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Briar   Listen
noun
Briar, Brier  n.  
1.
A plant with a slender woody stem bearing stout prickles; especially, species of Rosa, Rubus, and Smilax.
2.
Fig.: Anything sharp or unpleasant to the feelings. "The thorns and briers of reproof."
Brier root, the root of the southern Smilax laurifolia and Smilax Walteri; used for tobacco pipes. See also 2nd brier.
Cat brier, Green brier, several species of Smilax (Smilax rotundifolia, etc.)
Sweet brier (Rosa rubiginosa). See Sweetbrier.
Yellow brier, the Rosa Eglantina.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Briar" Quotes from Famous Books



... an afternoon, we would climb the steep winding pathway through the woods, past awful precipices, spirit-haunted, by grassy swards where fairies danced o' nights, by briar and bracken sheltered Caves where fearsome creatures lurked, till high above the creeping sea we would reach the open plateau where rose old Jacob's ruined tower. "Jacob's Folly" it was more often called about the country side, and by some "The Devil's Tower;" for legend ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... delightful odour which this plant diffuses; and as it is most readily cultivated in pots, its fragrance may be conveyed to the parlour of the recluse, or the chamber of the valetudinarian; its perfume, though not so refreshing perhaps as that of the Sweet-Briar, is not apt to offend on continuance the most ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... of blossom. It is a pity that the Swiss call this plant "Alpenrose," since there is a true and exquisite Alpine rose (which we often found) with deep red flowers, dark-coloured foliage, and a rich, sweet-briar perfume. Lovely as these larger flowers of the higher Alps are, they are excelled in fascination by the delicate blue flowers of the Soldanellas, like little fringed foolscaps, by the brilliant little red and purple Alpine snap-dragon, and by the cushion-forming ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... airs on us," said the inspector. "We've no time for them. If you won't tell the truth you had better say nothing at all." He plunged his hand into a jardiniere and withdrew a briar-wood pipe. "This looks to me like Birchill's property. ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... to which it comes; so with Christ in my heart the sins, the evil habits, the passions, the lusts, and all other foul spawn and offspring, will die and disappear. Take Him, then, dear friend! by simple faith, for your Saviour. He will plant the good seed in your spirit, and 'instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle.' Your lives will become fruitful of goodness and of joy, according to that ancient promise: 'The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... bark ran free for Tintagel. But it seemed to Tristan as though an ardent briar, sharp-thorned but with flower most sweet smelling, drave roots into his blood and laced the lovely body of Iseult all round about it and bound it to his own and to his every thought and desire. And he thought, "Felons, that charged me with coveting King Mark's land, I have come lower by ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier

... cedars rustling, the sun shone bright and hot, and the open fringe of the forest was garlanded with flowers, while a torrent made wild music in every ravine. I was sitting outside our shanty one morning smoking a pet English briar, whose stem was bitten half-way, and reveling in the warmth and brightness, when the unexpected happened. By degrees, perhaps under the spell of some influence which stirs us when sleeping nature awakens once more to life, I lost myself in reverie, and recalled drowsily a certain deep, oak-shrouded ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... another fashion, "fads" we should call them nowadays. A school-bag—they didn't call them satchels then—was made of a piece of blue and white bed-ticking, folded at the bottom. Every white stripe you worked with zephyr worsted in briar stitch or herring-bone or feather stitch. You could use one color or several. And now the old work and the bed-ticking has come back again and ladies make the ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... stitches most frequently used are (1) outline, (2) chain, (3) cat or herringbone, (4) blanket or loop, (5) feather, coral or briar, (6) hemstitching, (7) French knots, (8) button hole, and (9) cross stitch. Excepting the cross stitch, these are all variations of the plain ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... Lord, if thou tak'st from me all the rest, Thyself with each resumption drawing nigher, It shall but hurt me as the thorn of the briar, When I reach to the pale flower in its breast. To have thee, Lord, is to have all thy best, Holding it by its very life divine— To let my friend's hand go, and take his heart ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... the greatest variety of shapes, forms, and verdures the eye ever beheld; each, also, so far asunder as was necessary for the spreading of their several branches and the growth of their delicious fruits, without a bush, briar, or shrub amongst them. Behind these, and still on the higher ground, grew an infinite number of very large, tall trees, much loftier than the former, but intermixed with some underwood, which grew ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... and sheltering trees, and a great expanse of smoothly kept lawn. It possessed flower-beds and flower borders innumerable. There was more than one bower composed entirely of rose-trees, and there were very long hedges of sweet briar and ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... this Proserpine of fire and earthquake! this Katterfelto of wonders! exceeded expectation, went beyond belief, and soared above all the natural powers of description! she was nature itself! she was the most exquisite work of art! she was the very daisy, primrose, tube rose, sweet-briar, furze blossom, gilliflower, wall-flower, cauliflower and rosemary! in short she was a bouquet of Parnassus. Where expectation was raised so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance; but it was the audience who were injured—several of them fainted before the curtain ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... clambered up into the engineer's seat. Hemenway gave McLeod his longest and strongest cigar, and filled his own briar-wood pipe. The rain was now pattering gently on the roof of the cab. The engine hissed and sizzled patiently in the darkness. The fragrant smoke curled steadily from the glowing tip of the cigar; but the pipe went out half a dozen times while ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... time I parted from my Dear The linnet sang from the briar-bush, The throstle from the dell; The stream too carolled full and clear, It was the spring-time of the year, And both the linnet and the thrush I love them well Since last I parted from ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various

... bed, and, putting out her candle, lay down. The firelight played on the pale blue walls and lit up the bold design of the briar-roses which ran round the frieze at the ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... the morning; for she wanted to keep her way, which he did not. She lost it, however, continually. Her eyes were scratched by boughs and brambles, the tree roots tripped her up, her dress caught in a briar and was torn. "Archie! Archie!" she cried, as she went along. Her voice came back from the forest in strange echoing tones which made her start. At last, after winding and turning for a long time, she found herself again upon the main path, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... reproduced in oils by the painter. This silent period was, however, one of unremitting production. Hitherto Burne-Jones had worked almost entirely in water-colours. He now began a number of large pictures in oils, working at them in turn, and having always several on hand. The "Briar Rose" series, "Laus Veneris," the "Golden Stairs," the "Pygmalion" series, and "The Mirror of Venus" are among the works planned and completed, or carried far towards completion, during these years. At last, in May 1877, the day of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... haired man, with a coat buttoned clear to the neck, and a countenance like a funeral sermon, with no more expression than a wooden decoy duck, who was smoking a briar-wood pipe that he had picked up on a what-not that belonged to the host, knocked the ashes out in a spittoon, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... insurance, not enough, of course, but a little. He was plannin' to take on more, but somehow it never seemed as if he could die, he so big and strong, and we put it off until he got so he couldn't pass the examination. When the insurance money come I took it to Jedge Briar, a mighty good friend of Jubal's and mine and the one that held the mortgage on the house, and I told him I wanted to pay off the mortgage with it, so's I'd have the house free and clear. But the Jedge advised me not to, said the mortgage was costin' me only six per cent., and why didn't I put ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... Rendal felt in his pockets for a cigar-case; was annoyed and amused (in a sub-conscious sort of way) to find only a briar pipe and a pocketful of coarse-cut tobacco; filled and lit his pipe, and ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... thinking of this as he sat at the edge of the dear Old Briar-patch, looking over to the Green Forest. The Green Forest was no longer just green; it was of many colors, for Old Mother Nature had set Jack Frost to painting the leaves of the maple-trees and the beech-trees, and the birch-trees and the poplar-trees and the chestnut-trees, ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess

... "thing to see, not hear"—that brave, rash, resolute imp clinging like a terrier, or a crab, or a briar, on to the back of that gigantic ruffian, whom, if she had no strength to stop, she ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... wandering might well be indispensable. Spots as soft as my bed of earth from the roots of the briar-heather, purged of all hard bodies and finely sifted, are rare in nature. Coarse soils are more usual, on which the tiny creatures could make no impression. The larva must wander at hazard, must make a pilgrimage of indefinite duration before ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... pipes an' briar pipes an' meerschaum pipes as well, There's plain pipes an' fancy pipes—things jes made to sell; But any pipe that kin be bought fer marbles, chalk, or pelf, Ain't ekal to the flaver of th' pipe you ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... fond wretch! breathe not contagion here! No myrtle-walks are these: these are no groves Where Love dare loiter! If in sullen mood He should stray hither, the low stumps shall gore His dainty feet, the briar and the thorn Make his plumes haggard. Like a wounded bird Easily caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs, Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades! And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make at morn The dew-drops quiver ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... with haggard eyes And hands that fence away the skies, On rock and briar stumbling, Is it fear of the storm's rumbling, Of the hissing cold rain, Or lightning's tragic pain Drives you so madly? See, see the patient moon; How she her course keeps Through cloudy shallows and across black deeps, Now gone, now shines soon. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... back veranda, shelling beans, and Cousin Sophia was helping her. Peace and tranquility brooded over the Glen; the sky was fleeced over with silvery, shining clouds. Rainbow Valley lay in a soft, autumnal haze of fairy purple. The maple grove was a burning bush of colour and the hedge of sweet-briar around the kitchen yard was a thing of wonder in its subtle tintings. It did not seem that strife could be in the world, and Susan's faithful heart was lulled into a brief forgetfulness, although she had lain awake most of the preceding night thinking of little ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... briar-torn, I'm afraid. Those big beech woods are rather a puzzle to anybody who is not familiar with the country. No wonder she became ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... her; but instead of growing tired of his search he only became the more anxious to find her. One day, as he was riding through a wood, he came upon a sweet-smelling hedge, all made of honeysuckle and sweet-briar, so high that he could not climb it, and so thick that he could ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp

... the world for cunning and sweet wit; And what sweet fool but her sweet knight, God help! To serve her with that three-inch wit of his? She is all fool and fiddling now; for me, I am well-pleased; God knows, if I might choose I would not be more troubled with her love. Her love is like a briar that rasps the flesh, And yours is soft like flowers. Come this way, love; So, further in this window; ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... on re-entering his office, did a very unusual thing. It has been said that he could no longer afford himself tobacco. But an old briar pipe lay on the chimney-piece among a litter of notes and memoranda that had escaped the afternoon's holocaust. He took it up wistfully, and, searching in a jar, at the end of the shelf, found a few crumbs of tobacco. Scraped together with care, they all but filled ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... temple of Nicotiana. Daily, aye, thrice daily—well, call it six, then—do I make burnt offering. Now some use censers of clay, others employ censers of rare white earth finely carved and decked with silver and gold. My particular censer, as you see, is a plain, honest briar, a root dug from the banks of the blue Garonne, whose only glory is its grain and color. The original tint, if you remember, was like that of new-cut cedar, but use—I've been smoking this one only two ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... a pistol, but did not pause for the report. He scrambled over rock and stone, through bush and briar; rolled down banks like a hedgehog; scrambled up others like a catamount. In every direction he heard some one or other of the gang hemming him in. At length he reached the rocky ridge along the river; one of the red-caps was hard behind him. A steep ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... because so many folks were looking for him. after several hours I circled around and got out of reach of all spectators then I made a bee line for upstream,—(as that is the way all lost hunters and tenderfeet go) after I had traveled about two miles I found a raveling on a briar and then I was sure I had a trail. This discovery gave me courage and I took up the labor with all the instinct of my nature. I followed his trail till pitch dark and camped under a maple tree till the gray dawn announced day—then I resumed my ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis

... ascribes to "a walk, a discovery, a day of leisure, an hour of idleness." On a ramble with her children she came upon what she calls "a nook in a wild paradise;" a mill, whose owner had allowed everything to grow around the sluices that chose to spring up, briar and alder, oaks and rushes. The stream, left to follow its devices, had forced its way through the sand and the grass in a network of little waterfalls, covered below in the summer time with thick ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... of the 1st West India Regiment, was raised. Numerous royalists joined the British camp and were formed into various corps;[2] and the South Carolina Regiment is first mentioned as taking part in the action at Briar Creek on the 3rd of March, 1779,[3] the corps then being, according to Major-General Prevost's despatch, about 100 strong. The action at Briar ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... the 4th of September last year. Starlings are fond of elder-berries: a flock alighting on a bush black with ripe berries will clear the bunches in a very short time. Haws, or peggles, which often quite cover the hawthorn bushes, are not so general a food as the fruit of the briar. Hips are preferred; at least, the fruit of the briar is the first of the two to disappear. The hip is pecked open (by thrushes, redwings, and blackbirds) at the tip, the seeds extracted, and the part where it is attached to the stalk left, just as if the contents had been sucked out. ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... returned from hunting, awoke them, and, withholding their usual nourishment, gave the signal "Come." The obedient little family followed her along the dark passage, and ventured, close at her heels, into the grass-patch in the middle of the briar-brake. Vulp was slightly more timid than his sisters were; even at that early age he showed signs of independence and distrust. While the other cubs played "follow-my-leader" with the dam, he hung back, hesitating and afraid. Even ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... bleeding hand of mine, Take this sprig of Eglantine: Which, though sweet unto your smell, Yet the fretful briar will tell, He who plucks the sweets, shall prove Many thorns ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... practical reflection he rose to fill and light a briar pipe, his inseparable companion, before grappling with his ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... sandal, the cord, and the cope, The dread of the devil and trust of the Pope; For to gather life's roses, unscathed by the briar, Is granted alone to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... the lower portion of the Raven Hill estate we stumbled quite by accident into Dark Forest, vaguely hinted at by the negroes as a place to be avoided. This Dark Forest is a large tract of scrub oak, birch and holly, with dense undergrowths of briar; the haunt of innumerable small birds that dart in and out, chirping faintly. In its depressed portions the 'forest' has degenerated into a marsh through which a sluggish stream wends it way to the distant river. Slimy reptiles bask in the warm sun and glide lazily over the black, oozy ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... taking his short briar pipe from his mouth by the bowl, rapped three times upon the table with it. In a very short time a mug of ale and a paper cylinder of shag appeared on the ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... cruel manner. Poor Daniel was lame in the hip, and could not keep up with the rest of the slaves; and our master would order him to be stripped and laid down on the ground, and have him beaten with a rod of rough briar till his skin was quite red and raw. He would then call for a bucket of salt, and fling upon the raw flesh till the man writhed on the ground like a worm, and screamed aloud with agony. This poor man's wounds were never healed, and I have often ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... imitation of someone. She was a superb comic actress. I mentally compared her with our young ladies, and even the handsome, dignified Anyuta Blagovo could not stand comparison with her; the difference was immense, like the difference between a beautiful, cultivated rose and a wild briar. ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... later we passed out of the old church through a side door leading into a small green enclosure, now gloomy in the shade of the old stone walls. At one end was a tangle of briar, and here were some old graves, each with a tinsel wreath or two on the iron cross. And presiding over these was the limp figure of a one-legged man on two crutches, who saluted us. We passed along to the end of the inclosure, where lay a chance beam of sunshine like a bar of dusty gold ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... over her work, to all appearances the most industrious of Cinderellas, while the pendulum of the old oak clock clicked noisily to and fro, and through the open door came a whiff of clean cool air, laden with the scent of flowers and sweet-briar, with the pungent aromatic odour of growing herbs, with the heavy sweetness of ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... head without replying, and in silence they regained the house. At the house door they parted, Mary going indoors while the detective remained standing on the drive. Very deliberately he produced a short briar pipe, cut a stub of dark plug tobacco from a flat piece he carried in his pocket, crammed the tobacco into his pipe, and lit it. Reflectively he blew a thin spiral of smoke into the ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... in Indian file, I at the chief's heels and Jennifer at mine. I followed the Catawba blindly; and being as yet little better than half a man in breath and muscle, was well-nigh spent before we crashed down through a tangled briar thicket into the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... room you put me in was next to his. The chinkin's fallen out in spots, an' his light was lit late, so I just laid in my bunk an' glued my eye to the crack. He was readin'—an' enjoyin' what he read. He'd lay down the book now an' then an' light a good briar pipe. I'd get a good look into his face then, an' he's no more a fool than you or I. He's damned smart lookin'. An' the books he had laid out on the table wasn't books a fool would be readin'. He was careful ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... I could learn No better counsel for a simple case Than to put faith in princes, in my turn. Had all the death-piles of the ancient years Flared up in vain before me? knew I not What stench arises from some purple gears? And how the sceptres witness whence they got Their briar-wood, crackling through the atmosphere's Foul smoke, by princely perjuries, kept hot? Forgive me, ghosts of patriots,—Brutus, thou, Who trailest downhill into life again Thy blood-weighed cloak, to indict me with thy slow Reproachful eyes!—for being taught in vain That, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... town on those wet evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with their bundles drooping over their shoulders at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught, as then, with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the sensation of the very airs that blew upon me ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... writing their story; and I heard many tales and long poems about fair-haired Finn, who 'had all the wisdom of a little child'; and Conan of the sharp tongue, who was 'some way cross in himself,' and who had a briar on his shield; and their adventures beyond sea, and their hunting after deer that were 'as joyful as the leaves of a tree in summer time.' But some of the people repeated verses by Raftery and Callinan and Sweeny, and some told stories of ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... were outwitted as well as outrun. A few words will explain Martin's conduct. We arrive at causes by noting coincidences; yet, now and then, coincidences are deceitful. As we have all seen a hare tumble over a briar just as the gun went off, and so raise expectations, then dash them to earth by scudding away untouched, so the burgomaster's mule put her foot in a rabbit-hole at or about the time the crossbow bolt whizzed innocuous ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... a woman. One to whom heav'n gave beauty, when it grafted roses on a briar. You are the reflection of heav'n in a pond, and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white, a sheet of lovely, spotless paper, when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill. I know you; for I loved a woman, ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve

... have already been cruelly butchered by these remorseless villains; I, alone, escaped, and sought shelter in the jungle, where, from an opening down the ravine, caught a glimpse of your party, and have struggled through brake and briar to implore your assistance. Oh! do not lose a moment, if you would be in time. Even now it may be too late to save them;" and, weeping wildly, sank on her knees, convulsive ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... Perry's cult is the inaccessible—present him with all the virtues and he will run away; ignore him utterly and he'll make your life insupportable by his presence. For the last twenty-four hours I assure you he's stuck to me—like a briar." ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... He lit his heavy briar and proceeded to envelop himself in a cloud of smoke. He gasped out a great sigh of satisfaction, and his leathery eyelids half closed. Presently a gentle tap came at the glass door, which partitioned ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... scouts, either cycling or on foot, to go in any direction they like, to get a specimen of any ordered plant, say a sprig of yew, a shoot of ilex, a horseshoe mark from a chestnut tree, a briar rose, or something of that kind, whichever you may order, such as will tax their knowledge of plants and will test their memory as to where they noticed one of the kind required and will also make them quick in getting ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... Schuch's interpretation that rosy apples were used, remembering, however, that the fruit of the rose tree, the hip, dog-briar, eglantine is also made into dainty confections on the Continent today. It is therefore entirely possible that this recipe calls for the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... were all at breakfast with Lisbeth in a kitchen as clean as she could have made it herself. The window and door were open, and the morning air brought with it a mingled scent of southernwood, thyme, and sweet-briar from the patch of garden by the side of the cottage. Dinah did not sit down at first, but moved about, serving the others with the warm porridge and the toasted oat-cake, which she had got ready in the usual way, for she had asked ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... to see the end of this," said Tom, and led the way by a side path to the Widow Taylor's cottage. This was a short cut, but Aleck would not take it, because of the briar bushes and the dust. As the boys were in their knockaround suits they ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)

... at the seal, when her eyes fell upon a briar-wood pipe that lay on the table beside a half-filled pouch of tobacco. In an instant she seemed to see a stubby brown hand reaching for it, the quick spurt of the match, the flare of light on an old weather-beaten face, then a deep-drawn breath of ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... with a slightly anticipatory look in his face; the Strong Man was there, and looked as if he wanted to break something; and closer in than all these, forming a solid bodyguard of white flannels and laughing faces and briar pipes, were our young friends ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... don't mind it myself; I'm used to it. Born and bred in de briar patch, like Br'er Rabbit. I've been trying to place you for a long time; I think I must have met ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... condition were few and not such as would have seemed dramatic to an acquaintance. When he was in his room at the hotel in the Rue des Saints Peres, he got an old briar pipe out of his bag, filled it and lit it, and stood for nearly a quarter of an hour at the window, smoking thoughtfully with his hands in his pockets. The subtle analyst, observing that the street is narrow and dull and presents nothing of interest, jumps to the conclusion ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... would write with a piece of charcoal, or the p'int of a burnt stick, on the fence or floor. We got a little paper at the country town, and I made ink out of blackberry juice, briar root and a little copperas in it. It was black, but the copperas would eat the paper after a while. I made his first pen out of a turkey-buzzard feather. We hadn't no geese them days—to make good pens ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... of sorts and did a large amount of grumbling. The father lit a short briar-root pipe, while the son puffed away ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield

... hedge with wild briar overtwined, And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind Upon their summer thrones; there too should be The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethren shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots: Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... but he waited because he wanted to find some relief from his tormenting thoughts. He was just inside the Langrigg boundary and imagined the gamekeeper began his round at the other end of the estate. By and by dry underbrush rustled and there was a noise like a briar dragging across somebody's clothes. Afterwards all was quiet for a few moments, until a dark figure came out of the gloom close ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... her hand a glittering dagger, with gold hilt, and point as keen as a briar. It was a ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton

... the one who sewed for the young ladies at Loevdala Manor, and when Glory Goldie tried it on the effect was so perfect that one would have thought the two had blossomed together on one of the lovely wild briar bushes out in ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... Pike in Garrard County, and was owned by B.M. Jones. She gives the date of her birth as April 14, 1847. Aunt Harriet's father was Daniel Scott, a slave out of Mote Scott's slave family. Aunt Harriet's mother's name was Amy Jones, slave of Marse Briar Jones, who came from Harrodsburg, Ky. The names of her brothers were Harrison, Daniel, Merida, and Ned; her sisters were Susie and Maria. Miss Patsy, wife of Marse Briar gave Maria to Marse Sammy Welsh, brother of Miss Patsy's and who lived with his sister. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... other trenches: notice boards guide you, and you keep to Windmill Avenue. You go by Pear Lane, Cherry Lane, and Plum Lane. Pear trees, cherry trees and plum trees must have grown there. You are passing through either wild lanes banked with briar, over which these various trees peered one by one and showered their blossoms down at the end of spring, and girls would have gathered the fruit when it ripened, with the help of tall young men; or else you are passing through an old walled garden, and ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany

... gentle knight and a lady fair, They loved each other well. That very day on her bier she lay He on his sword-point fell. They buried her by the northward spire, And him by the south kirk wall; And theretofore grew neither bush nor briar In the hallowed ground at all. But next spring from their coffins twain Two lilies fair upgrew— And by and by, o'er the roof-tree high, They twined and they bloomed the whole year through. How read you ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen

... went up to her room, and presently Jeff, moodily puffing at his briar in the porch, heard the notes of her piano overhead. She played softly for some little time, and Jeff's pipe went out before it was finished—a most ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... by-and-by we'd quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp. 'Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers, aren't they, Jack?' he'd say, after chewing his cud, or rather the stem of his briar, for a long while without a word. (He had his pipe in his mouth as often as any of us, but somehow I fancied he didn't enjoy it: an empty pipe or a stick would have suited him just as well, it seemed to me.) 'Those are great lines,' ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... with a grunt of satisfaction, carefully filling a briar-root pipe with some dark tobacco, which he produced from out of a little round brass box that he carried in his waistcoat pocket, telling me it was "the right sort," and proceeding to light it—"now, we can ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... discovered my intents, You know my aims are lawful; and if ever The queen of flowers, the glory of the Spring, The sweetest comfort to our smell, the rose, Sprang from an envious briar, I may infer, There's such disparity in their conditions, Between the goddess of my soul, the daughter, And ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... an acre of good garden ground; from the very edge of that, the grey rising ledges of granite and rank greensward between held their undisputed domain. There the wild roses planted themselves; there many a flourishing sweet-briar flaunted in native gracefulness, or climbed up and hung about an old cedar as if like a wilful child determined that only itself should be seen. Nature grew them and nature trained them; and sweet wreaths, fluttering in the wind, ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... of stone in the center of the room, which Manuel could have sworn was not there when he looked into the chamber a short half-hour before, sat Guy Cecil, complacently puffing at a briar pipe. His tweeds were as immaculate as though he had just stepped from the hands of his valet, and his tan shoes showed mark neither of mud nor rough trails. Manuel's quick glance caught these details ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... of ophthalmia is best subdued by the application of emollient poultices, depletion, purgation and cooling washes. If a seed, small briar, or other substance has got in under the lids, or inserted itself in the globe of the eye, the dog keeps the eye closed, it waters freely, and in a short time becomes red and inflamed. The removal ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... well-connected but rustic Mills had been busy lighting his briar and the distinguished Captain sat smiling to himself. I was horribly vexed and apologized for that intrusion, saying that the fellow was a future great sculptor and perfectly harmless; but he had been swallowing lots of night air which had got ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... ye savage lands, ye barbarous climes, Where angry England sends her outcast sons— I hail your joyless shores! my weary bark Long tempest-tost on Life's inclement sea, Here hails her haven! welcomes the drear scene, The marshy plain, the briar-entangled wood, And all the perils of a world unknown. For Elinor has nothing new to fear From fickle Fortune! all her rankling shafts Barb'd with disgrace, and venom'd with disease. Have pierced my bosom, and the dart of ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... away Through grain and briar shoulder high, There are secrets hid in the heart of day, In the hush and ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer

... Grace, and, stopping in the briar path, Madaline glimpsed the imperturbable Grace, making her way through the thicket and dragging ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... ardent, strong, The green turf trembling as they bound along; Adown the slope, then up the hillock climb, Where every molehill is a bed of thyme; There panting stop; yet scarcely can refrain; A bird, a leaf, will set them off again: Or, if a gale with strength unusual blow, Scatt'ring the wild-briar roses into snow, Their little limbs increasing efforts try, Like the torn flower the fair assemblage fly. Ah, fallen rose! sad emblem of their doom; Frail as thyself, they perish while they bloom! Though unoffending innocence may plead, Though frantic ewes may mourn ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... the heather than any other form of vegetation. The mountains and hills were covered with it, and whatever else we saw, heather was always in the picture on the hills and mimosa along the roadside. From the roots of transplanted Mediterranean heather—and not from briar—are made what we call briarwood pipes. When a salesman assures you that the pipe he offers is "genuine briar," if it really was briar, you would think it wasn't. When names have become trademarks, we have to ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... Elf, Exclaim'd a thundering Voice, Nor dare to thrust thy foolish self Between me and my choice!" A falling Water swoln with snows Thus spake to a poor Briar-rose, That all bespatter'd with his foam, And dancing high, and dancing low, Was living, as a child might know, In ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... passed by, a fleet, confused crowd; With wafture of blown garments bright as fire, Light, light of foot and laughing, morning-browed, And where they trod the jonquil and the briar Thrilled into jocund life, the dreaming dells Waked to a morrice chime of jostled bells;— They danced! they danced! to piping such as flings The garnered music of a million Springs Into one single, keener ecstasy;— One paused and shouted to my questionings: "Lo, I am ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... afterwards learned this to be the case, that it was the mother, Mrs. Curr, who came every morning to pay this tribute of affection to the departed. A weeping willow drooped its supple branches over the tomb; some honey-suckle and sweet-briar surrounded it, loading the air with their rich fragrance; not even the chirping of a bird disturbed the solemn silence that reigned around; everything seemed to conspire to suggest holy and melancholy thoughts, and I lingered awhile to indulge in them; but perceiving ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... is as true now as it was over two thousand six hundred years ago, when it was penned by the divinely inspired prophet, and it is as true now as it was then, that "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off." That is, as the rains descend and the floods come and change the face ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... though wedded wife told him that the white-sailed ship, bearing his mistress to meet him, bore the black sail which meant that she was not on board; but all versions, I think, agree in ending with the fact, that the briar-rose growing on the tomb of the one, slowly trailed its flowers and thorns along till it had reached also the grave of the other, and knit together, as love had knit together with its sweet blossoms and sharp spines, the two fated lovers. The Middle Ages were enthralled by this tale; but they ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... liege, I'll never lin, But I will thorough thick and thin, Until at length I bring her in; My dearest lord, ne'er doubt it." Thorough brake, thorough briar, Thorough muck, thorough mire, Thorough water, thorough fire; And thus goes Puck ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... blue overalls began to pick industriously. The berries were thick and juicy, and the bottoms of the tin pails were covered in a few minutes. Meg had just stopped to pull a briar from her thumb when she heard a bellow ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley

... elaborate, glorified disorder. There were roses of all kinds that have ever gladdened poor gardens and simple hearts—yellow tea roses, moss roses with their firm, shapely buds, monthly roses that bore nearly all the year in a warm spot, the white briar that is dear to north country people, besides standards in their glory, with full round purple blossom. Among the roses, compassing them about and jostling one another, some later, some earlier in bloom, most of them together in the glad summer days, one could ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... her in a kind of dream. She felt herself going on through the forest, she did not know where. Deeper into the wood she went, and now it grew so dark that she saw scarce anything; only she felt the fragrance of briar roses, and it seemed to her that she was guided towards these roses. Then she knew there was a hand in her hand, though she saw nobody, and the hand seemed to lead her on. And she came to an open place in the forest, and there ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang

... got the sack from the water-works For smoking of his old cherry-briar; Father's got the sack from the water-works 'Cos he might set the ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... stormy passion, as wildflowers in the fields from the brilliant flowers in garden beds. Interchange of glances, delicate and sweet as blue water-flowers on the surface of the stream; a look in either face, vanishing as swiftly as the scent of briar-rose; melancholy, tender as the velvet of moss—these were the blossoms of two rare natures, springing up out of a rich and fruitful soil on foundations of rock. Many a time Eve had seen revelations of the strength that lay below the appearance ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... hundred feet. The trees, with their different kinds of foliage, rise up straight and tall, fantastically colored by patches of lichen, forming magnificent colonnades, with a line of straggling hedgerow of guelder rose, briar rose, box and arbutus above and below the roadway at their feet. The subtle perfume of this undergrowth was mingled just then with scents from the wild mountain region and with the aromatic fragrance of young larch shoots, budding ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... desk, with an old briar pipe in his teeth. He looked up with a quick nervous smile which showed his dread of the coming ordeal, but his voice had a ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... Harley; and taking out a tin of tobacco from a cabinet beside him he began in leisurely manner to load a briar. "No doubt you have good ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... the edge of the firs, in a coppice of heath and vine, Is an old moss-grown altar, shaded by briar and bloom, Denys, the priest, hath told me 'twas the lord Apollo's shrine In the days ere Christ came down from God to the Virgin's womb. I never go past but I doff my cap ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... This woeful shortcoming from bygone days attended other aspects of the scene. Instead of fiery oratory and pipes of peace—the stone calumets of old—the vigorous arguments, the outbursts of passion, and close calls from threatened violence, here was a gathering of commonplace men smoking briar-roots, with treaty tobacco instead of "weed," and whose chiefs replied to Mr. Laird's explanations and offers in a few brief and sensible statements, varied by vigorous appeals to the common sense and judgment, rather than the passions, ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... prison he had tricked still bellowed in rage, in amazement, still clamored not only for his person but perhaps for his life. The whole countryside heard it: the farmers bedding down their cattle for the night; the guests of the Briar Cliff Inn, dining under red candle shades; the joy riders from the city, racing their cars along the Albany road. It woke the echoes of Sleepy Hollow. It crossed the Hudson. The granite walls of the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... hollowed valleys; the dawn wind That bids the world wake, and on blind Eyelids of sleeping mortals lays Cool palms that urge them see and praise The Day-God coming with the sun To hearten toil! He warned you run And hide your beauties deep in brake Of fern or briar, or reed of lake, Or in wet crevice of the rock, There to abide until the clock You reckon by, with shadowy hands, Lay benediction on the lands And landsmen, and the eve-jar's croak Summon ye, lightfoot ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... her exuberant activity, Cecilia had been dragging branches of lilacs and laburnums, roses and sweet briar, to ornament the bower in which her fate was to be decided. It was excessively hot, but her mind was engaged, and she was indefatigable. She stood still at last to admire her works. Her companions all joined in ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... the familiar figure failed to disintegrate, and he noticed smoke curling from the blackened briar pipe. He caught its pungent aroma in the damp air of the court. Moreover, Silas Blackburn had spoken, challenging him as ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... rose, sweet-briar, we would remember thee And the cinnamon rose that evermore enthralls each passing bee, You old, old-fashioned roses, a-growing ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard

... having to carry all their goods and their canoe. The mountainous country was covered with splendid forests of spruce, pine, cypress, poplar, birch, willow, and many other kinds of trees, with an undergrowth of gooseberries, currants, and briar roses. The travellers generally followed paths made by the elk,[5] just as in the dense forests of Africa the way sometimes is cleared for human travellers by the elephant. Every now and again they resumed their journey ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... and "thorough" are originally the same word, and in Shakespeare's time both forms were used for the preposition. Cf. Puck's song in "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Thorough bush, thorough briar." ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... alone Laertes, with his hoe clearing a plant; Sordid his tunic was, with many a patch Mended unseemly; leathern were his greaves, Thong-tied and also patch'd, a frail defence Against sharp thorns, while gloves secured his hands From briar-points, and on his head he bore A goat-skin casque, nourishing hopeless woe. No sooner then the Hero toil-inured 280 Saw him age-worn and wretched, than he paused Beneath a lofty pear-tree's shade to weep. There standing much he mused, whether, at once, Kissing and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... I paid them another visit, and finding a better post of observation under the shade of a sweet-briar bush, I saw at once they were orchard orioles, and that the young ones were climbing to the edge of the nest; I had nearly ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... the fire, I snugly settle, My pipe I prime with proper care; The water's purring in the kettle, Rum, lemon, sugar, all are there. And now the honest grog is steaming, And now the trusty briar's aglow: Alas! in smoking, drinking, dreaming, How sadly ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... II. could find any pleasure in such sinks of literary infamies as In the Ranks and Harbour Lights. Artistic atrophy is benumbing us, we are losing our finer feeling for beauty, the rose is going back to the briar. I will not speak of the fine old crusted stories, ever the same, on which every drama is based, nor yet of the musty characters with which they are peopled—the miser in the old castle counting his gold by night, the dishevelled woman whom he keeps for ambiguous reasons confined in a cellar. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... reel, O hear me; Change us both upon the instant: I'll become a wild rose-briar, And my love ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... beds, and poorly cooked food sometimes found in small hotels. Frequently she had to sit by the kitchen stove all day as not a bedroom would have a fire and the only sitting-room contained the bar and was black with tobacco smoke. The path of the lecturer is uphill, over stony roads, with briar hedges ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... sir. I saw what a shabby old clay pipe Mr Gunson had got, and I thought a good noo clean briar-root one would be a nice present for him, and I ran off to get it, and bought a big strong one as wouldn't break. And then, as I was out, I thought I'd look in at some of the stores, and see if there wasn't something that would do ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... shall lie around, Full of sweet-briar and incense-bearing thyme: There I will sit, and listen for the sound Of ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... Vandeford, as he put his bare heels, protruding from his Chinese slippers, up on the edge of the mahogany reading-table in his living-room, and began to pull at a long, evil-smelling, briar pipe. ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Douglas. She had a family tartan—heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses—and she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking ancestors. She had her eyes from the deepest part of a deep moorland loch, her cheeks from the briar rose, some of the notes of her voice from the upland plover, and some from the lark. And her laugh was like an echo of the sounds that the River Tay makes when it goes ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... time since relinquished. I smoked several cigarettes that evening, with steadily increasing satisfaction. And, on the following day, acting on the advice of my room-mate, Mr. Smith, I bought a shilling briar pipe and a sixpenny plug of black tobacco as a week's allowance. From that point my current outgoings were increased by just sixpence per week, no less, and for a ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... SEPT. 2, Sweet Briar Farm.-Ernest spent Sunday with us, and I have just driven him to the station and seen him safely off. Things have prospered with us to such a degree that he has been extravagant enough to give me the use, for the summer, of a bonnie little nag and an antiquated ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... stones which present some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow field retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth being that which opens to the water. Two of these, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... force by sea under Colonel Campbell to invade Georgia. Campbell routed the Americans and took Savannah; and General Prevost, who joined him from Florida, easily obtained possession of the province. Lincoln's attempt to regain it was defeated at Briar creek on March 3, 1779, and Prevost penetrated into South Carolina. He finally retired to Georgia, leaving a garrison at Port Royal, which secured his access to the sea and gave him a footing in South Carolina, as well as a base for covering Georgia. The campaign was a ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... wild briar, red and white, Upon his head the garland dight, The green leaves withered black as night, And burnt into ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... his heavy-bowled briar. "We're going to have to send an agent in there. Someone who can be on the spot. Someone who can get the feel ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett

... man would do. The next moment he was laughing horribly. Emilia, to make sure of the thing she dreaded, forced the note, and would not be denied. What voice there was in her came to the summons. It issued, if I may so express it, ragged, as if it had torn through a briar-hedge: then there was a whimper of tones, and the effect was like the lamentation of a hardly-used urchin, lacking a certain music that there is in his undoubted heartfelt earnestness. No single note poised ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... get it off, is it? A politician is like a bee; he travels a zig-zag course every way, turnin' first to the right and then to the left, now makin' a dive at the wild honeysuckle, and then at the sweet briar; now at the buck-wheat blossom, and then at the rose; he is here and there and everywhere; you don't know where the plague to find him; he courts all and is constant to none. But when his point is gained and he has wooed and deceived all, attained his object, and his bag is filled, he then ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... she reached London. As he had with him only two hundred and fifty francs, he paid her the balance in United Cigar Stores coupons, some of which he chanced to have in his pocket-book, and which, he explained, was American war currency. He told me that he gave her almost enough to get a briar-pipe. At Boulogne he was arrested, as he had foreseen, was stripped, searched and his camera opened, but as nothing was found he was permitted to continue to London, where he went to the countess's ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... heightened faces Like wine-red winter buds; Their frolic bodies gentle as Flakes in the air that pass, Frail as the twirling petal From the briar of ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free: To hear the lark begin his flight, And, singing, startle the dull night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweet-briar or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine; While the cock, with lively din, Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And to the stack, or the barn-door, Stoutly struts his dames before: Oft listening how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, From ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... lines of it, making it if not handsome pleasant and friendly. He would talk to himself in English, ruffling his hands through his hair: "And then, at three o'clock I must go with Andrey Vassilievitch ..." or "I wonder whether she'll mind if I ask—" He had a large briar pipe at which he puffed furiously, but could not smoke without an endless procession of matches that afterwards littered the floor around him. "The tobacco's damp," he explained to us a hundred ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... through bush and brake, O'er log and stone and briar; On, on, for many a lengthening mile ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... was yellow with fever, and the hand that filled the briar pipe shook with ague. All ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... to-day," I thought; "and I hope that that rotund old lady, whose face beams under the shadow of her deep bonnet like a harvest moon through a fleecy cloud, will feel moved to speak." I plucked a few buds from the sweet-briar bush, fastened them in my button-hole, and promptly followed the old lady into the meeting-house. Having found a vacant pew I sat down, and looked around with serene content. But I soon observed that something was amiss, for the men folk looked ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... hear the elfins' wail Rise up in concert from their mingled dread, Pity it was to see them, all so pale, Gaze on the grass as for a dying bed;— But Puck was seated on a spider's thread, That hung between two branches of a briar, And 'gan to swing and gambol, heels o'er head, Like any Southwark tumbler on a wire, For him no present grief could ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... backbones—fashioned into fearsome walking-sticks. Up town we met them occasionally, but no one seemed inclined to talk, and a 'barley' was as far away as ever. If we went to the Institute they were to be seen lolling all over the sofas in the billiard-room, smoking cigarettes, when, as everyone knows, a briar pipe is the only thing that goes decently with a brass-bound cap, tilted at the right angle. They did not seem to make many friends, and their talk among themselves was of matters that most apprentices ignore. One night Jones heard them rotting about 'Great Circle sailing,' and ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... signs of May, The lily sweet and briar, Perfuming every shady way Beside the warbling river; And thou, gay cuckoo! hast returned ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... Summer's last Rose, That reigned like a queen on the briar? 'T is faded! and o'er its grave glows The glad warmth of ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... a deer, nor the uncouth shambling bulk of swamp bear that broke from the cover a moment later. Instead, there lurched into view a huge negro. The fugitive's clothing hung in shreds, witness of the cat's-briar claws; his face, from the same cause, was torn and bleeding. The breath wheezed loudly through the open mouth; the sweat ran in streams from the face; the eyes rolled whitely. There was terror in his expression. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... itself. It would seem to have been mere vanity and ambition that stimulated the former; whereas the motive force which drove Henry Mills to defy Nature and attempt dancing was the purer one of love. He did it to please his wife. Had he never gone to Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm, that popular holiday resort, and there met Minnie Hill, he would doubtless have continued to spend in peaceful reading the hours not given over to work at the New York bank at which he was employed as paying-cashier. For Henry was ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... Margot and Piqueur and Bele, prancing gaily-about them in their snug kitchen on the long winter evenings when they huddled by their fire. For them she whistled all the droll bits of Marthy's songs that she remembered. Piqueur only listened solemnly, with his smothered briar pipe held politely in his hand; but Margot, buxom, and red cheeked with her iron gray hair tucked under her flaring cap would sit and gape and laugh and quite forget her ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... sturdy, well-built and keen, smoked an old briar as he worked. A flannel shirt, open at the throat, showed a well-sinewed neck and powerful chest. Under the inverted cone of a shaded incandescent in his room, at the electricians' quarters of the Oakwood Heights enclosure, one could see the deep lines of thought and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... than the company he keeps, for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal blights the summer road as he maunders on between the luxuriant hedges; where (to my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and sweet-briar, are the worse for his going by, and need time to recover from the taint of ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... man was a perfectly commonplace sort of individual, dressed in a perfectly commonplace fashion, and he carried a perfectly commonplace briar pipe in his hand. Moreover, Tommy recognized him. He had seen pictures of him often enough, and he was Professor Edward Denham, entitled to put practically all the letters of the alphabet after his name, the author of "Polymerization of the Pseudo-Metallic Nitrides" and the proper owner ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... a hedge upshoots, and shows At distance like a little wood; Thorns, ivies, woodbine, misletoes, And grapes with bunches red as blood; All creeping plants, a wall of green Close-matted, bur and brake and briar, And glimpsing over these, just seen, High up, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... meantime, D'Artagnan, who had dismounted with his usual agility, inhaled the fresh perfumed air with the delight a Parisian feels at the sight of green fields and fresh foliage, plucked a piece of honeysuckle with one hand, and of sweet-briar with the other. Porthos had laid hold of some peas which were twined round poles stuck into the ground, and ate, or rather browsed upon them, shells and all; and Planchet was busily engaged trying ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... preacher, and took a prominent part in the social and religious life of the city. He wrote, under the name of "Ian Maclaren," several novels belonging to the "Kailyard" school, including Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush and The Days of Auld Lang Syne, which had great popularity both at home and in America. He also wrote religious works, of which The Mind of the ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... the Lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-towre in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to com in spight of sorrow, And at my window bid good morrow, Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, Or the twisted Eglantine. While the Cock with lively din, Scatters the rear of darknes thin, 50 And to the stack, or the Barn dore, Stoutly struts his Dames before, Oft list'ning how ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... she arranged the flowers in a small glass, and put them on the box near her mother's bed. The sweet-briar and cabbage-roses and southernwood filled the caravan with their fragrance. Then Rosalie took up her usual position at the door, to watch Toby driving, and to see all that was to be seen ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton

... Uncle John broke in on his meditations. Then there was a clatter as a briar pipe dropped on to the floor of the boat, and his uncle sat ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... one of the warders, spying mine axe, must think to recognise me and gave the hue and cry; whereat I, incontinent, fled ere they could drop the portcullis—and divers rogues after me. Aha! then did I lead them a right merry dance by moor and moss, by briar and bog, and contrived to slay of them five in all. But as to Pertolepe, a malison on him! he is not yet to die, meseemeth. But, some day—aye, some day!" So saying he kissed the great axe and setting it by came to the table and fell to eating mightily while Giles sat hard by ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... o' the briar pattern around the edge? I know it's some worruk, but it's a bonnie border to lie under, an' it's not so tedious whan there's plenty o' folks to tak ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... a lover's despair and complaint. Three or four are translations or imitations; translations from Marot, imitations from Theocritus, Bion, or Virgil. Two of them contain fables told with great force and humour. The story of the Oak and the Briar, related as his friendly commentator, Kirke, says, "so lively and so feelingly, as if the thing were set forth in some picture before our eyes," for the warning of "disdainful younkers," is a first fruit, and ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church



Words linked to "Briar" :   smilax, pipe, eglantine, catbrier, sweetbrier, true heath, greenbrier, briary, rose, Erica arborea, Rosa eglanteria, vine, sweetbriar, horse brier, horse-brier, rosebush



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