"Soil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not move thus, unless assisted, but Philo Gubb was too far away to see the hand he knew must have reached out for the bundle. He ran rapidly, keeping in the sawdust that formed the unfruitful soil of the lumber-yard, until he dared come no nearer, and then he climbed to the top of the tallest lumber-pile and lay flat. He commanded every side of the hillside lumber-yard, and he did not have long to wait. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... that if the soil of this country were scientifically cultivated, it is capable of producing sufficient to maintain a population of a hundred millions of people. Our present population is only about forty millions, but so long as the land remains in the possession of persons who refuse to allow it to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... six months in the Bastile. They ask me if I shall ever return to France? Yes, I reply, when the Bastile becomes a public promenade. You have all that is necessary to happiness, you Frenchmen; a fertile soil and genial climate, good hearts, gay tempers, genius, and grace. You only want, my friends, one little thing—to feel sure of sleeping quietly in your beds when you ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... passions, become overwhelmed with misery as the fruit of their own deeds. I have heard that my father, though begotten by Santanu of virtuous soul, was cut off while still a youth, only because he had become a slave to his lust. In the soil of that lustful king, the illustrious Rishi Krishna-Dwaipayana himself, of truthful speech, begot me. A son though I am of such a being, with my wicked heart wedded to vice, I am yet leading a wandering life in the woods in the chase of the deer. Oh, the very gods have forsaken me! I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the mercantile class, and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, with whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same sky over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out, with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the military uniforms, there was little ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... us as we trod the free earth once more! What we had gone through since we were last on shore! Then it was on British soil; now it was on that of a friendly neutral country. It seemed strange to be treading land again after five months on shipboard. How welcome to see the green fields, the horses at work on the beach, the people in the village, the village itself! How good ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... or sugar, but a small quantity of glycogen. The fat in an animal is derived from the carbohydrates, the fats and the proteids of the vegetables consumed. The soil that produced the herbage, grain and roots consumed by cattle, in most cases could have produced food capable of direct utilisation by man. By passing the product of the soil through animals there is an enormous economic loss, as the greater part of that food is dissipated in maintaining ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... there given, in which the Devil took no part unless he was at the back of the bad men who were concerned in the business. But in this strange, remote country, outside of "Wiltsheer," Bawcombe was in a region where anything might have happened, where the very soil and pasture were unlike that of his native country, and the mud adhered to his boots in a most unaccountable way. It was almost uncanny. Doubtless he was home-sick, for a month or two before the end of the year he asked his master to look out for ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... doubles the Quantity of its People in 250 Years; but I have seen Computations, that between our early Marriages, the Breedyness of our People, the Importations of our Neighbours, the Mildness of our Climate, and the Fertility of our Soil, evidently prove, that we have frequently doubled the Amount of our Inhabitants in half that Time. The Truth is, the matter of Fact is so incontestable, that I need not recollect all the Proofs, on which they ground ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... apart that the masses forget their birthmarks and the W's on their backs. But if you'll follow their appearances from place to place, as I've done, putting up my ante right along for the privilege, you'll become an accomplished boomist; and from the first gentle stirrings of boom-sprouts in the soil, so to speak, you can forecast their growth, maturity, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... where, with backs against the wall spotted with crystals of feldspar, they waited to breathe, hardly looking down from the dizzy ledge. Great slabs of obsidian were piled about them between stretches of calcareous stone, and the soil which was like beds of old lava covered by thin layers of limestone, was everywhere pierced by sharp shoulders of stone lying in savage disarray. Gradually rock-slides and rock-edges yielded a less insecure footing on the upper reaches, but the chasms widened ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... sits down.) One ought to have done with all that before the soul can get quite away from the dust that—. (Begins to rake the paper towards him with his stick.) And here am I, sitting here raking more of it towards me!—No, let the thing lie! I won't soil my wings any more.—Poor Harald! He has to take up the burden now! What a horrible bungle it is, that we should be brought into the world to give each other as much pain as possible! (Decidedly.) Well, I am going to see what legacy of unhappiness I am ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... that Natasha and Anna Ornovski went to Russia partly to discover the terms of the secret treaty that we believed to exist between France and Russia, and partly to warn, and, if possible, remove from Russian soil a large number of our most valuable allies, whose names had been revealed to the Minister of the Interior, chiefly through the agency of the spy Martinov, who was executed in this room six ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... crying all in one, the fine mist-drops shining down in the sun's rays, like star-dust from some new world in process of rasping up for use. I liked such days. The showers were as good for me as for the trees. I grew and budded under them, and they filled my soul's soil full ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... her husband's affairs. She found that she could not get the land worked by the islanders, and had induced O'Shea, who it seemed was an old farm hand of her own father's, to settle upon this farm, which was a richer one than the one he had had upon the mainland. The soil of the islands, Pembroke said, was in reality exceedingly rich, but in no case had it ever been properly worked, and he was in hopes that now Madame Le Maitre might produce a model farm, which would be of vast good in showing the islanders how much they lost by their indifferent ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... a powder, add some water to it; and when sprinkled, the ants will either die or leave the place. When they are found to traverse garden walls or hot-houses, and to injure the fruit, several holes should be drilled in the ground with an iron crow, close to the side of the wall, and as deep as the soil will admit. The earth being stirred, the insects will begin to move about: the sides of the holes are then to be made smooth, so that the ants may fall in as soon as they approach, and they will be unable to climb upwards. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... alone, with only the slightest labor to occupy her hands and mind, gave her idle time—fertile soil for the raising of a dark crop of morbid thoughts. She brooded much, and, brooding, became restless, unhappy, and she could not conceal it from Bonbright when he came home eagerly for his dinner, ready to take up with boyish hope the absurd game he had invented. She allowed herself ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... done, But here of white men there had ne'er walked one, But a fierce race of wild and savage hue, Their simple life from chase and angling won, And oft, when wrath arose, each other slew, In bloody wars which dyed their soil with ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... time southern farmers had been importuned to adopt a more diversified method of farming to offset the effects of unexpected misfortune in the cotton industry and to preserve the value of the soil. Following the ravages of the boll weevil, the idea gained wide application. The cotton acreage was cut down and other crops substituted. The cultivation of cotton requires about five times as many laborers ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... Spaces once occupied by graves had been turned into potato-patches. Between were tombs leaning at all angles out of the perpendicular, tablets made illegible by scurf, empty pedestals, shattered water-tanks, and statues of Buddhas without heads or hands. Recent rains had soaked the black soil,—leaving here and there small pools of slime about which swarms of tiny frogs were hopping. Everything—excepting the potato-patches—seemed to have been neglected for years. In a shed just within the gate, ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... now you come round, and dictate, and think sure of your Excise? Sure? Are you sure I'll let you pack with a whole skin? By my soul, but I've a mind to pistol you like dogs. Out of this! Out, I say, and soil my home no more. ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... Comte d'Artois or one of his sons that his presence was desired by the faithful population in the West, he thought of going himself to England with the invitation. Perhaps they would be able to persuade the King to put himself at the head of the movement, and be the first to land on French soil. This was d'Ache's secret conviction, and in the ardour of his credulous enthusiasm he was certain that on the announcement, Napoleon's Empire would crumble of itself, without the necessity ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... bought a thousand-dollar fur coat and a full-dress suit before he had learned to use a handkerchief. He always had one in his pocket, but he would handle it gingerly, as if he had not the heart to soil it, and then he would carefully fold it again. The effect money had on this man was of quite another nature than it was in ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... can be warded off by our own exertions, in contradistinction to others which are altogether beyond our controul; and here it may be as well to premise, that when I use the term epidemic, I mean atmospheric influence, endemic-terrestrial influence, or emanation from the soil; and by pestilential, I mean the spread of malignant disease without any reference to its source. The terms contagion and infection have already ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... by their representatives; the rights of private citizens violated, and the titles of all landed property declared void; the voice of complaint stifled by restrictions on the press; and, finally, disaffection overawed by the first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial love which had invariably secured their allegiance to the mother country, whether its head chanced to be a Parliament, Protector, or Popish Monarch. Till these evil times, however, such allegiance had been merely ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... about this home to which he and his family were to grow as trees grasp the soil. Already it seemed better to him than the one he had left. There would be new playmates, new landscapes, new meadows to run in, new neighbors, new prospects. The home, so distant during the journey that he had scarcely thought ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Work is energy applied to the creation of either material or immaterial products. The digging of the soil preparatory to raising a corn-crop is work; the making of brooms; the writing of fugues. There is no one who does not work, at one time or another, and a man's social value depends largely upon the amount of ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... possessed by the various cantons were indigenous to the soil. From time immemorial they had clung to the ancient right of self-government, and had developed in their midst a local system which feudalism never succeeded in eradicating. It mattered not how diverse their systems of local ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... marriage more recklessly. "Death itself," he once wrote, "to the reflecting mind is less serious than marriage. The elder plant is cut down that the younger may have room to nourish; a few tears drop into the loosened soil, and buds and blossoms spring over it. Death is not even a blow, it is not even a pulsation; it is a pause. But marriage unrolls the awful lot of numberless generations." The man who could write thus impressively about marriage one spring evening at Bath attended ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... animated being can find a living upon it, and such a being Nature adapts to its peculiar situation. For instance, there are animals that prefer the very desert itself, and would not thrive were you to place them in a country of mild climate and fertile soil. In our own species this peculiarity is also found—as the Esquimaux would not be happy were you to transplant him from his icy hut amid the snows of the Arctic regions, and give him a palace under ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... They feel that it is their very own property, and much of their discontent against the Turks is that it is no longer on Greek soil, no longer a part of Greece, but ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... loss you have is but a son being king, And by that loss your daughter is made queen. I cannot make you what amends I would, Therefore accept such kindness as I can. Dorset your son, that with a fearful soul Leads discontented steps in foreign soil, This fair alliance quickly shall call home To high promotions and great dignity: The king, that calls your beauteous daughter wife, Familiarly shall call thy Dorset brother; Again shall you be mother to a king, And all the ruins of distressful ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... encomendero. Its inhabitants are well-disposed. They have large fisheries, for there are many shoals near the island. There is also a pearl-fishery, although a very small one. The land produces millet and borona, but no rice, for all the island has poor soil notwithstanding that it is level. Some of the natives of this island cultivate land on the island of Cubu, which, as I have said, is two leagues away. The island abounds in excellent palm-trees—a growth common to all the Pintados islands, for all ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... us into and across the Ketchumstock Flats, a wide basin surrounded by hills and drained by the Mosquito Fork of the Fortymile. The telegraph-line, supported on tripods against the summer yielding of the marshy soil, cuts straight across country. This basin and the hills around form one of the greatest caribou countries, perhaps, in the world. All day we had passed fragments of the long fences that were in use in times past by the Indians for driving ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... tilted blocks of sandstone. They are of marked regularity of shape, as square as if hewn with a chisel. Both are splintered and fissured; one is broken in twain. No other rock is near. The earth in which they are embedded is the rich black soil not unfrequently found upon the summits. Nevertheless no great significance might seem to attach to their isolation—an outcropping of ledges, perhaps; a fracture of the freeze; a trace of ancient denudation by the waters of the spring in the gap, flowing now down the ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... old man, "you will not find here the gastronomical niceties of Paris. Like plain country people, we live on the produce of the soil. A good bottle of old beer, however, has some merit, and varieties of game are found in our forests, for which the gourmets of Paris would willingly exchange their hares ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... with a sigh, as the scarce dried window-panes disclosed a road now inch deep in mud! "Ah! then, it's little good claning of ye!"—for well had he learned in the hall below that eight miles of a stiff clay soil lay between the manor and ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... hand, to explore the country of the Druids. Now, if the matters I succeeded in visiting were in isolated and plain situations, they might have been less disappointing; but where the face of the whole soil is covered naturally with jutting rocks, and timeworn boulders of granite, one doesn't feel much astonishment to see some one stone set on end a little more obviously than the rest, or to find out by dint of perseverance a little arrangement, which may or may not be accidental: added to this, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... passes for loyalty or patriotism in other countries is blind impulse, growing out of mere attachment to the soil, or the power of custom, or a helpless feeling of dependence on things as they are. "If my father in his grave could hear of this war," said a Spanish peasant, "his bones would not rest." Yet what earthly interest, what intelligible concern had Spanish peasants in the rivalships and struggles ...
— The Spirit Proper to the Times. - A Sermon preached in King's Chapel, Boston, Sunday, May 12, 1861. • James Walker
... none to whose poison and infatuation the best of minds are so liable. Ambition scarce ever produces any evil but when it reigns in cruel and savage bosoms; and avarice seldom flourishes at all but in the basest and poorest soil. Love, on the contrary, sprouts usually up in the richest and noblest minds; but there, unless nicely watched, pruned, and cultivated, and carefully kept clear of those vicious weeds which are too apt to surround it, it branches ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... faith; each corporation marched behind the banner of its saint, brotherhoods of all kinds united the entire town, on festival mornings, in one large Christian family. And, as with some exquisite flower that has grown in the soil of its choice, great purity of life reigned there. There was not even a resort of debauchery for young men to wreck their lives, and the girls, one and all, grew up with the perfume and beauty of innocence, under the eyes ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the universe diamonds are as plenty as soil is on our Earth, but soil is as scarce and valuable as diamonds are in our world. The heart-rending oppression of the "Soil Trust" in the Diamond World portrayed. Illustration. The insatiable greed of "Trusts" follows the poor people into ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... petition the gods for Rome's victory and your preservation, but what the worst of our enemies would imprecate as a curse, is the very object of our vows. Your wife and children are under the sad necessity, that they must either be deprived of you, or of their native soil. As for myself, I am resolved not to wait till war shall determine this alternative for me; but if I cannot prevail with you to prefer amity and concord to quarrel and hostility, and to be the benefactor to both parties, rather than the destroyer ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... improvement—which was for the benefit of agriculture, in which Jefferson always felt a deep interest—had, perhaps, even greater importance, for it was not merely a convenience but a means of increasing wealth. It was a new form of plough, which, sinking deeper into the soil, vastly increased its productive power, and has been of untold value to the people not only of our country ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... successful stand against the Spanish and the hated friars, they have positively subjugated the desert. Its every resource is known and utilized for their benefit. Is there an underground irrigation that moistens the soil, they have searched it out and thrust their seed corn into its fertile depths. The rocks are used to build their houses; the cottonwood branches make ladders and supports for the ceilings; the clay is fashioned into priceless pottery; ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... the tender flower of life; which declines in us as those weeds flourish. We ought, therefore, to begin early to study what our constitutions will bear, in order to root out, by temperance, the weeds which the soil is most apt to produce; or, at least, to keep them down as they rise; and not, when the flower or plant is withered at the root, and the weed in its full vigour, expect, that the medical art will restore the one, or destroy the other; when that other, as I hinted, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... false wit which has been so recommended by the practice of all ages as that which consists in a jingle of words, and is comprehended under the general name of punning. It is indeed impossible to kill a weed which the soil has a natural disposition to produce. The seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and though they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art. ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... cardinal carried back his report to his master. The Pope, so defied, brought out his thunders; he excommunicated Luther; he wrote again to the elector, entreating him not to soil his name and lineage by becoming a protector of heretics; and he required him, without further ceremony, to render up ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... set of teeth, pleasant, smiling countenances and good physique; they also seem to have, somehow, acquired easy, agreeable manners. The secret of the whole difference, I opine, is that, instead of being located among the inhospitable soil of barren hills they are cultivating the productive soil of the Alashgird Plain, and, being situated on the great Persian caravan trail, they find a ready market for their grain in supplying the caravans in winter. Their Sheikh is a handsome and good-natured young fellow, sporting white clothes ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Further, the judicial fixing of rents, which, as the time for rent revision has approached, has presented to the tenant the temptation not to make the best of his land, and so run the risk of an augmentation of rent, has been a source of insidious demoralisation to the occupant of the soil. ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... forces that fascinated, yet inspired me with fear. Undoubtedly this secretiveness of our elders was due to the pernicious dualism of their orthodox Christianity, in which love was carnal and therefore evil, and the flesh not the gracious soil of the spirit, but something to be deplored and condemned, exorcised and transformed by the miracle of grace. Now love had become a terrible power (gripping me) whose enchantment drove men and women from home and friends and kindred to the uttermost ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a good scheme, too, except for the fact that the irrigation ditch ran uphill, and that there wasn't any water where it started from, and that apples never had been made to grow in that locality because of something in the soil, and that Brown-eyed Betty's title to the land wouldn't hold water any more than the ditch. Otherwise I'm sure he'd have made a success and I'd have spent my declining years in a rocking-chair under the falling apple blossoms, eating Pippins and Jonathans ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... country, which has been drained of its vitality by an excessive migration and military conscription. The young men of Finland are forced to serve five years in the Russian Army, and the country is suffering from a lack of men to till the soil. The credit of the country has been mined, and panic is spreading rapidly. Wholesale migration of the more thrifty has made the already difficult problem of readjustment more complicated. Those who remain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... waterborne diseases: bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever vectorborne diseases: malaria and yellow fever are high risks in some locations water contact disease: schistosomiasis respiratory disease: meningococcal meningitis aerosolized dust or soil ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... tributary of the Amazon, to which point he and Dick would proceed in the former's steam yacht Mohawk, a comfortable little craft of two hundred and fifty tons register. At this point, on the left, or northern, bank of the tributary, stands, on Peruvian soil, a small town called Conceicao, and abreast of this town the Mohawk came to an anchor about mid-afternoon of a certain day in the month of November, not ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... Ethelbert, and Ethelred; but their reigns were short, for in twenty years they too had passed away, to be succeeded by the strong, brave, and learned man who drove the Danish' invaders finally from the shores of England, or forced them to become peaceful workers of the soil. He was the brave warrior who never knew what it was to be conquered, but tried again and again till the enemy fled before ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... the forlorn adventurers would plunge into ravines of frightful depth, where the exhalations of a humid soil steamed up amidst the incense of sweet-scented flowers, which shone through the deep glooms in every conceivable variety of color. Birds. especially of the parrot tribe, mocked this fantastic variety ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... a sufficient theory in regard to the rate of profit, that it depends upon the productive power of capital. Some countries are favoured beyond others, either by nature or art, in the means of production. If the powers of the soil, or of machinery, enable capital to produce what is necessary for replacing itself, and twenty per cent more, profits will be twenty per cent; ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... to every man in the ward, and on election day I asked a good many men, as a personal favor, to vote for the Republican, and my friends asked others. Even Dennis Moriarty worked and voted for what he calls a 'dirty Republican,' though he said 'he never thought he'd soil his hands wid one av their ballots.' That is the nearest I ever came to telling ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... who fights with dirty foes Must needs be soil'd, admit they win or lose: Then think it doth a Doctor's credit dash To make himself antagonist ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... open sea, the most agreeable perfume. The hills are covered with vineyards, bordered with banian trees: in short every thing is combined to render Madeira one of the most beautiful islands of Africa. Its soil is only a vegetable sand, mixed with an ash, which gives it astonishing fertility; it shews every where nothing but the remains of a volcanised earth, the colour of which is that of the element, by which it was long consumed. Funchal, the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... throbbing brow—and he will hope, and not despair. Who knows whether or not our hope and our faith have power in some strange way to link the present to the future, carrying forward the spirit-seed to soil in which it blooms in splendor ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... have the English soil, These overbearing French; So if they come they'll find it here In six-foot two ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... the connivance of her ally, precipitated war with Austria. According to an understanding arrived at by Cavour and the Emperor Napoleon III. at Plombieres (June 20, 1858) Austria was to be expelled absolutely from Italian soil; Lombardo-Venetia, the smaller duchies of the north, the papal Legations, and perhaps the Marches, were to be annexed to Piedmont, the whole to comprise a kingdom of Upper Italy; Umbria and Tuscany were to be erected into ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... French folk, whereso'er ye be, Who love your country, soil and sand. From Paris to the Breton sea, And back again to Norman strand, Forsooth ye seem a silly band, Sheep without shepherd, left to chance— Far otherwise our Fatherland If Villon were the ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hundred or so Toltecs were on the beach, doing a war dance and waving their spears at us. We had a pretty close call of it for grub, but we made a little town on the gulf and stocked up, and then we headed for the mouth of the Rio Grande. We camped one night a week later on United States soil, and that night while I was asleep Taggart tried to knife me. I'd showed Taggart the diamond image one day while Ezela was asleep in the boat, and he'd got greedy for it. Ezela screamed when she saw him getting close to me with the knife, and I woke in time to grab him ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... her old ideals and standards were being torn up by the roots, roots that went deep down into the soil of life in the town in Ohio. But Ethel did not think of that. She ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... then, stood a string of cars loaded with wool, as his nose told him promptly. Farms there were none, but that was because the soil was yellow and pebbly and barren where it showed in great bald spots here and there; you would not expect to raise cabbages where a prairie dog had to forage far for a living. Behind the depot, the prairie humped a huge, broad shoulder ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... peristyle of his father's house; as he walked backward and forwards with poor, weary, abandoned Sirona, his neglected figure seemed by degrees to assume the noble aspect of a high-born Greek; and instead of the rough, rocky soil, he felt as if he were treading the beautiful mosaic pavement of his father's court. Paulus was Menander again, and if there was little in the presence of the recluse, which could recall his identity with the old man he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... carried away by pity," he said, "for these unscrupulous men, who soil their judicial ermine in the lowest passions of mankind, and thereby endanger the lives and sacrifice the honor of their wives ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... money as he had wished to give me. The peace ratified, I thought as he was at the highest pinnacle of military and political fame, he would think of acquiring that of another nature, by reanimating his states, encouraging in them commerce and agriculture, creating a new soil, covering it with a new people, maintaining peace amongst his neighbors, and becoming the arbitrator, after having been the terror, of Europe. He was in a situation to sheath his sword without danger, certain that no sovereign would oblige ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... must wash—you must scrub—you must scrape!" growled Jack, "you must traffic with cans and pails, Nor keep the spoil of the good brown soil in the rim of your finger-nails! The morning path you must tread to your bath—you must wash ere the night descends, And all for the cause of conventional laws and the soapmakers' dividends! But if 'tis sooth that our meal ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... rated them for the scandalous laxity of their conduct, and having reminded them of all the obligations of their office, he informed them of his new regulations, the nature of which made them tremble. He proposed nothing less than to condemn them to daily manual labour, the tillage of the soil, the performance of menial household duties; and to this he added the practices of immoderate fasting, perpetual silence, downcast glances, veiled countenances, the renouncement of all social ties, and all instructive or entertaining literature. In ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... fears of the kind. He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull, with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the use of the peasants. A rich succession of musical chimes pealed down to us from the belfry, as if in welcome, and our deck-load of pilgrims crossed themselves in reverent congratulation as they stepped upon the sacred soil. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... to such a portentous encounter. The further shore of the lagoon was partly a swamp of rankest growth, partly a stretch of savannah clothed with rich cane-brake and flowering grasses that towered fifteen or twenty feet into the air. But the hither shore was of a hard soil mixed with sand, carpeted with a short, golden-green herbage, and studded with clumps of bamboo, jobo, mango and mahogany, with here and there a thicket of canary-flowered acacia, bristling with the most formidable ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... disguise from you that the commission is a very dangerous, as well as an honourable one; as were you, an Englishman, detected on Spanish soil, you would almost certainly be executed ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... shook with the thunderous concussion of some great falling tree which, long since bled to death by parasitical plant growths, now at last toppled crashing back into the dank soil whence it had forced its way up into a place in the sun. Other noises, infrequent and unexplainable, also drifted at long intervals from the mysterious blackness. And in all the medley of night sounds not one was cheerful. The burden of ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... was made by us here in the provision of deep dug-outs, for which the chalk soil was eminently adapted. Excellent plans were drawn out by Major Zeller, commanding the Field Company attached to our Brigade, for complete systems of these dug-outs to be made in the support line, and a special Brigade Dug-out Company was formed for this purpose, to which we contributed, ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... surstreki. Defame kalumnii. Defeat venki. Defeat (n.) malvenko—ego. Defect difekto—ajxo. Defend defendi. Defer prokrasti. Deference respektego. Deficiency deficito. Defile (n.) intermonto. Defile (soil) malpurigi. Define difini. Definite difinita. Definitive definitiva. Deform malbonformigi. Deformed malbelforma. Defraud trompi. Defray elpagi. Defunct mortinto. Defy kontrauxstari. Degenerate degeneri. Degrade degradi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... of the men of Thule be blotted in oblivion; for though they lack all that can foster luxury (so naturally barren is the soil), yet they make up for their neediness by their wit, by keeping continually every observance of soberness, and devoting every instant of their lives to perfecting our knowledge of the deeds of foreigners. Indeed, they account it a delight to learn and to consign to remembrance ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Tilling the soil proved too laborious, and he determined to erect a grist mill; but the stream that ran through the clayey channel of the Seine petite was too feeble to turn the ponderous wheels. So he was obliged to move twelve miles to the east, where flowed another small stream bearing the ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... divided into soldiers and laborers. The territory was parceled out to chiefs, and the laborers were bound to the soil and worked under rigorous inspection; part of the products were reserved for their support, and the rest went to the chiefs, the king, the general government, and the army. The army was under stern discipline and ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... declares that he was born in the month Mizan of 1797—had made only a little fatter and greedier. We gave a wide berth to the future Alexandria, Ismailiyyah, whose splendid climate has been temporarily spoilt by the sweet-water canal of the same name. The soil became literally sopped; and hence the intermittent fevers which have lately assailed it. A similar disregard for drainage has ingeniously managed to convert into pest-houses Simla ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... of Wilna, the Duena and the Boristhenes separate Lithuania from old Russia. At first, these two rivers run parallel to each other from east to west, leaving between them an interval of about twenty-five leagues of an unequal, woody, and marshy soil. They arrive in that manner from the interior of Russia, on its frontiers; at this point, at the same time, and as if in concert, they turn off; the one abruptly at Orcha towards the south; the other, near Witepsk, towards ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... as a boy, I first read those lines how closely linked England was to remain with the soil where Thomas Hodges fell, how many thousand stout bodies and brave hearts would again be laid in Flemish earth, and how many true soldiers would in my own ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the words aloud, under his breath. Eight hundred in three years had seemed to him an almost miraculous amount for him to have torn from that thin soil with nothing but the strength of his two hands. Now, with a bitterness that had been months in accumulating, it beat in upon his brain with sledgelike blows that he had paid too great a price—too great a price in aching shoulders and ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... numbers of Japan's brightest men and noblest women, is shown in that superb Christian literature which pours from the pens of the native men and women in the Japanese Christian churches. Under this flood of truth the old obstacles to a nobler society are washed away, while out of the enriched soil rises the new Japan which is to be a part of the better Christendom that is to come. Christ in Japan, as everywhere, means not destruction, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... the housekeeper with proud complacency, "will set my Lady up! There is no finer air and no healthier soil ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... "and they are seen to wax and wane in winter and summer. The reddish-yellow tracts are doubtless continents of an ochrey soil; and not, as some think, of a ruddy vegetation. The greenish-grey patches are probably seas and lakes. The land and water are better mixed on Mars than on the earth—a fact which tends to equalise the climate. There is a belt of continents round the equator: ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... reproduced by spores, a process mysterious and marvellous as a fairy tale. Instead of seeds the fern produces spores, which are little one-celled bodies without an embryo and may be likened to buds. A spore falls upon damp soil and germinates, producing a small, green, shield-shaped patch much smaller than a dime, which is called a prothallium (or prothallus). On its under surface delicate root hairs grow to give it stability and nutriment; also two sorts of reproductive organs ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... Teufelsdrockh; how much more ought I to thank you for your hearty, genuine, though extravagant acknowledgment of it! Blessed is the voice that amid dispiritment, stupidity, and contradiction proclaims to us, Euge! Nothing ever was more ungenial than the soil this poor Teufelsdrockhish seed-corn has been thrown on here; none cries, Good speed to it; the sorriest nettle or hemlock seed, one would think, had been more welcome. For indeed our British periodical critics, and especially the public of Fraser's Magazine (which I believe I have now ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... doubtless knew they were giving new force not only to a faith in perfect harmony with their own state policy, but likewise to one possessing in itself a far more profound vitality than the alien creed, which although omnipotent as an art-influence, had never found deep root in the intellectual soil of Japan. Buddhism was already in decrepitude, though transplanted from China scarcely more than thirteen centuries before; while Shinto, though doubtless older by many a thousand years, seems rather ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the shores being every where lined with dangerous banks, or covered with impenetrable forests. Its appearance from the sea is singularly wild and uncultivated, and it is so low and flat that, as it is approached, the trees along the beach are the first objects visible. The soil, however, is fertile, and adapted to every variety of tropical production, sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, and cacao being its ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... lock of the Industrial Canal one of the largest in the United States, but its construction solved a soil problem that was thought impossible. That of the Panama Canal is simple in comparison. The design is unique in many respects. The lock is a monument to the power of Man over the forces of Nature, and to the progress of a community that ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... cannot do what you will with that flower. It has its exigencies and requirements. Had it a voice, it could say, what the stone never could: "I must have this or that: I must have light, I must have moisture, a certain heat, some soil to grow in." There is a course to be run by this flower and the plant that bears it, a development to be wrought out, a perfection to be achieved. For this end certain conditions are necessary, or helpful: certain others prejudicial, or altogether intolerable. In fact, that plant ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Devil entered upon the fertile soil of France, it was groaning beneath the oppression of that cruel and cowardly tyrant Louis the Eleventh, who was the first that ever styled himself "the most Christian king." The Devil had determined not to give Faustus the slightest information ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... bank of the Derwent River, which runs into Storm Bay. The surroundings are beautiful, and the soil evidently extremely fertile; but woods and fields were almost burnt up on our arrival; a prolonged drought had prevailed, and made an end of all green things. To our eyes it was, however, an unmixed delight to look upon meadows and woods, even if their colours were not absolutely fresh. ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... seen by the enemy and made a mark for their arrows; but nothing particular occurred. All around looked very beautiful, for nature was beginning to rapidly obliterate the devastation caused by the eruption and the earthquake wave. There was heat and there was moisture, with plenty of rich soil washed up in places, and these being three of her principal servants in beautifying a tropic land, they had been hard at work. Trees, whose roots had been buried in mud and sand, were putting forth green buds, the water was pretty well dried away, ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... chisel, they builded to withstand the ocean surge. Likewise stolen from the mainland, as mice steal from human habitations when humans sleep, they stole canoe-loads, and millions of canoe-loads, of fat, rich soil. ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... thought his love, but who was in truth a spy set to worm herself into the secrets of his wicked heart. Now let him take his fill of gold; look how he grips it even in death, a white man could not hug the stuff more closely to his breast. Ah! Teule, would that the soil of Anahuac bore naught but corn for bread and flint and copper for the points of spears and arrows, then had her sons been free for ever. Curses on yonder dross, for it is the bait that sets these sea sharks ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... of God her spirit came Unstained, and she hath ne'er forgotten whence It came, nor wandered far from thence, But laboreth to keep her still the same, Near to her place of birth, that she may not 70 Soil her white raiment ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... is one variety of pear, the Forelle, which both in England and France withstood frosts that killed the flowers and buds of all other kinds of pears. Wheat, which is grown over so large a portion of the world, has become adapted to special climates. Wheat imported from India and sown in good wheat soil in England produced the most meagre ears; while wheat taken from France to the West Indian Islands produced either wholly barren spikes or spikes furnished with two or three miserable seeds, while West Indian seed by its side yielded an enormous harvest. The ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the porous nature of the interior of the earth; and (after a fine digression on the thirst for knowledge), he examines the properties of fire, and specially its effect on the different minerals composing the soil of Aetna. A disproportionate amount (nearly 150 lines) is given to describing lava, after which his theory is thus ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... miles, and North-North-East for seven miles, over sandy soil, with thickets of acacia and cypress, we bivouacked on an elevated grassy spot, called Earroo, with ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... increased, so did the demand for land, until the whole of the country that was worth having was disposed of as far as to the country of the Caffres, a fine, warlike race, of whom we will speak hereafter. It must not, however, be supposed that the whole of the Hottentot tribes became serfs to the soil. Some few drove away their cattle to the northward, out of reach of the Dutch, to the borders of the Caffre land; others, deprived of their property, left the plains, and took to the mountains, living by the chase and by plunder. This portion were ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... SHODE. An anchor is said to be shod when, in breaking it from its bed, a quantity of clayey or oozy soil adheres to the fluke ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... from me—I have nothing full-blown to show except a few Polyanthuses, and a few Pansies. These Pansies never throve with me till last year: after a Cartload or two of Clay laid on my dry soil, I suppose, the year before. Insomuch that one dear little Soul has positively held on blowing, more or less confidently, all winter through; when even ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... the production of useful objects are all equally presupposed by the science of Political Economy: most of them, however, it presupposes in the gross, seeming to say nothing about them. A few (such, for instance, as the decreasing ratio in which the produce of the soil is increased by an increased application of labour) it is obliged particularly to specify, and thus seems to borrow those truths from the physical sciences to which they properly belong, and include them ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... green stuff began to transform the familiar sand. Our bivouac area was a valley which from a little distance looked almost like a meadow at home. On a nearer approach the vegetation was found to be very thin, and the soil still sandy, but it was spotted with delightful little flowers, and in the village of Sheikh Zowaid near by, were fruit trees and cactus hedged enclosures well covered with fresh grass; while to the south of us were some big areas of young crops. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... what vessels is it conveyed to the surface of the plants? and, in addition, if earth be its source, how is it that earth-seeking, and hollow plants, with their epidermis of silex, should arise in soils that are not silicious? being equally predominant, whether the soil be calcareous, argillaceous, or loamy. The decomposition of decayed animal and vegetable substances, doubtless composes the richegt superficial mould; but this soil, so favorable for vegetation, gives the reed as much ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... after day went by: and no one knew of, or found the sweet wild fern, or the beautiful valley it grew in. But—for this was a very long time ago—a great change took place in the earth; and rocks and soil were upturned, and the rivers found new channels ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... long and from 27 m. to 290 m. in breadth; belonged to Spain, but is now under the protection of the United States; is traversed from E. to W. by a range of mountains wooded to the summit; abounds in forests—ebony, cedar, mahogany, &c.; soil very fertile; exports sugar ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... there noise and tumult of these[326] excited round the gates, the towers being battered. Then did the elders of the AEtolians entreat him, and sent chosen priests to the gods, that he would come forth and defend them, promising a great gift. Where the soil of fertile Calydon was richest, there they ordered him to choose a beautiful enclosure of fifty acres; the one half, of land fit for vines, to cut off the other half of plain land, free from wood, for tillage. Much did aged oeneus, breaker ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... have no foreign taint; they have the pure breath of the heather and the mountain breeze. All genuine legitimate races that have descended from the ancient Britons; such as the Scotch, the Welsh, and the Irish, have national airs. The English have none, because they are not natives of the soil, or, at least, are mongrels. Their music is all made up of foreign scraps, like a harlequin jacket, or a piece of mosaic. Even in Scotland, we have comparatively few national songs in the eastern part, where we have had most influx ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... her innocence of any participation in the murder; offered to make amends, and if it were discovered that the conspiracy had been hatched on Serbian soil, to assist in bringing to justice any confederates in the crime ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... could have read the jealous breast of the San Reve, in which kindly soil a wildest suspicion was never two hours old before it had grown to the granite dignity of things certain, his criminal hopes might not have soared so high! Had he known how his every step was shadowed by the sleepless Inspector Val, and that ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... persuasion, and not by force. Hephaestus and Athena, brother and sister deities, in mind and art united, obtained as their lot the land of Attica, a land suited to the growth of virtue and wisdom; and there they settled a brave race of children of the soil, and taught them how to order the state. Some of their names, such as Cecrops, Erechtheus, Erichthonius, and Erysichthon, were preserved and adopted in later times, but the memory of their deeds has passed away; for there have since ...
— Critias • Plato
... That afternoon, and again on Sunday and Monday, committees sought him, protesting that Maryland soil should not be "polluted" by the feet of soldiers marching against ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... man; and thereby impressing irresistibly the mind of the spectator with a sense of the omnipotence of nature, and the comparative inefficacy of the boasted means of amelioration which man is capable of opposing to the disadvantages of climate and soil. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... approaches the yew, accompanied by the labourers, who are returning from their work. He has taught them to plough the ground, to sow, to till the soil, and now he deems it time to fell the old tree, which they have hitherto held sacred, and under the branches of which the King is wont to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... earthen ramparts, crooked fences, sod walls, and irregular lines of stunted trees following the water-courses. The marshes were shaggy with reeds and rushes, and brown with coarse, fading herbage, although here and there gleamed emerald-hued patches of water-soaked soil, fit for fairy-rings. Beyond a moderately high embankment of turf and timber, the lovers could see the broad river, sweeping eastward to the Nore, with homeward-bound and outward-faring ships afloat on its golden tide. Across the gleaming ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... three acres and a cow. If you could only have the solidarity of the Japanese, their public spirit, with the old Chinese love of family and peace, and a cathedral near-by on a hill! Patriotism? Why, it is in the soil of your three acres. I love to feel the warm, rich earth of our own garden in my hands! Hereafter I shall be a stay-at-home; and if my children win," she held out her hand in parting with the same frank, earnest grip ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... to Sure Pop. "But we'll have to get the soil ready first, won't we, just as the King told you? So the seed won't be wasted, ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... effort and of wealth involved in planting trees and assiduously cultivating the soil for the growth of poor crops decimated by disease is the prime cause of the dearness of fruit. If, therefore, it be true that the fruit diet is one which is destined to greatly improve the average health of civilised mankind, it is obvious that the tree-doctor will act indirectly as the ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... that this earth should be gathered and swallowed; it was the meaning of this mechanism. A portion of absorbent earth is found in every soil, sufficient not only to prevent the evil that would result from occasional decomposition, by neutralizing the acid principle as rapidly as it is evolved; but, perhaps, by its presence, preventing that decomposition from taking place. ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... fumes and steam issue at many points, and the ground is covered with a friable white alkaline substance. In many a hollow the water bubbles with clouds of vapor and sulphuretted hydrogen; here the soil is hot and evidently underlaid by active fires. It is not safe to go very near, as the crust is thin and crumbling. The water running down the hills has a refreshing sound and a tempting clearness, but the thirsty tongue ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... few further prolegomena are necessary to the understanding of the pages which follow. Before I touched the Italian soil I was, in the eyes of our law, a grown man, sufficiently robust and moderately well-read. I was able to converse adequately in French, tolerably in Italian, had a fair acquaintance with the literatures ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... worst character, in Roman estimation—took out its sting by following up his own oversight, as if it had been intentional, falling to the ground, kissing it, and ejaculating that in this way he appropriated the soil. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... so much as this when the sound of hoofs, of which we had already been aware on the soft soil of the woods, gave us pause. Then, behold! Ann turned pale and pressed her hands, full of the roses she had chosen for her garland, tightly to her bosom, as though in pain. Junker Henning, who, while she sang, had gazed at her devoutly, nay, in rapture, marked this gesture and leaped to his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
