"Sapling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cried, "sisters, daughters of Nereus, that you may hear the burden of my sorrows. Alas, woe is me, woe in that I have borne the most glorious of offspring. I bore him fair and strong, hero among heroes, and he shot up as a sapling; I tended him as a plant in a goodly garden, and sent him with his ships to Ilius to fight the Trojans, but never shall I welcome him back to the house of Peleus. So long as he lives to look upon the light of the sun he is in heaviness, and though I go ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... discipline should be man-timber. Tough timber must come from well grown, sturdy trees. Such wood can be turned into a mast, can be fashioned into a piano or an exquisite carving. But it must become timber first. Time and patience develop the sapling into the tree. So through discipline, education, experience, the sapling child is developed into hardy mental, moral, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... appointed day Sir Piers de Currie crossed over to Bute. He was a man of middle age, tall and strong. His gigantic limbs were hard and stout as the trunk of an oak sapling. He wielded the longest sword and the heaviest battle-axe in Bute and Arran, and he was the best bowman in all the lands of the Clyde. His life among the mountains of Arran had given him a mighty power of endurance, ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... have believed what now we hear? And to whom was the Lord's arm revealed? Why, he grew up like a sapling before us, Like a ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... And then he took up the third one, which was the biggest, and threw it nearly as far, but it didn't hit the others. 'Now, Mr. Matlack,' says he, 'this is the first part of my little programme. I have only one or two more things, and I don't want to keep you long.' Then he went and got a hickory sapling that he'd cut down. It was just the trunk part of it, and must have been at least three inches thick. He put the middle of it at the back of his neck, and then he took hold of the two ends with his hands and pulled forward, and, ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... the suggestion, and led the way to the woods. I had not had occasion to seek a hickory sapling before for years; not since the war, in fact, when I learned how hot a fire small hickory sticks would make. I had not sought wood for whistles since—gracious, nearly a quarter of a century ago! The dissimilar associations called ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... bewitch'd; behold mine arm Is, like a blasted sapling, wither'd up: And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch, Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore, That by their ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... as he spoke, "made it in her heart for us her first-born. See, here is such as the first handled weapon that ever came out of darkness," and he snatched from the ground, where it had lain hidden under his fox-skin cloak, a heavy club. I saw in an instant how it was. The club had been a sapling, and the sapling's roots had grown about and circled with a splendid grip a lump of native flint. A woodman had pulled the sapling, found the flint, and fashioned the two in a moment of happy inspiration, the one to an axe-head and the other to a ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... jumbled together, and then I was outside, standing with my hot hand resting in the frost on the top rail of a fence. Some one was urging me to come back—the neglected girl—but I stood there silent, with my hot hand melting the frost. I went out into the moon-lighted woods, seized a sapling and almost wrenched it from the ground. Down the road I went toward home, but I turned aside and sat on a log. I felt a sense of pain and I opened my hands—I had been cutting my palms with my nails. But in this senseless fury I had made up my mind. I ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... was grasping the slender trunk of a sapling which grew three feet to an inch from the new edge of the bluff. As he was, arm and all, at full length, it follows that from the breast-bone downwards the whole of him was over the cliff. Valerie was altogether in mid-air. She was directly suspended, with her back flat against Anthony, by ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... that now; I will tell you when we have more time," replied Deck, as he rode his horse to a tree, followed by both of his companions, and secured him to the sapling, as did the others. ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... lightest sleeper, he knelt by Chitta's side, and with great dexterity managed to pass the noose over both his moccasined feet without disturbing his slumber. Drawing it as tightly as he dared, the tall Indian made the other end fast to a sapling, and sat down beside the sleeper ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... Trackless," I cried, as soon as horror would permit me to speak, "that I may cut down this sapling, and liberate the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the blue cup and then went to find our birthday trees. We were rather disappointed to find them quite large, sturdy ones. It seemed to us that they should still be in the sapling stage corresponding ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at logging, our raw teamster fell, And the nigh ox trod on his foot as well; He tried to rise, but found it was in vain, And thoughts of their mad tricks shot through his brain. He gently touched them with his sapling goad, When they sprang sideways with their heavy load. Quick as a lightning's flash the log they drew O'er WILLIAM'S prostrate form—O, sad to view! When—wonder great—the cattle stood quite still (In strict obedience to their Maker's will)! ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... up, he observed that both the shafts of his gig were broken, and that they were held together by withes, formed from the bark of a hickory sapling. Our traveler observed further that he was plainly clad, that his knee buckles were loosened, and that something like negligence pervaded his dress. Conceiving him to be one of the honest yeomanry of our land, the courtesies of strangers passed between them, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of the entwined sapling tops that formed the fatal bower of death there hung a semicircle of tiny cages containing live decoys,—chaffinches, hawfinches, titmice and several other species. "The older and staider ones call repeatedly," says Mr. Astley, "and the chaffinches break ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... like to it since. Still—the very first. He ought to remember that! And as he concentrated his thoughts the veil of the years was rent, and he saw, he saw quite clearly the white moonlit beach, the felucca with its mast bent like a sapling in a high wind, and the great yard of the sail athwart the beam of the boat, the black shadow of it upon the sand, and the ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... properly regarded as a slow-growing tree, but under certain circumstances a sapling will shoot up quickly to a wonderful height. When the woodmen cut down a fir plantation in the Chace there was a young oak among it that overtopped the firs, and yet its diameter was so small that it looked no larger than a pole; and the supporting boughs of ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... spoor of the old man, the two hyenas, and the little black boy to the mouth of the cave in the rocky canon between the two hills. Here he paused a moment before the sapling barrier which Bukawai had set up, listening to the snarls and growls which came faintly from the far ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and hearing no body entred the houses and tooke out some things, and durst not stay but came again and told vs; so some seaven or eight of vs went with them, and found how we had gone within a slight shot of them before. The houses were made with long yong Sapling trees bended and both ends stucke into the ground; they were made round like unto an Arbour and covered down to the ground with thicke and well wrought matts, and the doors were not over a yard high made of a matt to open; the ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... natural love of liberty, which we are even more apt to display in the grounds of other people than in those which we cultivate ourselves. Sometimes, to his inexpressible and fierce satisfaction, Mr. Stirn fell upon a knot of boys pelting the swans; sometimes he missed a young sapling, and found it in felonious hands, converted into a walking-stick; sometimes he caught a hulking fellow scrambling up the ha-ha to gather a nosegay for his sweetheart from one of poor Mrs. Hazeldean's pet parterres; not infrequently, indeed, when all the family were fairly at ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... low shoes he wore, pitched them after his cap and coat, and leaped into the water. The current tugged hard at the end of the island, and Bessie and the uprooted sapling were being carried out farther ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... being yarded, the most exciting operation is the capturing and securing of the young beasts requiring to be broken in to the yoke. An experienced and expert stockman enters the enclosure carrying in his hand a pine sapling, 12 or 15 feet in length, at the end of which is a running noose of raw hide or strong hemp rope, attached to a strong rope which is passed round a capstan outside the stockyard and near to a corner post. With considerable dexterity, not infrequently accompanied ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... from one dollar to a dollar and a half. It is particularly desirable to have the specially made ball and cord for this game, but any of the paraphernalia may be improvised, the pole being cut from a sapling, and even the bats whittled from strips of thin board about the ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... to hear you ask, are men to dance, When all men are musicians. Tell me that, I hear you saying, and I'll tell you the name Of Samson's mother. But why shroud yourself Before the coffin comes? For all you know, The tree that is to fall for your last house Is now a sapling. You may have to wait So long as to be sorry; though I doubt it, For you are not at home in your new Eden Where chilly whispers of a likely frost Accumulate already in the air. I think a touch of ermine, ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... Jan tore down the sapling barricade around the woman's grave, and from noon until almost sunset he skirted the sunny side of a great ridge to the south. When he came back he brought with him a basket of the early red snow-flowers, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... feet, he had a great deal more of falling to do it than his friend. He did it most thoroughly, sitting down with such emphasis that the side of the canoe gave way, and he continued the act on dry land, being stopped by a small sapling in ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... thirty feet above them, leaped, and clung swaying to a sapling-top a dozen yards from the tree he had quitted. Two chickadees upside down uttering liquid undertones, searched busily for insects next their heads. Wilson's warblers, pine creepers, black-throats, myrtle and magnolia warblers, oven birds, peewits, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... a little strange unease that the pole did be gone; but scarce to know that I did be troubled, yet to set me to a new haste. And I bid the Maid put the scrip and the pouch and her bundle secure upon the raft; and in that time I lookt well about for a sapling tree that should do my purpose. And I saw that there grew an odd one a little to the side of the flat-topt rock that the Maid had lookt from; and whilst that I cut it, the Maid did come to watch, and made pretty chatter in the time that I ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... never missed a day. Then he'd send me out with one of his sons,—a grown-up man of twenty-two,—and if I didn't do exactly as much work as the son I went hungry until I got it done if it took half the night. He also had a willow sapling he relied upon when hunger didn't prove effective. He'd pray before he used that too,—pray with one hand gripping my neckband so I couldn't get away. I earned a dollar a day—one single solitary dollar—when I was logging oak in the Ozarks. Day ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... fro bent the sapling under his weight, threatening to snap asunder each moment and cast him into the ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... that to yourself in the mirror. You have wonderful color. Your eyes—there never was anything so clear. You were always straight—that was one of the things I admired about you. But now, you seem to be straight without the slightest effort—the natural straightness of a sapling." ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Dangler's prosy platitudes, which some deemed wit—Horner, par exemple—sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the "gushing" order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane "yes's" and lisping "no's" having an opportunity of being "weighed in the balance," and consequently, in my opinion, "found wanting." All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the prize so suddenly within his reach, the fox turned with a dash and caught—at least, no, he didn't quite catch the bird; she flopped by chance just a foot out of reach. He followed with another jump and would have seized her this time surely, but somehow a sapling came just between, and the partridge dragged herself awkwardly away and under a log, but the great brute snapped his jaws and bounded over the log, while she, seeming a trifle less lame, made another ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... know, as well as the youthful dreamer, is here revealed; here too, as well as the disciple of Shelley, we have the author of "The Ring and the Book." In it the long series culminating in "Asolando" is foreshadowed, as the oak is observable in the sapling. The poem is prefaced by a Latin motto from the Occult Philosophy of Cornelius Agrippa, and has also a note in French, set forth as being by Pauline, and appended to her lover's manuscript after his death. Probably Browning placed it in the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the trees upon the snow are blue and soft, sharply defined, and so contrasted with the gleaming white as to appear narrower than the boughs which cast them. There is something subtle and fantastic about these shadows. Here is a leafless larch-sapling, eight feet high. The image of the lower boughs is traced upon the snow, distinct and firm as cordage, while the higher ones grow dimmer by fine gradations, until the slender topmost twig is blurred and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... cane-brakes, with bells round their necks. One of the party stayed at home to watch the camp, prepare the meals and keep off the wolves; the others hunted. When a hunter killed a deer at a distance from the camp, he would open it and take out the entrails; then climbing a sapling he would bend it down, tie the deer to the top, and let it spring up again, so as to suspend the carcass out of reach of the wolves. At night he would return to the camp and give an account of his luck. The next ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... clubfooted bear—and something extraordinary must have happened to save him. An indefinite prolongation of the situation is unthinkable. Wherefore things happened in this wise: Foster's hat fell off, and while the bear was investigating it the man gained a few yards and time enough to climb a stout sapling, growing upon the brink of a cleft in the country rock about a dozen feet wide and twice as deep. The tree was as thick as a man's leg at the base and very tall. Foster climbed well out of reach of the bear, and, perched in a crotch twenty feet ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... seek temptation for the sake of exercising his virtue by overcoming it;—I only say that it is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble the foe;—and if you were to rear an oak sapling in a hothouse, tending it carefully night and day, and shielding it from every breath of wind, you could not expect it to become a hardy tree, like that which has grown up on the mountain-side, exposed ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... no sapling any more. And, consideration aside, you know it's government's policy for us to establish good relations with any intelligent life-form we have to share a planet with. ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... thy giant pride Yet spared the sapling green; And tall and stately by thy side 'Twill show what ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... been straight like the pine sapling. In civilization his descendant permits his back to bend. The chest caves in, squeezing the heart, lungs and liver. One is more liable to pneumonia and tuberculosis, and can not fight them successfully as these organs have lost much of their vital ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... was a slender man with graying hair and a darker mustache, "Charley was only a boy when I last saw him." He was a very jovial man, and red-faced. Rose thought him handsome, and told Mother Bunker so. "No, Charley was only a sapling then. And look at ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... sapling, growing in a cleft of the cliff, struck his shoulder. Around this he managed partly to twist his arm, and this saved him ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... This is supposed to give them complete mastery over the child's life; if the tree is cut down, the child will die. After a birth the Maoris used to bury the navel-string in a sacred place and plant a young sapling over it. As the tree grew, it was a tohu oranga or sign of life for the child; if it flourished, the child would prosper; if it withered and died, the parents augured the worst for the little one. In some parts of Fiji the navel-string of a male infant is planted ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... had a fright. She was taking a deep descent swiftly, when her skirt caught on a stubborn projecting stump of a sapling, and it appeared that she would fall headlong; but by some surprising, self-recovering power, which seemed exerted even in the act of falling, she lay before him in the path, almost as if reclining easily upon her elbow, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the corner in a slow, deliberate trot, and there, as calmly as though it were the most natural thing in the world, was Cynthia, sitting as straight as a sapling on the high seat, with the reins held close in her left hand, and beside her Woodford, and jogging along before the cart ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... and the initials J.M.D.S. were cut on the largest tree they could find. He then attempted to make the mouth of the Adelaide, but found the route too boggy for the horses, and not seeing the utility of fatiguing them for nothing, had a space cleared where they were, and a tall sapling stripped of its boughs for a flagstaff; on this he hoisted the Union Jack he had carried with him. A memorial of the visit was then buried at the foot of the impromptu staff. It was an air-tight tin case containing ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was interrupted; the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy slowly strangled to death the promising sapling. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... long to wait, for Rodolph and his seconds soon followed us down the path, and each party saluted. Then Captain Brooke and Dick Ringgold measured off the paces, and threw for the choice of positions. Dick won, and I found myself standing near a small sapling, with my back to the rising sun, which as yet had not climbed over the tree tops, and so did not interfere with Rodolph's position. Facing me, twelve paces away, stood Rodolph, his dark, swarthy face darker, more Indian-like, and forbidding than ever; behind him stretched ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... history of China.[6] The thoughts of men were turned toward deep and acute inquiry into the nature and use of things in general. This thinking resulted in a literature which to-day is the basis of the opinions of the educated men in all Chinese Asia. Instead of a sapling we now have a mighty tree. The chief of the Chinese writers, the Calvin of Asiatic orthodoxy, who may be said to have wrought Confucianism into a developed philosophy, and who may be called the greatest teacher ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... camp, a sapling was stuck into the ground, and upon the top of this was adjusted a piece of bear's-skin, which, with the long hair upon it, could be distinguished at the distance of a mile or more. The direction having been determined upon, another wand, similarly garnished ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... site of the Temple was consecrated, Smith laying the cornerstone. When the ceremonies were over, the spot was merely marked by a sapling, from two sides of which the bark was stripped, one side being marked with a "T" for Temple, and the other with "ZOM," which Smith stated stood for "Zomas," the original of Zion. At the foot of this sapling lay ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Van Volkenberg,' with its dash, style and virility, with 'Richard Carvel,' and in that respect they will be right, as one would compare the strong, sturdy and spreading elm with a slender sapling." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... pine. With a sudden conviction of having unearthed his fortune, the miner sprang to his saddle and hurried back to the spot whence the tree had been rived. It was dusk by the time he reached the spot, but he could detect gold in the friable rock which lined the cavity left by the uprooted sapling. With a mind too excited to sleep he determined to stay with his find till morning. To leave it involved no real risk of losing it, and yet he could not bring himself to even build a camp-fire, for fear some one might be drawn from the darkness to ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... one great faculty—inflamed and consecrated commonsense—to be more than equal to the subleties, and brilliancies, and wit, and eloquence, and taste, and genius, of his thousand opponents—whose crown was a branch of English oak, his sceptre a strong sapling of the same, his throne a mound of turf—who economised matters by being at once king and king's jester, and whose mere clenched fist, held up at home or across the waters, saved millions of money, awed despots, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... the long street-shaped villages are frequently closed with a fence of saplings and this sapling fence you will see hung with fetish charms to prevent evil spirits from entering the village and sometimes in addition to charms you will see the fence wreathed with leaves and flowers. Bells are frequently hung ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the spot, her heart beating wildly; she drew near, started back and caught at a young sapling for support; yes, there lay a motionless form among the fallen branches, that of a man, a gentleman, as she discerned by what she could see of his clothing; her heart ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... of the man's unfriendliness, Burrell watched him with admiration. There were no heels to his tufted fur boots, and yet he stood a good six feet two, as straight as a pine sapling, and it needed no second glance to tell of what metal he was made. His spirit showed in his whole body, in the set of his head, and, above all, in his dark, warm face, which glowed with eagerness when he talked, and that was ever—when he was ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... From the proud maid some sort of heed and answer, 'Twas mockery mere: she called herself unworthy To be great Balder's bride and Odin's daughter, And held my love-sick sighs for jest and flatt'ry. Yet never have I heard the word which killeth, Without the aid of Surtur's deadly sapling— The No, the frightful No, by Nanna utter'd. Ha! I will hear it! Yes, by Haelheim's darkness! My tears shall now extract that ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... articulate like these; Briefly ye shall be answer'd. When departs The fierce soul from the body, by itself Thence torn asunder, to the seventh gulf By Minos doom'd, into the wood it falls, No place assign'd, but wheresoever chance Hurls it, there sprouting, as a grain of spelt, It rises to a sapling, growing thence A savage plant. The Harpies, on its leaves Then feeding, cause both pain and for the pain A vent to grief. We, as the rest, shall come For our own spoils, yet not so that with them We may again be clad; for what a man Takes from himself it is not just he have. Here ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... tasselled stalks. They squirmed like snakes from under kicking horses, and fainting, got a carbine to the shoulder at aim, and someway, pulled the trigger. Then they were taken in the rear. One-half of the Contra forces, mounted, had waited under the sapling growth of the nearest foothill. Now they sprang from cover, bloodthirsty whelps trailing the Tiger. The guerrillas could not turn back. To retreat they must cleave the way in front, and they did, by sheer desperation. Falling in the mesh at every ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... had fallen across the dazzling white of the road, but neither noted it. The girl stood straight as a sapling, smiling up fearlessly into the twisted, sardonic face thrust close ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... the shoulder. Judge of my astonishment when Meg Merrillies stood before me, clad in the same wild gipsy garb in which she had warned the Laird of Ellangowan on Ellangowan's height! In her shriveled hand it would seem she held the very sapling which for the last time she had plucked from the bonny woods which had so long waved above her bit shealing, until driven thence by the timorous and weak-minded laird. With this she again touched me, and in a half inviting, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... a thirty-foot sapling, which we carried to the wall. A young Zerv swarmed up the pole, let down a rope to help the ascent of the others. I climbed the rough pole after him. I hadn't the athletic ability of these Zervs who seemed ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... of love had come to her, and though her love had grown as naturally as a sapling in a wood, who could tell what changes it would make. For Gavin Burns had been educated in the minister's house and Jean and he had studied and fished and rambled together all through the years in which Jean had grown from childhood into womanhood. Now Gavin was going ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... mingled the pure current of her life with another more turgid, and dull-eyed children, like houses of the suburbs, are builded on her bosom. I am alone, like this old tree, beside the spring where once I was a sapling, and still, like its waters, youth wells and wells, and keeps us yet both green in root. Come back, O Love! and freshen me, and, like a rill, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... at certain intervals, are placed others of a light red tinge, so that the tower is beautifully variegated. With respect to size, standing beside the giant witch of Seville, the Tangerine Djmah would show like a ten-year sapling in the vicinity of the cedar of Lebanon, whose trunk the tempests of five hundred years have worn. And yet I will assert that the towers in other respects are one and the same, and that the same mind and the same design are manifested in both; the same shape ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... most anxious and restless vanity being mentioned, 'Sir, (said he,) there is not a young sapling upon Parnassus more severely blown about by every wind of criticism than that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... little patch of front lawn, more gray than green from the scourge of heat. Insect life hung midair like a curtain of buzzings. Directly opposite the dusty, unmade street, she could see her parents' home standing unprotected except for one sapling maple, the sun already pressing against the drawn shades. There was a slight breeze through this morning that turned the sapling leaves and even lifted the little twist of tendril at the nape of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... against the next year, especially by the boys and young people." Amongst Dorsetshire customs, it seems that, in perambulating a manor or parish, a boy is tossed into a stream, if that be the boundary; if a hedge, a sapling from it is applied ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... still greater inclination, the angle at which the two parts meet remains the same; or if the strain be put in the opposite direction, the bough will break long before it loses its angle. You will find it difficult to bend the angles out of the youngest sapling, if they be marked; and absolutely impossible, with a strong bough. You may break it, but you will not destroy its angles. And if you watch a tree in the wildest storm, you will find that though all its boughs are bending, none lose their character but the utmost shoots and sapling spray. Hence ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... perplexity he serves me now, I soon will lead him where more light appears; When buds the sapling, doth the gardener know That flowers and fruit will deck ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... injustice. If our two hearts and destinies are severed, it has been by the underground machinations of this Administration. General Grant saw what was going on, and has cruelly circumvented two young and unsophisticated hearts that were knitting together, like ivy round an oak sapling. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... eaten as daintily as caviare at the king's table. It is only when its confidence in you is abused, and you pass too near the nest, that might easily be mistaken for a robin's, just above your head in a sapling, that the wood thrush so far forgets itself as to become excited. Pit, pit, pit, sharply reiterated, is called out at you with a strident quality in the tone that is painful evidence of the fearful anxiety your ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... and the solid block, Into the sky, in tiny fragments sped. Woe worth each sapling and that caverned rock Where Medore and Angelica were read! So scathed, that they to shepherd or to flock Thenceforth shall never furnish shade or bed. And that sweet fountain, late so clear and pure, From such tempestous wrath was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... claim my right in you, most hardly won, Of chaste fidelity upon the chaste: Hold me and hold by me, lest both should fall (O in high escalade high companion!) Even in the breach of Heaven's assaulted wall. Like to a wind-sown sapling grow I from The clift, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul, - Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome By all its clouds incumbent: O be true To your soul, dearest, as my life to you! For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot Of climbing ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... dream in very deed, He wondered, broken, trembling, dazed? His staff he lifted from the mead And as an upright sapling raised. ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... best firewood—though dry sticks of some lighter wood had been used to kindle it. On each side of the fire a forked stick was stuck into the ground, with the forks at the top; and on these rested a fresh cut sapling, placed horizontally to serve as a crane. A two-gallon camp-kettle of sheet-iron was suspended upon it and over the fire, and the water in the kettle was just beginning to boil. Other utensils were strewed around. There was a frying-pan, some tin cups, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... what ails the censurer that he at thee should flite? How shall I be consoled for thee, and thou a sapling slight? Thou of the black and languorous eye, that casteth far and wide Charms, whose sheer witchery compels to passion's utmost height, Whose looks, with Turkish languor fraught, work havoc in the breast, Leaving such wounds as ne'er were made of falchion in the fight, Thou layst ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... in her slipping garments by her long and trailing hair, And like sapling tempest-shaken, wept and shook ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... that dog's eyes, isn't he a fine fellow?" he kept asking. His knowledge of the trees on his estate was historical. He knew their lineage and characteristics from the date of their sapling age, four or five hundred years before. The old and decrepit aristocrats of his forest were tenderly bandaged, their ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... little hatchet and hastened to the woods as I had been bidden. I looked in every direction for a tall, slender tree that would answer the purpose; and every time I stopped to examine a young tree, a taller and straighter sapling caught my eye ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... to a place (marked by a sapling with a little flag attached to it) at some short distance from the cottage. She glided along by his side, with subtle undulations of movement which appeared to complete the exasperation of Perry. He waited until she was out of hearing—and then he invoked (let us say) the blasts ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... him for three hundred years, While fell around his green compeers - Yon lonely thorn, would he could tell The changes of his parent dell, Since he, so grey and stubborn now, Waved in each breeze a sapling bough: Would he could tell how deep the shade A thousand mingled branches made; How broad the shadows of the oak, How clung the rowan to the rock, And through the foliage showed his head, With narrow leaves and berries red; What pines on every mountain sprung, O'er every dell what birches hung, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... in Indian file, down the passage, and found Moynglass in a smaller cave at the end of it, staring intently at something which was at first difficult to see in the gloom. Then, by the light of our lamps, we made out a sapling sticking up between two rocks, with a withered human hand impaled on it by a ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... sticking out of the earth. This spring, however, has been long exchanged for one on higher ground, and the wooden logs for lead pipe, half as expensive, and not half so healthy. Just pop over that chip-munk, whose head is peeping out of the ground at the foot of the maple sapling. Too cruel! Well done! you are growing compassionate all at once. Look out for your head! I declare, you escaped narrowly! That dead limb would have dispersed all your theology, had it struck your head. Well, Dancer, what are you staring at? Do you think the old tree dropped one ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... close to the house for food. In his choice of a nesting-place he seems at first sight to show less than his usual caution; for, though the nest is a very conspicuous one, it is generally made in a pine sapling not far from the ground, and often on a path or other opening in the woods. But perhaps, in the somewhat remote situations where he builds, the danger is less from below than from birds of prey sailing overhead. I once found a blue jay's nest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... trotting to and fro, twisting about and singing as she went. Was this then the lazybones who had such dreadful headaches at the least bit of work? But she laughed; at headwork, yes; but exertion with her hands and feet did her good, seemed to straighten her like a young sapling. She confessed, even as she would have confessed some depraved taste, her liking for lowly household cares; a liking which had greatly worried her mother, whose educational ideal consisted of accomplishments, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... dig up the old tree That sheltered in ages past The earth's noblest men and women From the fury of the blast, See that your sapling is rooted, And no borer at its base, And its boughs both strong and spreading, To ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... chanced to meet With a water bag, billy, and dog complete; He came too close to a knocked up steer, Who up a sapling made him clear. ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... they had stopped the night before, but going into camp without the presence of the horse was lonesome to him. He saw the place where he had scraped away the leaves from the side of the stream to give him a spot to drink, and found the sapling to which he had hitched him, and the place where he had spread his blanket—but there was little sleep for ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... been pitched in a small open space surrounded by bushes. Through the thicket, on the south side, he picked a way, pushing away each sapling and weed noiselessly to make room for the passage of his huge body. For such a bulk of a figure he moved lightly. Twice he stopped by reason of the crackle of a snapping twig, but no sign of alarm ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... participle is known by its ending in ing; as, floating, riding, hearing, seeing. These are derived from the verbs, float, ride, hear, and see. But some words ending in ing are not participles; such as evening, morning, hireling, sapling, uninteresting, unbelieving, uncontrolling. When you parse a word ending in ing, you should always consider whether it comes from a verb or not. There is such a verb as interest, hence you know that the word interesting ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... the ridge of the hills. He was hunchback, or the great pack he was carrying made him seem so. His thin legs were long for his body, and he walked too rapidly, with bent knees; his right hand he leant upon a great sapling; upon his head was a very wide hat, the stuff of which I could not see in the darkness. Now and again he would turn and beckon me, and he always went on a little way before. As for me, partly because ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... tumbled down into the cheese, and we lost her; and after we had eaten at this cheese seven years, we came upon a great dun mare, alive and kicking. Well, once after that I was going to drive this mare to the mill, and her backbone snapped in two; but I wasn't put out, not I; for I took a spruce sapling, and put it into her for a backbone, and she had no other backbone all the while we had her. But the sapling grew up into such a tall tree, that I climbed right up to the sky by it, and when I got there I saw a lady sitting and spinning the foam of the sea into pigs'-bristle ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... mother's name in it completed the—I hadn't exactly liked to call it a trousseau. It was all tied up in one of Adam's Romney handkerchiefs, which he had washed out one day in the spring branch and left hanging on a hickory sapling to dry, and which I had appropriated because I loved its riot of ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to which Muskwa was fastened was not much more than a sapling, and he lay in the saddle of a crotch five feet from the ground when Metoosin led one of the dogs past him. The Airedale saw him and made a sudden spring that tore the leash from the Indian's hand. His leap carried him almost up to Muskwa. He was about to ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... the parents seemed to be limitless, for one of them, having some difficulty in reaching a bunch of foliage which grew upon a considerable-sized tree, put his fore-legs round the trunk and tore it down as if it had been a sapling. The action seemed, as I thought, to show not only the great development of its muscles, but also the small one of its brain, for the whole weight came crashing down upon the top of it, and it ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... showed what seemed to be a tiny sail far out in the bay, but it disappeared and, at the same moment, a sudden, violent wind swept in from the sea, and almost threw her down. She caught hold of a sapling-stem to steady herself, and held tightly till the gust passed. Next instant came a great roar of blinding rain, and she was forced to run as fast as she could to the house. It took but two minutes to reach it; but already she was drenched to the skin, and the ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... for the third time, the stranger-youth dismounted from his horse, and cutting a supple willow sapling from a tree in the cemetery, stripped it of its leaves, and thrusting it into his whip-handle, mounted his horse again. Hitherto he had not once ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... the tiny ford, warily, she saw a saddled horse tied to a sapling and a man seated ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... thee to Coventry, I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge; Watched by thy three tall squires. And there I shaped An ancient willow's sapling into this." ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... Coates, a severe man. Because I could not learn his way of hilling corn, he flogged me naked with a severe whip, made of a very tough sapling; this lapped round me at each stroke; the point of it at last entered my belly and broke off, leaving an inch and a half outside. I was not aware of it until, on going to work again, it hurt my inside very much, when, on looking down, ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... returned the dame, hastily. "Thou comest of noble blood and long descent, though, as I have told thee often, I know not the exact names of thy parents. But what art thou shaping that tough sapling of oak into?" ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is broken above the knee, lay shoulders slightly back, with the head and shoulders slightly raised. Draw the leg out straight, and, after padding it with cotton or towels, cut a small sapling long enough to reach from the foot to the armpit, and fasten it at the ankle, knee, and waist. If it is necessary to move the boy, ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... creatures than I am," he said. "We must try what we can do in some other way. We need not starve in the midst of abundance, that's very certain." He looked about carefully on every side for a young sapling or a tree of some flexible character of which he might form a bow, but he was too ignorant of their nature to ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... one of the houses a girl stood—a tall, lean-flanked, but deep-bosomed creature, as graceful as a well-grown sapling. Her calico frock clung to the lines of her matured figure as though she had just stepped up out of the sea itself. Around her head she had banded a crimson bandanna, but it allowed the escape of ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... by the heavy red beard and long matted hair. It was dressed in what appeared to be white trousers, but barefoot; and its upper clothing seemed to be a shirt beneath and a loose flowing white robe hanging from the shoulders. In its hand this terrible figure carried a club of green sapling oak, heavily knotted at the end, about five feet in length, two inches in diameter at the butt and tapering to where it was grasped at the lower end. A more effective weapon in close combat could not be devised; and with this weapon, and with fierce yells that seemed like those ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... gallant stature, This of the rock, that of the flock that skim along the water, Like whistle shriek the blows they strike, as the torrent of the fell, So fierce they gush—the moor flames' rush their ardour symbols well. Clandonuil's[124] root when crown each shoot of sapling, branch, and stem, What forest fair shall e'er compare in stately pride with them? Their gathering might, what legion wight, in rivalry has dared; Or to ravish from their Lion's face a bristle of his beard? What limbs were wrench'd, what furrows drench'd, in that cloud ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... take hold of a growing sapling, we can of course bend it to all sides in succession, so as to make the tip describe a circle, like that performed by the summit of a spontaneously revolving plant. By this movement the sapling is not in the least twisted round its own axis. I mention this because if a black point be painted ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... about your souls In vain the heaving tide of mourning rolls, If from your trails unto the crimson goals The weeper and the weeping must depart, If lust of blood come on you like a fiery dart And darken all the dark autumnal air, Then, then — be fair. Pluck a young ash tree or a sapling yew And at the root end fix an iron thorn, Then forth with rocking laughter of the horn And passing, with no belling retinue, All timorous, lesser sippers of the dew, Seek out some burly guardian of the hills And set your urgent thew against his thew. Then shall the hidden wisdoms and the wills ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... red, hissing water splattered from the radiator cock, and the lifted hood gave the machine a chance to cool before replenishment came from the murky, discolored stream of melted snow water which churned beneath a sapling bridge. Panting and light-headed from the altitude, Barry leaned against the machine for a moment, then suddenly straightened to draw his coat tighter about him and to raise the collar about his neck. The wind, whistling down from above, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... Through almost every city of Europe are men whose great glory it appears to be to proclaim that they worship the beast, and wear his name in their foreheads. I have seen sometimes, in the forests, a vigorous young sapling which had sprung up from the roots of an old, decaying tree. So, unless the course of things alters much in America, a purer civil liberty will spring up from her roots in Europe, while her national tree is blasted with despotism. It is most affecting, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the fruit, but he also determined that he would plant a tree and thus have apples for his wife, whenever she wanted them. So he bought a fine young sapling, to set in his orchard, for the children to play under and to keep his pantry full of the fine red-cheeked fruit. At this his wife ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... about for something with which to strike. Nothing lay within reach of her bleeding fingers, however, but a little piece of dried sapling. She tried to struggle loose, but the lunatic held her mercilessly. He continued the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... an airthquake agitatin' this solitude?" he asked, steadying himself against a sapling, "or am I standing on ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... a mullen spike, a goldfinch is singing to his mate, whose nest is in a sapling not far away. His jet black wings fold over his yellow back, shaping it into a pointed shield of gold. He is so happy and so fond that he can not bear long to remain out of her sight. Now he sings a tender serenade, then his joy rises to ecstasy. He takes wings and floats ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... studied the ground. Suddenly her face brightened. "Why, of course!" she exclaimed. "That mark represents the crack, and daddy meant to stake the claim with the crack for the center. Well, here goes!" She vehemently attacked a young sapling, and ten minutes later viewed with pride her four roughly hacked stakes. Picking up one of them and the axe, she paced off her distance, and as she reached the first corner point, stared in surprise at the ground. The claim had already been staked! Eagerly she stooped ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... toilsome journey to the boat, and I found it half-full of flood-water. This I emptied by hauling the boat, as the river rose, on to a shelving rock. Then I waited for it to float free, having meanwhile got hold of a long, fir sapling, which, pruned of its branches, I thought to use as a guiding pole, helm or oar, as the rushing of many waters ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... joined in an earnest plea with me not to destroy their homes and little ones, and I hurriedly climbed down from the tree to relieve their agitation, stopping only a moment to examine the twine plaited into the felted nests of the kingbirds. The willow sapling contained also the nest of a ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... shivering with a sudden sense of desolation. He took his bearings, propped a fallen fir sapling aslant by the sled, and, forgetting he was ready to drop, he ran swiftly hack along the way he came. They had travelled all that afternoon and evening on the river ice, hard as iron, retaining no trace ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... resiny needles on the tree, as well as those on the ground, are very inflammable, and fires probably sweep a lodge-pole forest more frequently than any other in America. When this forest is in a sapling stage, it is very likely to be burned to ashes. If, however, the trees are beyond the sapling stage, the fire probably will consume the needles, burn some of the bark away, and leave the tree, together with its numerous ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... bring himself to chop them down. The crash of a falling tree which gave me the most intense delight, made him sorrowful. He stood awhile over it as over the corpse of an old friend. He had known it for many a year, had noted its growth from a sapling to a tree as old as himself. Like the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... long are they called saplings?" Rabbi Eleazar, the son of Azariah, said,(42) "till they can be used." R. Joshua said, "till the age of seven years." R. Akiba said, "a sapling, as commonly named." "A tree decays and sprouts afresh; when less than a handbreadth, it is a sapling; when more than a handbreadth, it is a tree." The ...
— Hebrew Literature
... and form roots and new stems, till at length a solitary tree becomes the parent of an extensive grove, appropriately characterized by the bard as "a pillared shade high overarched." And as they are thus continually increasing, seeming meanwhile almost exempt from the general law of decay, a tiny sapling borne to the spot in an infant's hand may come in time to cover thousands of feet of soil. Such a specimen is the noted Cubber Burr, growing on a picturesque little island in the river Nerbudda, near Baroach, in the province of Guzerat. This wonderful tree, named after a venerated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... well, and some time after again sought to escape, but was caught, and handcuffed to another. Being removed from one place to another, the two prisoners managed to knock their guards on the head, and ran for life through the woods, chained together. One would sometimes run on one side of a sapling, and the other on the opposite side. At night they managed to rub their handcuffs off, and finally escaped to Canada. Of the other brothers, two were carried off by the rebels and were never more heard of; John was taken to the rebel army when old enough to do service, but he also escaped to Canada, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson |
