"Turf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fingers, and dropped the pasteboard box on the turf. She stood with her arms hanging limply, breathing in sharp inspirations. She gazed about at the valley, the half-distant maple grove: suddenly the youth momentarily returned to her, the frightened expression of a child abruptly ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... two lads were down at the most desolate part of Port Mooar, in a cave under the scraggy black rocks of Gobny-Garvain, kindling a fire of gorse and turf inside the remains ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... butterfly box stood open. The pale clouded yellows had pelted over the moor; they had zigzagged across the purple clover. The fritillaries flaunted along the hedgerows. The blues settled on little bones lying on the turf with the sun beating on them, and the painted ladies and the peacocks feasted upon bloody entrails dropped by a hawk. Miles away from home, in a hollow among teasles beneath a ruin, he had found the commas. He had seen a white admiral ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... debris as lies about unburnt, and the final burning of these heaps. During April and May the rains begin; and then grass seed is sown broadcast over the charred expanse. It soon sprouts up, and in a couple of months there will begin to be some pasturage. Before next season a good strong turf ought to have formed among the stumps. Every farmer has his own particular ideas as to the kinds of seed to use. We used a mixture of poa pratensis, timothy, and Dutch clover, and have abundant reason to be satisfied with ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... They had simply vanished into thin air, for the native he had sent to inspect the ground beneath the open window had just returned to report that there was no sign of a footstep there, and what sort of creatures were they who could have dropped that distance to the soft turf without leaving spoor? Herr Skopf shuddered. Yes, it was a great mystery—there was something uncanny about the whole thing—he hated to think about it, and he dreaded the ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... literally cold, one might think, since most of the cures were by external application. Lady Spencer used a plebeian "greene turfe of grasse" to warm her stomach, with the green side, not the dirt side, placed next the skin. She could scarcely have worn this turf when she was up and around the house, could she? She must have had it placed upon her while she was in bed. Josselyn said in his "New England Rarities" that, "to wear the skin of a Gripe dressed with the doun on" would cure pain and coldness ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... it is awkward to do so. Clumsy inddeed are all words the moment the wooden stage of commonplace life is left. I restrained psyche, my soul, till I reached and put my foot on the grass at the beginning of the green hill itself. Moving up the sweet short turf, at every step my heart seemed to obtain a wider horizon of feeling; with every inhalation of rich pure air, a deeper desire. The very light of the sun was whiter and more brilliant here. By the time I had reached the summit I had entirely forgotten the petty circumstances and the annoyances ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... level of the lake, in gentle declivity, was a lawn of turf as fresh and green as that of the most beautiful English fields; this was a rare thing at the Antilles, and was due to underground irrigation which flowed from the lake and gave to this park a delightful freshness. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the Holy Land. Pleas'd with my admiration, and the fire His speech struck from me; the old man would shake His years away, and act his young encounters. Then having shewn his wounds; he'd sit him down. And all the live long day, discourse of war. To help my fancy, in the smooth green turf He cut the figures of the marshall'd hosts: Describ'd the motions, and explain'd the use Of the deep column and lengthen'd line, The square, the crescent, and the phalanx firm; For, all that Saracen ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... himself in a hall, which had an iron door at one end. This door he unlocked with his golden key, and he passed through into a vast chamber which had a roof of blue sprinkled with golden stars, and a carpet of green silk soft as turf. Twelve windows framed in gold let in the light of the sun, and on every window was painted the figure of a young girl, each more beautiful than the last. While the prince gazed at them in surprise, not knowing which he liked best, the girls began to lift their eyes and ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... crowned with flowers, no grotto shadowed with foliage,[35] no oak bedecked with horns, no beech garlanded with the skins of beasts, no mound whose engirdling hedge proclaims its sanctity, no tree-trunk hewn into the semblance of a god, no turf still wet with libations, no stone astream with precious unguents. For these are but small things, and though there be a few that seek them out and do them worship, the majority note them ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... the forest, not far from the spot where, in the month of January, Reine and Julien had visited the wood cutters. Under the sheltering branches of a great ash tree, the newly erected but raised its peaked roof covered with clods of turf, and two furnaces, just completed, occupied the ground lately prepared. One of them, ready for use, was covered with the black earth called 'frazil', which is extracted from the site of old charcoal works; the other, in course of ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... To ears not over nice.—— With careless lounging gait, the saunt'ring youth Upon his sweetheart's open window leans, And as she turns about her buzzing wheel Diverts her with his jokes and harmless taunts. Close by the cottage door, with placid mien, The old man sits upon his seat of turf, His staff with crooked head laid by his side, Which oft the younger race in wanton sport, Gambolling round him, slyly steal away, And straddling o'er it, shew their horsemanship By raising round the clouds ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... behind old Bull Mountain. The Reverend Howard Wynkoop, who for more than an hour past had been vainly dangling a fishing-line above the dancing waters of Clear Creek, now reclined dreamily on the soft turf of the high bank, his eyes fixed upon the distant sky-line. His thoughts were on the flossy hair and animated face of the fair Miss Spencer, who he momentarily expected would round the edge of the hill, and so deeply did he become sank in blissful reflection ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... same sloping heather-covered hills, suddenly opens to the right. There are no cliffs, no overhanging trees, not even a bush, but all along the stream, "with its soft, dark babble," lie heaps and half-circles of stone nearly buried in the turf, and almost hidden by the tall ferns and foxgloves. And this is what we went out for to see! These are the ruins of the Doones' huts. There could not be anything more disappointing. Two hundred years have effectually destroyed all distinctive traits, and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the thicket. As soon as he arrived at the spot, he crouched and crept silently through the underwood. At last he arrived close to the cleared spot by the pool. There was no stag there, but fast asleep upon the turf lay James Corbould, the sinister-looking verderer who had accosted him in the forest on the previous day. Holdfast was about to bark, when Edward silenced him, and then advanced to where the verderer was lying; and who having no dog with him to give ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... lancing each foot and both ears of the pig, he allowed the blood to run into a piece of common dowlas. Then taking two large pins, he pierced the dowlas in opposite directions; and still keeping silence, entered his cottage, locked the door, placed the bloody rag upon the fire, heaped up some turf over it, and reading a few verses of the Bible, waited till the dowlas was burned. As soon as this was done, he returned to the pigsty; found his pig perfectly restored to health, and, mirabile dictu! as the white witch had predicted, the old woman, who it was supposed had ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... since the lofty spire rose like a huge golden finger pointing heavenward. An avenue of noble elms led from the iron gate to the broad stone steps; and on either side and behind the church swelled the lines of mounds, some white with marble, some green with turf, now and then a heap of mossy shells—not a few gay with flowers—all scrupulously free from weeds, and those most melancholy symptoms of neglect, which even in public cemeteries too often impress the beholder with gloomy premonitions of his own inevitable future, and recall the solemn admonition ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... hundred years ago,[6] the moon Shone on a battle plain; Cold through that glowing night of June Lay steeds and riders slain; And daisies, bending 'neath strange dew, Wept in the silver light; The very turf a regal hue Assumed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... an eagle, the note of the curlew, a whinny as of a horse of Lilliput, the strange noise a pheasant makes and it rising from the heather: whir-r-r, like a piece of elastic snapping. Barring these you'd hear nothing at all. And barring a mountainy man or woman, and they cutting turf, you'd meet nothing unless it were ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... summit of the Paunsa'gunt Plateau, which rises above us on the east. Our way for a mile or more is over a great peat bog, which trembles under our feet, and now and then a mule sinks through the broken turf and we are compelled to pull it out with ropes. Passing the bog, our way is up a gulch at the foot of the Pink Cliffs, which form the escarpment, or wall, of the great plateau. Soon we leave the gulch and climb ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... received information that a party of horsemen were rapidly approaching the mansion. The old cavalier hastened to a spot whence he could descry his visitors, and form a judgment of their quality. The party consisted of an armed knight, and about half a dozen men-at-arms, bounding over the elastic turf, with the greatest buoyancy of spirits. Don Manuel, who stood watching their advance, was soon able to recognize, in the martial figure and gallant carriage of the knight, his young friend and kinsman, Don Antonio de Leyva, of whose ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the brief visit. He was an old man now, Milly realized, but a chirping and contented old man, who still went faithfully every working day in the year to his humble desk in Hoppers' great establishment, on Sundays to the Second Presbyterian, and in season watered the twenty-six square feet of turf before his front door. He talked a great deal about Hoppers', which had been growing with astounding rapidity, like everything in Chicago, and now covered three entire city blocks. That and the church and Josephine quite filled all the corners ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... on a narrow terrace at the rear of the building, which was sodded with turf and starred with pansies and ox-eyed daisies, and on the wide, stone window sills sat boxes and vases filled with maiden-hair ferns and oxalis, with heliotrope and double white violets. Three lines of tables ran down this bright pretty room, and in the centre rose a spiral stair ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... gay with the flowers of early summer or faded and parched with the droughts of autumn. Sometimes they camped in the open air until lumber could be brought from a distance and a rude shanty erected, but often they built a turf house, in which they passed their first winter. These houses were constructed by cutting blocks of turf about eighteen inches square—the roots of prairie-grass being that long—and piling one upon another until the walls were raised to the desired height. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... or a personal distribution, so as to produce what is called Peasant Proprietorship. I think the latter solution the finer and more fully human, because it makes each man as somebody blamed somebody for saying of the Pope, a sort of small god. A man on his own turf tastes eternity or, in other words, will give ten minutes more work than is required. But I believe I am justified in shutting the door on this vista of argument, instead of opening it. For this book is not designed ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... to be a most romantic reason for their brilliance. Down among the grass blades are lowly, wingless creatures—the female fireflies, which, as twilight falls, leave their earthen burrows in the turf and, crawling slowly to the summit of some plant, they display the tiny lanterns which Nature ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... tenant's pig, or horse, or cow, or calf, or goose, trespassing, which was so great a gain to Sir Murtagh, that he did not like to hear me talk of repairing fences. Then his heriots and duty-work[I] brought him in something, his turf was cut, his potatoes set and dug, his hay brought home, and, in short, all the work about his house done for nothing; for in all our leases there were strict clauses heavy with penalties, which Sir Murtagh knew well how to enforce; so many days' ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... at the sound of a footfall on the turf close behind him, and turned about with a slight frown; which readily yielded, however, and ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the bright grounds, followed the directions, and in a few minutes he was climbing a slope of rough common-land, here velvety short turf full of wild thyme, which exhaled its pungent odour as his feet crushed its dewy flowers, there tufted with an exceedingly fine-growing, soft kind of furze, beyond which were clumps of the greater, with its orange ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... the stranger's heels against the tail-board. Zeb jumped down and trudged at the side. The hill was long, and steep from foot to brow; and when at length the slope lessened, the wheels turned off at a sharp angle and began to roll softly over turf. ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the place seemed to yield us assurance of having reached our goal. The hotel is a long oblong building with two slight retiring wings, beyond which extends a square walled enclosure of what was then green turf; Cambrian Terrace overlooks the enclosure at right angles to the hotel, the whole reminding us remotely of a college quadrangle. On entering the hotel, the eye seized on the straight roomy corridors which traverse it, and the wide solid staircase, as features of high strategic ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... much to her answer. He was working the point of his stick into the turf, and his ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... spots, Ned Hinkley proceeded, leaving his companions above, where, in shade themselves, and lying at ease upon the smooth turf, they could watch his successes, and at the same time enjoy the coup d'oeil, which was singularly beautiful, afforded by the whole surrounding expanse. The tarn, like the dark mysterious dwelling of an Undine, was spread out before them with the smoothness of glass, though untransparent, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... wheel in the air as the clamour neared them. Far off a lonely battery was coming down the western slope to join the throng in its order, and for some reason their two trumpets were still playing the march and lending to this great display the unity of music. We dismounted and watched from the turf of the roadside a pageant which the accident of an ordered and servile life afforded us; for it is true of armies that the compensation of their drudgery and miserable subjection is the continual opportunity of these large emotions; ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... people. They used the turf cut from the common for fuel, and the farmers were glad to carry away the potash as manure ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... than equal to the subleties, and brilliancies, and wit, and eloquence, and taste, and genius, of his thousand opponents—whose crown was a branch of English oak, his sceptre a strong sapling of the same, his throne a mound of turf—who economised matters by being at once king and king's jester, and whose mere clenched fist, held up at home or across the waters, saved millions of money, awed despots, encouraged freedom in every ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... of sunset, and the horses were permitted to browse freely, but Von Bloom observed that they were every moment getting more excited—now striking their hoofs upon the turf,—now running a length or two—and at intervals snorting angrily. At the distance they were off—a quarter of a mile or so—Von Bloom could see nothing of what was disturbing them; but their odd behaviour at length induced him to walk up to where they were. Hans and Hendrik ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... suffered the enemy to blockade him. Frode, distrusting his power of attacking this town, commanded several trenches of unwonted depth to be made within the camp, and the earth to be secretly carried out in baskets and cast quietly into the river bordering the walls. Then he had a mass of turf put over the trenches to hide the trap: wishing to cut off the unwary enemy by tumbling them down headlong, and thinking that they would be overwhelmed unawares by the slip of the subsiding earth. Then he feigned a panic, and proceeded ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... in the hill casting (digging) peats, he heard a voice which seemed to call to him out of the air. It commanded him to dig under a little green knoll which was near, and to gather up the small white stones which he would discover beneath the turf. The voice informed him, at the same time, that while he kept these stones in his possession, he should be endued with the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the divided halves growing, after a time, into complete and separate animals; and that many are able to perform a very similar process naturally, in such a manner that one polype may, by repeated incomplete divisions, give rise to a sort of sheet, or turf, formed by innumerable connected, and yet independent, descendants. Or, what is still more common, a polype may throw out buds, which are converted into polypes, or branches bearing polypes, until a tree-like mass, sometimes of ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... like those that appeared to Dante; bear-skins from Siberia, fox-skins from Norway, and so on; and all these skins were strewn in profusion one on the other, so that it seemed like walking over the most mossy turf, or reclining on the most luxurious bed. Both laid themselves down on the divan; chibouques with jasmine tubes and amber mouthpieces were within reach, and all prepared so that there was no need to smoke the same pipe twice. Each of them took one, which Ali lighted and then retired to prepare the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... physiognomy—compounded chiefly of cunning and assurance; not low cunning, nor vulgar assurance, but crafty sporting subtlety, careless as to results, indifferent to obstacles, ever on the alert for the main chance, game and turf all over, eager, yet easy, keen, yet quiet. He was somewhat showily dressed, in such wise that he looked half like a fine gentleman of that day, half like a jockey of our own. His nether man appeared in well-fitting, well-worn ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it. From a defect, partly of subject, and partly of style, many of Mr. Browning's works make a demand upon the reader's zeal and sense of duty to which the nature of most readers is unequal. They have on the turf the convenient expression 'staying power': some horses can hold on and others cannot. But hardly any reader not of especial and peculiar nature can hold on through such composition. There is not enough of 'staying power' in human nature. One of his greatest admirers once ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... East and West Dale Moors, (from the Saxon Dob, share or portion) which were occupied till within these few years in the following remarkable manner:—The land was divided into single acres, each bearing a peculiar mark cut in the turf, such as a horn, an ox, a horse, a cross, an oven, &c. On the Saturday before Old Midsummer Day, the several proprietors of contiguous estates or their tenants, assembled on these commons, with a number of apples marked with similar figures, which were distributed by a boy to each ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... people had vanished and the charming paradise was a solitude. They went away when the surface diggings gave out. In one place, where a busy little city with banks and newspapers and fire companies and a mayor and aldermen had been, was nothing but a wide expanse of emerald turf, with not even the faintest sign that human life had ever been present there. This was down toward Tuttletown. In the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, one found at intervals ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... culture. Oh! my friend, we shall not allow you to take out a patent for magnanimity on the strength of that confession. When all the women, or even the majority of the women, shall unite in one solemn, earnest appeal for a voice in the framing of the laws which they are compelled to obey, the turf will be green over that political statesmanship which supposes that a question of right, of principle, is a question of majorities. While I do not believe that the fewness of the women in any community who really desire the ballot furnishes any man good ground for throwing his influence in the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... extremity of endurance and that this was the result. It might have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... my brother-in-law from the salon to the study. "Look here, Charles," I said, "there's a cheque in the book which you haven't entered." And I handed it to him without comment, for I thought it might have been drawn to settle some little loss on the turf or at cards, or to make up some other affair he didn't desire to mention to me. ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... companion by the hand, Copernicus approached the dark form, moving with great caution over the clumps of grassy turf. Presently he reached the side of the machine. Rebecca heard him strike it with his hand two or three times, as though groping for something. Then she was drawn forward again, and suddenly found herself entering an invisible doorway. She stumbled on the threshold and flung out her free hand for ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... My grief has leaped the channel. My thought is a silent mourner at my father's grave. Shall a King sink to the measure of a mound of turf for the tread of a peasant's foot? Where is now the ermine robe, the glistening crown, the harness of a fighting hour, the sceptre that marked the giddy office, the voice, the flashing eye that stirred a coward to bravery, the iron gauntlet shaking in the pallid face of France? All—all ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... On the brown turf in front of the house were two men, stretched side by side, as if other hands had laid them there, dead. One man was much bigger than the other. He was of exceptional stature. Jocelyn recognised them almost immediately—Guy Oscard and ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... few seconds they were scattered around the blue waters of the fiord, where might be seen also the turf roofs of the ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... an hour through mossy glades and the still, perpendicular gloom of the fir-woods. Suddenly, on the grassy margin of a by-path, I came upon a young man stretched at his length in the sun-checkered shade, and kicking his heels towards a patch of blue sky. My step was so noiseless on the turf that, before he saw me, I had time to recognise Pickering again. He looked as if he had been lounging there for some time; his hair was tossed about as if he had been sleeping; on the grass near him, ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... iii., p. 38.).—Venwell or Venville appears to me to be a corruption of the word fengfield; and the meaning of it seems to be, that custom of delivering possession of land to a purchaser by cutting a piece of turf from the field bought, and delivering ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... near the wild white Bull, who stood there yet, foaming and stamping up the turf, but not advancing. His huge horned head was held erect, and his mane bristled up, as he looked upon the adversary who thus dared to brave him. He suffered Frederick Delaval to approach him, and only betrayed a consciousness ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... road that bordered the lake a cart was jolting slowly along; it was painted in a startling shade of blue, with shafts of brightest red that projected both back and front; upon it was arranged, with neatness and precision, a load of turf just cut from the bog; on one side, painted black, that all who run might read, was the name of "Patrick O'Malley" in crude lettering, and Patrick himself, in working dress of coarse cream homespun, walked beside his slow-going jennet, idly smoking his tin-topped ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... and spices are as unknown as they are unnecessary. True, our houses are built not according to the most modern principles of architecture. They are, in most cases, built of undressed stone and moss (coinneach), thatched with turf or divots, generally covered over with straw or ferns held on by a covering of old herring nets, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... hundred passengers, most of them Quakers from his own neighborhood. A third part died of smallpox on the way. On the 24th of October, he sighted land; on the 27th, he arrived before Newcastle, in Delaware; on the 28th, he landed. Here he formally received turf and twig, water and soil, in token of his ownership. On the 29th, he entered Pennsylvania. Adding ten days to this date, to bring it into accord with our present calendar, we have November 8 as the day of his arrival in the province. The place was Upland, where there was a settlement ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... way back he felt impelled to climb for a moment on the bank at his favourite spot. It amazed him to see the ground all torn up, and to find a trowel lying half bedded in the turf at the top. Still more did it surprise and perplex him to find a penknife, which he recognised at once as belonging to Trimble, and which he distinctly recollected having seen in that hero's hand during school the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... plain covered with coarse grass, and upon the barren fields. I mirrored my face in the Tyris river, while the steamboat drove the fish into the rushes. Beneath me floated the waves, throwing long shadows on the so-called graves of Odin, Thor, and Friga. In the scanty turf that covers the hill-side names have been cut. There is no monument here, no memorial on which the traveller can have his name carved, no rocky wall on whose surface he can get it painted; so visitors have the turf cut away for that purpose. The naked earth peers ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... tatters of other buildings; while blinking in the sunlight I could discern clatter-emitting, windows which looked to me like watchful eyes. Only on the nearer side of the wall was a sparse strip of turf dotted over with ragged, withered, tremulous stems, and beyond this, again, lay the site of a burnt building which constituted a black patch of earth-heaps, broken stoves, dull grey ashes, and coal dust. To heaven gaped the black, noisome mouths of burning-pits wherein the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... "look at the troops of thim! Is it standin' here we are with our tongues in our cheeks, whin there's bastes to be killed, and mate to be got, and the call to war on the ground below! Clap spurs with your heels, sez I, and down the side of the turf together and give 'em the teeth of our guns!" The Irishman dashed down the slope. In an instant, all followed, or at least Trafford thought all followed, swinging their guns across their saddles to be ready for this excellent foray. But while ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... love to mangle turf: I see Them drive their balls from sandy tee, And think their day's delight begins When they are up among the whins. Some elders, full of godly zeal, Turn crazy about rod and reel; And ministers, reputed wise, Take service with the Lord of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... ten seconds later would have been past recognizing in Top's stomach. But fortunately the dog had fallen upon a brood, and besides the victim he was devouring, two other rodents—the animals in question belonged to that order—lay strangled on the turf. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... built, as the antiquarians of Draguignan avow, of stone that was hewn by the Romans for less peaceful purposes. That an ancient building must have stood here would, indeed, be to some extent credible, from the fact that in front of the house lies a lawn of that weedless turf which is only found in this country in such places as the Arena at Frejus. In the center of the lawn stands a sun dial—grey, green and ancient—a relic of those days when men lived by hours, and not by minutes, as we do to-day. It is all of the old world—of that old, old world ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... house in ten minutes, then. I'll join you there," said McLean, glancing over his shoulders at his comrade as he started across the springy turf to obey the summons. "What is it, Miss Forrest?" he inquired. "Good-morning Mrs. Gordon—Mrs. Wells—everybody," he continued, as, with forage-cap in hand, he made his obeisance to the various ladies ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... up to the point where I began to suspect," Ren continued. "I described the feeling I had that was something like watching a large chunk of the bank of a stream break away, starting first as a jagged crack in the turf, with it widening slowly at first, then faster, until the broken chunk becomes a separate THING, dissociated from the bank. It breaks away, drops into the stream—and vanishes; while the bank itself remains, enclosing and containing ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... seen all I wanted of these weary and dismal thoroughfares. Here and there was a strip of discolored turf, like an old worn-out bit of woolen carpet; and now and then a bit of kitchen garden, in which grew potatoes, cabbage, and lettuce, almost diminutive enough to ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... thumps on the turf and then the sharp crack of an unshod hoof upon stone. Wheeling, she saw three horsemen. They were just across the wash and coming toward her. One rider pointed in her direction. Silhouetted against the red of the sunset they ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... timber flooring of the pavilion. Desmond heard his head strike the boards with a thud, heard a muttered curse. He found himself standing in a narrow lane, less than three feet wide, which ran between the garden wall and the summer-house; for the pavilion, erected on a slight knoll surrounded by turf, was not built against the wall as is usually the ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... had entertained another lover, a gentleman on the staff of a sporting newspaper, one of Fenayrou's turf acquaintances. This gentleman had found her a cold mistress, preferring the ideal to the real. As a murderess Madame ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... only found in a few woods in the Thames valley, and possibly in Kent. The bladderworts fade instantly, and are not much interfered with, and though the fritillaries are picked for market, the roots are not dug up because that would injure the meadow turf in which they grow, and ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... Tysnas, Norway, a meteorite had fallen: that the turf was torn up at the spot where the object had been supposed to have fallen; that two days later "a very peculiar stone" was found near by. The description is—"in shape and size very like the fourth part of a large ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... The enthusiasm of the people was like a great conflagration, like a prairie fire before a wild tornado. A little more than twenty years had passed since Owen Lovejoy, brother of Elijah Lovejoy, on the bank of the Mississippi, kneeling on the turf not then green over the grave of the brother who had been killed for his fidelity to freedom, had sworn eternal war against slavery. From that time on, he and his associate Abolitionists had gone forth preaching their crusade against oppression, with hearts of fire and tongues ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... name cares what thou thinkst!" shouted the captain. "Begone before I box thy malapert ears." And driving the lad before him he strode down the hill without another word or look at John, who grinding his heel into the turf muttered,— ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... when Gabrielle was sitting in a dream over her turf fire, Considine came home from a day's blackcock shooting in the woods on the edge of the lake. She did not hear him coming, for the garden path was now deep in fallen leaves. As he turned to open the house door Considine saw a small shadow moving under the garden hedge. He thought it was ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... likely to manifest itself when the interests of other neighbors are involved. The thistle was an uncommonly large and active one, and I suffered somewhat from its teeth before I finally got it comfortably located in a patch of succulent turf under one ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... dissatisfied and moody when, one afternoon, he stood, waiting for the grouse, behind a bank of turf on Malton moor. To begin with, he had played cards until the early morning with some of his guests and had been unlucky. Then he got up with a headache for which he held his wife accountable; Alice was getting horribly parsimonious, and had bothered him until he tried ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... was great at the flower-stands, which Mr. Froggatt had kindly left full of primulas, squills, and crocuses; and when she looked out from the back room into the little garden, where Mr. Froggatt's horticultural tastes had long found their sole occupation, and saw turf, green laurels, and bunches of snowdrops and crocuses, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... defeated their own fury, by rolling up in the course of ages a rampart of gray boulder-stones, some two miles long, as cunningly curved, and smoothed, and fitted, as if the work had been done by human hands, which protects from the high tides of spring and autumn a fertile sheet of smooth, alluvial turf. Sniffing the keen salt air like a young sea-dog, he stripped and plunged into the breakers, and dived, and rolled, and tossed about the foam with stalwart arms, till he heard himself hailed from off the shore, and looking up, saw standing ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... curiously at one another. With an affectation of indifference I began to chop idly at the ground in front of me with my hatchet. They looked, I noticed, at the deep cuts I made in the turf. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... mind reader, Phil Forrest," grumbled Teddy, digging his heel into the soft turf of the circus lot. "Can you read my mind? If you can, what am I ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... and as he stood there his keen eyes saw something move across the short grass at the water's edge. Promptly he put an arrow to his bowstring and took deft aim. The shaft sped quickly to its mark, plunged into the body of a stoat, and pinned the animal to the soft turf. ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... narrow Flemish streets of tall houses with projecting upper stories, and showed them that seminary which was popularly supposed in England to be the hotbed of truculent plots, but where they only saw a quiet academic cloister and an exquisite garden, green turf, roses and white lilies in full perfection, and students flitting about in cassocks and square caps, more like an Oxford scene, as Mr. Fellowes said, than anything he had yet seen. He was joined by an English priest from his ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... night with gas: the modern idea of a ruin is a dancing-floor, with a few patched arches and walls lifted between the wind and our nobility. We shave the weeds away and produce a fine English turf: we root up the brambles and eglantines which might tear the skirts of the ladies. Our lovers, our poets and romancers must fly to distant glades if they would not walk in the shade of trees that have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... you could see Walnut Hills. It is about two miles from the city, and the road to it is as picturesque as you can imagine a road to be without 'springs that run among the hills.' Every possible variety of hill and vale of beautiful slope, and undulations of land set off by velvet richness of turf and broken up by groves and forests of every outline of foliage, make the scene Arcadian. You might ride over the same road a dozen times a day untired, for the constant variation of view caused by ascending and descending hills relieves you from all tedium. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... 1721. May his turf lie lightly on him! Deus sit propitius huic potatori, as Walter de Mapes sang.(112) Perhaps Samuel Johnson, who spoke slightingly of Prior's verses, enjoyed them more than he was willing to own. The old moralist had studied them as well as Mr. Thomas Moore, and defended ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of you all is herself? (He goes up to Bride.) Is it you is Mary Doul? I'm thinking you're more the like of what they said (peering at her.) For you've yellow hair, and white skin, and it's the smell of my own turf is rising from your shawl. [He ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... worked as steadily as I could for the rain, for this was the rainy season. I may say I was always busy. I raised a turf wall close outside my double fence, and felt sure if any people came on shore they would not see anything like a dwelling. I also made my rounds in the woods every day. As I have already said, I found plenty of wild ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... no wind the water was perfectly still. Even the trees all round it were motionless, as there came no breeze to stir their leaves, and the only sounds that could be heard were the dull croaking of the frogs amid the water grasses, and the shrill cries of children playing on the green turf. Every now and then a steamer would skim across the surface of the water in an airy manner, looking more like a child's clockwork toy than anything else, and Vandeloup, when he saw one of these arrive at the little pier, almost expected to see a man put in ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... taken up the staircase into the corridor, and shown the window, which had been found nearly closed but not fastened, as though it had been partially shut down from the outside. The cedar bough almost brushed the glass, and the slope of turf came so high up the wall, that an active youth could easily swing himself down to it; and the superintendent significantly remarked that the punt was on the farther side of the stream, whereas the evening ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to a little bank that, having lain in the sun all day, was warm and dry, and stretched himself out. Ann was too big to go "larking" about with the girls, so she and Hanny, and one or two others, sat down on the soft, sunburned turf. ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... blue shadow of the bluff lay all across that part of the town, and it deepened to a still bluer and cooler mystery under the apple-tree canopy sheltering the dooryard. I never see that light to this day, a high gloaming sifted through leaves on turf, without the faintest memory of a shiver. For that was the first I had even known of anger, the still and deadly ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... title, that are quite high life, sir - the tiptop sort of thing. I know the name of every man who has been out on an affair of honour within the last five-and-twenty years; I know the private particulars of every cross and squabble that has taken place upon the turf, at the gaming-table, or elsewhere, during the whole of that time. I have been called the gentlemanly chronicle. You may consider yourself a lucky dog; upon my soul, you may congratulate yourself, though ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... shrill whistle blast would sound, the vast crowd in the stands, on the side-lines, and in the parked automobiles, would suddenly still their clamor and breathlessly await the kick-off—then, seventy minutes of grim battling on the turf, and victory, or defeat, would perch on the banners of ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... I hear tell, One that many loved in vain, Looked into a forest well And never looked away again. There, when the turf in springtime flowers, With downward eye and gazes sad, Stands amid the glancing showers A ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... almost shining through some of the clefts between them. Cleeve Abbey, lying in the trough of a green valley through which runs a stream, the cloister garth and the Abbot's seat at the end of it, are most impressive. Under the turf lie the dead monks. A place like this begets half- unconscious dreaming which issues in nothing and is not wholesome. It would be better employment to learn something about the history of the abbey and about ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... over his grave; but the thoughtful and the wise, though turf never covered a nobler heart, could not lament that it was so soon at rest. He left a world for which he was unfit; and we trust, that, among the innumerable stars of heaven, there is one where he has ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ears, the unmistakable thudding of galloping hoofs on turf. The posse was riding for the bridge full tilt. He picked up his rifle and dodged in among the trees along the trail. Forty yards from the mined stringer he met Molly riding back ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... lulling sound, and shadow cool Hangs half the darkened churchyard o'er, From thy green depths so beautiful Thou gorgeous sycamore! Oft hath the holy wine and bread Been blest beneath thy murmuring tent, Where many a bright and hoary head Bowed at that awful sacrament. Now all beneath the turf are laid On which they sat, and sang, and prayed. Above that consecrated tree Ascends the tapering spire, that seems To lift the soul up silently To heaven with all its dreams, While in the belfry, deep and low, From his heaved bosom's purple gleams ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... reaching the green spot in question, shouted out that he could discern nothing; but presently added, as he moved about, that the turf heaved like a sway-bed beneath his feet, and he thought—to use his own phraseology—would "brast." The abbot then commanded him to go down to the orchard below, and if he could find Demdike to bring him to him instantly. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... be impossible to give any account of the Duke and his character and actions without noticing his devotion to the Turf. It was that devotion which made Lord Salisbury once say with humorous despair that he could not hold a most important meeting "because it appears that Hartington must be at Newmarket on that day to ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... came hither early in the day, we had time sufficient to survey the place. The house was built like other huts of loose stones, but the part in which we dined and slept was lined with turf and wattled with twigs, which kept the earth from falling. Near it was a garden of turnips and a field of potatoes. It stands in a glen, or valley, pleasantly watered by a winding river. But this country, however it may delight the gazer or amuse the naturalist, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... one will those Russians, with a good sword in one's hand, and a good horse between one's knees; and have a chance of giving him what he brings, instead of being kicked off by the cowardly Rockite, no one knows how; and not even from behind a turf dyke, but out of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... repeatedly faced these dangers on the most terrific glaciers, and in the wildest weather, it was with a new and oppressive feeling of panic terror that he leaped the last chasm, and flung himself, exhausted and shuddering, on the firm turf ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... immense mountain covered with a shining green turf is nothing, in this respect, to one dark ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... whose current was from the sea, and let myself drift along its banks in bewildered delight. The sky appeared bluer, and the air balmier than even that of Italy's favored clime. The turf that covered the banks was smooth and fine, like a carpet of rich green velvet. The fragrance of tempting fruit was wafted by the zephyrs from numerous orchards. Birds of bright plumage flitted among the branches, anon breaking forth ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... seats is a comparatively trifling affair when there are to be young people present, who prefer clean turf or the piazza steps to any more luxurious lounging place. For the older guests, less unconventional accommodations may be devised. Light rockers, camp chairs, wooden or wicker settees are pretty, and in harmony with the rustic nature of the reception. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Glenfernie gave upon the hill's steepest, most craglike face. A door opened on a hand's-breadth of level turf across from which rose the broken and ruined wall that once had surrounded the keep. Ivy overgrew this; below a wide and ragged breach a pine had set its roots in the hillside. Its top rose bushy above the stones. Beyond the opening, ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... luncheon party was not lively. Tongue and chicken, pigeon-pie, cheese-cakes, tarts, cake, fruit—all had been neatly spread upon a tablecloth laid on the soft turf. Nothing had been forgotten. There were plates and knives and forks enough for everybody—picnicking being a business thoroughly well understood at The Knoll; but there was a good deal wanting in ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... a short distance ahead, and Billy crept forward with the utmost caution. The cry seemed to come from the other side of a space littered with blocks of turf. Some cottagers who lived on the heath had the right to cut turves, and this was a place where they worked. Here and there the turves were gathered into little heaps. In the centre of the open ground was a ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... Other measures were resorted to, in order to carry out their object. Arson, the burning of hayricks, firing into dwelling-houses, spiking meadows, the mutilation of horses and cows, the destruction of turf, the damaging of machinery, and various other forms of lawless violence began to increase and multiply. At the Spring Assizes in 1907, the Chief Justice, when addressing the Grand Jury at Ennis, in commenting on the increasing need for placing law-abiding people ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... have gained our most important victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the sword and the lance, but the bush-whack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog-hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian's corn-field into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the skill ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... nature, however it may seem to have gone and to go on for ever, is [3] but a fleeting phase of her infinite variety; merely the last of the series of changes which the earth's surface has undergone in the course of the millions of years of its existence. Turn back a square foot of the thin turf, and the solid foundation of the land, exposed in cliffs of chalk five hundred feet high on the adjacent shore, yields full assurance of a time when the sea covered the site of the "everlasting hills"; and when the vegetation of what land lay nearest, was as different from the present Flora of ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... near Amanges, half shrouded in trees, stood a small hovel of the rudest construction; its roof was of turf, and its walls were blotched with lichen. The garden to this cot was run to waste, and the fence round it broken through. As the hovel was far from any road, and was only reached by a path over moorland ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... distress'd for want of fuell' because of the traffic up and down the estuary being interrupted. Hence Evelyn was appointed one of a Committee to search the environs of London and find if any peat or turf were fit for use. Experiments were made with houllies or briquettes of charcoal dust and loam in the Dutch manner, and Evelyn shewed to many proof of his 'new fuell, which was very glowing and without smoke or ill smell'. But the process never caught on, and was abandoned ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... cheek. On whom the Angel Hail Bestowed, the holy salutation used Long after to blest Mary, second Eve. Hail, Mother of Mankind, whose fruitful womb Shall fill the world more numerous with thy sons, Than with these various fruits the trees of God Have heaped this table!—Raised of grassy turf Their table was, and mossy seats had round, And on her ample square from side to side All autumn piled, though spring and autumn here Danced hand in hand. A while discourse they hold; No fear lest dinner cool; when thus began Our author. Heavenly stranger, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... race tracks at Calcutta, one for regular running, the other for steeple chasing, and, as in England and Ireland, the horses run on the turf, and most of the riders are gentlemen. A few professional jockeys represent the stables of breeders who are too old or too fat or too lazy to ride themselves, but it is considered the proper thing for every true sportsman ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... city numerous camps had been established for the wounded, convalescents, etc. One of these, called the Westphalian camp, presented a most beautiful scene. It was a succession of beautiful small gardens; there a fortress made of turf, its bastions crowned with hortensias; here a plot had been converted into a terrace, its walks ornamented with flowers, like the most carefully tended parterre; on a third was seen a statue of Pallas. The whole barrack was decked with moss, and decorated with boughs and garlands ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... were high and steep, but luckily for me some tree-roots protruded in places, and by their aid I climbed up at last, and stretched myself upon the turf at the top, where I lay, more dead than alive, till the sun was high in the heavens. By that time I was very hungry, but after some searching I came upon some eatable herbs, and a spring of clear water, and much refreshed I set out to explore the island. Presently I reached a great plain ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... have remained longer on the sod of the sloping hill, and have stretched themselves over the outspread turf, had they not feared its dampness. "Now it would be enchanting," said somebody of the company, "if we had Turkey carpets to spread here." The wish was hardly expressed ere the man in the grey coat had put his hand ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... faster. It was scarce two minutes from the time when the first shot was fired, but it seemed ages to him before he dashed into the group of men, knocking down two by the impetus of his rush. He was but just in time. A figure lay prostrate on the turf; another standing over him had just been beaten to his knee. But he sprang up again at Luke's onward rush. His assailants for a ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... a Bible, a hymn-book, a Pilgrim's Progress, and several other books, all of which had seen their best days and were doubtless in constant use. On the walls were prints in wooden frames and much discoloured by the turf smoke of the fire. Upon a carved old oak cupboard, which held the clothes of the family, were arranged various rare shells and stones, curious sea-urchins and other treasures of the sea, and in the centre, the chief ornament of the house and the pride of Polly's heart, ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton |
