"May Day" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... May day, with hot wave rising off the parched land as far as eyes could see, and as Samuel sat stewing in his little improvised office—a few chairs, a bench, and a wooden table—he was glad the thing was almost over. He wanted to get back East the ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... return to Susan. She put the bright guinea carefully into the glove with the twelve shillings, which she had received from her companions on May day. Besides this treasure, she calculated that the amount of the bills for bread could not be less than eight or nine and thirty shillings; and as her father was now sure of a week's reprieve, she had great hopes that, by some means or other, it would be possible to make up the whole sum necessary ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... theatrical entertainments, and various gaieties marked the advent of the British in Philadelphia, all of which formed a fitting prelude to the full-blown glories of the Meschianza, which burst upon the admiring inhabitants on that last-century May day."[224] ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... On May day, 1817, Lord Selkirk, with his body guard, left Fort William and following the water-courses arrived at his own Fort in the last week of June. Fort Douglas was the centre of his Colony, and there he was at once the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... piscatory tastes, having duly warned his company to turn out on a certain day, they, like obedient soldiers, appeared promptly on parade at the appointed time, but, unfortunately, they went undrilled, except in the manuoevres of a soldier's wit and unlicensed jesting, that May day; for their captain, forgetting his own appointment, and warned only by the favorable aspect of the heavens, as he had often done before, went a-fishing that afternoon, and his company thenceforth was known to old and young, grave and gay, as "The Shad," and by the youths of this ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers. Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting his medicine ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that May Day came in Burgundy. And in the evening, when the party were seated in King Gunther's hall, Siegfried, at the command of the May-queen,—who was none other than Kriemhild the peerless,—amused them ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... he said. "What a May Day! Simpson and I were up with the lark; weren't we, Simpson? Poor Simpson felt like a sort of 'Queen of the May,' when my electric bell trilled in his room, at 5 A.M. But I couldn't stay in bed. I woke with my something-is-going-to-happen feeling; and when ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... cattail, Mr. Red-winged Blackbird shook his head in reply. And he said that no doubt it would be a week before the looked-for arrival. "The season's a bit backward," Mr. Red-winged Blackbird remarked. "So I don't expect to set eyes on him to-day—though I have known him to get here as early as May Day." ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... which are due about January; and the vacation stories, which begin to appear in July, and the stories of holly and mistletoe and stockings, which come with the Christmas season. Likewise, we have special stories for New Years', St. Valentine's Day, Washington's Birthday, Easter, May Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and a host of minor special occasions. The plot and matter for these stories of occasions are so trite and conventional that it is a wonder that the reading public did not rebel against them long ago; but there is a ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... "Come along with you. We have much to do on this fine May day. First, we will go to the hardware store, saving the queensware store till the last,—like float at the end ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Comforter to abide in thy Church unto the end: Bestow upon us and upon all thy faithful people his manifold gifts of grace, that with minds enlightened by his truth, and hearts purified by his presence, we may day by day be strengthened with power in the inward man; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the same Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... quiet death-beds of Alfred and of Bede, we transfer ourselves to the great hall of the Blackfriars' monastery, London, on a dull, warm May day in 1378, amid purple robes and gowns of satin and damask, amid monks and abbots, and bishops and doctors of the Church, assembled for the trial of John Wycliffe, the parish ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... spring air; perhaps it was the turn in the tide of Cynthia Walden's life, but whatever it was it roused her and gripped her from early morning. At six o'clock on that May day she awoke in her shabby room of Stoneledge and looked out of the vine-covered window, heard a bird sing a wild, delicious little song, and then sat up with the strange thrill of happiness flooding ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... It was on a May day, and I saw Mary accompany her husband as far as the first crossing, whence she waved him out of sight as if he had boarded an Atlantic-liner. All this time she wore the face of a woman happily married who meant to go straight home, there to await her lord's glorious return; and the military-looking ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Glory—when the springtime came. She took Bubby and Baby down to the Common, of a May Day, to see the processions and the paper-crowned queens; and stood there in her stained and drabbled dress, with the big year-and-a-half-old baby in her arms, and so quite at the mercy of Master Herbert Clarence, who defiantly skipped oft down the avenues, and ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... country and the kindly courtesy of the people impressed me greatly. Having beheld the scenes of George Eliot's childhood, I desired to view the place where her last days were spent. It was a fine May day when I took the little steamer from London Bridge ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... One May day George thought he had a glimpse of Lucy. He was not certain, but he was sufficiently disturbed, in spite of his uncertainty. A promotion in his work now frequently took him out of town for a week, or longer, and it was upon his return from one of these absences that he had the strange experience. ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... some book. Thus Ouida's "Under Two Flags" could be very easily represented. Young folks always enjoy "dressing up," and any hostess can either find directions for some form of fancy dress, or invent something new for herself. St. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, May Day, the Fourth of July, Hallowe'en, have their traditional decorations, and games, and suggest their own refreshments. Elaborate refreshments have rather gone out ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... give me joyful eyes for joyful nature. May I be alive to the gentle influences of a May day which bring new experiences to all who may receive them: and may I serve thee by unfolding to others the love of truth, the love of good, and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... On May Day there was a parade of the negro drivers; many drove carts, drays and wagons, for on that day they had holiday, and paraded with wagons and horses adorned with ribbons, flowers and bright papers, the drivers wearing long white aprons, and headed by a band. ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... dancers," "liveries and coats," "bread and ale," "horse-meat of the horses for the kings of Colen on May Day," are some of the items which appear ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... May day came—warm, bright, and beautiful. At six o'clock in the morning the Zephyr and the Butterfly were manned, and the boys went over to the island to trim the May-pole with evergreen and flowers. The Sylph was degraded for ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... came about that on a certain afternoon in the beginning of February, in the year 1758, I was sitting on this tomb looking out to sea. Though it was so early in the year, the air was soft and warm as a May day, and so still that I could hear the drumming of turnips that Gaffer George was flinging into a cart on the hillside, near half a mile away. Ever since the floods of which I have spoken, the weather had been open, but with high winds, and little or no rain. Thus as ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... the sport was, how sweet to breathe the bright pure air of that May day; how grand to outstrip the wind over the yielding turf, and at last to carry home the trophies of their prowess; the scalp of the wolf, the tusks of the boar, leaving the serfs to bring in the succulent flesh ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... them lasted, and of all there was in it, she had no clear knowledge; thought after thought, wave after wave of feeling, rushed through her. Revolt and attraction, contempt and admiration, queer sensations of disgust and pleasure, all mingled—as on a May day one may see the hail fall, and the sun suddenly burn through and steam from ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the wounded dying on Crecy field was a May Day revel compared to this, though it is but one old woman who has gone. Oh, how heavily they parted who have dwelt together these forty years! And 'twas my careless tongue this morning that ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... Sir Christopher Burroughs of Stolham, Norfolk, lay shining in the last rays of the setting sun, on the eve of May Day 1646. The long range of windows along the front of the building between the two buttresses flashed with crimson and gold; for the house faced the south-west, and the brilliant light that shone from the rim of the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... every student at the college had been working for months past. And now, almost the first of May, everything was in readiness, the pageants, the costumes, the plays—all the splendid and complicated arrangements for an Old English May Day Festival. Judy, as she had planned on the opening night of college all those long months ago, was to be a gentleman of the court and was now engaged in constructing a velvet cape with Nance's assistance. Furthermore all the girls were ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... a custom which was frequently productive of costly extravagance. Then there was their festival of the Floralia, in honour of the reappearance of spring-time, with its hosts of bright blossoms, a survival of which has long been kept up in this country on May Day, when garlands and carols form the chief feature of the rustic merry-making. Another grand ceremonial occasion, when flowers were specially in request, was the Fontinalia, an important day in Rome, for the wells and fountains ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... is lovely, as May day adorning Wi' gowans an' primroses ilka green lee; Though sweet is the violet, new blown i' the morning, As tender an' sweet is her blue rollin' e'e. O, say what is whiter than snaw on the mountain? Or what wi' the red rose in beauty can vie? Yes, whiter her bosom than snaw on the mountain, An' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... building at Chelsea Square. Entering so, it flapped suddenly at the white curtains as if astonished. What was this? Two muscular black clad arms were stretched across a table, and between them lay a brown head, inert, hopeless. It seemed strange that on such a May day, with such a May breeze, life could look dark to anything young, yet Reginald Fairfax, at the head of the graduating class, easily first in more than one way—in scholarship, in athletics, in versatility, and, more than ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... again. A clear apprehension had already been born in me that only her presence, her encouragement, her devotion could redeem me. And when I saw her cordially bowing from the carriage that awaited us at the suburban station on a bright, sunny May day, and went to meet her trembling and dizzy with emotion, and seeing nothing of the great world about me save her hair, golden in the sunlight, the white dress, the broad-brimmed straw hat and the shining ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... unsettling element of gold-dust hung in the air, breeding argument. The early, thin, bright morning steadily mellowed against the windows distant from the stove; the panes melted clear until they ran, steamed faintly, and dried, this fresh May day, after the night's untimely cold; while still the Legislature sat in its shirt-sleeves, and several statesmen had removed their boots. Even had appearances counted, the session was invisible from the street. Unlike a good number of ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... exceedingly delightful. A picturesque country, which at every winding of the river seemed to increase in richness and beauty; the serenity of the sky, which formed a May day in the middle of February; the charming gardens and elegant countryseats which adorned the banks of the Brenta; the maestic city of Venice behind us, with its lofty spires, and a forest of masts, rising as it were out of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was my privilege to celebrate May day by officiating at a wedding in a farm-house among the hills of West Brookfield. The bridegroom was a man of tried worth, a leader in the Western Anti-Slavery Movement; and the bride was one whose fair name is known throughout the nation; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... with its discomfort comes to an end at last. One May day, when spring sunshine was warming up the stone chamber where the old Admiral lay, he called for a pen and put the last touches to his will. All the titles he still hoped to get back were for Diego; and should Diego die without a son, Fernando ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... Oxford a little, and saw Tom Quad at Christ Church (or "The House," as it is called), and were shown the rooms in which the author of "Alice in Wonderland" lived for so many years; and so right up through the city to Magdalen Grove, where the deer live, and Magdalen Tower, on the top of which the May Day ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... this wholesome medley. She was being especially taught aside;—and now, on this mid-May day, Jane sat with her beneath the trees while the room within was wrapped in the unrestful silence of tedious thought. Occasionally the teacher glanced at her when she happened to sigh and bend more intently over the knotty problem on her lap. Dale ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... may still be seen in country places at certain times of the year. The very meagre celebrations of May Day, which can be seen in London even now, are a survival of the ancient customs with which the Morrice-Dance was always associated. Hawkins gives this account of the Morris; "there are few country places in ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... Winter Solstice, 464-l. Sun said to have been slain at the Winter Solstice, 447-l. Sun, symbolism of the; manifestation and visible image of God, 13-u. Sun symbolized by the point within the circle, 486-l. Sun termed by an inscription on an obelisk as "Apollo," etc, 460-u. Sun, the festival of May day of Druidical origin and in honor of the, 367-l. Sun, the great symbol of the Mysteries, purified Souls, 408. Sun, the moderator in the celestial harmony; fourth in musical scale, 410-m. Sun the name of the seventh gate of the ladder; material, gold, 414-m. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... one living link between the old kindness and the new, between the good will of the past and the good works of the future. He links May Day with Bank Holiday, and he does it almost alone. All the men around him, great and good as they were, were in comparison puritanical, and never so puritanical as when they were also atheistic. He is ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... Wednesday.—May Day passed off quietly enough; but you can't have air charged with electricity, and your back-cellars filled with dynamite, without danger of explosion. Burst to-day in unlooked-for place, in unexpected circumstances. HALDANE brought in Bill providing that ratepayers should share with Duke of WESTMINSTER ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... these occasions, in the early morning, when the candles on the altar were almost effaced by the first brilliance of a May day, Laura stole away from the darkened room where Mrs. Fountain lay soothed and sleeping, and stood for long at an open window overlooking ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and richly adorned pavilion, and entertained him at a splendid collation, it being then one of the clock. And being refreshed his majesty set forth again, and entered the city, which had never before shown so brave and goodly an appearance as on this May day, when all the world seemed ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... frugally and simply on a few, fertile Norman acres. Their home was but a hut of stone and clay and thatch. It was surrounded by a carefully attended vineyard and fruit trees which, in the springtime, made the spot most beautiful. On this May day the passerby would have stopped that he might carry away this scene of perfect pastoral charm. The blossoming vines almost hid the house, the blooming trees perfumed the morning breeze, and it all spoke for simple peace and contentment. But at this hour neither peace nor contentment ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... in the evening of a warm May day that the Prior and Chris arrived at the hostelry in Southwark, which ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... league the first national suffrage May day was observed in Little Rock with speeches from the steps of the Old State House. Seventy-five letters were sent out to prominent men in the State, asking them to make five-minute speeches and after ten days Dr. L. P. Gibson, the well-known physician, was ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... been a very busy and quiet one for the four years following the May day when she made her choice. Study, exercise, housework, and many wholesome pleasures kept her a happy, hearty creature, yearly growing in womanly graces, yet always preserving the innocent freshness girls lose so soon when too early set upon the world's ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... various customs and pursuits proper to given seasons. The customs, it is true, were preserved only by the children; but they had their acceptable effect. It might have been foolish and out-of-date, yet it was undeniably pleasant to know on May Day that the youngsters were making holiday from school, and to have them come to the door with their morning faces, bringing their buttercup garlands and droning out the appropriate folk ditty. At Christmastime, too, it was pleasant when they came singing carols after dark. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the game was inconclusive. A king remained surrounded by small cards, like a real monarch overwhelmed by the rabble on May Day. Mrs. Thalassa's eyes strayed mournfully over the rows, then she gathered up the cards ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... of the English fleet at Antigua would not go except by order from England—which, however, came soon afterward, so that he and his ships joined them after all before hostilities began. The expedition first set eyes on their objective point on the day before May day, 1745. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... disaster than the winter's ice storms could have wrought. Between these more kindly adventurers and the pasture folk have grown up a friendly intimacy which is beginning to teach city ways to the pasture denizens. Therein lies the cause of my surprise. Under the soft mists of a cool May day I brushed the dew from the wood grasses and unrolling croziers of cinnamon fern to pause in admiration at shrubs and trees bearing calling cards. Here is a red cedar announcing on a Dennison tag, "I am Juniperus virginiana, known to my intimates as savin." Out of its nimbus of pale yellow ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... go. With his elegantly lacquered cane, he picked at the sod, undecidedly. His chill, veiled eyes roved about the open space. He lifted his pearl-gray derby, and, for lack of a handkerchief, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Although the May day was cool and brisk with wind, his knuckles glistened when they descended. I began to suspect that, despite his stony self-command, Mr. Hines's nerves were not all that ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... his last trip to the store before the happy time of going to pay the bill on Monday, Jerry thought, making a slight detour in order to jump two low hedges in a neighbor's yard. Over without touching, he was pleased to note. May Day would mean the end of all that rigmarole of the secret charge account. And what a relief that would be! In his thoughts Jerry had shied away from applying the word deceit to his charging groceries and keeping Mr. Bartlett's money over at the ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... are long. It was past seven on this May day; yet Lydia knew that the best of the show was still to come; she waited for the last act, and refused to think of supper. That golden fusion of all the upper air; that "intermingling of Heaven's pomp," spread on the great slopes of Skiddaw—red and bronze and purple, shot through ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a small woollen shawl of shepherd's plaid (because summer was not come); a white handkerchief tied over her head-gear, because it was so foggy, so damp, and so early; and a straw bonnet and ribbons peeping from under the handkerchief, because it was likely to be a sunny May day. ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... the sea; and so he can go in just as if they were all-right bathing-drawers. In he goes, has a good long swim with her, and when he comes out, says, of his dripping ducks, 'tabula votiva . . . avida vestimenta,' to remind an old schoolmate of his hopping to the booth at the end of a showery May day, and dedicating them to the laundry in these words. It seems marvellous. It was a quaint revival, an hour after breakfast, for little Collett to be acting as intermediary with Selina to request Lady Ormont's grant of a five-minutes' interview before the church-bell summoned her. She ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his one-volume edition of Keats is there to show his eagerness for beauty and his love of English verse. I sent him the first volume in proof, about a year before the book came out, and awaited his verdict with much anxiety. It came one May day in 1889. I happened to be very tired and depressed at the moment, and I remember sitting alone for a little while with the letter in my hand, without courage to open it. Then at ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hobo named Carl Ericson crawled from the rods of an N. & W. freight-car at Roanoke, Virginia, on a May day, with spring at full tide and the Judas-trees a singing pink on the slopes of ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... was not exactly an infant when I was set down, on a May day some fifteen years ago, in this pleasant nursery of America. I had long since acquired the use of my faculties, and had collected some bits of experience practical and emotional, and had even learned to give an account of them. Still, I had very little perspective, and my observations ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... sorts were held on this early playground, always a May day celebration with its Maypole dance and its May queen. I remember that one year that honor of being queen was offered to the little girl who should pick up the largest number of scraps of paper which littered all the streets and alleys. The children that spring had been organized into a league, and ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the butterfly; "come up into the fresh morning air and the sunlight, where everything smiles this sweet May day." ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... we need not describe the pastime here. At least four coaches will start from New York for some neighboring town-New Rochelle, Yonkers, etc.—during the summer, and there is no better way of spending a May day than on top of one. As for al fresco entertainments, game pie, patties, cold beef, pressed tongue, potted meats, sandwiches, pft, de foie gras, champagne, are all taken out in hampers, and served on top of the coach by the obedient valets at the races, for those parties who go out with four ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... has always been the customary date for turning out cattle to grass, but people forget that old May Day was nearly a fortnight later, which makes a great difference as to warmth and keep ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... look very fair in the sun of that May day, with its homely gables of warm red brick and sunburnt timber, its cheery roof of Holland tile, and with the sunlight flashing from the diamond panes that were leaded into the sashes of the great bay-window on the eastern ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... On that May day when Christoval Colon,[1] the hare-brained foreigner whom the King and Queen had made an Admiral, read the royal orders in the Church of San Jorge in Palos, there was amazement, wrath and horror in that small seaport. Queen Ysabel had indeed been ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... as we had a lot to see on that day, with not overmuch time to see it in, we left the dew to the ladies, feeling certain, however, that they would be more likely to find it there in October than on May Day. When we had walked about five miles, we turned off the main road to visit the pretty village of Rosslyn, or Roslin, with its three great attractions: the chapel, the castle, and the dell. We found it surrounded by woods and watered by a very pretty reach of the River Esk, and as full of history ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... fired in the moat towards evening raises a dense cloud of pigeons, "obscuring utterly the waning day and deafening one with the mighty rushing sound of countless strong and rapidly-plied pinions." According to Hume the breeding season for these birds in Upper India lasts from Christmas to May day. The experience of the writer is that April, May and June are the months in which to look for their nests. However, in justice to Hume, it must be said that recently Mr. A. J. Currie found a nest, containing ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... idols".[62] In Leviticus it is laid down: "Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Moloch".[63] It may be that in Babylonia the fire-cleansing ceremony resembled that which obtained at Beltane (May Day) in Scotland, Germany, and other countries. Human sacrifices might also have been offered up as burnt offerings. Abraham, who came from the Sumerian city of Ur, was prepared to sacrifice Isaac, Sarah's first-born. The fire gods of Babylonia never ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... there'll be some plum blossoms out—it's three whole days till May Day and you can see the white on the buds." ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... straw hat trimmed with yellow roses and a shawl of lilac barege (it was the period of the shawl) sprinkled with tiny bouquets of violets. Her dark curls (the poor beloved curls to-day, alas! so thin and white) were at this time without a gray hair. There was about her the fragrance of the May day, and her face as it looked that morning with its broad brimmed hat is still distinctly present with me. Besides the bouquet of pink hyacinths, she had brought me a tiny watering-pot, an exact imitation in miniature of the crockery ones so much ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet, what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... he slightly stooped or bent forward as he walked. There is poetry in every move of his bent figure as he slowly walks down the street on this autumn morning. As we gaze upon him strolling feebly along, we involuntarily sigh for the days when the heart was young. May Day, with its buds and blossoms, Christmastide, full of bright anticipations, come trooping up the misty way. We are following the old band; listen ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... laughing quizzically, "that you were a very brave man to walk to-night over the enchanted hills, because this is May Day eve, and on May Day eve, you know, They have power over the minds of men, and can put ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... dined with us. He said during the dinner, when we heard a blast of wintry wind howling outside, 'This is May day enough; it does not matter to us how cold it is outside.' He was inclined to be silent, for there were other and brilliant talkers at the table, one of whom said to him in a pause of the conversation, 'Longfellow, tell us about yourself; you never talk about ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... always planning surprises, so when she appeared with two large lunch baskets heaped with goodies, Mary realized that this would be a May day party unlike any she had ever before seen. Six burros were kept ever ready in the corral and these were caught and saddled for the children. Mother rode her Indian pony, a Christmas gift from Father. As they passed the mill and wound ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster
... his side to read; in attempting to do this my voice failed me: words were lost in sobs. He and I were the only occupants of the parlour: Diana was practising her music in the drawing-room, Mary was gardening—it was a very fine May day, clear, sunny, and breezy. My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion, nor did he question me as to its cause; ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... members of Admiral Dewey's fleet, I feel obligated to extend a separate and special welcome; for without your chivalrous devotion to duty last May Day, yon shell-riven wrecks (part of unraised Spanish fleet visible above the bay) would not bespeak the down-fall of a sister nation, and we ourselves would not have been permitted to assemble here this afternoon. There is ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... one day in the year on which both the peals of bells were heard, the Feast of SS. Philip and James, which is also May Day. Then there was morning prayer at S. Philip and evening prayer at S. James, and the bells rang changes and cannons, and went on ringing by turns all the evening, the bell-ringers being escorted from one church to another with May garlands and a sort of triumphal procession. The churches ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... owned but three cows and loved but one. That was the first one, Chloe, a bright red, curly-pated, golden-skinned Devonshire cow, that an ocean steamer landed for me upon the banks of the Potomac one bright May day many clover summers ago. She came from the north, from the pastoral regions of the Catskills, to graze upon the broad commons of the national capital. I was then the fortunate and happy lessee of an old place with an acre of ground attached, almost within the shadow ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... has decreed that nobody in Ireland should do any work on May Day. Messrs. DEVLIN and MACVEAGH, however, being out of the jurisdiction, demonstrated their independence by being busier than ever. The appointment of a new Press Censor in Ireland furnished them with many opportunities at Question-time for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... To impress a stranger with any sense of the charm of London as a whole, let him be taken to that vantage-ground and bidden to gaze. The great city seemed to lie below and around him as in a hollow, tinged and glorified by the luminous haze of the May day. The countless spires which pointed to heaven in all directions gave the vast agglomeration of buildings something of an Italian air; it reminded the beholder agreeably of Florence. To right and to left the gigantic city spread, its grey wreath of eternal ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... that time of the day. The distance from this solitary dwelling to the first habitation on Herman Mordaunt's property, was eighteen miles; and that was a length of road that would require the whole of a long May day to overcome, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... had passed, and various political changes had taken place, that one bright May day, bright as such days are sometimes seen in the west, a heavy carriage drawn by four horses, and attended by two gentlemen and a sturdy servitor on horseback, passed slowly up and down the hills along the ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... full account of the relations of apprentices to their masters; though I confess that I do not know whether Edmund Burgess could have become a citizen of York after serving an apprenticeship in London. Evil May Day is closely described in Hall's Chronicle. The ballad, said to be by Churchill, a contemporary, does not agree with it in all respects; but the story-teller may surely have license to follow whatever is most suitable to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... May day falls into the loathsome sick-bed; but dull, unnoticed there: for they that look out of the windows are quite darkened; the cistern-wheel moves discordant on its axis; Life, like a spent steed, is panting towards the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the Modern Festivals of Christmas, May Day, St. John's Day, and Hallowe'en, to Ancient ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... heavy fog and sleet, and a continuance of the blizzard. April ended with a terrific windstorm which nearly destroyed the hut. The one remaining tent had to be dismantled, the pole taken down, and the inhabitants had to lie flat all night under the icy canvas. This lasted well into May, and a typical May day is described as follows: "A day of terrific winds, threatening to dislodge our shelter. The wind is a succession of hurricane gusts that sweep down the glacier immediately south-south- west of us. Each gust heralds its approach by a low rumbling ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... part of a song from Davidson's Fleet Street Eclogue of May Day. I quote these lines in particular, because, unlike most very short passages of this poet, they admit of being disentangled from their setting. They are typical of only one side of a many-sided being, the side which exults in the simple sensuous delights of nature. They ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... clouds broke. The sun, shining with summer warmth, ushered in a glorious May day, and the column, turning its back upon the Valley, took the stony road that led over the Blue Ridge. Upward and eastward the battalions passed, the great forest of oak and pine rising high on either hand, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... little romance opens in New York City in "the tender grace" of a May day long past, when the old Dutch families clustered around Bowling Green. It is the beginning of the romance of Katherine, a young Dutch girl who has sent, as a love token, to a young English officer, the bow of orange ribbon which ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... are, very mellow in colouring and tasteful in effect, but—if you know what a "spring clean" is—very execrable and inhuman. Whoever, having the bowels of humanity, has seen servants scrubbing at these polished wooden walls with beeswaxed cloths on a warm May day must allow that they are "intolerable and not to be endured;" and I cannot but secretly applaud the benevolent barbarian who had painted another and larger apartment of Fieldhead—the drawing-room, to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... fight again for many days. None of the persons who had wronged him would be punished for some time, neither his coarse and cowardly rival, nor his perfidious mistress, nor monstrous Lydia Maitland, whose infamy he had just discovered. They were all happy and triumphant, on that lovely, radiant May day, while he tossed on a bed of pain, and it was proven too clearly to him that very afternoon by his two seconds, the only visitors whom he had not denied admission, and who came to see him about five o'clock. They came ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... the morrow will be May Day when, in the olden days in Merrie England, the happy populace were wont to frolic about the May pole, to indulge in morris dances, to witness mummeries and mystery plays. How great the pity that such pleasant customs should ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... it was, could always be had in exchange for his mother's signature, I suspected. The pale May day had turned bleak and chilly, and we sat down by an open hatchway which emitted warm air from somewhere below. At this close range I studied Cressida's face, and felt reassured of her unabated vitality; the old force of will was still ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... May day—once, before the world became industrial, a day of gladness, now a day of dread, another result ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... groups of the charming flower songs by Mrs. Gaynor, bird songs by Nevin, simple folk dances, and appropriate Spring poems, etc., as part of the May Day fete.) ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... that May day, had given the moment, and wide circumstance had met it. Now the hand was in the glove, the statue in the niche, the bow upon the string, the spark in the tinder, the sea through the dike. Now what had reached ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... May Day, with that sweetness which is her own, made a neat speech proposing the health of the founder. This being done, the lordly New Year from the upper end of 30 the table, in a cordial but ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... not surprise the reader to learn they were all makers of ballades and rondels. To write verses for May day, seems to have been as much a matter of course, as to ride out with the cavalcade that went to gather hawthorn. The choice of Valentines was a standing challenge, and the courtiers pelted each other with humorous and sentimental verses as in a literary carnival. If an indecorous adventure befell ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... late afternoon in the same day, a bright, sunny golden afternoon, more like a warm May day than a day ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... over his round little knees and hitched up high under his arms by an improvised pair of calico "galluses" which were stretched tight over a clean but much patched gingham shirt. His feet and legs had been stripped in accordance with the time-ordered custom in Providence that bare feet could greet May Day, and his little, bare, pink toes curled up with protest against the roughness of even the dust-softened pike. Susie May, Billy and young Ez beamed with pride at their share in the rehabiting of the recent acquisition and waited breathlessly for words of praise from ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to the spring at the bottom of the garden, and lifted her head as a young deer does when it senses something new or dangerous. Suddenly, and entirely subconsciously, she felt her kinship with life, her relation to the lovely May day which was more like June than May—and a rare thing for Kenmore—whose seasons lapsed into each other as calmly and sluggishly as did all the other happenings in that spot known to the Canadian Indians as The Place ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... interest. For they had all disappeared. They were in the trenches, landing at Suvla, garrisoning Egypt, pushing up to Baghdad. The colleges contained a few forlorn remnants—under age, or medically unfit. The river, on a glorious May day, showed boats indeed, but girls were rowing them. Oriel, the college of Arnold, of Newman, of Cecil Rhodes, was filled with women students, whose own college, Somerville, had become a hospital. The Examination Schools in the High Street were a hospital, and the smell of disinfectants displaced ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... vivacity. Let people find anything to gloat over in her appearance, if they could. Glancing about as they left Mr. Avery, she saw that the old court or lobby, where she had stood and talked once on a rainy May day, had been left intact, only renovated somewhat as to floor and walls. On one side of it now ran down a row of offices with new glass doors, the first of them, marked "Mr. Pond." On the other side, a great arched doorway led into the large meeting-room, formed ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... selection; no other tree seems so to have forgotten itself; a noble nature that has lost the need of insisting its demands and making its values known, having long since called unto itself the perfect things.... There was one early May day of high northwind, that we entered the beech-wood, and saw those forest lengths of trunk swaying in a kind of planetary rhythm. Full-length the beeches gave, and returned so slowly, a sweeping vibration of their own, too slow and vast for ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... white pines that stood close to some only less picturesque red pines on the shores of a pond deep in the Adirondacks emphasized again for me one May day the majesty of this beneficent friend of mankind; and yet another old pine monarch against the sunset sky pointed the westward way from the picturesque Cornell campus, and alas! also pointed the danger to even this one unreplaceable tree when modern "enterprise" constructs a ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... for Valois in the Commandante's scowl when the saddest May day of his life comes. A rider on relay horses hands him ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Association, of which my friend, Tom Legare, was president, secretary, and treasurer, and kept the funds in a little purse that his cousin knit for him. There was three and sixpence on hand, I believe, the last time he brought in his accounts, on a May day, when we had a meeting in a grove on the river-bank. Tom was a very honest treasurer, and never spent the Society's money for peanuts; and besides all, was a fine, generous boy, whom I much loved. But I must not talk about ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... current events. They had already opinions of their own, which not rarely they could utter with striking audacity."—I could only envy these lines of gold; not one word of them had any reference to me: for I was still but a child. During a night that followed a lovely May day, the weather suddenly changed: winter, who was during the days of his dominion, watching how the warm breezes played with the flower-bells of the trees, all at once returned: with the full vigor of vengeance he came, and in three days destroyed everything, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... finger-tips, a fearless and graceful rider, and an expert in manly sports. Such a combination of attractions the daughter of Anne Child could not long, nor was she at all disposed to, resist. And one May day in 1804—almost twenty-two years to the day after her parents' dramatic flight to Gretna Green—the Lady Sarah became Vicountess Villiers. A year later she ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... the Abbey of St. Ouen that on a May Day of 1485, Charles VIII. held a great assembly to deliberate over the concessions to the town after his famous entry into Rouen. To welcome him, poets, machinists, actors, tableaux vivants, marionettes, songs, comedies, and "mysteries," were gathered together regardless of expense. The Dukes ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... was any attention paid to this stipulation. The seigneur was entitled to take firewood and building materials from the lands of his habitants if he desired, but he rarely availed himself of this right. On the morning of every May Day the habitants were under strict injunction to plant a Maypole before the seigneur's house, and this they never failed to do, because the seigneur in return was expected to dispense hospitality to all who came. Bright and early in the morning the whole community ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... object that the presence of so many personages, however pious or well intentioned, in a sick chamber on a hot Spanish May day, especially as the bath had been, for some generations past, held in religious horror throughout Spain, as a sign of Moorish and Mussulman tendencies, might have somewhat interfered with the chances of the ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... the afternoon of a May day. Sally Cosgar is kneeling, near the entrance chopping up cabbage-leaves with a kitchen-knife. She is a girl of twenty-five, dark, heavily built, with the expression of a half-awakened creature. She is coarsely dressed, ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... in its bosom, the crowd of great religious mountains; blessing God, who at his time of life had sent him such a love. And he had returned soon, too soon, to the hotel. The only other guests there on that May day, an old German professor and his daughter, had gone up Mount Pilatus. There was no one in the little reading-room. In that reading-room Maria and Giovanni had spent two happy hours, hand in hand, talking with hushed voices, often trembling ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... Sabbath, the Sabbath being considered to cease at sundown, should be kept with decorum, but seldom were they enforced, and often, as now, a great din arose when the first gloom overspread the earth. However, that night was the 30th of April, the night before May day; and there was more merrymaking in consequence, though May was not here as in England, and even in England not what it had been in ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... of the chief festivals of ancient times and also in more modern times. The Romans held the "Floralia" or festivals in honor of Flora, the Goddess of Flowers, from April 28th to the First of May. The Celts and English used to celebrate May Day extensively. But time makes many changes and as the years increase this custom has decreased, so that in some parts of the country the present generation know May first only as moving day instead ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... the Hall of Rufus) Sir William Wallace was tried and condemned; in this very Hall, Sir Thomas More and Protector Sommerset were doomed to the scaffold. Here, in Henry VIII.'s reign (1517), entered the City apprentices, implicated in the murders on 'Evil May Day' of the aliens settled in London, each with a halter round his neck, and crying 'Mercy, gracious Lord, Mercy,' while Wolsey stood by, and the King, beneath his cloth of state, heard their defense ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... endowed with all quaint humour, invested with all pathos, ennobled by vast struggle with vast adversity, oh, sufferers of all things, hero-fibred, grim fighters, oh, Army of Northern Virginia—all men and all women who have battled salute you, going into the Wilderness this May day with ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... In Chicago, the May Day strike was a great success. Those who remember it and took part in it tell us that thousands of workers filled the streets. Some paraded, others gave out handbills, others went in committees from factory to factory calling the workers out on strike. Despite all the efforts of a hostile press ...
— Labor's Martyrs • Vito Marcantonio
... mummings (from "mum," a mask) in the nineteenth century. In Scott's novel The Abbot we have a glimpse of other mummings, such as were given to celebrate feast days of the Church.] More widespread than the mummings were crude spectacles prepared in celebration of secular holidays,—the May Day plays, for example, which represented the adventures of Robin Hood and his merry men. To these popular comedies the Church contributed liberally, though unwillingly; its holy days became holidays ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Cousin Jack, "A May Day Festival Feast for the Maynards, and nothing could be pleasanter ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... nothing whatever the matter with my health. I am well—that is, bodily." He got up from the sofa, and crossed to the Zoological hearthrug, and poked the smoky little fire burning in the narrow grate, for the May day was wet and chilly. "I shall be better, mentally," he said, with an effort, looking over his shoulder towards Saxham, "when you have heard what I have to tell." He rose up, and turned round, his thin face flaming. "Mind, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... heaven fell the bolt. The mails on May Day morning brought to the desk of every manager of every industry in Blackwater, and to every building contractor, a formal document setting forth in terms courteous but firm the demands of the executives of the allied ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... this May Day of the year 157, at the place hight Rozel in the Manor called of the same of Jersey Isle, to Michel de la Foret, at Anvers ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... those harsh notes and putting a golden cornet to his lips, sent back the melodies the bugler meant to make. As the last reverberations died away among the hills we thought of those lines in Emerson's "May Day": ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... most of these little people are my benefactors, and add another ray of sunshine to the May day. I shall not soon forget the spectacle of that rare little warbler peeping around the corner of the porch, like a little ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... partner for the Polonaise," he said. "I hope you have a cup of coffee ready for me." He then sat down, and peered at Walter with his bright, inquisitive eyes. Now everyone knows that the foxes dance on the Feldberg on May Day. On one of the biggest fir-trees there hangs a picture of two foxes dancing, and these cross-roads have thence derived their name Fuchstanz. But they do not only dance on May Day, but on many other occasions such as the present. Walter had often wished that ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... went by, and then with the first May day reason returned again, bringing life and strength to the invalid, and joy to those who had so anxiously watched over her. Almost her first rational question was for Hagar, asking if ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... Last May Day fair I searched to find a snail That might my secret lover's name reveal. Upon a gooseberry-bush a snail I found, For always snails near sweetest fruit abound. I seized the vermin, home I quickly sped, And on the hearth the milk-white embers spread: Slow ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... from the house. It was a strange evening. Two different weathers seemed to have met over the Polchester streets. First there was the deep serene beauty of the May day, pale blue faintly fading into the palest yellow, the world lying like an enchanted spirit asleep within a glass bell, reflecting the light from the shining surface that enfolded it. In this light houses, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole |
