"Bog" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from being flooded and the beetling of the cliff kept it dry and within a couple of feet of the entrance but it could not keep out the rain smell, the raw smell of Kerguelen carried from inland, the smell of bog patches and new washed dolerite and bitter vegetation, keen, like the smell of the Stone Age. Then after a bit the first ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... suppuration, lienteria[obs3]; faeces, feces, , excrement, ordure, dung, crap[vulgar], shit[vulgar]; sewage, sewerage; muck; coprolite; guano, manure, compost. dunghill, colluvies[obs3], mixen[obs3], midden, bog, laystall[obs3], sink, privy, jakes; toilet, john, head; cess[obs3], cesspool; sump, sough, cloaca, latrines, drain, sewer, common sewer; Cloacina; dust hole. sty, pigsty, lair, den, Augean stable[obs3], sink of corruption; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... described, and is the direct cause of the modern land problem. It remained unaltered in the smallest respect for seventy years, that is, until 1761, when a Catholic was permitted to lease for sixty-one years as much as fifty acres of bog not less than four feet deep. Long before this the distribution of landed property and the system of ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... washing down iron from the hills. They carry the tiny particles along as easily as possible until they come upon limestone. Then, almost as if it was frightened, the brook drops its iron and runs away as fast as it can. Sometimes it flows into a pond or bog in which are certain minute plants or animals that act as limestone does, and the particles of iron fall to the bottom of the pond. In colonial days much of the iron worked in America was taken from these deposits. One kind of iron is of special interest because it comes directly ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... at first. The nimble steed His partners roused,—like lightning was their speed. What happened next? Toward heaven was turned his eye,— Unused across the solid ground to fly, He quitted soon the safe and beaten course, And true to nature's strong resistless force, Ran over bog and moor, o'er hedge and pasture tilled; An equal madness soon the other horses filled— No reins could hold them in, no help was near, Till,—only picture the poor travellers' fear!— The coach, well shaken, and completely wrecked, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... evident signs on the part of the road of retrograding into lane-ism; the county had evidently deserted it, and though made for cars and coaches, its traffic appeared to be now confined to donkeys carrying turf home from the bog, in double kishes on their back. Presently the fragments of a bridge presented themselves, but they too were utterly fallen away from their palmy days, and in their present state afforded but indifferent stepping-stones over a bog stream which ran, or rather crept, across the road. These, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... held breath, and as palpitating with human possibilities; the domes of the Sacre-Coeur loomed white against the sky, dumb witnesses to the existence of the spirit. The scene was undoubtedly poetic; yet, placed in the noisiest highway of London or the most desolate bog-land of Blake's native country, these two would have been as truly and amply cognizant of the real and the ideal; for the cloak of love was about them, the vapor of love was before their eyes, and for the hour, although they knew it not, they were capable of reconstructing a whole ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... flowers, but every time I tried to gather them, he pulled me back by that single hair. I don't remember any more, only something about running wildly away from him, and losing myself in a dark forest, and there the ground was soft like a bog, and it seemed as if I were going to be swallowed up every moment. It was a terrible sensation. All of a sudden I woke with a cry. The room was grey with dawn, and you said: "Emily dear, what have you been dreaming, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... old night dress and a petticoat this minute. I'm sorry now she has the petticoat itself. If I'd known what would have to be I'd have kept it from her. It doesn't be natural for a woman to be dressed up grand when a lot of murdering ruffians from behind the bog has been shooting her husband ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... and sent to market. Among these the cranberry is the most important. It grows in nearly inaccessible bogs, principally in New Jersey, and the usual custom is for owners of land on which there are cranberry bogs to let out the bog to pickers on a percentage basis. Cranberries can be cultivated, and there is a considerable profit in the business. The swampy nature of the ground needed, however, will deter all except the most persistent from this industry. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... is a bog," was the reply. "When I say a bog, I don't mean a swampy hole, either. I mean a grassy knoll sticking up out of a swamp full of mud. If you keep on the bogs, or nigger-heads, you are reasonably safe, ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... passing over a tract of mushkeeg or bog-land, he saw musquitoes of such enormous size, that he staked his reputation on the fact that a single wing of one of the insects was sufficient for a sail to his canoe, and the proboscis as big as his wife's shovel. But he was favored with a still more extraordinary sight, in a gigantic ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... was sent to England, and imprisoned in Cardiff Castle. At first he was honorably treated, and allowed to indulge in hunting and other amusements; but he made an attempt to escape, and was only recaptured in consequence of his horse having plunged into a bog, whence he could not extricate himself. After this he was more closely guarded, and it is said that his eyes were put out; but there is reason to hope that this may not be true. He was under the charge of Robert, an illegitimate son of Henry, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... at a garden. A strawberry bed overgrown with weeds, a sickly cabbage lifting its head bravely; a gaunt row of currant bushes; another wandering, out-reaching row of raspberries; a broken fence; a stretch of soppy bog land to the right, and the farm trailed off into desolate neglect ending in a charming grove of thick trees that stood close down to the ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... to cross that hateful divide, that at another time might have looked so beautiful, when suddenly Nimrod's horse plunged withers deep in a bog, and in his struggles to get out threw Nimrod head first from the saddle into the mud, where he ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... and as Truth and Falsehood start from the same point, and sometimes even go along together for a little way, his business is to follow the path of the latter after it diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog at the end of it. Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, that continual use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language. He becomes more and more ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... off through the woods, following the telephone line. It was hard work, for the wire led through the thickest part of the forest, as though those who had strung it wanted to discourage curiosity seekers. Now it would cross some bog or swamp, and Frank had to make a wide circuit in order to avoid getting over his knees in water. Again it would wind in and out among the trees, as if the persons who put it up wanted to confuse any one who sought to trace where ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... "window"-, rulkurteno. blond : blonda. blood : sango. blot : makulo. blow : blovi; bato, frapo. blouse : bluzo. blue : blua; -"bell", hiacinto, kampanoleto. boa-constrictor : boao. boast : fanfaroni. boat : boato. bobbin : bobeno. body : korpo. bog : marcxo. boil : boli; absceso. bold : kuragxa, sentima. bolt : rigl'i, -ilo; bolto. bomb : bombo. bombard : bombardi. bond : obligacio, garantiajxo bondage : servuto, sklaveco. bone : osto. bonnet : cxapo. booth ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... replied Uncle Dick. "You have too much smoke and fog. We are going where he shines almost too much. Here, put away your watch, Joe. It is of no use to a boy who will be journeying through the primeval forest, plunging through thorny undergrowth or bog, or fording rivers and letting his clothes dry ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... distress, now pausing, then beginning afresh. The child, recovering her courage, hurried forward to the spot from which they came. Behind the first low-growing clump of willows the ground was wet and swampy; and fast caught in the bog stood two children;—a little girl, who was screaming with all her might, and a boy, who was tugging at his sister's arm as hard as he could. When he found that he could not pull her out he too began to cry aloud. Elsli came to their aid, and lifted the little girl from her uncomfortable position. ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... twice they were brought to action by Sir James Duff and Sir Charles Asgill; and, ludicrously enough, once more they were suffered to escape by the eternal delays of the "late Needham." At length, however, after many skirmishes, and all varieties of local success, they finally dispersed upon a bog in the county of Dublin. Many desperadoes, however, took up their quarters for a long time in the dwarf woods of Killaughrim, near Enniscorthy, assuming the trade of marauders, but ludicrously designating themselves ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... it comes to applying what's in the books, I'm not so worse. You know that, Tommy. But this proposition—Only available dam site is across a stretch of bottomless bog, yet it's got to hold a sixty-five foot ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... and then it threw back a hundredfold clear echo. In between came the dull crack of the Russian shrapnel. They broke in the broad, swampy lowlands of the Rawka; they pierced the cover of ice which broke with a tremendous noise while dark fountains of bog water gushed up from the ground. In front and in back of the German batteries one could see the craters made by the Russian hits; they were dark holes where the hard frozen ground had been broken up into thick, slaglike pieces ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... would hesitate, at any expenditure in my power, to reclaim the miles of desert my father and I own here? The plain is a series of swamps and stone quarries. In one place you find the rock a foot below the surface, and the soil burns up in summer; a hundred yards farther you find a bog hundreds of feet deep, which even in summer ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... says Monsieur Foullepointe, "who is that queer man who has been talking about the Court of Assizes before a gentleman whose acquittal lately created such a sensation: he is all the while blundering, like an ox in a bog, against everybody's sore spot. A lady burst into tears at hearing him tell of the death of a child, as she lost her own two ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... with their feet in straw. Cousin Giles called the bar to which the traces were fastened, a sprit-sail yard. The drivers were boys, who sat in front of the carts. Off we rattled down a steep hill, and through a bog, and were quickly in Finland. The boys tried to keep ahead of each other, and galloped down hills and up hills, and along the road at a tremendous pace;—it was rare fun. The road was sometimes sandy, sometimes gravelly, and always undulating. After a little time we had some ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... the disguise of temper. This day of all days she insisted disrespectfully, with rustic fury, that Mrs. Weir should stay at home. But, "No, no," she said, "it's my lord's orders," and set forth as usual. Archie was visible in the acre bog, engaged upon some childish enterprise, the instrument of which was mire; and she stood and looked at him a while like one about to call; then thought otherwise, sighed, and shook her head, and proceeded on her rounds ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... winter's accumulation. I made this discovery in a spinney, or copse, near a small tarn some half mile to the eastward of Fernbridge's precincts. I am aware that the resident populace hereabout customarily refer to this spot as the wet woods back of Whitney's Bog, but I infinitely prefer the English phraseology as more euphonious and at the same time more poetic. With all due gentleness I uprooted Viola cucullata from its place in the boscage and, after it has been suitably pressed, I mean to add it to my collection of the fauna indigenous ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... accumulates in the sheath, and gradually passes into the more insoluble ferric oxide. These actions are of extreme importance in nature, as their continuation results in the enormous deposits of bog-iron ore, ochre, and—since Molisch has shown that the iron can be replaced by manganese ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... and gloves (glof). The crusene was a fur coat, while the serc or smoc seems to have been an undergarment and probably sleeveless. The whole attire was of national origin and had probably been in use long before the invasion of Britain. In the great bog-deposit at Thorsbjaerg in Angel, which dates from about the 4th century, there were found a coat with long sleeves, in a fair state of preservation, a pair of long trousers with remains of socks attached, several ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... poor friend that cries 'Godspeed!' to one who struggles in a bog, and gives not his hand to ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... would ye be thinkin' that a lot of bog-trottin' counterfeiters'd be havin' a rale aeroplane?" burst out Andy Flinn, who had up to now been unable to give any ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... Julian, who had been leaning over towards the cigarette bog, glanced around at his friend. There was a frown on Furley's forehead. He withdrew his pipe from ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Harwarden, Like a garden (To Caucus-mustered crowds) glowing and greeny In soft September, Is distant now, and dull; for 'tis November, And we are in a Fog! Cabbin' it, Council? Ah! each absent Member May be esteemed a vastly lucky dog! The streets are up—of course! No Irish bog Is darker, deeper, dirtier than that hole SP-NC-R is staring into. On my soul, M-RL-Y, we want that light you're seeking, swarming Up that lank lamp-post in a style alarming! Take care, my JOHN, you don't come down a whopper! And you, young R-S-B-RY, if you come a cropper Over that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... he is a clever peasant. Twenty-five years ago his cottage was burnt down; so he came up to my late father and said: "Allow me, Nikolai Kouzmitch," says he, "to settle in your forest, on the bog. I will pay you a good rent." "But what do you want to settle on the bog for?" "Oh, I want to; only, your honour, Nikolai Kouzmitch, be so good as not to claim any labour from me, but fix a rent as you think best." "Fifty roubles a year!" "Very well." "But I'll ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... believe, the only way," said the tutor, despondingly; "I was relieved once that way before in the bog of Ballynawashy." ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... he answered with some animation. "What difference does a few days makes? Let us have another week. We haven't been over to Bog Eddy yet; please ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... you want to see some bad lands, Go over on the Dry; You will bog down in the coulees Where the ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... moss. On the South-Western Railway a heavy embankment, about fifty feet high, crossed a piece of ground near Newham, the surface of which seemed to be perfectly sound and firm. Twenty feet, however, beneath the surface an old bog lay concealed; and the ground giving way, the fluid, pressed from beneath the embankment, raised the adjacent meadows in all directions like waves of the sea. A culvert, which permitted the flow of a brook under the bank, was forced down, the passage ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... pegged away behind. The heavy downpour of rain, which had not ceased for a day and a night, and which had followed upon the heavy rains of the week before, had made the ground as soft as a bog. The crippled lad's crutch sank in so deeply at every step that it was only with great pain that he could keep up at all. Still, he struggled ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... never wore a hat.... He and Dr. Franks were at variance.... Rock cautioned the world to beware of bog-trotting quacks, while Franks called his rival "Dumplin' Dick." Head of Confucius, what profanation!—Goldsmith, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... inspection terminated with the repairing of a break in the fence inclosing the spring-hole, a small area of bog-land dotted with hummocks of lush grass. Between the hummocks was a slimy, black ooze that covered the bones of more than one unfortunate animal. The heavy, ripe grass lent an appearance of stability, of solidity, to ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... have kissed the honest trusty face of the man, for he had lifted me out of a bog of unease. I might be bound by honour, but Captain Macdonald was free as air to dictate terms. Volney looked long at him, weighed the man, and in the end flung up the sponge. He rose to his feet and sauntered over ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... flaug milli sīðunna ok handarinnar, ok svā aptr ī hǫfða-fjǫlina, at langt stōð ūt broddrinn. Þā mælti jarl við mann þann er sumir nęfna Finn, en sumir sęgja at hann væri Finskr, sā var hinn mesti bog-maðr: 'skjōt-tu mann þann hinn mikla ī krapparūminu!' Finnr skaut, ok kom ǫrin ā boga Einars miðjan, ī þvī bili er Einarr drō it þriðja sinn bogann. Brast þā boginn ī tvā hluti. Þā mælti Ōlāfr konungr: 'hvat brast þar svā hātt?' ...
— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet
... glorious, bold affair. Death, life, conflict, defeat, triumph, love, freedom, country.... Good God, grant as much to all of us! That's a very different thing from sitting up to one's neck in a bog, and pretending it's all the same to you, when in fact it really is all the same. While there—the strings are tuned to the highest pitch, to play to all the world or ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... practical matter, it is better to concentrate on a few elementary rules-of-thumb, such as are contained in the following list, than to bog down attempting to heed everything that the pedants have said about ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... this "Butte" was the only place for many miles not submerged when the waters were up. The country between it and the Teche was almost impassable even in the dry season—a region of lakes, bayous, jungle, and bog. I succeeded in making my way through to inspect the position, the only favorable one on the river, and with much labor two twenty-fours were taken there and mounted. Forts Beauregard on the Washita, De ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... to. They're smart boys, too," she added, with sincere pride; "but they don't take to larnin'. I never see sich boys. Ye can't git no larnin' into 'em no way. They'd rather be whipped than go to school. Sim had a man to work on our cranberry bog, and he found out that he was first-rate in 'rithmetic, this man was, and so Sim, says he,—I'll give ye the same ye git on the bog,' says he, 'to stay up to the house and larn my boys 'rithmetic,' says he; and the man, he tried ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... compelled to flounder on in the best way they could; and by the time the rear of the column gained the morass all trace of a way had entirely disappeared. But not only were the reeds torn asunder and sunk by the pressure of those who had gone before, but the bog itself, which at first might have furnished a few spots of firm footing, was trodden into the consistency of mud. The consequence was, that every step sank us to the knees, and frequently higher. Near the ditches, indeed, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... growing dark, and not being sure of my way through the ever-changing bypaths of the bog land, I called on Father Dan to guide me. The old priest seemed to know my errand (the matter my darling had communicated as a secret being common knowledge), and at ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... are better, and the third year, better than the second; and the fourth, as good as the third; especially, if they approach the water. A bank at a foot distance from the water, is kinder for them than a bog, or to be altogether ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... as if you stepped into a bog and then sat in it and looked forlorn and said. "What a terrible thing it is that I should be in a bog like this; just think of having to sit in a black, muddy bog all the time," and staying there you made no effort whatever to get ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... end down she stepped, wrapped up in a black cloak, and a black hood over her yellow shining hair. Straight she went to the bog edge and looked about her. Water here and water there; waving tussocks and trembling mools, and great black snags all twisted and bent. Before her all was dark—dark but for the glimmer of the stars in the pools, and the light that came from her own white ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... life and good luck to you, in your stationary quarters, and may His Majesty never find a more active enemy than yourself!—By the soul of my grandmother, it would be well for poor Ireland, who has taken leave of her senses, if her bog-trotting marauders were as peaceably inclined as you are.—Fait and troth, but you're a fine looking lad after all, and with the assistance of your master, and a touch of Prometheus, we might raise a regiment of braver fellows than the King's Guards, without bounty or beat ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... all his tramping through the wilderness, and all his work, for nothing, had he? Had he not better have gone back to Midian, and made use of the present reality, than followed a will-of-the-wisp that led him into a bog, if he got none of the good that he set out expecting to get? Then, did he make a mistake? Would he have been a wiser man if he had stuck to his first refusal? Surely not. It seems to me that the very ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... like eyries on the crags, her rivers gliding under ancient walls; beautiful is Italy, her seas, and her suns: but dearer to me the long grey wave that bites the rock below the minster in the north; dearer are the barren moor and black peat-water swirling in tauny foam, and the scent of bog myrtle and the bloom of heather, and, watching over the lochs, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... toil of the tenant, receiving a rent upon the values that the labour and the energy of generations of members of a particular family had created. The Irish landlord and his horde of hangers-on—his agents, his bailiffs, his process-servers, his bog-rangers, his rent-warners—created a system built upon corruption, maintained in tyranny, and enforced with all the ruthless severities of foreign laws enacted solely for the benefit of England's garrison. "I can imagine no fault," said Mr Arthur Balfour, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... fresh water lake in the neighbourhood, young Rasay and Dr Macleod, with the help of some women, brought it to the sea, by extraordinary exertion, across a Highland mile of land, one half of which was bog, and the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... sat at dinner Mainhall acquainted Bartley with the fortunes of his old friends in London, and as they left the table he proposed that they should go to see Hugh MacConnell's new comedy, "Bog Lights." ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... is also used in the first book when the Romans visit the scene of the defeat of Varus. "Caecina," says the historian, "having been sent on to explore the hidden recesses of the forest, and make bridges and conveyances over the waters of the bog and the insecure places in the plains, the soldiers reach the sad spot, hideous both in its appearance and from association." "Praemisso Caecina, ut occulta saltuum scrutaretur, pontesque et aggeres humido paludum et fallacibus campis imponeret, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... of the long craigs, and came into the Hunter's Bog. Here, on a piece of fair turf, my adversary drew. There was nobody there to see us but some birds; and no resource for me but to follow his example, and stand on guard with the best face I could display. It seems it was not good enough for Mr. Duncansby, who spied some flaw in my manoeuvres, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... while I must by chance be directed.' Thereupon answered the maiden: 'I will with faithfulness portion These thy gifts, that all shall bring comfort to those who are needy.' Thus she spoke, and quickly the bog of the carriage I opened, Brought forth thence the substantial hams, and brought out the breadstuffs, Bottles of wine and beer, and one and all gave to the maiden. Willingly would I have given her more, but the carriage was empty. All she packed at the sick ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ancestral residence of Barry Lyndon, Esq., with the projected improvements, in which the castle was represented as about the size of Windsor, with more ornaments to the architecture; and eight hundred acres of bog falling in handy, I purchased them at three pounds an acre, so that my estate upon the map looked to be no insignificant one. [Footnote: On the strength of this estate, and pledging his honour that it was not mortgaged, Mr. Barry Lyndon borrowed L17,000 in the year 1786, from young Captain ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... consist of peat, and nothing else. The trunks of such trees as the oak, yew, and fir, are often found mingled with the remains of mosses and reeds, and these often assume a decidedly coaly aspect. From the famous Bog of Allen in Ireland, pieces of oak, generally known as "bog-oak," which have been buried for generations in peat, have been excavated. These are as black as any coal can well be, and are sufficiently hard to allow of their being used ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... and unharness their horses at the meeting of the bog and the river, to the south above the fort of the others; and he threw the withe that was on the pillar as far as he could throw into the river and let it go with the stream, for this was a breach of geis to the sons of Nechta Scene. They perceive ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... contributed to the soldiers in their shelter tents near by. Mrs. Miles and I, escorted by her young son, Sherman Miles, on horseback, had the benefit of a horse and buggy with which we could drive in any direction. There was no fence or bog or obstruction in the way. We generally kept in sight of our hunters, but if we lost the trail we could go to the hills and soon locate our camp. This free and easy life soon cured my languor and weariness and ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... country, and they become so expert in their use that they can travel twice as fast as an ordinary walker on foot. They carry a long pole for balancing purposes and to take soundings when wading through bog ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... year, (January 8, 1766,) captain Macbride arrived at port Egmont, where he erected a small block-house, and stationed a garrison; His description was less flattering. He found what he calls a mass of islands and broken lands, of which the soil was nothing but a bog, with no better prospect than that of barren mountains, beaten by storms almost perpetual. Yet this, says he, is summer, and if the winds of winter hold their natural proportion, those who lie but two cables' length from the shore, must pass weeks without any communication with it. The ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... hold taken by the hounds was a firm and assured one was due, not only to their own virtues, but also to the fact that where the fox had broken, a tract of turf bog met the wood, and carried a scent of entire efficiency. What, however, it was incapable of carrying were the horses. The hounds, uttering their ecstasy in that gorgeous chorus of harmonious discordance ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... tracks which afforded us an easier footing and inspired us with courage to proceed. These, for a time, terminated at a brook or in a bog, and we were once more compelled to go forward at random. One of these tracks insensibly became more beaten, and, at length, exhibited the traces of wheels. To this I adhered, confident that it would finally conduct us to ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... sure of this a few steps farther on, when the Supervisor's horse went down in a small bog-hole, and Berrie's pony escaped only by the most desperate plunging. The girl laughed, but Wayland was appalled and stood transfixed watching McFarlane as he calmly extricated himself from the saddle of the fallen horse and ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... among some of the wilder portions of the forest range!—intently observing your dog and anticipating the wily artifices of some old cock, with spurs as long as a dragon's, who will sometimes lead you for a mile through bog, brake, fern, and heather, before the sudden drop of your staunch companion, and a rigidity in all his limbs, satisfy you that you have at last compelled the bird to squat under that wide holly-bush, from whence you kick him up, and feel some little exultation ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... special influences have no doubt played a small part in influencing and determining hereditary characteristics; just as environment in the ages past changed the foot of the evolving horse from a flat, "cushiony" foot with many toes (much needed in the soft bog of his earlier existence) into the "hoof foot" of later days, when harder soil and necessity for greater fleetness, assisted by some sort of "selection" and "survival," conspired to give us the foot of ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... and through the brake, Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake; Now o'er the violet's azure flush He skips along in lightsome mood; And now he thrids the bramble bush, Till its points are dyed in fairy blood. He has leapt the bog, he has pierced the briar, He has swum the brook, and waded the mire, Till his spirits sank, and his limbs grew weak, And the red waxed fainter in his cheek. He had fallen to the ground outright, For rugged and dim was his onward track, ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... to the "bog," as they called the biography. Mary, supervising as usual, watched over their meals and the housework with the aid of a young rosy-cheeked Canadian girl, Anna Dann, who had recently come to work for them and whom they at once took to their hearts, making her one of the family. Soon another young ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... first place where descent was possible, and let myself down along a rather wide crevice where some earth had gathered, and a few bushes were growing. I went fast too, for I meant to go just as far as I could before I was rounded up and brought into camp. Between the two ridges was a bog, and I tried to cross it to save time; but it threatened to let me in too deep, and I had to give it up and go round. I was only a little way up on the other hill when there came the sound of two rifle ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... becoming the most popular watering place on the Pacific coast. About twelve miles beyond the Sulphur Springs are the 'Hot Springs,' which resemble the description just given of the Icelandic Geysers—the little geysera—there being the same quaking bog around them, which emits steam to the tread, and the surface being scabby, like an old salt meadow under a midsummer sun. These waters are scalding hot, but are pure, excepting a trace of iron. If they have been analyzed, the writer ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... took long rides over the moor, crossing it this way and that from end to end, in the hope of finding what he sought; for he had made up his mind that this strange couple were lodged somewhere in the waste of bog and heather. But he failed to find the least trace of them; and indeed the moor is wide now and was far wider and wilder and more desolate in those days, before there was a fence or a ditch to be found in the whole of it. Then stag-hunting ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... of mine at the university; it had only recently come to him on the death of a bachelor cousin, and he was not living in it himself.... But at no great distance from it there were wide tracts of steppe bog, in which at the time of summer migration, when they are on the wing, there are great numbers of snipe; my friend and I, both enthusiastic sportsmen, agreed therefore to go on St. Peter's day, he from Moscow, I from my own village, to his little house. My friend ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... early seekin' prog,(3) Will oftentimes ransack the bog, To finnd a sneel, or weel-fed frog, To give relief; But I prefer a leg of hog, Or ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... rain; the island ran like a sop, there was no dry spot to be found; and when I lay down that night, between two boulders that made a kind of roof, my feet were in a bog. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... du shillelagh et du bog, Ou les patriots vont toujours ce qu'on appelle le whole hog. Aujourd'hui je prends la plume, moi qui suis vieux, Pour dire au grand patriot Parnell, "How d'ye do?" Erin, aux armes! le whisky vous donne la force De se battre l'un pour l'autre comme ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... foundation on which Exmoor lies is covered with a peaty deposit which is formed of decayed vegetable substance—the myriad leaves, perhaps, of many hundred autumns—and near the Chains, which are a series of dangerous bogs near Dunkery Beacon, stumps and roots of bog-oak have been pulled out of the ground. This last fact does not seem to me in any way conclusive, for Exmoor may have had wooded thickets, without being a forest covering half a county, like the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... ma'am. After taking his lessons this morning, he made me dress him three times. Yes, ma'am, three times! and by way of paying me for my trouble, he hit me a blow on the side of my head, and crying, "Take that, old bog-trotter"—he ran off laughing; and five minutes after that, when I was talking with Andrew on the edge of the hill at the back of the house, he came suddenly up behind and upset us both. My ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... together, as far as the eye can reach, that an Egyptian donkey can scarcely thread its way through amongst them, and so natural that, were it in Scotland or Ireland, it might pass without remark for some enormous drained bog, on which the exhumed trees lay rotting in the sun. The roots and rudiments of the branches are, in many cases, nearly perfect, and in some the worm-holes eaten under the bark are readily recognizable. The ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was longest due north and south. It was divided in the center by a creek about a yard wide and ten inches deep, running from west to east. On each side of this was a quaking bog of slimy ooze one hundred and fifty feet wide, and so yielding that one attempting to walk upon it would sink to the waist. From this swamp the sand-hills sloped north and south to the stockade. All the trees inside the stockade, save two, had been cut down and used ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... "Oh, into a bog with you!" she almost shouted. "I know you! Want me to darn socks for you? Cook on a kerosene stove? Pass nights without sleeping on account of you when you'll be chitter-chattering with your short-haired friends? But when you get to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a government ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... without entertainment although it was offered to them by Cronan who had prepared supper for him. Mochuda refused however to go to it saying that he would not go out of his way to visit a man who avoids guests and builds his cell in a wild bog far from men and that such a man's proper guests are creatures of the wilderness instead of human beings. When Cronan heard this saying of Mochuda he came to the latter, by whose advice he abandoned his hermitage in the bog and he, with Mochuda, marked out the site of a new monastery and ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... me the worst of the two, more aristocratic, big-feeling, and tyrannical than the English nobility. He said, too, that the blackguard could never visit the ould sod again unless he landed in the night-time, and hid himself by day in a bog up to his eyes, and even then the Father said he believed the blissed mimory of ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... fog, What a merry night O ho! Follow, follow, nigher, nigher - Over bank, and pond, and briar, Down into the croaking ditches, Rotten log, Spotted frog, Beetle bright With crawling light, What a joy O ho! Deep into the purple bog - What a joy O ho! Where like hosts of puckered witches All the shivering agues sit Warming hands and chafing feet, By the blue marsh-hovering oils: O the fools for all their moans! Not a forest mad with fire Could still their teeth, or warm their bones, Or loose them from their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!) within a rood— Bog, clay and rubble, sand and ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... have been as over-praised by the zealous Scotsmen who cry 'genius' at the sight of a kilt, and who lose their heads at a waft from the heather, as his other books have been under-praised. The best of all, The Master of Ballantrae, ends in a bog; and where the author aspires to exceptional subtlety of character-drawing he befogs us or himself altogether. We are so long weighing the brothers Ballantrae in the balance, watching it incline now this way, now that, scrupulously removing a particle of our sympathy from the one brother to ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... place in Thessaly, where the mountains of OEta rose up like a steep wall, leaving no opening but towards the sea, where a narrow road wound round the foot of the cliff, and between it and the sea was a marsh that men and horses could never cross. The springs that made this bog were hot, so that it was called ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the Slavs bore a great resemblance to that of the Norsemen and of the Germanic races; that is, they worshiped nature (p. 027) and its phenomena. Dagh Bog was the sungod; Perun, the Thor of northern mythology, was the god of thunder; Stri Bog, the god of the winds; Voloss, the protector of flocks. They had neither temples nor regular priests, but worshiped the oak as the ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... were a few stalks of tansy "to kill the thievin' worms in the childhre, the crathurs," together with a little Rosenoble, Solomon's Seal, and Bugloss, each for some medicinal purpose. The "lime wather" Mrs Sullivan could make herself, and the "bog bane" for the linh roe, or heartburn, grew in their own meadow-drain; so that, in fact, she had within her reach a very decent pharmacopoeia, perhaps as harmless as that of the profession itself. Lying on the top ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... directions from personal experience on "How to be Happy when Miserable." Jimmie always bewails the fact that the American girl lives on her nerves. "Goes on her uppers" is his choice phrase. Nevertheless, it pulled us through many a mental bog while travelling so continuously. ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... copses still were bare And black along the turbid brook; When catkined willows blurred and shook Great tawny tangles in the air; In bottomlands, the first thaw makes An oozy bog, beneath the trees, Prophetic of the spring that wakes, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... echoed Creede ecstatically. "W'y, tell her I'm lonely as hell now she's gone—tell her—well, there's where I bog down, but I'd trade my best horse for another kiss like that one she give me, and throw in the saddle for pelon. Now, say, Rufe, don't leave me in a hole like this. You've made your winnin', and here's your nice long letter to Miss Lucy. My hands are as stiff as a burnt rawhide and ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... paws included, must have weighed fifty pounds; the cubs, sacked, thirty—a total load of 80 pounds to carry out over rocks and fallen trees, through bog and willows. With this load on my back, I struggled to my feet and started, picking my way slowly, circling logs and avoiding soft spots. The first half mile was the best, after that things thickened up, the bog deepened, the bears wanted to get ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... dispositions till he learned that the English meant to march by the former route. He then chose ground where his front was defended, first by the little burn of Bannock, which at one point winds through a cleugh with steep banks, and next by two morasses, Halbert's bog and Milton bog. What is now arable ground may have been a loch in old days, and these two marshes were then impassable by a column ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... trink the apominations, and be curst to you!" said Donald, who perfectly understood that judgment had gone against him, "and much goot may't do you! but mysel would sooner trink the dirty bog water of Sleevrechkin. Oich, oich! the dirts! But I say, lanlort, maype you'll have got some prandies in the house? I can make shift wi' that when there's no whisky ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... driven furiously, dashed high up the slippery beach, and the troops swarmed over the brown and sticky dikes. Major Lawrence led the way at a run across the marshes; but the soft soil clogged their steps, and a wide bog forced them far to one side. When they reached the outskirts of the village the sorrowful dusk of the April evening was falling over the further plains and the full tide behind them, but the sky in front was ablaze. There was little wind, and the flames shot straight aloft, and ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... faster over the sea. Bands of English rovers, outdriven by stress of fight, had long found a home there, and lived as they could by sack of vessel or coast. Chance has preserved for us in a Sleswick peat-bog one of the war-keels of these early pirates. The boat is flat-bottomed, seventy feet long and eight or nine feet wide, its sides of oak boards fastened with bark ropes and iron bolts. Fifty oars drove it over the waves with a freight of warriors whose arms, axes, swords, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... sale. But it came to pass that a certain farmer of Hanover was, like many another, unsuccessful during several years. As a last resource, he purchased of the owner of the Big House a cranberry-bog,—that is to say, one of the many marshy spots which are interspersed in the forest,—for which he paid five dollars the acre. There were a little more than one hundred acres in the bog. At a cost of some six hundred dollars Mr. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... a year there you would get no rest, only sitting up at night and forever drinking. The lamb and the sheep are there; the cow and the calf are there, fine lands are there without heath and without bog. Ploughing & seed-sowing in the right month, plough and harrow prepared and ready; the rent that is called for there, they have means to pay it. There is oats and flax & large eared barley. There are beautiful valleys with good growth in them ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... beyond the ridge, into the fact of evening accomplished. At the base of the range he crossed a softly-swelling expanse of close-cropped grass, skirted a bog and troop of naked-seeming birches, and came in view of the maple grove ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... me at Boundary Creek, ten miles beyond Nebo. I was stuck in a bog for five weeks, rain pouring the whole time. I eventually delivered the wool, loaded up rations from Brodziak Bros., and started on my return journey. In those days the range was in a primitive state, and coming down my mate capsized his dray. While I was ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... Vixens, Royal Musicians and Monsters, Bengal Tigers and Time-servers, Magicians and Madmen, Flying Birds, Swimming Fishes, Walking Cats and Dogs, Crawling Reptiles, and various other extraordinary and impossible arrangements, the like of which never before appeared in Bog county, until the arrival of the present ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dream has been a middle-class aspiration built on a bog of toil-soddened minds. The piles beneath the castle of our near-democratic arts were rotting for lack of folk-imagination. The Man with the Hoe had no spark in his brain. But now a light is blazing. We can build the American soul broad-based from ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... out of quicksand and bog holes," he remarked. "Oh, yes, don't think I've forgotten what happened in that Great Dismal Swamp. But do you mean to yank the carcass up in a tree, Max? Is that the way you expect to ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... plantain over there in the bog," he said lazily, "and swamp honeysuckle. And see," he turned out his pockets, "swamp apples. Queer, aren't they? Johnny says they're good to eat. The honeysuckle ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... his, which spread desolation in a thousand genteel homes. Alice wondered what her father would have said, had he lived. On the whole, she was glad that he did not happen to be alive. The shock to him would have been too rude. The floor seemed to be giving way under Alice, melting into a sort of bog that would swallow up her and her husband. For years, without any precise information, but merely by instinct, she had felt that England, beneath the surface, was not quite the island it had been—and ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... all evidence that helps it, and shed all that harms it. It crawls forward in all weathers, like Richard Edgeworth's hygrometer. It does not stand at the boundary of our ignorance, it seems to me, but is one of the will-o'-the-wisps of its undisputed central domain of bog and quicksand. Yet I should not have devoted so many words to it, did I not recognize the light it has thrown on human actions by its study of congenital organic tendencies. Its maps of the surface of the head are, I feel sure, founded on a delusion, but its ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... these plants, necessarily of a water-loving species, retain so much moisture in the spongy mass which they form that they gradually extend up the slope. Thus extending the margin of their field, and at the same time thickening the deposit which they form, these plants may build a climbing bog over the surface until steeps are attained where the inclination is so great that the necessary amount of water can not be held in the spongy mass, or where, even if so held, the whole coating will in time slip down in the manner of ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... morning saying, "Dear, ma'am, how charming you smell of coals! quite charming!" and she snuffed the ambient air. [Footnote: The coal burnt at Black Castle was naturally more agreeable to Mrs. Billamore (a faithful servant) than the bog turf used at Edgeworthstown.] ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... but the tracks were so confused, and the run of the lanes so uncertain—let alone the map being some years out of date—that I soon felt I had lost my bearings. By a little wayside inn, half hidden in a deep combe, with bog on every side, I descended and asked for a bottle of ginger-beer; for the day was hot and close, in spite of the packed clouds. As they were opening the bottle, I inquired casually the way to ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... a sight to make the gods weep. With features more than usually attractive, softened by a halo of waving, silvery hair, she was but a mushy bog of misery. It was three P. M.; she had just been carried downstairs, and in spite of the usual host of apprehension, with some added new ones for to-day, no slightest accident had marred the perilous trip from her front bedroom to the living-room ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... line of the hunted hare through the opening, and thus "fouled" the scent so thoroughly that the hunt came to a "check." After the hare had left the fields frequented by the sheep, she took the direction of a path leading over a wide bog towards the woodland. On the damp ground the scent lay so badly, that when, some time later, the beagles crossed her line, they were unable, even after repeated "casts," to follow her track. Presently the impatient ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... twenty-four hours." He has, however, been partly lame for the last two years, from the effects, it is thought, of early exposure in his explorations in the west, where he used frequently to lie down in the swamps to sleep, with no pillow save clumps of bog, and no covering but a traveling Indian blanket, which sometimes when he awoke was cased in snow. This local impediment, however, being entirely without neuralgic or rheumatic symptoms, has had no effect whatever upon his mental activity, as every moment of his time is still consecrated ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... steep, and difficult, but there is fresh life on every surmounted height, a purer air gained, ever more life for more climbing. But the path that is not the true one is not therefore easy. Up hill is hard walking, but through a bog is worse. Those who seek God with their faces not even turned towards him, who, instead of beholding the Father in the Son, take the stupidest opinions concerning him and his ways from other men—what should they do but ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... bog-hole!" cried Mr. Bunker. "He must have waded out into the water for something or other, and he got stuck ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's • Laura Lee Hope
... bowing to the ground to the lady. "Oh! my Lord I was late, and made a short cut over Fearnley Bog. It has proved a very Moscow expedition. However, I am keeping you. I shall be in time for the guava and liqueurs, and you know that is the only refreshment I ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... hurried parley. The result was that while the leader rode on, his six men stood, and, spreading themselves across the road, waited for us. 'Twas a spot not ill chosen for standing at bay. For, on either side of the steep track, the land fell away in desolate bog, on which we scarce dare venture; so that there was nought to do but either fall back ourselves or come face to face with those who ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... the works, several other deposites of iron are discovered—one of a superior quality, surpassing in magnetic power any other ore yet discovered, possessing what mineralogists call polarity—and near to this, meadow and bog ore, not a mile distant from the works, is to be found in great quantities. The works are to the north-north-east and eastward, surrounded by beds of ore, of which five have been tried and brought into use—but as they are inland, and consequently more ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... say anything after that, and as it really is a splendid opportunity, I made the bargain, and we began. I took four lessons, and then I stuck fast in a grammatical bog. The Professor was very patient with me, but it must have been torment to him, and now and then he'd look at me with such an expression of mild despair that it was a toss-up with me whether to laugh or cry. I tried both ways, and when it came to a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... This is the great Bog of Cree. It is a salt-water marsh formed by an inroad of the sea, and so intersected is it with dangerous swamps and treacherous pitfalls of liquid mud, that no man would venture through it unless he ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... treacherous muskeg lands which border the Athabasca; and that very night, while Shag slumbered in the deep sleep of a full age, A'tim, whose lean stomach tugged at his eyelids and kept them open, stole off into the forest, and searched by the strong light of the moon for a bog that would mire his comrade ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... several times, my hands were so large and my coat sleeves so short. When we returned from looking at the colt, we went into the parlor. Say, fellows, it was a little the nicest thing that ever I went against. Carpet that made you think you were going to bog down every step, springy like marsh land, and I was glad I came. Then the younger children were ordered to retire, and shortly afterward the man and ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... not intermittently, but steadily to a particular segment of the circle of conduct. It is the long, strong, never-ending pull and tug upon the wheels of conduct, which marks the great reformer. He finds his age or country stuck in some Serbonian bog of iniquity. He prays, but he prays with his shoulders braced strenuously against the body of society, and he does not cease his endeavors until a revolution in conduct places his age or country on firm ground beyond its Serbonian bog. The coming of such a man is no accident. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... little beast's back, as any other man would have done in my position, placing implicit confidence in the sureness of his feet. And how did he repay that confidence? Brother Francis, carry your mind on from morning to noon. Picture to yourself a howling wilderness of grass and bog, bounded by low stony hills. Pick out one particular spot in that imaginary scene, and sketch me in it, with outstretched arms, curved back, and heels in the air, plunging headforemost into a black patch of water and mud. Place just behind me the legs, the body, ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... the sleet stopped falling, and the cold was less severe. The road was become a bog, and the horses labored through it at a walk—they could do no better. As the heavy time wore on, exhaustion overcame us, and we slept in our saddles. Not even the dangers that threatened us could keep ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... state of poverty, although there were only eight holdings on a hundred and seventeen plantation acres, and they paid but L27: 10s: 2 for that extent of land, which was valued under the poor-law valuation at L68, and in addition to which they had a considerable extent of mountain and bog." Mr Lambert, an extensive farmer in Mayo, declares—"I see among the poor people having land, that those who have leases are much less inclined to make improvements than those who have not." Mr Kelly of Galway, a large proprietor, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... thought there was any cherry-brandy for me when I came back," said the man, throwing a stone down to try the nature of the bog-ground beneath, "I would get below there, and try what I could find. I might lay hold of a linsey-woolsey cloak somewhere ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... prince had nothing for it but to walk back to the castle; and through it and round it he walked, and the finest of eating and drinking he got, and a bed of bog-down to sleep on, and long walks he took through gardens and lawns, but not a sight could he get, high or low, of Seven Inches. He, before a week, got tired of it, he was so lonesome for his true love; and at the end of a month he didn't know ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... damaged except the automobile. When Mr. 'Possum came to, and Mr. Rabbit cleaned some of the bog off of himself, and Mr. Crow came back, and Mr. 'Coon climbed down, and the others caught up with them, they all looked around to see what they could find of Mr. 'Possum's invention. Some of it was in the bushes and some in the tree, and two of the wheels ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... gentlemanly manner. Mr. Gibson had once or twice amused himself, by leading the vicar on in his agreeable admissions of arguments 'as perfectly convincing,' and of statements as 'curious but undoubted,' till he had planted the poor clergyman in a bog of heretical bewilderment. But then Mr. Ashton's pain and suffering at suddenly finding out into what a theological predicament he had been brought, his real self-reproach at his previous admissions, were so great that ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... himself together again with an effort, 'especially since this feeling relates in a way ... in a way, notice ... to you. You reproached me, if you remember, yesterday with a want of seriousness,' Arkady went on, with the air of a man who has got into a bog, feels that he is sinking further and further in at every step, and yet hurries onwards in the hope of crossing it as soon as possible; 'that reproach is often aimed ... often falls ... on young men even when they cease to deserve it; and if I had more self-confidence ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... are mine—I will repay For ev'ry Soul you lead astray— Give out thyself a Light to shew Which way 'tis best to Heav'n to go; But lead the Pilgrims wrong, and shine An Ignis fatuus of mine— Draw them thro' bog, thro' brake, thro' mire, I'll dry them ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... demands of spiritual functions upon the time of the monks, they cannot fairly be charged with "agricultural indolence." Their glebe consisted entirely of marsh and bog when the Abbacy was created. By 1218—i.e., in about twenty years—it had all been ditch-drained and reclaimed. The beneficial results of their labour are noticeable to-day. Fields immediately ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... the difficulties of a regular siege were enormous, if not insurmountable, and that the only vulnerable point was covered by a bog, where the transport of cannon or the formation of works would be impossible. Above all, the principal hope of the expedition had failed. The adherents of Charles had assured him that the whole country would rise in ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... rare and fertile vales there were moors for many a mile, here and there bleak enough, with the red freestone cropping out above the scanty herbage; then, perhaps, there was a brown tract of peat and bog, uncertain footing for the pedestrian who tried to make a short cut to his destination; then on the higher sandy soil there was the purple ling, or commonest species of heather growing in beautiful wild luxuriance. Tufts of fine elastic grass were occasionally to be found, on which the little ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 'How is it that ye do not understand?' is plainly this: their minds were so full of care about the day's bread, that they could not think with simplicity about anything else; the mere mention of leaven threw them floundering afresh in the bog of their unbelief. When the Lord reminded them of what their eyes had seen, so of what he was and what God was, and of the foolishness of their care—the moment their fear was taught to look up, that moment they ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... persuaded the authorities to make him ruler over the province where the Blue Nile was supposed to rise. Amid great opposition he at last left the palace of Gondar on 28th October 1770, and was soon on his way to the south "to see a river and a bog, no part of which he could take away"—an expedition wholly incomprehensible to the royal folk at Gondar. Two days' march brought him to the shores of the great Lake Tsana, into which, despite the fact that he was tremendously hot and that crocodiles abounded there, the hardy young ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... end of the 17th century. The streets in the oldest part of Amsterdam are often narrow and irregular, and the sky-line is picturesquely broken by fantastic gables, roofs and towers. The site of the city being originally a peat bog, the foundations of the houses have to be secured by driving long piles (4-20 yds.) into the firm clay below, the palace on the Dam being supported on nearly 14,000 piles. As late as 1822, however, an overladen corn magazine ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... quaking swamps. When, formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog—a natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no richer parterres to my eyes ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... find it bends off to the left into the path of Metaphysics. The path becomes narrower and more difficult continually, and many side-walks lead off to other spots: one, to the wilderness of Atheism; another, to the populous city of Thinkasyouplease; still another, to the dangerous bog of Alldoubt. But if you follow the right road, you cannot possibly err." "Much obliged: I'll try to keep the path." Presently, the traveller returned, in a battered condition: he had wandered from the right track; his cloak of philosophical reason had been torn by the ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... him at what hour he returns,—from oystering or from the cranberry-bog. If it is in the middle of the afternoon, good and well. Instantly upon landing he will collect a troop of urchins; in an incredibly short space of time there will be a heap of little clothes upon the bank; in a moment a procession of small naked ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin |
