"Overgrown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was feeble and old, so his daughter had to do all this. The gold-horned cow's stable was a sort of a "lean-to," built into the side of the cottage where Drusilla and her father lived. Its roof, as well as that of the cottage, was thatched and overgrown with moss, out of which had grown, in its turn, a little starry white flower, until the whole roof looked like a flower-bed. There were roses climbing over the walls of the cottage and stable, also, ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... mountain ridge of Laurel Hill, hewing, digging, blasting, laying fascines and gabions to support the track along the sides of steep declivities, or worming their way like moles through the jungle of swamp and forest. Forbes described the country to Pitt as an "immense uninhabited wilderness, overgrown everywhere with trees and brushwood, so that nowhere can one see twenty yards." In truth, as far as eye or mind could reach, a prodigious forest vegetation spread its impervious canopy over hill, valley, and plain, and wrapped the stern and awful waste in the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... the old road, I wander over soft logs and gray yielding debris, across the little trout brook, until I emerge in the overgrown Barkpeeling,—pausing now and then on the way to admire a small, solitary white flower which rises above the moss, with radical, heart-shaped leaves, and a blossom precisely like the liverwort except in color, but which is not put down in my botany,—or to observe the ferns, of which ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... surmise of Bob proved correct. There was a lonely little house—more of a cabin, or shack—set in the midst of what had been a garden, but now overgrown with weeds. ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... larder, and especially of steak and kidney pie—tender steak and plenty of kidney, and rich, thick gravy between. Ever and again I was seized with fits of hungry yawning. We came to flat places overgrown with fleshy red things, monstrous coralline growths; as we pushed against them they snapped and broke. I noted the quality of the broken surfaces. The confounded stuff certainly looked of a biteable texture. Then it seemed to me ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... rest,' Jerrie answered laughingly. 'It is you who are to lie and rest, and not a great overgrown girl like me. I have given Harold his breakfast and seen him off. I cooked him half the steak,' she added as she took out the remaining half and put it on the gridiron. 'I don't care for steak,' ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... a few unkempt and overgrown rhododendron bushes dotted here and there ran its length in front of the house and terminated in an iron railing which separated the grounds from a little wood. A badly water-logged drive, green with grass in places, ran past ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... humbleth us, and that makes us bow before God, for our faults committed in our prosperity? and yet doth it yield no good unto us? we cold not live without such turnings of the hand of God upon us. We should be overgrown with flesh, if we had not our seasonable winters. It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit, because there is no winter there. The Lord bless all seasons to his people, and help them rightly to behave themselves, under all the times that go over them. Farewell. I ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... always something of the overgrown, provoking child in him, when he wanted to bear down an opinion or feeling that displeased him. She would have liked to go on walking and wrangling with him, for the great ceremony had excited her, and made ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... long neglect on every plank and seam; half its props had sunk or decayed, and the huge hollow leaned low on one side, disclosing the squalid desolation of its lean ribbed and naked interior, producing all the phantasmic effect of a great swampy desert; old pools of water overgrown with a green scum, lay in the hollows between its rotting timbers, and the upper planks were baking and cracking in the sun. Near where they lay a steep path ascended the cliff, whence through grass and ploughed land, it led across the promontory to the fishing village of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... land to be had, from which neither stick nor stump must be removed, these woods were very lonely. Occasionally a trapper or a sportsman wandered through them, but just here where Ingolby was none ever loitered. It was too thick for game, there was no roadway leading anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used in the old days by Indians. It was this path which Ingolby trod ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... A road half overgrown with grass and goldenrod bordered the wheat-field, and it wound away down toward the house. Her father appeared mounted on the white horse he always rode. Lenore sat down in the grass to wait for him. Nodding stalks of goldenrod leaned to her face. When looked ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... pace that permitted the cyclist to keep alongside, and presently, turning sharply to the right, picked their way along a narrow roadway which, overgrown with grass and flanked by densely-wooded country, was as desolate and lonely a spot as could be conceived. The car bumped and swayed over ruts and hummocks, and Green touched his companion's sleeve to ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... its name denotes, had been a rustic village. When Miss Willis was engaged (to teach school, not to be married) it was a thriving, bustling, overgrown, manufacturing town already yearning to become a city. By the end of another five years Glendale had realized its ambition, and Miss Willis was still a teacher in its crowded grammar-school. How the years creep, yet how they fly, when one is busy with regular, routine ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... of the old moat were overgrown with furze and brambles, and we stole into this cover as they approached. The foremost bore the light, was armed at all points, and mounted on a fresh horse. I started with exultation where I lay—he was her father. ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... New Chapel Green, which hounds ate in Kent at half-past five, nobody knows quite where, so bad was the light. Nearly at the end of the second run White found himself on the edge of a narrow, deep ghyll, with a stream at the bottom, crossed by an overgrown footpath which went down to the stream and up again by flights of stone steps opposite each other. Riding down two or three of the steps, he took a standing jump over the stream and landed on the top steps the other side. On another occasion his daring was of a different ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... field more agreeable than its fertility, and that scarce any advantages of ornament or situation will be able to equal this beauty. It is the same case with particular trees and plants, as with the field on which they grow. I know not but a plain, overgrown with furze and broom, may be, in itself, as beautiful as a hill covered with vines or olive-trees; though it will never appear so to one, who is acquainted with the value of each. But this is a beauty merely of imagination, and has no foundation in ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the trees he passes, leaving white scars on their trunks, and to follow such a trail you stand at your first tree until you see the blaze on the next, then go to that and look for the one farther on; going in this way from tree to tree you keep the trail though it may, underfoot, be overgrown and indistinguishable. ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... otherwise it would have been torn. Now it is always hung on lines, possibly because the hedges are not so well trimmed and kept. Bad times in farming have greatly helped the beauty of hedges. They are mostly overgrown, hung with masses of dog-rose, trailed over by clematis, grown up at bottom with flowers, ferns, and fox-gloves, festooned with belladonna, padded with bracken. The Surrey hedges are mostly on banks, a sign that the soil is light, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... said her grandfather; "they had overgrown the other things so much that I had to cut them back, and her ladyship told me to ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Scrub, n. country overgrown with thick bushes. Henry Kingsley's explanation (1859), that the word means shrubbery, is singularly misleading, the English word conveying an idea of smallness and order compared with the size and confusion of the Australian use. Yet he is etymologically ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... somewhat on the captain of the vessel—what sort of a man he is," said Kit. "He may be one of the high and mighty sort, full of overgrown ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... summer curtains should not be used at all, and in winter we should do well without them. In summer every wise man, who can afford it, will sleep out of town—at any of the villages which are removed sufficiently from the smoke and impurities of this overgrown metropolis. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... detached and impersonal view, I am bound to say that there is about him an outstanding merit which at once puts him on a different level from all others. It isn't so much his four and a half teeth I'm thinking of, nor is it the twenty-seven overgrown and badly managed hairs which wander about at the back of his bald head and give him the look of a dissipated monk. It is just his intrinsic worth, clearly evidenced in everything about him. Obviously a man of parts, he has brains, a stout heart and an unfailing ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... to hers or any one else's case," said the dwarf, hopping over the table like an overgrown toad, "I will first see that this guest of ours is properly taken care, of, and does not leave us without ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... the sense of resemblance the more striking was the sea, which one feels to be always near, though one may not see it, and which any turn of the valley may bring into view. We found out a little tower with an overgrown garden, of which the owner might have been taken for a husbandman of the Odyssey. He could scarcely speak any French, but was not without a certain grave dignity. I translated to him the inscription on his sun-dial, "Hora est benefaciendi," which ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... propositions he should make, since they would have a tendency to weaken court influence. He could only, however, make an offer, and if it was rejected the people must effect their own salvation. All the grievances of the nation, he observed, arose from the overgrown influence of the crown, and this influence was the creature of the prodigality of the commons. The operation of this influence, he said, was not confined to the superior orders of the state; it had insinuated itself into every section of the community. Scarcely a family in all England ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... pitch now widened out, and the whole ground looked like an asphalt pavement, half overgrown with marsh-loving weeds, whose roots feed in the sloppy water which overlies the pitch. But, as yet, there was no sign of the lake. The incline, though gentle, shuts off the view of what is beyond. This last lip of the lake has surely overflowed, and is overflowing still, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... blended. Within, the court is a mediaeval surprise. It is a miniature castle, such as might serve for an opera scene. An extension of the galleries, an ombre, completes the circle around the plot of close-clipped green turf. The house itself is all balconies, galleries, odd windows half overgrown and hidden by ivy, and a large gilt clock-face adds a touch of piquancy to the antique charm of the facade. Beyond the first court is a more spacious and less artificial lawn, set with fine trees, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a farthing of capital, no stock, no anything. I came upon the clearing one day in the course of my surveying, and never did I see Gone to the Dogs more clearly written on any spot; the half-burnt or overthrown trees lying about overgrown with wild vines and raspberries, the snake fence broken down, the log-house looking as if a touch would upset it, and nothing hopeful but a couple of patches of maize and potatoes, and a great pumpkin climbing up a stump. My horse and myself ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... question of performing day after day the same rather unnecessary duties, seeing the same people, listening to the same chatter, the same jokes, the same chaff. And added to the incurable dulness of the mess was the irksome feeling of being merely an overgrown schoolboy at the beck and call of every incompetent and foolish senior. Life was too short to waste in such solemn trifling, masquerading in a ridiculous costume which had to be left at home when any work was to be done. But he was young, with ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... enough to produce an original picture; but, corrupted by study of the Poussins, and gathering his materials chiefly in their field, the district about Rome—a district especially unfavorable, as exhibiting no pure or healthy nature, but a diseased and overgrown Flora among half-developed volcanic rocks, loose calcareous concretions, and mouldering wrecks of buildings—and whose spirit, I conceive, to be especially opposed to the natural tone of the English mind, his originality was altogether overpowered, and, though he ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... the ruts were described as being four feet deep. In Young's Tours through England (1768) the Essex roads are spoken of as having ruts of inconceivable depth, and the roads so overgrown with trees as to be impervious to the sun. Some of the turnpikes were spoken of as being rocky lanes, with stones "as big as a horse, and abominable holes!" He adds that "it is a prostitution of language to call them turnpikes—ponds of liquid dirt and a scattering ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... behind a laid-up excursion-boat and a file of North Sea fish-carriers, lay the Minnie, painted black, with nothing brighter than a deep brown on her deck-house, her boats painted a shabby green. She might have been an overgrown ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... area. Among the ferns grew holly bushes deeper in tint than any shadow about them, whilst the whole surface of the scene was dimpled with small conical pits, and here and there were round ponds, now dry, and half overgrown ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... cannot be removed are tumbled into the marsh or upset into the sea. The stones from the walls are carried away to Halifax. By 1760, of Louisburg, the glory of New France, the pride of America, there remains not a vestige but grassed slopes overgrown by nettles, ditches with rank growth of weeds, stone piles where the wild vines grow, and an inner yard where the cows of the fisher ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... to the fore: back to the sources! It is not merely an intellectual, philological requirement; it is equally an ethical and aesthetic necessity of life. The original and pure, all that is not yet overgrown or has not passed through many hands, has such a potent charm. Erasmus compared it to an apple which we ourselves pick off the tree. To recall the world to the ancient simplicity of science, to lead ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... were waiting in the woods where—near to what Mr. Penn meant as a public square, a little east of Schuylkill-Eighth street—was an open space, once a clearing, but now disused, and much overgrown. We were first on the ground, and I took occasion to tell Hugh of Pike's counsels—for he had at once guessed what we were about—to watch his opponent's eyes, and the like. Hugh, who was merry, and had put aside such thoughts of the future as were troubling me, declared ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... classes at the expense of a large majority of their fellow-citizens. Those employed in agriculture, mechanical pursuits, commerce, and navigation were compelled to contribute from their substance to swell the profits and overgrown wealth of the comparatively few who had invested their capital in manufactures. The taxes were not levied in proportion to the value of the articles upon which they were imposed, but, widely departing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... its various features. The two-story portico with a Doric order below and Ionic above, relieved against the brick front laid in Flemish bond, the simple but well-designed iron fence, flanked on either side by a wall with massive brick posts covered with plaster, and all overgrown with a tangle of foliage, make up a fascinating picture. The view of the side gateway and a group of darky boys is wonderfully picturesque, besides being very suggestive as ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... her way into the cherry-tree copse, and followed a tiny, overgrown path to a sunshiny corner beyond. She had not been there since last summer; the little path was getting almost impassable. When she emerged from the cherry trees, somewhat rumpled and pulled about in hair and attire, but attended, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... which, save for a small stable, was the sole out-building. One end of this house was a kitchen, the other was divided into two rooms for servants. There were some shattered remnants of oak-trees out in the field, and some chimneys overgrown with vines, showing where in happier times the real ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... the hotel, our hearts sank within us. Dusk as it was, there was light enough to guess, at first sight, that it would never do for sleeping—half covered with overgrown ivy, damp, forlorn, windows broken, shattered look all about it. With difficulty we got at the broken gate into the very small and dirty courtyard, where the four horses could hardly stand with the carriage. Out came such a master and such a maid! and ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Renan, "is to see dimly." Dimness or mystery, call it what you will: it is in all these overgrown and formless, but profoundly moving books. Just what do they mean? Just what is Dreiser driving at? That such questions should be asked is only a proof of the straits to which pedagogy has brought criticism. The answer is simple: he is driving at nothing, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it and pass on superior. The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold is there only by sufferance,—by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... at what appeared to have been a sugar plantation, but evidently abandoned for the fences were thrown down, though the shrubs and bushes formed an almost impenetrable barrier. They discovered, however, at last, a path. Even that was much overgrown, though they managed to force ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... given him all she had brought, he still opened his mouth and whimpered for more. At this exhibition of gluttony she lost her patience. Would he never be satisfied, the great, greedy, overgrown lubber? He was simply making a slave and a drudge of her. She looked at him for a moment with a savage glitter in her dark eyes, then began to peck him angrily right in the mouth, and drove him peremptorily backward ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... enormous size. Never were there such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy, badly-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any other roof, as are collected between the four walls of this overgrown Tavern." ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... the park of Charrebourg was deserted, and permitted to fall to decay, for the old visconte, and even Marguerite, had been removed to the establishment at Des Anges, and so, in process of time, the little walks were overgrown with grass, the fences spread and straggled, dark green plants clambered to the roof, and weeds showed themselves over the tiled vestibule and even ventured into the inner chambers. Thus time and nature, in mournful alliance, began their obliterating ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... without impediment permanently to the sun. It is thus that snatches of spiritual exercise do not avail to promote the growth, or even to preserve the life of grace in a heart that in the main is habitually overshadowed by a crowd of overgrown imperious worldly cares. Evening and morning you may open the Bible and bend the knee, but the tender plant of righteousness in your heart is not effectually revived by these brief and fitful glances. Before the drooping leaves have had time to feel the genial warmth, another cloud has closed the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... had not earned the money which had already been advanced to him. But all that was now ancient history—the entrenchments and graveyards of the Wilderness battlefield were not more forgotten and overgrown with new life than was the war-book in Thyrsis' mind. He had had enough of being a national chronicler which the nation did not want; he had come down to the realities of the hour, to the blazing ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a peer in England. His understanding, at the best, is of the middling size; neither hath he much improved it, either in reality, or, which is very unfortunate, even in the opinion of the world, by an overgrown library.[31] It is hard to decide, whether he learned that rough way of treating his sovereign from the lady he is allied to,[32] or whether it be the result of his own nature. The sense of the injuries he hath done, renders him (as it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... dotted with groups of rhododendrons, which grew in more perfection here than anywhere else in the county. To the right there were the kitchen gardens, the fish-pond, and an orchard bordered by a dry moat, and a broken ruin of a wall, in some places thicker than it was high, and everywhere overgrown with trailing ivy, yellow stonecrop, and dark moss. To the left there was a broad graveled walk, down which, years ago, when the place had been a convent, the quiet nuns had walked hand in hand; a wall bordered with espaliers, and shadowed on one side by ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... I remember aright, in the mouth. He has a great quantity of dark hair, curling in great rolls, not in little corkscrews, and a pair of large, dark, and very steady, bold, bright eyes. His manners are those of a prince. I felt like an overgrown ploughboy beside him. He speaks English perfectly, but with, I think, sufficient foreign accent to stamp him as a Russian, especially when his manners are taken into account. I don't think I ever saw any one who looked like a hero before. After ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... storms of wind it sways to and fro, causing no little alarm, and boughs are sometimes blown off it, and fall upon the roof-tree. The thatch of the cottage is saturated; the plants and grasses that almost always grow on it, and the moss, are vividly, rankly green; till all dripping, soaked, overgrown with weeds, the wretched place looks not unlike a dunghill. Inside, the draught is only one degree better than the smoke. These low chimneys, overshadowed with trees, smoke incessantly, and fill the room with smother. To avoid the draught, many of the cottages are fitted with wooden ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... whole length of the southern facade of the house, and is generously broad. It is paved with great lozenge-shaped slabs of marble, stained in delicate pinks and greys with lichens; and a marble balustrade borders it, overgrown, the columns half uprooted and twisted from the perpendicular, by an aged wistaria-vine, with a trunk as stout as a tree's. Seated there, one can look off over miles of richly-timbered country, dotted with ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... more questions to ask, and I beg the special attention of the jury to the answers. Is the ditch, or is it not, very thickly overgrown with brambles and brushwood?' ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that the village was built partly in the bottom of the gorge and partly on one of its craggy sides. Closely hemmed in by rocks and high hills overgrown with forest was a bright and fertile little valley, with abundance of pear and walnut trees, luxuriant cottage-gardens, and little fields by the flashing torrent, where shocks of lately-cut buckwheat stood with their heads together waiting ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the plains died off, and we re-entered a new bed of scrubs—again consisting of mallee, casuarinas, desert sandal-wood, and quandong-trees of the same family; the ground was overgrown with spinifex. By the night of the twelfth day from the dam, having daily increased our rate of progress, we had traversed scrubs more undulating than previously, consisting of the usual kinds of trees. At sundown we descended into a hollow; I thought this would prove ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... the Devil! This once given, I find that all is given; daily History, in Kingdom and in Parish, is an experimentum crucis to show what is the Devil's and what not. But on the whole are we not the formalest people ever created under this Sun? Cased and overgrown with Formulas, like very lobsters with their shells, from birth upwards; so that in the man we see only his breeches, and believe and swear that wherever a pair of old breeches are there is a man! I declare I could both laugh and cry. These ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the better to digest their hearty dinner, refreshed the travelers so much that they soon re-embarked and pursued their voyage. Leaving the lake they entered another branch of the Kabekanka, and found that at its mouth the stream ran between low shores, and that its bed was so overgrown with wild rice as to make it almost impossible for a canoe to work its way through. Further up the river narrowed and ran more swiftly, the wild rice giving place to snags and driftwood, which made navigation even more toilsome. Almost worn out, our weary voyagers began to despair of finding navigable ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... neighbors, for your time will be so much occupied in taking care of their faults that you will have no time to look after your own. And while you are pulling the chickweed out of their garden yours will get all overgrown with horse-sorrel ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... only question is, what is the most convenient time for their duration? On which there are three opinions. We are agreed, too, that the term ought not to be chosen most likely in its operation to spread corruption, and to augment the already overgrown influence of the crown. On these principles I mean to debate the question. It is easy to pretend a zeal for liberty. Those who think themselves not likely to be encumbered with the performance of their promises, either from their known inability, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... something. He was happy in the wet hillside, that was overgrown and obscure with bushes and flowers. He wanted to touch them all, to saturate himself with the touch of them all. He took off his clothes, and sat down naked among the primroses, moving his feet softly among the primroses, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... abhorrence of tyranny and brute force—many such good things have been nourished in the child's heart by this powerful aid. It has greatly helped to keep us ever young, by preserving through our worldly ways one slender track, not overgrown with weeds, where we may walk with children, sharing ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... fashion. As for the latter, we have expressly described it above. So far was the skin on his cheeks from being cherry-coloured, that you could not discern what the natural colour of his cheeks was, they being totally overgrown by a black beard, which ascended to his eyes. His shape and limbs were indeed exactly proportioned, but so large that they denoted the strength rather of a ploughman than any other. His shoulders were broad beyond all size, and the calves of his legs larger ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... him to-day a visitor of his own—a vastly overgrown person of eighteen, who, at Johnnie's beckoning, abandoned a fair companion of the moment and came forward as William ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... could understand what he was doing so far away from his place of refuge. Was he after ducks, or what? The animal was at least a quarter of a mile away from dry land, being in the middle of a marsh, overgrown with reeds. Another of Mr. Dick's adventures ended more unfortunately for him, as I fear he never got over its effects. I again, as on the last occasion, heard him evidently furiously engaged with something in a thick wood. After crawling ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... then coasted slowly round from the "River of the Flint" to "Jackdaw Point," and the "Chamber of the Wolves," where his men started a herd of sea-calves. So he came to the vast plain overgrown with fennel or "Funchal," where the chief town of after days grew up. A party sent inland to explore, reported that on every side the ocean could be seen from the hills; and Zarco, after taking in some specimens of the native wood and plants and birds ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... after the Easter Vacation. The Doctor, looking complacently expansive, cheerily anticipative, welcomed them on the doorstep. They did not welcome him. Oh, dear no! Look at them; the five senior pupils in front, headed, of course, by that overgrown and somewhat ungainly Irish boy, Master PATRICK GREEN, cock of the School, and prime favourite of Doctor GLADSTONE! Can you not fancy them singing—after ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... spade. Wells that the Romans sunk, still yield water; roads that the Romans made, form part of our highways. In some old battle-fields, British spear-heads and Roman armour have been found, mingled together in decay, as they fell in the thick pressure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps overgrown with grass, and of mounds that are the burial-places of heaps of Britons, are to be seen in almost all parts of the country. Across the bleak moors of Northumberland, the wall of SEVERUS, overrun with moss and weeds, still stretches, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... difficult a task as to trace out and build up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like Ticonderoga, from a view of its gray and broken ruins. Here and there, perchance, the walls may remain almost complete, but elsewhere may be only a shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown, through long years of peace and neglect, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... holding its cones and hoarding seeds often results in the cones being overgrown and embedded in the trunk or the limbs of the trees. As the cones hug closely the trunk or the limbs, it is not uncommon for the saw, when laying open a log at the mill, to reveal a number of cones embedded there. ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... the splendid palaces wandered hundreds of mendicants, who made of their mendicity a horrible trade, and even went so far as to steal or mutilate infants in order to move compassion by their hideous maladies. This class was increased by the exposure of children, and by that overgrown accumulation of landed property which drove the poor from their native fields. It was increased also by the ambitious attempt of people whose means were moderate to imitate the enormous display of the numerous millionaires. The great ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... down, and quite on the edge of the valley, stood another cabin. And this was quite overgrown with vines, and was quite hidden away in a growth of pines that gathered over it. Then there was an undergrowth of fruit trees that grew inside the fence and about the lonely porch. On this porch had sat, for years and years, a tawny, silent old woman. She ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... may keep a man warm in January, even in this climate," said the Alderman, willing to turn the discourse; "but what with rebellious blacks, hot streets, and spoiling furs, it passeth mortal powers to keep cool in yonder overgrown and crowded town. Thou seest, Patroon, the spot of white on the opposite side of the bay.—Breezes and fanning! that is the Lust in Rust, where cordial enters the mouth at every breath, and where a man has room to ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... depend on the season of the year. In summer, the heads will remain at the proper stage for cutting no more than a day or two, while late in autumn they may often be left a week before becoming overgrown. ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... by the Buddhists and Brahmanists were destroyed by the Moslem invaders, and others abandoned. All of these edifices became, during the succeeding centuries, overgrown with the luxuriant tropical vegetation and partly buried. Some of them, like that of Boro-Bodor, have been uncovered, displaying hundreds of statues and ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... partly that they might satiate themselves with the booty. But on the morning of June 7 the cavalry appeared, who, learning of the defeat, pursued the fugitives until they entered a region that was rocky and overgrown with thickets, where most of them perished—some from hunger, and many from the cruelty of the Negrillos of the mountains. Then, as the alcaldes-mayor of Bay and Bulacan attacked them with their troops, hardly a Sangley could escape who did not perish either at their hands ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... of the southern province is covered with palm-trees; the centre is a mountainous region, with magnificent scenery, crowned by the lofty summit of Adam's Peak; while the low lands, where cultivation does not extend, are overgrown with dense masses of forest and impenetrable jungle. This is the condition of the northern and a large portion of the eastern province. Kandy, the capital, is situated in the central province, and in the high lands. In the northern part of it are to be ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... energy he plied his spear, now on this side and now on that, directing the course of the raft, or clearing it from the flaggers which interrupted its passage through the narrow inlet. This duty he had to attend to for some time, even after leaving the little inlet; for the river was much overgrown with flaggers at this point, and the increasing darkness made ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... over their meal when the little corporal brought in another recruit, a tall overgrown lad with a pink and white boyish face, apparently several years younger than the rest. The corporal spoke less gruffly to him, and showed him his locker with something like politeness. Apparently there was something ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... much frightened. He had never before been out at night, but had always slumbered secretly behind the warm rose-leaves. Oh, this would certainly be his death. At the other end of the garden, he knew there was an arbor, overgrown with beautiful honey-suckles. The blossoms looked like large painted horns; and he thought to himself, he would go and sleep in one of these till the morning. He flew thither; but "hush!" two people were in the arbor,—a ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... extraordinary.; important &c. 642; unsurpassed &c. (supreme) 33; complete &c. 52. august, grand, dignified, sublime, majestic &c. (repute) 873. vast, immense, enormous, extreme; inordinate, excessive, extravagant, exorbitant, outrageous, preposterous, unconscionable, swinging, monstrous, overgrown; towering, stupendous, prodigious, astonishing, incredible; marvelous &c. 870. unlimited &c. (infinite) 105; unapproachable, unutterable, indescribable, ineffable, unspeakable, inexpressible, beyond expression, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the antidote of reformation, to avoid the poison of Popery; forasmuch as in England and Ireland, every noisome weed which God's hand had never planted was not pulled up, therefore we now see the faces of those churches overgrown with the repullulating twigs and sprigs of popish superstition. Mr Sprint acknowledgeth the Reformation of England to have been defective, and saith, "It is easy to imagine of what difficulty it was to reform all things at the first, where the most part of the privy council, of the ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... thick round our wheels. I could bear it no longer, and put out my head again, and I shall never forget the sight. The moon was coming a little bit from behind the clouds, and showed a court-yard in which we had pulled up, surrounded with buildings in ruins, and overgrown with nettles and rank grass. We had not seen a human being since we left Glasgow, at least an hour before,—and of all the places to have one's throat cut in!! The situation was so tight a place, it really gave one the courage ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... considerable ascent, and now he was upon a broad ledge of rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this eminence and another of equal height, upon which the castle was built, there was a deep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, so that the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged surface of the abyss; but the profoundness might well be conjectured by the hoarse, low, monotonous sound of waters unseen that rolled below, and the ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... walls built by the Venetians round the town still remains, overgrown with ivy, and the city is still entered by the old gate-openings, the Porta di Su and the Porta Pisani, though the actual gateways have disappeared. On one of the towers guarding the latter is a rather ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... had chosen wisely was proved when some twenty minutes later. I clattered into the hamlet of Mirepoix, and drew up before an inn flaunting the sign of a peacock—as if in irony of its humbleness, for it was no better than a wayside tavern. Neither stable-boy nor ostler was here, and the unclean, overgrown urchin to whom I entrusted my horse could not say whether indeed Pere Abdon the landlord would be able to find me a room to sleep in. I thirsted, however; and so I determined to alight, if it were only to drink a can of wine and obtain information ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... conquest-branded brow Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne among the waves, Wilt thou be,—when the sea-mew Flies, as once before it flew, O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state, Save where many a palace-gate With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandon'd sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way Wandering at the close of day, Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the front of the Castle of PENTHEUS, King of Thebes. At one side is visible the sacred Tomb of Semele, a little enclosure overgrown with wild vines, with a cleft in the rocky floor of it from which there issues at times steam or smoke. The God DIONYSUS ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... oak, which stood at the entrance of the wood, and the foot of which was overgrown with fragrant green moss. Assisted by Staps, the two officers seated themselves, and the roots, covered with soft turf, served as pillows to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... to usurp its inward and autonomous authority, and did not set up, in the name of salvation, some new partiality, some new principle of distress and illusion. In destroying worldliness this religion avoided imposture. The clearing it made in the soul was soon overgrown again by the inexorable Indian jungle; but had a virile intellect been at hand, it would have been free to raise something solid and rational in the space so happily swept clean of all ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... paper, and judge as kindly as he can the infirmities of my description. To me, who find it so difficult to tell the little that I know, he stands essentially as a GENIUS LOCI. It is impossible to separate his spare form and old straw hat from the garden in the lap of the hill, with its rocks overgrown with clematis, its shadowy walks, and the splendid breadth of champaign that one saw from the north-west corner. The garden and gardener seem part and parcel of each other. When I take him from his right surroundings and try to make him appear for me on paper, he ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... awaked, greatly refreshed, to find himself the cynosure of three pairs of eyes. These were all kindly and full of cheer. Two pairs were contributed respectively by the nurse and Lady Touchstone, while the third was set in the face of an overgrown cherub, who smelt agreeably of Harris tweed and was gently furbishing his ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... little farmed. Everything was slipshod. House and barn and outbuildings were fast falling into ruin. The front yard was weed-grown. There was no vegetable garden. The small orchard was old, sickly, and neglected. The trees were twisted, spindling, and overgrown with a gray moss. The sons and daughters were away in the cities, Saxon found out. One daughter had married a doctor, the other was a teacher in the state normal school; one son was a locomotive engineer, the second was an architect, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... of intestine anarchy, as Castile. These were still further aggravated by the improvident donations of the monarch to the aristocracy, in the vain hope of conciliating their attachment, but which swelled their already overgrown power to such a height, that, by the middle of the fifteenth century, it not only overshadowed that of the throne, but threatened to subvert ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... changes are as slow as the progress of cultivation. The towns of Angostura, Nueva Barcelona, and Mompox, where from the want of police, the streets, the great squares, and the interior of court-yards are overgrown with brushwood, are sadly celebrated for ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... from the main road into the old untravelled one leading past Sylvia Crane's house. It appeared scarcely more than a lane; the old wheel-ruts were hidden between green weedy ridges, the bordering stone-walls looked like long green barrows, being overgrown with poison-ivy vines and rank shrubs. For a long way there was no house except Sylvia Crane's. There was one cellar where a house had stood before Barney could remember. There were a few old blackened ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... thirty miles of ups and downs, ascending to a height of 7,600 feet and descending again some 3,000 feet. In the beginning it was almost impossible to make out the track; where it did not lead over bare rocks, it was nearly obliterated by overgrown grass. The first ascent was over a mile long in a straight line; then, after a little while, came the most arduous climbing I had until then ever attempted. Following the slope of the mountain, the track rose higher and higher in long zigzags, without any chance for the animals ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... passing immediately under the old Castle and traversing its entire length. The further side is called the Deer Park, inclosed and stocked by Sir John Glynne in 1739. Its banks and glades, richly timbered, and overgrown with bracken, afford from various points beautiful views over the plain of Chester, with the bold projections of the Frodsham and Peckforton hills. Along the bottom of the hollow flows Broughton brook. ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... course. But now, look you, 'twas Leopoldine's turn to be affected, to begin the same eternal round. She was well fitted for the same, overgrown and pretty and newly confirmed; an excellent sacrifice she would make. A bird is fluttering in her young breast, her long hands are like her mother's, full of tenderness, full of sex. Could she dance?—ay, indeed she could. A marvel where she had managed to learn it, but learn it they did at ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... mankind. And like Cato he is never weary of extolling the wisdom and virtues of the harsh infancy of the Republic, and blaming the degeneracy of its feeble and luxurious descendants who refuse to till the soil, and add acre to acre of their overgrown estates. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... like any other country in autumn, and appears to be reasonably free from the fantastic animals and overgrown flowers which made the other paradises look childish. Come now, there is an attractive simplicity about Leuke. I might put up with Leuke if the local by-laws allowed me ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Interpreter had been in those years before the accident that condemned him to his chair. But Billy Rand lacked the commanding presence that had once so distinguished his older friend and guardian. His age was somewhere between twenty and thirty; but his face was still the face of an overgrown ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... Knights Hospitallers. Walsingham, the chronicler, indeed, says that the rebels—who, by the by, claimed only their rights—had resolved to decapitate all the lawyers of London, to put an end to all the laws that had oppressed them, and to clear the ground for better times. In the reign of Henry VI. the overgrown society of the Temple divided into two halls, or rather the original two halls of the knights and Fratres Servientes separated into two societies. Brooke, the Elizabethan antiquary, says: "To this day, in memory of the old custom, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... passes for a mighty clever guesser, outpointing with ease his transatlantic cousin. Over there the sovereign guesses officially that devotion to the Mother of God is a superstitious practice. This reminds one of the overgrown farmer boy, who, when invited by his teacher to locate the center of a circle drawn on the blackboard, stood off and eyed the figure critically for a moment with a wise squint; and then said, pointing his finger to the middle or thereabouts: "I should jedge ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... big, overgrown cowards," shouted the reporter. "I'll thrash the both of you, with ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... or bleaching of the London fogs, by the improved methods of consuming smoke, must be a very fine thing for the dwellers in that overgrown city. We hear, however, of one old lady, a duchess, who thinks the fog now to be very vulgarly pale; and regrets the good old days of what she thought a much more ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... grove now, on a terrace with a perspective of ruined garden, whence the battered faces of ancient statues peeped out, yellow-white from behind overgrown rose bushes and heliotrope. The chateau was before them, the windows still reflecting the sunlight; but this borrowed glitter was all the brightness it had. Once beautiful, the old battlemented house had an air of proud desolation, as if scorning pity, since ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... over rough sand dunes, overgrown with coarse grass, in the direction of the sounds of the axe. The sand was loose and their feet sank ankle deep in it, but they ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... I reached the town of which he had spoken, and following certain directions which he had given, discovered, though not without some difficulty, the dingle which he had mentioned. It was a deep hollow in the midst of a wide field, the shelving sides were overgrown with trees and bushes, a belt of sallows surrounded it on the top, a steep winding path led down into the depths, practicable, however, for a light cart, like mine; at the bottom was an open space, and there I pitched my tent, and there I contrived to put up my forge. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... hundred and fifty years ago. Hideyoshi's going to treat King Yoorkerk to a movie-show. Want to bet he won't loosen up and release Procyon and Northern Lights and unblockade the Grank Residency after he sees that shot of Firkked's head leering at him off the point of that overgrown asagai? As I said, that's only the last scene, too. I've been having scenes shot all through this fight; some of them ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr |
