras assouiar. Aa ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... was a melancholy fact bewailed by Monsieur Querin. The town was perishing from lack of Anglo-Saxon support. Monsieur Coquereau, the Mayor, agreed. If the English and Americans came in their hordes to this paradise of mimosa, fourteenth century architecture, sunshine and unique Carnival, the fortunes of all the citizens would be assured. Perpignan would out-rival Nice. But what ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... no. Look, I'm not trying to tell you that terrestrial trees think, too, nor even that they have a nervous system. They don't. But—well, on Earth, if you've ever touched a lighted match to the leaf of a sensitive plant like the mimosa, say—and I have—you've been struck by the speed with which other leaves close up and droop. I mean, sure, we know that the leaves droop because certain cells exude water and nearby leaves feel the heat of the match. But the others don't, yet they droop, too. Nobody ...
— Tree, Spare that Woodman • Dave Dryfoos
... north-northeast, continues to recede from the shores of the United States, until, further deflected to the eastward by the Banks of Newfoundland, it approaches the European coasts, frequently throwing a quantity of tropical seeds ('Mimosa scandens, Guilandina bonduc, Dolichos urens') on the shores of Ireland, the Hebrides, and Norway. The northeastern prolongation tends to mitigate the cold of the ocean, and to ameliorate the climate on the most northern extremity of Scandinavia. At the point where the Gulf Stream ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the scope of his investigation has been very much enlarged by the devise of the Resonant Recorder, Dr. Bose proceeded to attack the current view "that there was no transmission of true excitation in Mimosa, the propagated impulse being regarded as merely hydromechanical." This conclusion was based on the experiments of the leading German plant physiologists, Pfeffer and Haverlandt who failed to bring on any variation in the propagated impulse in plants ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... day was at times really painful. In order that the camels might start in time, our tents were packed early; sometimes we would sit for hours waiting the good pleasure of the cameleers under the scanty shade of a mimosa, vainly endeavouring to find in its dwarfed foliage a relief from the burning rays of the sun. Night after night, be it moonlight or starlight, on we went; the task was before us, and duty urged us on to reach the land where ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... any difficulty in discovering Haji Wali's tree, a solitary Mimosa to the right of the caravan-track, springing from the sands of the Shigdawayn gorge. The latter is formed by the sister-blocks before alluded to. The western Shigd, on the right of the Wady 'Afl, is composed of carbonate ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... precisely in proportion as they are incapable of sympathy,—of quick understanding,—of all that, in deep insistence on the common, but most accurate term, may be called the "tact" or "touch-faculty," of body and soul: that tact which the Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman has above all creatures;—fineness and fulness of sensation, beyond reason;— the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but determine what is true:- it is the God-given passion of humanity which ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... storm lasted far into the night; then the clouds rolled away, leaving an absolutely clear sky. Next morning was cloudless, and was followed by a lovely day. We searched far and near for evidence of damage, but all we found was a shattered mimosa-tree. The bark and the wood were lying about, frayed into their ultimate fibers; they looked like teased-out flax. Curiously enough they showed no sign ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully |
