"Fern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shaky, rattly little car when Lois and Dosia entered it, whizzing off, a moment later, down a lonely road with wooded hills sloping to the track on one side and a wooded brook on the other. The air grew aromatic in the chill spring dusk with the odor of damp fern and pine. Both women were silent, and the baby, rolled in his long cloak, had slept all the way. It was but seven miles to Collingswood, yet the time seemed longer than all the rest of the journey before ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... but pass'd unworried By angry wolf, or pard with prying head, Until it came to some unfooted plains Where fed the herds of Pan: ay great his gains Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many, Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny, 80 And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly To a wide lawn, whence one could only see Stems thronging all around between the swell Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell The freshness of the space of heaven above, Edg'd round with dark ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... back to our raking. Above us, among the stones of the slope, hang bunches of Christmas fern; around the foot of the trees we uncover trailing clusters of gray-green partridge vine, glowing with crimson berries; we rake up the prince's-pine, pipsissewa, creeping-Jennie, and wintergreen red with ripe berries—a whole ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... invade the roots; stony and rocky grounds, ivy, and all climbers, weeds, suckers, fern, wet, mice, moles, winds, &c. to these may be added siderations, pestiferous air, fogs, excessive heat, sulphurous and arsenic smoak, and vapours, and other plagues, tumours, distortions, lacrymations, tophi, gouts, carbuncles, ulcers, crudities, fungosities, gangreens, and ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... her in such small respect that he waited with patience for her to come, although married, into his arms. And there was not a man or a woman on the Round-about, except Alice, who really cared whether she ever went back again. The greedy squirrel peeked at her from behind a fern, recognized his old playmate, and came forward in a series of runs and leaps. With a little cry Joan bent down and held out her hand. And away in the distance there was the baying of Martin's ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... stalactite formations like cauliflowers. Immediately above the village is a much larger cavern 72 feet high and 36 feet deep. It is vaulted like a dome, and tendrils of ivy and vine hang down draping the entrance. Violets grow in purple masses at the opening, and maiden-hair fern luxuriates within. At the extreme end, high up, to be reached only by a ladder of forty rungs, is another opening into a cave that runs far into the bowels of the Causse, to where the water falls in a cascade that now flows ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... was apparently more grown than other cereals. The chief meat of the lower classes then, as to-day, was bacon from the innumerable herds of swine who roamed in the woods and wastes, but in bad years, when food was scarce, the poor ate nuts, acorns, fern ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... out fantastically all over them. It shelved so deeply, that, while the hemlock-tassels were swinging on the trees around its border, all would be still at its springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre with a twist as of a feathered oar,—and this when not a breath could be felt, and every other stem and blade were motionless. There was an old story of one having perished here in the winter of '86, and his body having been found in the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 2-cleft, thus appearing to be twice as many. Scape: 4 to 10 in. high. Leaves: Growing in an open rosette on the ground; round or broader, clothed with reddish bristly hairs tipped with purple glands, and narrowed into long, flat, hairy petioles; young leaves curled like fern fronds. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... the storm rushes upon the deep woods, It lets down curtains of mist And sheets of rain, that drip Crystal beads among the trees. Way above, the branches lash and moan And weave. Below, it is still, Still as the undersea. Soft fern and feathery bracken Loom through the mist Like branching coral, And drifting leaves float down ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... and dark, in sun and storm, for years, and the old instinctive sense of direction, of location, had not deserted him. In a little while he came out abreast of Cradle Bay. The Gower house, all brightly gleaming windows, loomed near. He struck down through the dead fern, over the ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and colour. Every green was young, every pore was open, and every stalk was swollen with racing currents of juice. God was palpably present in the country, and the devil had gone with the world to town. Flossy catkins of the later kinds, fern-sprouts like bishops' croziers, the square-headed moschatel, the odd cuckoo-pint,—like an apoplectic saint in a niche of malachite,—snow-white ladies'-smocks, the toothwort, approximating to human flesh, the enchanter's night-shade, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... with their perpetual summer,—or of the Hesperides (if they were flat, and not close to Atlas), golden apples and all,—I would give away in an instant, for one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady-fern.[24] ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... not a single living thing left. I didn't know about this, when I spoke to your man Democritus. I have ordered the service of Rhosian ware. But, hallo! what are you thinking of? You generally serve us up a dinner of herbs on fern-pattern plates, and the most sparkling of baskets: what am I to expect you to give on porcelain? I have ordered a horn for Phemius: one will be sure to turn up; I only hope he may play something worthy ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... seen from the country to which I was going, where it might be useful to me in fixing other points; the other being to obtain a view of Port Phillip, and thus to connect my survey with that harbour. But the tree-fern, musk-plant, brush, and lofty timber together shut us up for a long time from any prospect of the low country to the southward, and it was not until I had nearly exhausted a fine sunny afternoon in wandering round the broad summit that I could ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... tutor, sympathising fully with the ardent pursuits of boyhood, had been over-indulgent in the matter of granting whole Wednesdays, instead of half-holidays. Any excuse sufficed. Skating on inland ponds in the winter; fishing in the bay, as the year wore on; and, latterly, digging for primrose or fern roots in Brattlesby Woods. But Philip Price was beginning to find out by results that too much play and not enough work was making dull scholars of his pupils, and he had determined to stand out firmly against any more indulgences in the future. It was high time that Alick ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... ages ago a beautiful fern grew in a deep vale, nodding in the breeze. One day it fell, complaining as it sank away that no one would remember its grace and beauty. The other day a geologist went out with his hammer in the interest of his science. He struck a rock; and there in ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... in den garten, Da er dieselb zu sein gedacht, Und nehmend war[1] von fern der zarten, Die ihn in diese Welt gebracht, 10 "Wolan, sprach er, nu soll dein blut Recht bssen, ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... companion with them. The man found himself in a beautiful hall with everything he could desire at his command, and here he pleasantly passed the time ere he retired to rest. In the morning when he awoke, instead of finding himself on a couch in Fairy Hall, be found himself lying on a heap of fern on the wild ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... may be symbolized by a frond of fern, having ten or more leaves, and to this a common leaflet may be added to increase the number of thousands. In this way any given number may be represented in foliage, such as the date of a year in which ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... got in any quantity at Wankelo, so Mrs. Hading had cleverly decided to use only those of one colour, choosing sunflowers, marigolds, and all the little yellow children of the Zinnia family. These, mingled with the tender green of maidenhair fern, of which quantities had been obtained from Selukine, massed against walls draped with green, made an exquisite setting for her entertainment and her own beauty. She glided here and there among the amber lights, welcoming her guests and setting ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... ground will permit the use of a harrow good results are obtainable by scarifying the soil in strips about 10 feet apart and sowing the seed in these strips. On unburned areas covered with a dense growth of fern, salal, moss, grass, or other plants, this covering must be removed by the seed spot method. This consists in removing the ground cover with a grub hoe or mattock in spots of varying diameter (6 inches ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... than the drive to Strathfield-saye, passing, as we do, through a great part of Heckfield Heath,* a tract of wild woodland, a forest, or rather a chase, full of fine sylvan beauty—thickets of fern and holly, and hawthorn and birch, surmounted by oaks and beeches, and interspersed with lawny glades and deep pools, letting light into the picture. Nothing can be prettier than the approach to the duke's lodge. And the entrance ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... manor-house appeared before them, rising amidst the hereditary woods, which doubtless dated from a time beyond the days which Middleton fondly recalled, when his ancestors had walked beneath their shade. On each side of them were thickets and copses of fern, amidst which they saw the hares peeping out to gaze upon them, occasionally running across the path, and comporting themselves like creatures that felt themselves under some sort of protection from the outrages of man, though they knew too much of his destructive character to trust ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seemed uninviting, these were occasionally broken into charmingly alluring coves floored with golden sand, clad with evergreen shrubbery, and adorned with every variety of indigenous wattle, she-oak, wild flower, and fern, from the delicately graceful 'maiden-hair' to the palm-like 'old man'; while the majestic gum-tree, clean and smooth as the mast of 'some tall admiral' pierces the clear air to the height of 230 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with unreasoning, nightmare terror. She was lying on a bed of fern in a narrow, dark ravine. The place was full of shadow, though far overhead she saw the light of day. At one end, only a few yards from her, a stream rushed and gurgled among great boulders, and its insistent murmur filled the air. Behind her rose a great wall of grey rock, clothed ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... lilac and with the blackbird's song; and when the curtain fell into its trench of flowers, and the play commenced, we saw before us a real forest, and we knew it to be Arden. For with whoop and shout, up through the rustling fern came the foresters trooping, the banished Duke took his seat beneath the tall elm, and as his lords lay around him on the grass, the rich melody of Shakespeare's blank verse began to reach our ears. And all through the performance this delightful sense of ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Leamington. He was riding homewards, through a sequestered and wooded part of the park, when he was aware of the presence of two ladies, evidently a mother and daughter. They sate on one side of the rude path, on an old prostrate beech tree. The daughter, who was very beautiful, was sketching a piece of fern for a foreground: the mother was looking over the drawing. Neither ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... saw that all was ruinous, Here stood a shattered archway plumed with fern; And here had fall'n a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers, And high above a piece of turret stair, Worn by the feet that now were ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... considerable way to go. The glen path, narrow and rough, went up and down, still following the water. Hazel and birch, oak and pine, overhung and darkened it. Bosses of rock thrust themselves forward, patched with lichen and moss, seamed and fringed with fern and heath. Roots of trees, huge and twisted, spread and clutched like guardian serpents. In places where rock had fallen the earth seemed to gape. In the shadow it looked a gnome world—a gnome or a dragon world. Then upon ledge or bank showed ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... and the men put down their tools, for a sharp, ringing noise rolled across the woods. When they reached camp Jim was surprised to note two hobbled horses among the springing fern. The big pack-saddles stood near the fire and a man was helping Carrie to fill the tin plates. He stopped when Jim advanced, and Carrie said, "This is Mr. Davies; he was at ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... they may be seen bending over fields tapestried with Passion-Flowers and verdurous with Myrtles and Orange-trees, and presenting their long shafts to the tendrils of the Trumpet Honeysuckle and the palmate foliage of the Climbing Fern. But the slender Palms, when solitary, afford but little shade. It is when they are standing in groups, their lofty tops meeting and forming a uniform umbrage, that they afford any important protection from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt.[19] 190 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief[20] 195 With quaint arabesques[21] of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond drops, 200 Which crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star of every one: So mortal builder's most rare device ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... and looked out, wishing the children a happy Christmas. Then we dressed, for there was a great deal to do. Papa had many services in church, Chinese, English, and Dyak. I had the wreaths to make. The church had been decked with moss fern the day before, but the flowers must be added in the morning, or they would be faded. So Julia and I made a crown of French marigolds to hang on the cross over the altar, two large wreaths for either side, and one at the west end made entirely of the golden allamanda, in the buds of which ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... by which she had crept in, and a dove finding its way in every day with a loaf to feed her, while a spring within the cave supplied her with water. Legends have grown over every stone of this poetic land like moss and lichen and rock-fern; and at Beul, a small bathing-place with a real geyser and a very tolerable circle of society, we come across the universal story of a golden treasure sunk in a castle-well and guarded by a giant. The old, world-forgotten town has its hall of justice and all the shell of its antique civic paraphernalia, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Kidney bean, which when roasted eats like a Chestnut, and is called Ahee; the fruit of a Tree which they call Wharra, something like a Pine Apple; the fruit of a Tree called by them Nano; the roots of a Fern and the roots of a plant called Thive. All these Articles the Earth almost Spontaniously produces, or, at least, they are raised with very little Labour. In the Article of food these people may almost be said to be exempt from the Curse of our Forefathers, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... mankind were gazing that night. She was in dashing spirits, a glorious color diffused her cheeks, her eyes fairly danced. Her dress was of feathery black tulle, and a broad silver ribbon, like an order, went over her shoulders. In the shining black braids glistened fern leaves of silver filigree. Fortunately, Fred and I discovered them—Leonora and her inseparable cavalier, Denis, I mean—in an alcove of roses and jessamines. She admiring the flowers, and he talking with a fervor very easy to read. She listening, as women always listen ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... respectable land-owners and farmers of the county of Wilts, to take into consideration the propriety of presenting Petitions to both Houses of Parliament, on behalf of the proprietors and occupiers of land. Thomas Grove, Esq. of Fern, one of the gentlemen who called the meeting, having taken the chair, Mr. Benett addressed them at a very considerable length in favour of a petition that he submitted for their adoption, expressive of the serious injury already ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Ravenswood; 'the broad blaze which might have been seen ten miles off—what occasioned that?' 'Hout, awa! it's an auld saying and a true, "Little's the light will be seen far in a mirk night"—a wheen fern and horse litter that I fired in the courtyard, after sending back the loon of a ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... Introduction Key to Genera Classification of Ferns The Polypodies The Bracken Group: Bracken Cliff Brakes Rock Brake The Lip Ferns (Cheilanthes) The Cloak Fern (Notholaena) The Chain Ferns The Spleenworts: The Rock Spleenworts. Asplenium The Large Spleenworts. Athyrium Hart's Tongue and Walking Leaf The Shield Ferns: Christmas and Holly Fern Marsh Fern Tribe The Beech Ferns The ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... glorious sight upon a glorious day. To the northward the glens rushed down toward the cliff, crowned with gray crags, and carpeted with purple heather and green fern; and from their feet stretched away to the westward the sapphire rollers of the vast Atlantic, crowned with a thousand crests of flying foam. On their left hand, some ten miles to the south, stood ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... into our fern-house, which is just beyond here," she said. "We have got such exquisite maidenhairs and such a splendid Killarney fern. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... spring had lost its way Amid the grass and fern; A passing stranger scooped a well Where weary men might turn. He walled it in, and hung with care, A ladle on the brink; He thought not of the deed he did, But judged that Toil might drink. He passed again; and lo! the well, By summer never dried, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... brought their pikes, and spears, and javelins, and such other projectiles as were employed in those days in hunting wild beasts. The troop was divided into companies of one hundred, and for banners they bore tufts of grass on wisps of straw, or fern, or other herbage, tied at the top of a pole. The armament was rude, but the men were resolute and determined, and they made their appearance at the gates of the city upon the outside, just in time to co-operate with Remus in the rebellion which ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of the brow, rising out of the rich green scrub? Verily, again, we are in the Tropics. They are palms, doubtless, some thirty feet high each, with here and there a young one springing up like a gigantic crown of male-fern. The old ones have straight gray stems, often prickly enough, and thickened in the middle; gray last year's leaves hanging down; and feathering round the top, a circular plume of pale green leaves, like those of a coconut. But these are not cocos. The last year's leaves of the coco are rich yellow, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... carry on their backs. Flour, of course, formed the principal article of our commissariat. This was packed up in sacks, which were again enclosed in long pockets, made of hides, and called "parfleshes," the use of which is to defend the canvas of the sacking from being torn by branches of fern and underwood. The sacks we secured on strong pack-saddles, between which and the back of the horse were some thick soft cloths. All our baggage-horses were furnished with trail ropes, which were allowed to drag on the ground ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... pound pulverized and dried iron sulphate and 1/2 pound bicarbonate of soda, and give one teaspoonful each morning until the medicine is gone. After the last dose give the following: Turpentine, 2 ounces; fluid extract male fern, 1/2 ounce; Pearson's Creolins, 1 ounce; raw linseed oil, 1 pint. Mix and give all at one dose. To improve the general condition one may give artificial Carlsbad salts, 1 tablespoonful in each feed, and ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... to descend the narrow cork-screw stair, so dark and cool, I caught a glimpse, one turn down, by the feeble light that came through its chinks after it was shut behind us, of a tiny maiden-hair fern growing out of the wall. I stopped, and said ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... such as intercommuning of foreigners, surcharges of commoners, trespasses in the fence month and winter haining, and in the enclosures; keeping hogs, sheep, goats, and geese, being uncommonable animals, in the Forest; cutting and burning the nether vert, furze, and fern; gathering and taking away the crabs, acorns, and mast; and other purprestures and offences; carrying away such timber trees as were covertly cut down in the night time; by which practices several hundred fine oaks were yearly ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... white goods on the morrow, or Mrs. Gashwiler's version of a regrettable incident occurring at that afternoon's meeting of the Entre Nous Five Hundred Club, in which the score had been juggled adversely to Mrs. Gashwiler, resulting in the loss of the first prize, a handsome fern dish, and concerning which Mrs. Gashwiler had thought it best to speak her mind? What importance could he attach to the disclosure of Metta Judson, the Gashwiler hired girl, who chatted freely during her appearances with food, that ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... that drifted One after one, like infant elves at play Amid the night-winds, in their lonely way— Some whistling and some moaning, some asleep, And dreaming dismal dreams, and sighing deep Over their couches of green moss and flowers, And solitary fern, and ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... sunshine glimmers with green light. Oh! 'tis a quiet spirit-healing nook! Which all, methinks, would love; but chiefly he, The humble man, who, in his youthful years, Knew just so much of folly, as had made His early manhood more securely wise! Here he might lie on fern or withered heath, While from the singing lark (that sings unseen The minstrelsy that solitude loves best), And from the sun, and from the breezy air, Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame; And he, with many feelings, many thoughts, Made up a meditative ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... stream, she came at last to another wood—not a wild wood like the first, but a tame, domesticated wood. The dead limbs were cut away, and the ground was neatly brushed up under the trees. The brook flowed sedately between fern-bordered banks, under rustic bridges, and widened occasionally into pools carpeted with lily pads. Mossy paths set with stepping-stones led off into mysterious depths that the eye could not penetrate: the leaves were just out enough to half hide and to tantalize. The grass was starred with ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... neither a painter nor a poet) to describe this dell as it should be described; and I will therefore only beg of thee, gentle reader, who peradventure mayst not have lingered in this classical neighbourhood, to fancy a deep, deep dell, its steep sides fringed down with hazel and beech, and fern and thick undergrowth, and clothed at the bottom with the richest and greenest sward in the world. You descend, clinging to the trees, and scrambling as best you may,—and now you stand on haunted ground! Tread ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... and yet it cannot be said to have been unproductive; for, probably, there never was a space of ground of equal size, unless it were Maidenhead Thicket, which could show so rich and luxuriant a crop of gorse, heath, and fern. For a shelter to the latter, appeared scattered at unequal distances over the ground a few stunted trees—hawthorns, beeches, and oaks. The beech, however, predominated, in honour of the county in which ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... yours," said the pertinacious Master Ganlesse, as he called himself; "and we will both travel the safer, that we journey in company. I have the receipt of fern-seed, man, and walk invisible. Besides, you would not have me quit you in this lane, where there is no turn to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... grass and wild flowers weave their lovely patterns for the earth floor, and tall pines spread their soft carpets of brown, while giant oaks and sycamores lift their cathedral arches to support the ceilings of green, and dark rock fountains set in banks of moss and fern hold water clear and cold. It was to one of these that Stanford Manning brought his bride for their honeymoon. Stanford himself pitched their tent and made their simple camp, for it was not in his plan that the sweet intimacy of these, ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... Westminster, my Lord being gone before my coming to chapel. I and Mr. Sheply told out my money, and made even for my Privy Seal fees and gratuity money, &c., to this day between my Lord and me. After that to chappell, where Dr. Fern, a good honest sermon upon "The Lord is my shield." After sermon a dull anthem, and so to my Lord's (he dining abroad) and dined with Mr. Sheply. So, to St. Margarett's, and heard a good sermon upon the text "Teach ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... light has turned a rich yellow;— long black shapes lie across the curving road, shadows of balisier and palm, shadows of tamarind and Indian-reed, shadows of ceiba and giant-fern. And the porteuses are coming down through the lights and darknesses of the way from far Grande Anse, to halt a moment in this little village. They are going to sit down on the road-side here, before ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... I'd better turn back?" he asked her, gently. "Your path is clear before you." He pointed to it winding through the fern. "And you know, I hope, that anything I could do for you and your mother during your stay here I should be only too enchanted to do. The one thing I shrink from doing is to interfere in any ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into silence and changes the subject,—why, look there for something! just as, when going through deep meadow-grass, a bird flies ostentatiously up before you, you may know her nest is not there, but far off, under distant tufts of fern and buttercup, through which she has crept with a silent flutter in her spotted breast, to act her pretty little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... nature affects us painfully, like the want of sympathy in a dear friend. Mara had been all her days a child of the woods; her delicate life had grown up in them like one of their own cool shaded flowers; and there was not a moss, not a fern, not an upspringing thing that waved a leaf or threw forth a flower-bell, that was not a well-known friend to her; she had watched for years its haunts, known the time of its coming and its going, studied ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... he, heedless of her; and pointed to the oak, where, half hidden by the tall fern, stood ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... warranted to evoke from almost any face. The sky had darkened strangely, but pale streaks of light, coming from one knew not where, filtered through the trees. No breath was stirring; the wheels and horses' hoofs made no sound on the deep fern mould. All around, the burnt tree-trunks, leafless and jagged, rose like withered giants, the passages between them were black, the sky black, and black the silence. No one spoke, and literally the only sound was Pippin's breathing. What was it that was so terrifying? Scorrier had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Thornton and Florence made their appearance, looking very confused and awkward. Glenville preceded them, shouting and laughing. "Here they are, caught at last, and apparently quite pleased at keeping us all waiting, and quite unable to give any account of what they have been doing. One little fern has fallen before their united efforts in the space of half an hour or more. Hawkstone says he'll be shot if he lends you his boat to go a row in another time. ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... occupations they often considered it expedient to escape detection by assuming invisibility, and for this object sought the assistance of certain plants, such as the fern-seed[17]. In Sweden, hazel-nuts were supposed to have the power of making invisible, and it may be remembered how in one of Andersen's stories the elfin princess has the faculty of vanishing at will, by putting a wand in ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... the kitchen to find her father sitting placidly in the rocking-chair by the window. He had lighted his corn-cob pipe, in which he always smoked a mixture of dried sweet-fern as being cheaper than tobacco, and his face wore something resembling a smile—a foxy smile—as he watched his youngest-born ploughing down the hill through the deep snow, while the more obedient Waitstill moved about the room, setting supper on ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... weeks that she lay weak and speechless upon a pallet of dried fern, her only shelter the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... had since her widowhood succeeded in freeing from the ugly stucco which had once disguised and defaced it. It could not claim the classical charm, the learned elegance of Threlfall Tower. Duddon was romantic—a medley of beautiful things, full of history, colour, and time, fused by the trees and fern, the luxuriant creepers and mosses, and of a mild and rainy climate into a lovely irregular whole; with no outline to speak of, yet with nothing that one could seriously wish away. The size was great, yet no one but an auctioneer could have called it "superb"; it seemed ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... about five miles, we sat us down on a bridge to rest a while, and there the Don left us to go a little way up the course of the stream that flowed beneath, and he came back with a posey of sweet jonquils set off with a delicate kind of fern very pretty, and this he presents to Moll with a gracious little speech, which act, it seemed to me, was to let her know that he respected her still as a young gentlewoman in spite of her short petticoat, and Moll was not dull to the compliment neither; for, after the ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... the function of science, not as some think to divest this universe of its wonder and mystery, but, as in the case before us, to point out the wonder and the mystery of common things. Those fern-like forms, which on a frosty morning overspread your windowpanes, illustrate the action of the same force. Breathe upon such a pane before the fires are lighted, and reduce the solid crystalline film to the liquid condition; then watch its subsequent resolidification. You ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... one of these carefully, we find on the lower side numerous fine hairs like those on the lower surface of the liverworts, which fasten it firmly to the ground. By and by, if our culture has been successful, we may find attached to some of the larger of these, little fern plants growing from the under side of the prothallia, and attached to the ground by a delicate root. As the little plant becomes larger the prothallium dies, leaving it attached to the ground as an independent plant, which after ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... in full leaf stood, its fruit Hidden in a green expectancy; but all His days were rounded with ripe consciousness: While Jerry felt the winter's whitening blight, As when that frosty fern-work and those palms Of visionary leaf, and trailing vines, Quaint-chased by night-winds on the pane, melt off, And naked earth, stone-stiff, with bristling trees, Stares in the winter sunlight coldly through. But yet he rose, and clothed himself amain With misery, and once ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... shade beneath was broken by the gilding of a ray of sunshine on a lower twig, or on a white trunk, but the floor of the vast arcades was almost entirely of the russet brown of the fallen leaves, save where a fern or holly bush made a spot of green. At the foot of the slope lay a stretch of pasture ground, some parts covered by "lady-smocks, all silver white," with the course of the little stream through the midst indicated by a perfect golden river of shining kingcups interspersed with ferns. Beyond lay ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... cleared away, and as, by the assistance of an old tree, I climbed over the paling of Barstone Park, the sun was shining brightly, wrapping dale and down in a mantle of golden light. Rabbits sprung up under my feet as I made my way through the fern and heather; and pheasants, their varied plumage glittering in the sunlight, ran along my path, seeking to hide their long necks under some sheltering furze brake, or rose heavily on the wing, scared at the unwonted intrusion. At any other time the fair scene 396 ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to look at that which had taken the doctor's attention, for he was gazing into a side nook that suggested, from a dry heap of fern-like growth and grass, that ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... my ancient kindred spoke— Grotesque and monstrous voices, heard afar Down ocean caves when behemoth awoke, Or through fern forests roared the plesiosaur Locked with the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... the foot of this path, concealed amongst the bushes, crouched two sentries. At another point also, where, from the loftiest part of the platform, a view was obtained over the tree-tops up the defile between the mountains, other two watchers were stationed, stretched at full length amongst the fern, and peering out through laurel bushes, with whose dark foliage their bronzed physiognomies were confounded beyond ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... cold? Greenland with its rolling drifts is safer hunting than this forest world. What glory, doomed prisoners between the woods and the sea within the shadow of the great forests and a great fear? The smell of wildwood things, of flower banks, of fern mold, came dank and unwholesome to these men. Their {3} nostrils were for the whiff of the sea; and every sunset tipped the waves with fire where they longed to sail. And the shadow of the fear fell on Gudrid. Ordering the vessels loaded with timber ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... his pleasure almost too openly. They chatted lightly on many subjects as they walked together, knee-deep, at times, among scarlet wine-berries, and the delicate green and ebony of maidenhair fern. The scents and essence of summer hung heavy in the air. Shafts of golden sunlight, piercing the somber canopy of the forest isles, touched, and, it seemed to Geoffrey, etherealized, his companion. The completeness of his enjoyment troubled the man, and presently he lapsed into ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... garden, it was full of delightful old-world flowers that came up year after year: daffodils and violets and snow-flakes, and clumps of pinks, and orange lilies and Canterbury bells, and tall Michaelmas daisies, and ribbon grass and royal Osmunda fern, the sort of flowers that people used to pick in days gone by, put a paper frill round, and call a nosegay or a posy. There was a lawn for tennis and cricket, a pond planted with irises and bulrushes, and a wild corner ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... of fern, I saw what I had never dreamed of, what sent the blood from my heart in a cold shudder of fear: a girl, pale and dishevelled, was trying to part some vines. A twig crackled and she looked round, showing a face drawn with weariness ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... Joan; "at any rate the name is quite new and Gorla is new as far as the public are concerned, and that is enough to establish the novelty of the thing. Among other things she does a dance suggesting the life of a fern; I saw one of the rehearsals, and to me it would have equally well suggested the life of John Wesley. However, that is probably the fault of my imagination—I've either got too much or too little. Anyhow it is an understood thing that she is ...
— When William Came • Saki
... the pitcher of water to Mrs. King without touching a drop of it and helped her to strain the fern bits out of it through a handkerchief before she began to give it to her husband in spoonfuls. With the first sip he ceased his uneasy murmuring and she smiled up at the boy. "Thank you, Carter. It's very splendid of you. Won't you take a ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the peculiar sentiment of the card she tore off the enclosing tissue paper from the flowers. Orchids, wonderful, delicately tinted orchids, nestled in a sheaf of feathery green fern—five of them. ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... and inferior ones. Not that there is want of quantity even in the lower ranges, but it is a quantity of inferior things, and therefore more easily represented or suggested. On a Highland hill side are multitudinous clusters of fern and heather; on an Alpine one, multitudinous groves of chestnut and pine. The number of the things may be the same, but the sense of infinity is in the latter case far greater, because the number is of nobler things. Indeed, so far as mere magnitude of space occupied on the field of the horizon ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... give my namesake's philosophy the lie. However that may be, intense and new was the animal delight, to plant my hinder claws at some tree-foot deep into the black rotting vegetable-mould which steamed rich gases up wherever it was pierced, and clasp my huge arms round the stem of some palm or tree-fern; and then slowly bring my enormous weight and muscle to bear upon it, till the stem bent like a withe, and the laced bark cracked, and the fibres groaned and shrieked, and the roots sprung up out of the soil; and then, with a slow circular wrench, the whole ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... all very well, but it will be quite a job to make you all little again. It will take three magic fern seeds, and I don't think I have any ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... shady and undulating walks, winding over sweeping lawns dotted with masses of flowers and copses of shrubbery, and overhung by wide-spreading trees, sometimes gradually rising over gentle acclivities or points of rock overhung with moss and fern. Rustic cottages, half hidden by the luxuriant foliage, crowned each prominent eminence, and little by-ways branched off into cool, umbrageous recesses, where caves, glittering with sea-shells ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... quarrel to notice anything—took the Lamb in his arms, and, still stooping, carried the sleeping baby a dozen yards along the road to where a stile led into a wood. The others followed, and there among the hazels and young oaks and sweet chestnuts, covered by high strong-scented brake-fern, they all lay hidden till the angry voices of the men were hushed at the angry voice of the red-and-white lady, and, after a long and anxious search, the carriage at ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... beautiful and instructive example of this play of molecular force than that furnished by water. You have seen the exquisite fern-like forms produced by the crystallization of a film of water on a cold window-pane.[15] You have also probably noticed the beautiful rosettes tied together by the crystallizing force during the descent of a snow-shower ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... internal force and the external stimulus. Neither is enough by itself. A rose will not flower in the dark, and a fern will not flower anywhere. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... impression,—a sturdy figure with long body and short legs, clad in a woolen shirt and butternut-colored trousers repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his head surmounted by a limp, light-brown felt hat, frayed away at the top, so that his yellowish hair grew out of it like some nameless fern out of a pot. His tawny hair was long and tangled, matted now many years past the possibility of being ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sometimes used as an anthelmintic, so is wormwood, and the liquid extract of male fern, and in America spigelia root ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... company that had dined in the valley making their way up the dry bed of a stream, through a gorge which cleft a line of precipitous hills. On either hand the bank rose steeply, giving no footing for man or beast. The road was a difficult one; for here a tall, fern-crowned rock left but a narrow passage between itself and the shaggy hillside, and there smooth and slippery ledges, mounting one above the other, spanned the way. In places, too, the drought had ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... the air grew cold and dark about him. But the distant valley with its houses was all the brighter for that. He came presently to talus, and among the rocks he noted—for he was an observant man—an unfamiliar fern that seemed to clutch out of the crevices with intense green hands. He picked a frond or so and gnawed its stalk, and found ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... first—but there was the codfish. If the poor dear had had nothing but codfish! . . . Helen opened a jar of the treasured peach preserves, too; indeed, the entire supper table from the courageous little fern in the middle to the "company china" cup at Mrs. Raymond's plate was a remorseful apology for that midday codfish. If Mrs. Raymond noticed this, she gave no sign. Without comment, she ate the corncake and the peach preserves, and drank her tea from the china cup; with Mrs. ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... when we had left the uplands of Boulogne behind us, lay along the skirts of that desolate marsh in which I had wandered, and so inland, through plains of fern and bramble, until the familiar black keep of the Castle of Grosbois rose upon the left. Then, under the guidance of Savary, we struck to the right down a sunken road, and so over the shoulder of a hill until, ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... most part, and here and there, underneath their spreading branches, were open spaces carpeted with wind-flowers and bluebells, primroses and wild orchids, while ferns, large and small, grew in glorious profusion, some as tall as Tony, others as fragile and tiny as a fairy fern might be. In other spots large lichen-covered rocks raised their heads out of a tangle of bracken and bushes, while here and there, down by the river's brink, gleamed ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Sat to sew, Just where a patch of fern did grow; There, as she yawned, And yawn wide did she, Floated some seed Down her gull-e-t; And look you once, And look you twice, Poor old Tillie Was gone in a trice. But oh, when the wind Do a-moaning come, 'Tis poor old Tillie Sick for home; And oh, when a voice In the mist do sigh, Old ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... probable that the late Cromwellian proprietor had discovered the jewels during his occupancy, and that, like a prudent man, he kept his own counsel in the matter. But Sir Ralph still clung to the belief that somewhere in his grounds, "near the water and by the fern," the wealth he now so sorely needed lay concealed. That in this faith Sir Ralph lived and died was proved by his will, in which he bequeathed to the younger of his two sons, "and to his heirs," the jewels and other specified valuables which the testator firmly believed ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... handy, far from speculative, and yet good at succedaneum: when his anger is kindled, it descends like lightning: unlike his dog, his wrath gives no notice by grumbling: he blazes up like one of his own fires of dried fern. Quarrels do not often take place among them, but when they do, they are dreadful. The laws of the country in which they sojourn have so far banished the use of knives from among them that they only grind them, otherwise these conflicts would always be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... und folglich auch ihr Abklatsch, die romische Palliata, war nicht ein Lustspiel im hoechsten, im sittlichen Sinne des Wortes, sondern ein blosses Unterhaltungsdrama. Amuesieren wollten die Komoediendichter, nichts weiter. Jedes hoehere Streben lag ihnen fern. Wohl spickten sie ihre Lustspiele mit moralischen Sentenzen.... Aber die schoenen Sentenzen sind eben nur Zierat, sind nur Verbramung einer in ihrem Kerne und Wesen durch und durch unsittlichen Dichtung ... Mit der Wahrscheinlichkeit der Handlung wird es sehr leicht genommen: die ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... into the house, and laid me down on the lit de fouaille—a wooden frame forming a sort of couch, and filled with dried fern, which forms the principal piece of furniture in every farm-house kitchen in the Channel Islands. Then he cut away the boot from my swollen ankle, with a steady but careful touch, speaking now and then a word of encouragement, as if I were ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... deficient in that meat. Jacob had gone out accordingly; he had gained his leeward position of a fine buck, and was gradually nearing him by stealth—now behind a huge oak tree, and then crawling through the high fern, so as to get within shot unperceived, when on a sudden the animal, which had been quietly feeding, bounded away and disappeared in the thicket. At the same time Jacob perceived a small body of horse galloping through the glen in which the buck had been feeding. Jacob had never ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... an elegant little tree from Japan. Its foliage is almost fern-like in its delicacy. It is a free grower, and in ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... Hemlock spruce of America; which, while growing by itself in open ground, is the most wilful and fantastic, as well as the most graceful, of all the firs; imitating the shape, not of its kindred, but of an enormous tuft of fern. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Chinese embroidery in imperial yellow, and a neutral mauve carpet. The effect, with glittering iridescent pyramids of glass, massive frosted repousse silver, burnished gold-plate and a wide table decoration of orchids and fern, was tropical and intense. It was evident to Linda that the Feldts were very ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... part visited, will not fail to repay you for the certain disappointment to be experienced within the streets of the town. Portions of the scenery, from these heights, are not unlike those in Derbyshire, about Matlock. There is plenty of rock, of shrubs, and of fern; while another Derwent, less turbid and muddy, meanders below. Thus much for a general, but hasty sketch of the town of Vire. My next shall give you some detail of the interior of a few of the houses, of which I may be said to have hitherto only ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... exqusite black-and-gilt Etruscan patera filled with white anemones; on another table near by stood a silver one filled with the same flowers, pink and yellow. Each was circled round the edge with fringing masses of maiden-hair fern. Every lounge and chair had a low, broad foot-stool before it, ruffled with the chintz; and in one corner of the room were a square pink and white and green Moorish rug, with ten or a dozen chintz-covered pillows, piled up in a sort of chair-shaped ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... on for about an hour, till we were in a denser forest than I had yet seen. Creepers innumerable hung down from the boughs, twisting round them, and forming a complete network in all directions; while huge fern-leaved plants covered the ground, waving gracefully above our heads. We were in a complete labyrinth of shrubs, plants, and creepers, out of which alone I could certainly never have extricated myself. "No fear, me find a way," said Chickango, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... diameter and redwoods even larger. One such he passed, a twister that was at least ten or eleven feet through. The trail led straight to a small dam where was the intake for the pipe that watered the vegetable garden. Here, beside the stream, were alders and laurel trees, and he walked through fern-brakes higher than his head. Velvety moss was everywhere, out of which grew maiden-hair and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... hill stream which was pouring noisily down in a flood made turgid by the rain, and the "rough bit of bog and boulder" was a sort of natural bridge across the torrent, formed by heaps of earth and rock, out of which masses of wet fern and plumy meadow-sweet sprang in tall tufts and garlands, which though beautiful to the eyes in day-time, were apt to entangle the feet in walking, especially when there was only the uncertain glimmer of the stars by ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... finished visiting each other, and Mr. MacAngus had given them, speaking as an old campaigner, some very useful if simple hints, such as always pitching the tent with its back to the wind; and keeping inside a supply of dry wood to light the fires with; and tying fern on Moses's head, against the flies; and carrying cabbage leaves in their own hats, against the heat; and walking with long staves instead of short walking sticks—after this he made them all sit round their fire, and sketched them, and the picture hangs at this very ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... Richmond Hill or Windsor Terrace,—nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual summer—or of the Hesperides, (if they were flat, and not close to Atlas,) golden apples and all, I would give away in an instant, for one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady fern. ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... BED. The following characteristic lines are from the pen of Fanny Fern, and contain such good advice that we cannot refrain from quoting them: "Not with a reproof for any of the day's sins of omission or commission. Take any other time than bed-time for that. If you ever heard a little creature sighing ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... light. In the hollows we met with superb ferns growing on stems some twenty feet in height, and about the thickness of a boat-oar. It then throws out a number of leaves in every direction, four or five feet in length, very similar in appearance to the common fern. Another curious tree had a stem sixteen feet long; after which it branched out in long spiral leaves which hung down on all sides, resembling those of the larger kinds of grass. From the centre of the leaves sprang a foot-stalk twenty feet in length, exactly like the sugar-cane, and terminating ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... verse witch crease built calf search script eaves squint half fern guess heave live talk kern start leap stick walk sperm wrath knee cliff chalk serve floor spleen writ lawn were czar have bronze daub herb haunch frank buzz fault strength flaunt slake snatch spawn sneak haunt smack dredge drift purse sharp clamp church ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... still; They will search all about till the sunlight slips out And the trees stand frowning and chill. "The flowers," they will say, "have all vanished, And where can the fairies be fled That played in the fern?"—The flowers will return, But I fear that ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... Verkimier with enthusiasm. "Look at zat tree-fern. You have not'ing like zat in England—eh! I have found nearly von hoondred specimens of ferns. Zen, look at zee fruit-trees. Ve have here, you see, zee Lansat, Mangosteen, Rambutan, Jack, Jambon, Blimbing ant many ozers—but zee queen of fruits is zee Durian. ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... ear— They are you, and only you. And those other nameless two Walking in Arcadian air— She that was so very fair? She that had the twilight hair?— They were you, dear, only you. If I speak of night or day, Grace of fern or bloom of grape, Hanging cloud or fountain spray, Gem or star or glistening dew, Or of mythologic shape, Psyche, Pyrrha, Daphne, say— I mean you, ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... there was a slip of soil, a helpless clutch at fern and heather, a cry of terror, and he was alone on the headland. The black swirl was closing over the ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... out of the village, and paused among the trees and fern on the summit of the hill above, to take breath, and to look down at the beautiful sea. Suddenly the captain gave his leg a resounding slap, and cried, "Never knew such a right thing in all ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... no one understood the cool nature of that organ better than Melanie herself. The ladies in the apartment at the Archangel had lingered at their breakfast, the austerity of which had been mitigated by a center decoration of orchids and fern, fresh-touched with dew; or so Madame Reynier had described them to Melanie, as she brought them to her with the card of Mr. Lloyd-Jones. Miss Reynier smiled faintly, admired ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... 3 Carnations and 1 Maiden-Hair Fern gracing the center of the Board, the terrified Guests saw a Wagon-Load of tropical Bloom which pleased them very much as soon as each had secreted a new kind of Cocktail, served in a Goblet, with a Stick of Dynamite substituted ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... and set out again over the bracken-covered hill-side. Another half-mile and they had reached the bourne of their expedition. The narrow track through the gorse and fern widened suddenly into a lane, a lane with very high, unmortared walls, over which grew a variety of bramble with a particularly luscious fruit. Every connoisseur of blackberries knows what a difference there is between the little hard seedy ones that commonly ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... and, perhaps, unreasonably irritating to him. He could not bear to hear him speak with trembling voice and gleaming eyes of the grand mountains and the silent corries around Ben-Nevis, the red deer trooping over the misty steeps, and the brown hinds lying among the green plumes of fern, and the wren and the thrush lilting in ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... slices of bread on top of the stove," she explained. "She said she always makes toast that way, and no one could tell the difference! I never heard of such a thing—did you, Manley? But I've been attending a cooking school ever since you left Fern Hill. I didn't tell you—I wanted it for a surprise. I could have done better with the toast before a wood fire—I think poor Arline was nearly distracted at the way I poked coals down from the ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... telegraphed for a waggonette to meet them, and they started on their drive in high spirits. It was a lovely July evening, and the air was delicate with the scent of the pine-woods. Now and then they heard a wood pigeon brooding over its own sweet voice, or saw, deep in the rustling fern, the burnished breast of the pheasant. Little squirrels peered at them from the beech-trees as they went by, and the rabbits scudded away through the brushwood and over the mossy knolls, with their white tails in the air. As they entered the avenue of ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... pass. In truth, she would have had little of her lover's company, if she had liked the chaunt of the choristers better than the cry of the hounds: yet I know not; for they were companions from the cradle, and reciprocally fashioned each other to the love of the fern and the foxglove. Had either been less sylvan, the other might have been more saintly; but they will now never hear matins but those of the lark, nor reverence vaulted aisle but that of the greenwood canopy. They are twin plants ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... or other material as therein described, covering with moss, chaff, leaves or some other light substance. The clog should be fully twice as heavy as that used for the fox. Some trappers rub the traps with "brake leaves," sweet fern, or even skunk's cabbage. Gloves should always be worn in handling the traps, and all tracks should be obliterated as much as if a fox were the object sought ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... brilliant in color, and singular in abundance. The form of the larger cottages, being frequently that of a cross, would hurt the eye by the sharp angles of the roof, were it not for the cushion-like vegetation with which they are rounded and concealed. Varieties of the fern sometimes relieve the massy forms of the stonecrop, with their light and delicate leafage. Windows in the roof are seldom met with. Of the chimney I ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... "I thought fern would suit your hair better than anything else," said Tom; "and so I got these leaves," and he picked out two ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... for him his first jacket, and that, though he succeeded in sewing on one sleeve to the hole at the shoulder, where it ought to be, he committed the slight mistake of sewing on the other sleeve to one of the pocket-holes. Poor Andrew Fern had heard that his townsman's sloop had been captured by a privateer, and, fidgety with impatience till he had communicated the intelligence where he thought it would tell most effectively, he called on the master's wife, to ask whether she had not heard that all the wind-bound vessels had got ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... the Sheep Eaters had passed. The silent night became more silent, the owl ceased calling to his mate, the coyote skulked into his lair, the birds ceased their chirping, the great forest trees seemed in a trance, not a flower or fern moved, all ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... like gauzy butterflies. The hard, bitter feeling was getting pretty bad, when the maid brought in a box of flowers. Before she could speak, Annie had the cover off, and all were exclaiming at the lovely roses, heath, and fern within. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... and a half kilometres. We passed signs of Indian habitation. There were abandoned palm-leaf shelters on both banks. On the left bank we came to two or three old Indian fields, grown up with coarse fern and studded with the burned skeletons of trees. At the mouth of a brook which entered from the right some sticks stood in the water, marking the site of an old fish-trap. At one point we found the tough vine hand-rail of an Indian bridge running right across the river, a couple ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... bloom of the grass; in time to come the furrow, as it were, shall open, and the great buttercup of the waters will show a broad palm of gold. You never know what will come to the net of the eye next—a bud, a flower, a nest, a curled fern, or whether it will be in the woodland or by the meadow path, at the water's side or on the dead dry heap of fagots. There is no settled succession, no fixed and formal order—always the unexpected; and you cannot say, 'I ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... magnificent, while everywhere the country was covered with beautiful trees, among them the pandanus palm, the tree-fern, the banyan, the bread-fruit tree, wild nutmeg, and superb bamboos. The natives also were very well-behaved and quiet, and were always inclined to treat us hospitably. Indeed, we might have travelled without the slightest risk from one end of the island to the other. ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... embittered, disappointed, old maids of New England. The noble apology which Edmund Burke once offered for his countrymen always recurs to my mind when I hear these 'women's conventions' alluded to: 'Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, while thousands of great cattle repose beneath the shade of the British oak, chew the cud, and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the silvery trunks and fragile twigs which looked like lacework against a background of blue shadow. Thick hollies and rhododendrons planted near the wayside kept off the light wind, and dead leaves and withered fern made patches of glowing colour. When they came to a gate leading to a drive through ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... peacock and a bird of paradise, lift their proud and haughty heads above an impenetrable growth which, the guides tell us, is the home of tigers, rhinoceroses, panthers, bears, wild hogs, buffaloes, deer and all sorts of beasts, and snakes as big around as a barrel. Fern trees are lovely, and are found here in their greatest glory, but nevertheless we have foliage at home, and they are no more beautiful than our elms, oaks, and other trees that I ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... which they were assigned. In the poetry of our enlightened times, the characteristics of all seasons, soils, and climates may be blended together with much benefit to the author's fame as an original genius. The cowslip of a civic poet is always in blossom, his fern is always in full feather; he gathers the celandine, the primrose, the heath-flower, the jasmine, and the chrysanthemum all on the same day and from the same spot; his nightingale sings all the year round, his moon is always ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... of July when Margaret returned home. The forest trees were all one dark, full, dusky green; the fern below them caught all the slanting sunbeams; the weather was sultry and broodingly still. Margaret used to tramp along by her father's side, crushing down the fern with a cruel glee, as she felt it yield under her light foot, and send up the fragrance peculiar ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... ascension of the night We heard the mellow lapsing and return Of night-owls purring in their groundling flight Through lanes of darkling fern. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... "El Liceo," 1838. The Duque de Rivas may have been influenced by our text, but such introductions were a Romantic commonplace. See M. Fernndez y Gonzlez, "Crnicas romanescas de Espaa. Don Miguel de Maara, memorias del tiempo de Carlos V," Paris, 1868. The story begins "Era la media noche"; and, later, "Haca mucho tiempo que ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... fearing to hesitate, the boy got over the low wall and stood on the narrow edge of the old, crumbling, fern-hung shaft, and the next moment he was being lowered down, Joe turning a little faint from excitement as the upturned face disappeared, and he watched the rope glide through the man's ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... committed. Damage was also received from the little stock which remained alive; the owners, not having wherewith to feed them, were obliged to turn them loose to browse among the grass and shrubs, or turn up the ground for the fern-root; and as they wandered without any one to prevent their doing mischief, they but too often found an easy passage over fences and through barriers which were now grown weak and perishing. It was however ordered, that the stock should be kept up during the night, and every damage ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... for there arose a crack-cracking as of men coming closer among the scrub of heather and fern which surrounded the Dower House, only it was quite momentary. The stick which she had half-lifted, an unconscious act of readiness for defence, tapped back on to the floor, and my sword-point made a sharper rattle, though I was unaware that my hand had even ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... which she can lend to beauty. She was not ignorant of the lightest graces; she whose eye could embrace such vast proportions, had stooped to study the glowing illuminations painted upon the wings of the fragile butterfly. She had traced the symmetrical and marvellous network which the fern extends as a canopy over the wood strawberry; she had listened to the murmuring of streams through the long reeds and stems of the water-grass, where the hissing of the "amorous viper" may be heard; she had followed ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... the Burn, We play the sad 'two more'; How often at the turn, The heather must we spurn; How oft we've 'topped and swore,' In bent and whin and fern! ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... o' the cromlech and cairn, Where blossoms the thistle by hillocks o' fern; There Freedom in triumph an altar has made For holiest rites in the land o' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... several minutes together. They moreover share the business of incubation, taking day and night duty on the eggs, which, two in number, are laid on the bare ground without any pretence of a nest, and generally on open commons in the neighbourhood of patches of fern-brake. Like the owls, these birds sleep during the day and are active only when the sun goes down. It is this habit of seeking their insect food only in the gloaming which makes nightjars among the most difficult of birds to study from life, and all accounts of their feeding habits ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... in striking here," and Friedel sprang to withhold Koppel, who had lighted a bundle of dried fern ready to thrust ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and daisy sweetly bloomed, Hemlock and fern, in rank luxuriance spread; Where rose and lily once the air perfumed, Wild dock and nettle sprout, no fragrance shed: And here no more the throstle's mellow lay Awakes with gladsome song ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... and shine of sea, Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It wasn't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Lomond now that I had so beloved a companion for my rambles. I visited with my father every delightful spot, either on the islands, or by the side of the tree-sheltered waterfalls; every shady path, or dingle entangled with underwood and fern. My ideas were enlarged by his conversation. I felt as if I were recreated and had about me all the freshness and life of a new being: I was, as it were, transported since his arrival from a narrow spot of earth into a universe ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... strike, the young coco-nut sends up at first a fine rosette of big spreading leaves, not raised as afterwards on a tall stem, but springing direct from the ground in a wide circle, something like a very big and graceful fern. In this early stage nothing can be more beautiful or more essentially tropical in appearance than a plantation of young coco-nuts. Their long feathery leaves spreading out in great clumps from the buried stock, and waving with lithe motion before the strong sea-breeze of the Indies, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... banks of Lough Ness, a water about eighteen miles long, but not, I think, half a mile broad. Our horses were not bad, and the way was very pleasant; the rock, out of which the road was cut, was covered with birch-trees, fern, and heath. The lake below was beating its bank by a gentle wind, and the rocks beyond the water, on the right, stood sometimes horrid, and wild, and sometimes opened into a kind of bay, in which there ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... in air near the rocks. The Cove lay in sunshine, its rough stone chimneys and rude slate roofs overgrown with moss and fern, rising rapidly, one above the other, in the fast descending hollow, through which a little stream rushed to the sea,—more quietly than its brother, which, at some space distant, fell sheer down over the crag in a white ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inquisitive fellow, who gave me the Indian names of the birds and plants that we met. The water-ousel he knew well and he seemed to like the sweet singer, which he called "Sussinny." He showed me how strips of the stems of the beautiful maidenhair fern were used to adorn baskets with handsome brown bands, and pointed out several plants good to eat, particularly the large saxifrage growing abundantly along the river margin. Once I rushed suddenly upon him to see if he would be frightened; but he unflinchingly ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... passion for such pillaging expeditions, and Cicely, who had discovered that her step-father knew almost as much about birds and squirrels as Miss Brent did about flowers, was not to be appeased till Amherst had scrambled into the pony-cart, wedging his long legs between a fern-box and a lunch-basket, and balancing a Scotch terrier's telescopic body across ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... stooping to pluck the withered frond of a fern that grew in the path. When she looked up at him again all the ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... fern-bordered wood road attracted me; I reasoned that it must lead, by a short cut, across the hills to the military highway which passed between Trois-Feuilles and La Trappe. So I took it, and presently came into four cross-roads ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... 'tis merry in gay greenwood, When the little birds are singing, When the buck is belling in the fern, And the hare ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... species of heath-berries, cranberries, bilberries, &c., furnishing the poor with a source of profit, and the rich of luxury. What a pleasure it is to throw ourselves down beneath the verdant screen of the beautiful fern, or the shade of a venerable oak, in such a scene, and listen to the summer sounds of bees, grasshoppers, and ten thousand other insects, mingled with the more remote and solitary cries of the pewit and the curlew! Then, to think of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... are told how the common break-fern flowers but once a year, at midnight, on Michaelmas Eve, when it displays a small blue flower, which vanishes at the approach of dawn. According to a piece of folk-lore current in Bohemia and the Tyrol, the fern-seed shines like glittering ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer |
