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Moss   Listen
verb
Moss  v. t.  (past & past part. mossed; pres. part. mossing)  To cover or overgrow with moss. "An oak whose boughs were mossed with age."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Moss" Quotes from Famous Books



... tried to think; but she fell asleep instead and dreamt that she had fallen off Rupert and was lying on the moss beside the river, quite comfortable and most absurdly content. When she woke the sister was standing beside her, and nodded with ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... a vast region; and everywhere they are such dense woods, and so still, and so piney and fragrant. The stems of the trees are trim and straight, and in many places all the ground is hidden for miles under a thick cushion of moss of a vivid green color, with not a decayed or ragged spot in its surface, and not a fallen leaf or twig to mar its immaculate tidiness. A rich cathedral gloom pervades the pillared aisles; so the stray flecks of sunlight that strike a trunk here and a bough yonder are strongly accented, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... dressings have recently been introduced—bassorin and plasment; the former is made from gum tragacanth, and the latter from Irish moss. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... receptacle, make an unusual show window attraction. Secure two glass vessels having straight sides of the same height, one 18 in. in diameter (Fig. 1) and the other 12 in. in diameter (Fig. 2). The smaller is placed within the larger, the bottoms being covered with moss and aquarium decorations which can be purchased at a bird store. Fill the 3-in. space between the vessels with water. Cut a piece of galvanized screen into circular form to cover the larger vessel, and hang a bird swing, A, Fig. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... crown the deer-park sloping upward to the rear of Ecclesfield Manor. Mr. Bruce walks across a darkened room to throw the window open for a gasp of fresh evening air, laden with the perfume of pinks, carnations, and moss-roses in the garden below. Her garden! Is it possible? Something in the action reminds him of that bright, hopeful morning at Calais. Something in the scent of the flowers steals to his brain, half torpid and benumbed; his heart contracts with an agony of physical ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... death! Yet, so courts and ceremonies are instituted. One of the hardest battles that reform has to fight is this battle in the air—so to speak: this contest with taste and imagination that cling to the myriad-hued moss and the delicate vine fringe upon the ogre's castle, and that find the donjon so much more picturesque than ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... rejoiced to find in Paradise. Balder took the hint, and without more ado threw himself down there, while Gnulemah half knelt, half sat beside him, propped on her arm, her warm fingers buried in the cool moss. The little master-of-ceremonies remained, with a fine sense of propriety, between the two, preening and fluttering his brilliant feathers and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... remark to make to an old tree with moss on his branches," said the oak. "I am beginning to regret that I was so kind to you. If you have a scrap of honour in your composition, just have the goodness to move your leaves a little to one side. Last year, there were hardly any ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald

... lower limit of the clouds; and in consequence, an abundant cryptogamic vegetation, and a few flowers cover the summit. On the hills near Lima, at a height but little greater, the ground is carpeted with moss, and beds of beautiful yellow lilies, called Amancaes. This indicates a very much greater degree of humidity, than at a corresponding height at Iquique. Proceeding northward of Lima, the climate becomes damper, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... letters and despatches of the day, which prove that the Reformer's memory, though picturesque, had, in the course of fifteen years, become untrustworthy. He is the chief source of the usual version of Solway Moss. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... miles along the highway, then up a trail where the Gomez brushed the undergrowth on each side as it desperately dug into moss, rain-gutted ruts, loose rocks, all on a vicious slant which seemed to push the car down again. Beside them, the mountain woods were sacredly quiet, with fern and lily and green-lit spaces. They came out in a clearing, before dusk. Beside the clearing was a brook, with a crude cradle—sign ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... the polls. John Gage, chairman of the Woman Suffrage Association of Vineland, called a meeting, and though the day was an inclement one, there was a good attendance. A number of earnest men as well as women addressed the audience. Among them were Colonel Moss of Missouri, and James M. Scovel of Camden, State senator, who strengthened us by their words of earnest eloquence. At 7:30 A. M., November 3, John and Portia Gage and myself entered Union Hall, where the judges of election had already established themselves for the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... plants may be found, and, at that time will have large brown or greenish brown buds in great abundance, all very neatly wrapped up in conical rolls. A basket should be carefully filled with these tubers, without shaking all the earth from them, and some of the flakiest and greenest pieces of moss that can be found adhering to the rocks must also be put ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various

... your impudence, you self-satisfied little moss-weaver;" saying which the thrush gave the new-comer such a dig in the back with his hard bill, that the finch flew off in a hurry, vowing that he would pass no more opinions ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn

... the stalk is mother's dress, and the outside green of the moss roses is the same goods, only it 's our roundabouts. I meant to make 'em red, when I marked the pattern, and then fill out round 'em with a light color; but now I ain't satisfied with anything but white, for nothing ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... built a rough shelter of rocks against the wind. After a time the exhausted horse got up, but there was no forage, and the two animals stood disconsolate, or made small hopeless excursions, noses to the ground, among the moss and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... is one picture. Large trees are about us, and from their branches hang gray filaments of moss, while great creepers, like monstrous serpents, curl around the trunks and writhe in tangles through the air. And all about is the mud, soft mud, that bubbles forth gases, and that heaves and sighs ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... never seen Miss Denham in any but a dark travelling-dress, or in such unobtrusive costume as a modest girl may wear at a hotel table. He stood motionless an instant, seeing her in a trailing robe of some fleecy, maize-colored material, with a cluster of moss-roses at her corsage and a cross of diamonds at her throat. She was without other ornament. The shade of her dress made her hair and eyes and complexion wonderful. Lynde was proud to have her look like that for Flemming, though he was himself affected by a queer impression ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Bury telling him that I have been unwell, and that I send my kind regards and respects to him. I send dear Hen a paper in company with this, in which I have enclosed specimens of the heather, the moss and the fern, or 'raineach,' of ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... Saint Cloud Wherein John's picture of her grew To be a Salon masterpiece — Till the rain fell that would not cease. Through one long alley how they raced! — 'T was gold and brown, and all a waste Of matted leaves, moss-interlaced. Shades of mad queens and hunter-kings And thorn-sharp feet of dryad-things Were company to their wanderings; Then rain and darkness on them drew. The rich folks' motors honked and flew. They hailed an old cab, heaven ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... for the newly affluent in the days when the Poodle Dog flourished and flaunted in the hull of a wreck, in the days when that Chinatown site was Rialto and Market-place for the overgrown mining camp. The wall moss which blew in with the trade winds, and the semi-tropic growth of old ivies and rose-bushes, had given to these houses the seasoning of two centuries. Unpretentious hovels beside the structures of stone ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... talking again of last night's "problems" (more briefly this time), about the impending revolution, the weary expression never once leaving his face. He was smothered in perspiration and dust, his voice was hoarse, and his clothes were covered all over with bits of wood shavings and pieces of green moss. The labourers stood by silently, half afraid and half amused. Nejdanov glanced at Markelov, and Ostrodumov's remark, "What is the good of it all? All the same, it will have to be altered afterwards," flashed across his mind. One ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... all events, it seemed to Redclyffe that the ancient knight had purposed a good thing, and in a measurable degree had effected it; for here stood the venerable edifice securely founded, bearing the moss of four hundred years upon it; and though wars, and change of dynasties, and religious change, had swept around it, with seemingly destructive potency, yet here had the lodging, the food, the monastic privileges ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... laid its kind touch of forgetfulness upon mind and body. At first she lost herself leaning against the cedar tree, waking up by turns to place herself better; and at last yielding to the overpowering influences without and within, she curled her head down upon a thick bed of moss at her side and gave herself up to such rest as ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... flowers was to find out their names—the first conscious pleasure,—and then I began to see so many that I had not previously noticed. Once you wish to identify them there is nothing escapes, down to the little white chickweed of the path and the moss of the wall. I put my hand on the bridge across the brook to lean over and look down into the water. Are there any fish? The bricks of the pier are covered with green, like a wall-painting to the surface of the stream, mosses along the lines of the mortar, and among ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... subject of an artist, foreground and all. The prevailing hues were light red and purple-grey, the rocks being finely interlaced with a small-leaved creeper of the brightest green. A dark-coloured moss, which presents a warm green in the sun, covered the lower masses and relieved and supported the brighter hues, while a brilliant iris shone steadily in the spray, and blended into perfect harmony the lighter hues of the higher ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... on the ground, and some of the red coals lit a tuft of dried moss that flared up, as all the Council drew back in terror before ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... boulder, half overgrown with moss and lichen, offered a tempting resting-place, and flinging herself down on the yielding turf beside it, she leaned back and drew out ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... exclaimed the other, seating herself by the fire. "I don't know that I've any claim to look better than Mrs. Moss. I suppose she and I are about on a level in understanding and education, if the truth were told. Your uncle ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... rivers, but will not Damon's strong true love enable him to carry Sweetheart over them? There may be dragons and dangers in the path, but shall not his courageous sword cut them down? Then at eve, how they will rest cuddled together, like two pretty babes in the wood, the moss their couch, the stars their canopy, their arms their mutual pillows! This is the wise plan young folks make when they set out on the love journey; and—O me!—they have not got a mile when they come to a great wall and find they must walk back again. They ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... out their tale, to Mrs. Moss's great amusement; for she saw in it only some playmate's prank, and was not much impressed by the mysterious sneeze ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... in aerial fleets and sailed away, white in a blue sky. The sun, swinging in a low arc, cocked a lazy eye over the southern peaks, and Hollister carried his first pack-load up to the log cabin while the moss underfoot, the tree trunks, the green blades of the salal, and the myriad stalks of the low thickets were still gleaming with the white frost that came ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... those chiefly between the girls. Flora gathered some hoary clematis, and red berries, and sought in the hedge-sides for some crimson "fairy baths" to carry home; and, at the sight of the amusement Margaret derived from the placing the beauteous little Pezizas in a saucer of damp green moss, so as to hide the brown sticks on which they grew, Ethel took shame to herself for want of perception of little attentions. When she told Norman so, he answered, "There's no one who does see what is the right thing. How horrid the room looks! Everything is nohow!" added he, looking round ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... man stamped his foot, and the striking of his foot upon the moss made a new noise such as Jurgen had never heard: for the noise seemed to come multitudinously from every side, at first as though each leaf in the forest were tinily cachinnating; and then this noise was swelled by the mirth of larger creatures, and echoes played with this noise, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... scattered by the cavalry, and since that day, with some interludes, Claverhouse had been engaged in the inglorious work of dispersing Presbyterian Conventicles gathered in remote places among the hills, or searching the moss-hags for outlawed preachers. It was a poor business for one who had seen war on the grand scale under the Prince of Orange, and had fought in battles where eighteen thousand men were left on the field. War was not the ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... presentiment of death appears, even in the morning hour of creation, to have impressed its seal upon this country. The vast shadows of the dark mountain masses fall upon valleys where nothing but moss grows; upon lakes whose still waters are full of never-melted ice—thus the Cold Valley, the Cold Lake (Koledal and Koldesjoe), with their dead, grey-yellow shores. The stillness of death reigns in this wilderness, interrupted ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... are cruel, but others are gentle and good to all the creatures of the earth. One of these good magicians was one day traveling in a great forest. The sun rose high in the heavens, and he lay down at the foot of a tree. Soft, green moss grew all about him. The sun shining through the leaves made flecks of light and shadow upon the earth. He heard the song of the bird and the lazy buzz of the wasp. The wind rustled the leafy boughs above him. All the music of the ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook

... force, That gives me not a chance To fill my natural course; With mathematic rod Economising God; Calling me to pre-ordered circumstance Nor suffering me to dance Over the pleasant gravel, With music solacing my travel— With music, and the baby buds that toss In light, with roots and sippets of the moss!" ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... suddenly on Monsieur Joseph's out-buildings, with no gates or barriers, things unknown in Anjou. Tall oaks and birches, delicate and grey, leaned across the cream-coloured walls and the high grey stone roofs where orange moss grew thickly. Low arched doorways with a sandy court between them led into the kitchen on one side, the stables on the other. Beyond these again, in the broad still sunshine, standing squarely alone in a broad space of ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... in a wild, unknown to public view, From youth to age, a reverend hermit grew; The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell, His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well; Remote from man, with God he passed his days, Prayer all his ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... had sent to read a manifesto to the army, had been appointed its general—upon which the new bands, disgusted in their turn, fell into a forced retreat, and getting involved in the broken ground of Solway Moss were there pursued and surrounded by the English, miserably defeated and put to flight. "There was but ane small number slain in the field," says Pitscottie, "to wit, there was slain on both sides but twenty-four, whereof was nine Scottishmen and fifteen ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... green shore beneath the woods and rocks, the reflections of tree and crag and grassy slope were dropping down and down, unearthly clear and far, to that inverted heaven in the 'steady bosom' of the water. A little breeze came wandering, bringing delicious scents of grass and moss, and in the lake the fish ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... world—our own country and France—that can put England into this singular state. It is the united sensitiveness of a people extremely well-to-do, careful of their country's honor, most anxious for the preservation of the cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and incompetent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to judge when ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... apparatus, tents, guns, ammunition, and the goat. Poor old thing! she had suffered dreadfully from sea-sickness, and I thought a run ashore might do her good. On the left-hand side of the bay, between the foot of the mountain and the sea, there ran a low flat belt of black moss, about half a mile broad; and as this appeared the only point in the neighbourhood likely to offer any attraction to reindeer, it was on this side that I determined to land. My chief reason for having run into English Bay rather than Magdalena Bay was because we had been told ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... Wilcox, calling herself Mrs. Demarest, lives in a charming old house surrounded by box hedges, paved paths lead through beds of old-fashioned sweet-scented flowers, stocks and wall flowers and mignonette and moss roses, lavender, myrtle, thyme and sweet geranium. Mr. Demarest, it appears, could not bear the wonderful new varieties ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... this little firstling half enough. When at the maturity of its charms, it is certainly the gem of the woods. What an individuality it has! No two clusters alike; all shades and sizes.... A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye. Then,...there are individual hepaticas, or individual families among them, that are ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... the edge of the forest. Hepaticas watched them with their eyes of blue. Violets marked their tread. The frontiers of the daylight softly closed behind them. A thousand trees opened a way to let them pass, and moss twelve inches thick took their footsteps silently as birds. They came presently to a little clearing where the pines stood in a circle and let in a space of sky. Looking up, all three saw the first small stars ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... girl, her husband's child, stood between her and her own honour, her own safety. Once the girl was removed, she would have no further fear, no apprehension, no hideous forebodings concerning the imminent future. She saw it all as she walked along that moss-grown forest-road, her eyes fixed straight before her. The tempter at her side had urged her to commit a dastardly, an unpardonable crime. In that man's hands she was, alas! as wax. He poured into her ear a vivid picture ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... coaches being officers. Only when a unique character like Sandy appears is the monotony shattered. Sandy is often humorous in his most serious moments. One afternoon not many weeks before the Navy game Sandy, as Crolius tells it, was paying particular attention to Moss, a guard whom Sanford tried to teach to play low. Moss was very tall and had never appreciated the necessity of bending his knees and straightening his back. Sanford disgusted with Moss as he saw him standing nearly erect in a scrimmage, and Sandy's ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... in cure by sympathy, however, is much older than DIGBY'S or TALBOT'S Sympathetic Powder. PARACELSUS described an ointment consisting essentially of the moss on the skull of a man who had died a violent death, combined with boar's and bear's fat, burnt worms, dried boar's brain, red sandal-wood and mummy, which was used to cure (?) wounds in a similar manner, being applied to the weapon with which the hurt had been inflicted. With reference ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... link that connected the people of Wythburn with the world outside. To the north of the city and the mere there lived a family of sheep farmers who were known as the Rays of Shoulthwaite Moss. The family consisted of husband and wife and two sons. The head of the house, Angus Ray, came to the district early in life from the extreme Cumbrian border. He was hardly less than a giant in stature. He had ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... little rest before we tackle the last round," begged Bandy-legs, as they arrived alongside the landmark mentioned by Obed; and without waiting for the others to assent he dropped his pack, and threw himself down on an especially inviting bit of moss, heaving a great sigh of relief; for be it known, Bandy-legs was not especially "mountain out of a mole-hill," as Steve aptly put it, when referring to ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place or giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed; or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and, frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... therefore venture not to say what may be the aspect of the Llanberries; but the only verdure I beheld, was that of short, brown heathy grass, a few stunted furze-bushes, and patches of that vividly green moss, which is spongy and full of water. The only living inhabitants of these wilds were a few ruffian-like miners, two or three black slugs, and a scanty flock of straggling half-starved mountain sheep, with their brown, ropy coats. The guide told me, that even eagles, had for three centuries ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... would be observed. Furniture, apparently home-made, yet neat, pretty, and suitable; chairs and settees of the cana brava, or South American bamboo; bedsteads of the same, with beds of the elastic Spanish moss, and ponchos for coverlets; mats woven from fibres of another species of palm, with here and there a swung hammock. In addition, some books and pictures that appeared to have been painted on the spot; a bound ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... rivulet flows; Greener than moss tiny grass grows. No one call at my humble cottage on the rock, But the gate by itself ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... soil rose very slightly above the green turf; at its head, a small stone cross, roughly hewn, was let into the masonry itself. The grave of Hubert Cochrane was not obtrusive: in a few months it would have merged again into the greensward, and its humble memorial symbol would be covered with moss and lichen like the matrix of stone which ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... and I went on undisturbed. The sharply sloping mountain-side, very wild and rugged, was strewn with great fragments of rock which had fallen from the heights above, and which, lying there for ages beneath the trees, had come to be moss-grown and half hidden by bushes and fallen leaves. In the dim light that filtered through the branches, walking in so uncertain a place was attended with a good deal of danger; for not only was there a likelihood of falls leading to broken legs, but broken ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... the wall was pointed like a house roof, and immediately below him was covered by a thick growth of green moss, and it flashed through his mind as he hung there that maybe it would offer a very slippery foothold for one dropping upon the steep slopes of the top. But it was too late to ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... Through moss and fern and tangled trees Twelve panting creatures broke, And bending low their stately knees They knelt beneath ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown

... so softly and sweetly and said: "Little slender Goldenrods, I am going to give you something to do that will win you great honour among all who understand. In the thick woods the moss on the trunk shows the north side; when the tree is alone and in the open, the north side is known by its few branches; but on the open prairie, there is no plant that stands up like a finger post to point the north for travellers, while the sun ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... nearly noon that day, and Uncle Wiggily was about to sit down on a nice green mossy bank in the woods—not a toy bank with money in it, you understand, but a dirt-bank, with moss on it like a carpet. That's where ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis

... thing around them, not a fly, not a moss upon the rocks. Neither seal nor sea gull dare come near, lest the ice should clutch them in its claws. The surge broke up in foam, but it fell again in flakes of snow; and it frosted the hair of ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... the rocks along the shore, covered with seaweed and moss, present an unsightly appearance; but when the tide comes in, these unsightly things are all covered with water, which present the appearance of a sea of glass. When the grace of God is low in our soul, the unseemly parts ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... and his armies were turned as they came down the slope. It lay beneath them, grave with seared antiquity, with old-world gables stained and bent by the lapse of frequent years, with all its chimneys awry. Its roofs were tiled with antique stones covered over deep with moss, each little window looked with a myriad strange cut panes on the gardens shaped with quaint devices and overrun with weeds. On rusted hinges the doors sung to and fro and were fashioned of planks ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... was subjected by being kept in the pickle-jar. In this gravel she had embedded the roots of some Water Crowfoot and other pond-plants. The stones in the middle were nicely arranged, and well covered with moss and water-weeds. When water had been poured in up to the brim of the bell-glass, and we had been emptied out of the jars, the dragon-fly larva got into a good hole among the stones and ate most of the May-fly grubs, water-shrimps, and so forth, as they came into sight. ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... all that company whom the announcement did not cause to start; led by old Sylvester, they hastily rose, and conducted by Mopsey, followed to the scene. Blind Sorrel was lying by the moss-grown horse-trough, ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... worthy of the emulation of the church at large; especially those congregations that seem to take pride in having "itching ears" and the consequent doom of standing vacant and idle half the time, and those perambulating ministers, who remind one of the proverb of the "rolling stone that gathers no moss." ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... directed their course to the furthest visible land, which bore N.W. (true). Cape Berens (the point alluded to) is equated in latitude 69 deg. 4' 12" north, and longitude 90 deg. 35' west. It is formed entirely of granite partially covered with moss. Thirteen miles beyond this they arrived at two narrow points in the small bay, between which they built ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Here a laughing satyr was perched on the top of a fountain, spouting water in a silvery arc. Through a shaded avenue could be seen other secluded spots with marble benches in front of other fountains. In another direction was a grotto where water trickled down gray, moss-covered stones. Far in the distance were cypress trees waving their spear-like tops and standing guard over the coolness and ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various

... waiting in their niches for the gift of violence; scuttling trolls with horse-blanket jackets and alpine hats; deposed patriarchs under the small shelter of black derbies, hiding from persecution behind the Spanish moss of consolidated beards; headless things and thingless heads, importuning, threatening, watching or just standing there, ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler

... the unnatural confinement until it elbows out the exotics. Its charm is gone, unless one find it in its native haunts, beside some cascade which streams over rocks that are dark with moisture, green with moss, and snowy with white bubbles. Each spray of dripping feather-moss exudes a tiny torrent of its own, or braided with some tiny neighbor, above the little water-fonts which sleep sunless in ever-verdant caves. Sometimes along these emerald canals ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... of virtue," he said, pointing with his chin; and, walking round the sundial, he made its acquaintance from the other side. Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow on the turf; tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies clustered thick around its base; it had acquired a look of growing from the soil. "I should like to get hold of that," the stained-glass man remarked; "I don't know when I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... superintended this dreadful business was not satisfied; and upon her refusing the abjuration, she was again plunged into the water, where she expired. It is to be remarked that being at Bothwell Bridge and Air's Moss were among the crimes stated in the indictment of all the three, though, when the last of these affairs happened, one of the girls was only thirteen, and the other not eight years of age. At the time of the Bothwell Bridge business, they were still younger. To recite all the instances ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... from what he had conceived it would be as he sat in the tap-room of some New England old 'Sailor's Home,' with a couple of glasses of Burton ale on the table, listening through the drowsy afternoon to the fact and fiction of some old 'tar,' as the two looked across the white-sanded floor at the old moss-grown dock without, and listened to the salt wavelets splashing against its rotting timbers, and watched the far- distant sails on the outer sea. It is not very difficult to picture to one's self Poe searching among these sailors' lodging-houses ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... of the sun in the sky, the appearance of the bark and moss, and the tops of certain trees, enabled the young woodman to keep a pretty true course. He remarked, with a laugh, that if there was any likelihood of going wrong, ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis

... took advantage of this to sneak forward and smell at it, whereupon the mother seized a heavy piece of wood, and hit the dog such a rap over the nose as sent it away howling. Then she spread a thick layer of soft moss on the wooden board. Above this she laid a very neat, small blanket, about two feet in length. Upon this she placed the baby, which objected at first to go to bed, squalled a good deal, and kicked a little. The mother therefore took it up, turned it over, gave it one or ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne

... or fissure in the cliff almost hidden under exuberant foliage. This passage brought us to a turfy knoll, upon which opened a deep recess in the mountain rock; a picturesque cavern, carpeted with moss, and showing, from some ancient, half obliterated carvings which here and there adorned its walls, that it had once served as a crypt or chapel, possibly in some time of ecclesiastical persecution. At the mouth of this cave, with ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... certain, and ever since the country-people have called it "the haunted house,"—the owners haven't been able to let it since the last tenants left on account of the noises,—so it has fallen into sad decay, and the moss grows on the rotten shingles of the roof, and the clapboards have turned black, and the windows rattle like teeth that chatter with fear, and the walls of the house begin to lean as if its knees were shaking,—take the man who didn't mind the real risk of the cars to that old house, on some dreary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... giving a description of the many simpler devices used for lifting water. In small farmhouses lift and force pumps worked by hand are now introduced, and the old-fashioned, moss-covered draw-bucket, which is neither convenient nor sanitary, is becoming a relic ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... got nearly over a third of the distance down the fig-tree grove before there were the faintest signs of life about him, and there, apparently overcome by the fatigue of his walk, he dropped down upon a moss-grown bank to rest. ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... gold sunshine patching, And streaming and streaking across The gray-green oaks; and catching, By its soft brown beard, the moss. 1833 BAILEY: Festus, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... We landed in a little clearing by the river at the foot of a waterfall hundreds of feet high, towering over us. The forest stood about us on all sides, coming down to the river's brim on the opposite bank and meeting it not far from us on the near bank. The precipice, covered with moss and small bushes, stood ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker

... mossy bank descended to a flat plot of grass with a gravel walk and flower borders on each side, and a broad gravel walk ran along the front of the house. My mother was fond of flowers, and prided herself on her moss-roses, which flourished luxuriantly on the front of the house; but my father, though a sailor, was an excellent florist. He procured the finest bulbs and flower seeds from Holland, and kept each ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... presented by a Belgian employer, burst at a critical moment and crippled him for life. At the very moment of starting, Arnold had trouble with the railway officials. He was taking a quantity of Sphagnum moss in which to wrap the precious things, and they refused to let him carry it by passenger train. The station-master at Waterloo had never felt the atmosphere so warm, they say. In brief, this was a ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... been there only a few minutes—although they seemed hours to her—when she heard the light tread of moccasined feet on the moss behind her. Starting up with a cry of joy she turned and looked up into the astonished face of ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... the brightest glows, Is it redder than the rose? But its sweetest buds are seen Almost hid with moss and green. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... covered with dense, tangled, and almost impenetrable tropical forests, rendering fruitless all attempts at systematic investigation. There are vast tracts untrodden by human feet, or traversed only by Indians who have a superstitious reverence for the moss-covered and crumbling monuments hidden in the depths of the wilderness. * * * For these and other reasons, it will be long before the treasures of the past, in Central America, can become ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... night the moonbeams shone under the moss-draped branches of a live oak in a cemetery. They brought out in snowy whiteness a small headstone on which were engraved the words, "Yes, Vilet." Sitting by the grave and leaning his head against the stone was Kern Watson, but his calm, strong face ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... of war than has the Crystal Palace of Sentiment. The fair fabric which was the type of materialism has fallen, and it would be most unwise to seek its reconstruction. That which was to have stood as long and as firmly as the Pyramids has fallen before the first moss could gather upon it. Nor is the reason of this fall far to seek, as it lies upon the surface, and ought to have been anticipated—would have been, only that men are so ready to believe in what they wish to believe. England, as a nation, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... any painter, and by the obscure laws of their reproduction, studies for any philosopher. Why, there is not a heap of dead leaves among which by picking it through carefully you might not find some twenty species of delicate and elegant land-shells; hardly a tree-foot at which, among the moss and mould, you might not find the chrysalides of beautiful moths, where caterpillars have crawled down the trunk in autumn, to lie there self-buried and die to live again next spring in a new and fairer ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... later I spied the 'big stag' again. He was nearly in the middle of a herd of about twenty, mostly hinds, on the look-out. They were on a large open moss at the bottom of a corrie, whence they could see a moving object on every side of them. A stalk where they were was out of the question. I made up my mind ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... above its mouth; there the fleet halted, tied up, and the troops debarked, and marched out to the highlands back of the town. We were now in a region that was new to us, and we soon saw several novel and strange things. There was a remarkable natural growth, called "Spanish moss," that was very plentiful, and a most fantastic looking thing. It grew on nearly all the trees, was of a grayish-white color, with long, pendulous stems. The lightest puff of air would set it in motion, and on a starlight night, or when the moon was on the wane ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... itself to me. I look with pleasure at the neatly cut walks and grass. I peep in at a window of the church, and think how I am to finish my sermon for next Sunday. I read over the inscriptions on the stones which mark where seven of my predecessors sleep. I look vacantly at the lichens and moss which have overgrown certain tombstones three or four centuries old. And occasionally I think of what and where I shall be, when the village mason, whistling cheerfully at his task, shall cut out my name and ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter (And heaven it knoweth what that may mean; Meaning, however, is no great matter) Where woods are a-tremble with ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... conduct her to his aunt's house; but before they had passed half through the wood, Hermia was so much fatigued, that Lysander, who was very careful of this dear lady, that had proved her affection for him even by hazarding her life for his sake, persuaded her to rest till morning on a bank of soft moss, and lying down himself on the ground at some little distance, they soon fell fast asleep. Here they were found by Puck, who seeing a handsome young man asleep, and perceiving that his clothes were made in the Athenian fashion, and that ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... I hear that he excels, And he insures Immediate cures Of weird, uncanny spells; The most unruly patient Gets docile as a lamb And is freed from ill by the potent skill Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam; Feathers of strangled chickens, Moss from the dank lagoon, And plasters wet With spider sweat In the ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... runs from Bradore in the east to Kegashka in the west. Here, close beside the crowded track of ocean liners, and well below the latitude of London, is by far the most southerly arctic region in the world. It is a land of rock and moss; for, except along the river valleys, there are neither grass nor trees. No crops are grown or ever can be grown. There are no horses, cattle, poultry, pigs or sheep. Reindeer are said to be coming. But there are none at present. The only domestic animals are dogs, that howl like wolves, but never ...
— Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

... I have. I guess I've wandered round too much. Been a sort of rollin' stone; and my granny used to say that a rollin' stone gathers no moss. I've got about enough money to get me to San Francisco, and I own this animal; but I haven't made a fortune yet. What luck have you ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... its heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a baby in lap, while the tall ships are stripping naked to fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-sails banging and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles; beeches, oaks, most numerous;—many of them hung with moss, looking like bearded Druids; some coiled in the clasp of huge, dark-stemmed grape-vines. Open patches where the sun gets in and goes to sleep, and the winds come so finely sifted that they are as soft as swan's down. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... of low organization such as mosses, lichens, diatoms and algae. The animal world, so far as true land-forms are concerned, is limited to types like the protozoa (lowest in the organic scale), rotifera and minute insect-like mites which lurk hidden away amongst the tufts of moss or on the under side of loose stones. Bacteria, most fundamental of all, at the basis, so to speak, of animal and vegetable ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... sense of personal love and aid towards the Lord and Master whom he served grew upon him. Neither the gazelle-eyed Ayesha nor the prosperous village life presented any great temptation. He would have given them all for one bleak day of mist on a Border moss; it was the appalling contrast with the hold of a Moorish galley that at times startled him, together with the only too great probability that he should be utterly incapable of saving poor little ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ourselves on a moss-covered boulder and waited the coming of the sun. With marvellous swiftness, it seemed to me, the light in the east passed into the radiance of early morning, and when the wind awoke and began to whisper ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... to pray still exists, built of red sandstone, a structure of different epochs, where the Norman style and perpendicular Gothic unite. Behind the village rise steep hills, covered with gorse, ferns, heather, and moss. Their highest point quite at the end of the chain, towards Wales, is crowned by Roman earthworks. From thence can be descried the vast plain where flows the Severn, crossed by streams bordered by rows ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... power, mother Kensett vexed her soul in one city, while in another, two young people, happy as birds, held long consultations as to which should be mother's room, just how it should be furnished, and ran here and there with the eagerness of children gathering moss and bits of china, and all rare and pretty things for a play-house under ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... sable veil. Concern, e'en known to be assum'd, our pains Respecting, kinder welcome far acquires Than cold Neglect, or Mirth that Grief profanes. Thus each faint Glow-worm of the Night conspires, Gleaming along the moss'd and darken'd lanes, To cheer the Gloom with her ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... Colonel? What can it matter whether Dickens's clerks talked cockney now that half the duchesses talk American? What would Thackeray have made of an age in which a man in the position of Lord Kew may actually be the born brother of Mr. Moss of Wardour Street? Nor does this apply merely to Thackeray, but to all those Victorians who prided themselves on the realism or sobriety of their descriptions; it applies to Anthony Trollope and, as much as any one, ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... came out in my hand or my foot slipped in the wet notches of the rock, I thought that I was gone. But I struggled upwards, and at last I reached a ledge several feet deep and covered with soft green moss, where I could lie unseen in the most perfect comfort. There I was stretched when you, my dear Watson, and all your following were investigating in the most sympathetic and inefficient manner the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and is breathed by the fish. The water need not be changed for years. The swamps and slow streams afford great numbers of plants. If you know the plants get pond weeds, Canadian water weed, ludwigia, willow moss, or tape grass. (Look in the dictionary for official names of the plants or get special books from the library.) Take some tape grass (vallisneria) to your teacher or doctor and ask him to show you under his microscope how the sap flows and the green coloring matter is deposited. The simplest ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... with a long white beard was standing in the gate, armed with a rusty pike. He wore large spectacles, which were covered with dust. Through the gate I saw the city. A deathly stillness was over all of it. The ways seemed untrodden, and moss was thick on doorsteps; in the market-place huddled figures lay asleep. A scent of incense came wafted through the gateway, of incense and burned poppies, and there was a hum of the echoes of distant bells. I said to the sentinel in the tongue ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany

... branches and twigs have been cut away so as to have but little more than protruding knots. When these are well seasoned, rub, brush and rebrush, both with a soft brush and a stiff one, to remove from every crevice in the bark every loose particle of moss and dust. Then, with liquid gold, gild the bark all over, or, if preferred, gild only the bare wood where it is exposed at the ends and where the limbs are cut off, and give a touch of gold to every crack or ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... stamped with a purity unknown in climates where fine weather is cheap. It was as if the mellow brightness, as tender as that of the primroses which starred the dark waysides like petals wind-scattered over beds of moss, had been meted out to us by the cubic foot—distilled from an alchemist's crucible. From this pastoral abundance we moved upon the more composed scene, the park proper—passed through a second lodge-gate, with weather-worn gilding on its twisted bars, ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James

... your husband's suits. A dream of a dress that would be, with all the shades of Madame Abel cunningly blended. A honeymoon lasts at least a month. The roses would all be out at Long Barton by the time they walked up that moss-grown drive, and stood at the Rectory door, and she murmured in the ear of the Reverend Cecil: "Aren't you ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... was a small, deep pool, skirted with moss and shaded with evergreens; the brook which issued from it ran down the glen, jumping over the rocks in a series of waterfalls, reaching the lake a quarter of a mile distant where it disappeared under a sand-bar, after the manner of the streams that ran into the western ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... with delight a bank covered with flowers so thick that they almost hid the green turf, inviting her to alight and rest. She dismounted from her palfrey, and turned him loose to recruit his strength with the tender grass which bordered the streamlets. Then, in a sheltered nook tapestried with moss and fenced in with roses and hawthorn- flowers, she yielded herself to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... they came to the foot of the mound that was entirely overshadowed by the cedar above, from the outspread limbs of which hung long grey moss, that swayed ceaselessly in the wind. Here dwarfs appeared from right and left, the same whom they had seen within the thickness of the wall, or others like to them, some male and some female; melancholy-eyed little creatures ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... of the western world," and we felt rather sublime and poetical. The trees, generally speaking, are much too close to be either large or well grown; and, moreover, their growth is often stunted by a parasitical plant, for which I could learn no other name than "Spanish moss;" it hangs gracefully from the boughs, converting the outline of all the trees it hangs upon into that of weeping willows. The chief beauty of the forest in this region is from the luxuriant undergrowth of palmetos, which is decidedly the loveliest coloured and most graceful plant ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... letters that burn, the unforgetable date, Fourteen Hundred Ninety-two. He was a part of the great unrest, and he helped cause the great unrest. Every great awakening, every renaissance, is an age of doubt. An age of conservatism is an age of moss, of lichen, of rest, rust and ruin. We grow only as we question. As long as we are sure that the present order is perfect, we button our collars behind, a thing which Columbus, Luther, Melanchthon, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... to the cave. He unscrewed the object glass from Voules's telescope, but in vain tried to obtain a light. The sticks might have burned had a flame once been established. He had, therefore, to go back and search for dry leaves or moss, or some more ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... about three miles, she struck into a deep, dark ravine, through which there rushed a slender stream, whose waters, seldom gladdened by a sunbeam, seemed to groan and murmur like an angry captive. The way, thickly strewn with moss-bound stones and the mouldering skeletons of trees, required all the maiden's horsemanship. But she struggled on, until she reached something midway between a grotto and a hut, projecting from the side of the gully, and looking as though ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... its home a country far distant from this. Yet there was something fitting in this environment. All around swept the heavy, solemn forest, its giant oaks draped here and there with the funereal Spanish moss. A ghostly sycamore, a mammoth gum-tree now and then thrust up a giant head above the lesser growth. Smaller trees, the ash, the rough hickory, the hack-berry, the mulberry, and in the open glades the slender persimmon and the stringy ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... the city's paven way, Where redbreast knows the white moon's ray; It sentinels the moss-grown homestead, And waits the men ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... sensations. Once he had fairly fucked her, he continued to do so constantly until the age of puberty, which declared itself by the coming-on of her monthly courses even before she was twelve years of age. Already an extensive moss-bed of sable silky short curls adorned ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... 'hindsight is better than foresight,' the force of which I shall now, no doubt, appreciate more fully than ever. All I can say is, that the prospect was such when I went into that long sleep that I should not have been surprised had I looked down from your house-top to-day on a heap of charred and moss-grown ruins instead ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... be there With wreathed mullions proud, With burnished ivy for its screen, And moss, that glows as fresh and green As thought beneath an April ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... honeycomb. The doctor called the attention of his friends to the fact that these animals began to lose their white winter plumage, or hair, to put on their summer dress; they were evidently getting ready for summer, while their sustenance appeared in the form of moss, poppy, saxifrage, and thin grass. A new life was peering through the melting snows. But with the harmless animals returned the famished foes; foxes and wolves arrived in search of their prey; mournful howling sounded during the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... believe all of his statements. I was then experienced in climbing Philippine mountains, and at five thousand feet had invariably found a hopeless tangle of the rankest tropical vegetation, with humidity so high that trees were draped with ferns, orchids, and thick moss, and dripping with moisture. However, I knew that the mere presence of pine and oak trees would mean the occurrence of special bird species feeding upon their seeds, and so determined ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... the yard of the other cabin. He gathered a big load of wood in his arms, and stamping the snow from his feet, called "Open!" at the door. Dannie stepped inside and filled the empty box. With smiling eyes he turned to Mary, as he brushed the snow and moss ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... ... imprented at London by Rycharde Pynson printer vnto the kynges noble grace: with priuylege vnto hym grauted by our sayd souerayne lorde the kynge." On the back of the last leaf is Pynson's device, No. v. The date is erroneously conjectured in Moss's Classical Bib. to be 1511. It was probably 1519, certainly between 1519 and 1524. Contains 92 numbered leaves, and one leaf unnumbered, besides eight leaves of preliminary matter: numbering quite regular: signatures; ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... offered he the holy rite, With arms extended praying God to spare, The while adoring knelt he humbly there. That people prostrate! oh, most solemn sight That church, its porticoes with moss o'ergrown, The ancient walls, dim light and Gothic panes, In its antiquity the brazen lamp A symbol of eternity doth stamp. A lasting sun. God's majesty down sent, Vows, tears and incense from the altars rise, Young beauties ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... ancient abodes. Andre's experience among them was of the roughest. The staple of his diet was acorns and tripe de roche,—a species of lichen, which, being boiled, resolved itself into a black glue, nauseous, but not void of nourishment. At times he was reduced to moss, the bark of trees, or moccasins and old moose-skins cut into strips and boiled. His hosts treated him very ill, and the worst of their fare was always his portion. When spring came to his relief, he returned to his ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... are companionable: birds within call, butterflies in waiting, and a bee now and again to bump one, and be off again with a grumbled 'Beg your pardon. Confound you!' So presently imagine me 'prone at the foot of yonder' sappy chestnut, nice little cushions of moss around me, one for Whisper, one for a pillow; above, a world of luminous green leaves, filtered sunlight lying about in sovereigns and half-sovereigns, and at a distance in the open shine a patch of hyacinths, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... sort of happy farmer, harvesting wines, figs, oil, and oranges, preserving his citrons and cedrats in the sun of his casemates. The fortress, encircled by a deep ditch, its only guardian, arose like three heads upon turrets connected with each other by terraces covered with moss. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... no inhabitants in these wildernesses all that time ago. If you'd thought a bit longer, you might have hit upon the true an' very commonplace explanation. Y'see, the stones haven't even been in the lake long enough to get a growth of weeds and moss on 'em. As a matter of fact, they've been there only a very few winters—since the time when the name 'Kiddie' was more appropriate to me than it is now. There was a big frost; the lake was frozen over. I'd the boyish idea that it 'ld be ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... jolly pirates a-pleasuring ashore but the ferocious tumult of men in conflict and taken unawares. Perched in the tree, Jack Cockrell listened all agog as the sounds rose and fell with the breeze which swayed the long gray moss that draped the branches. He heard a few pistol shots and then was startled to see a spurt of flame dart from a gun-port of the sloop. The dull report reached him an instant later. He could see that the gun had been fired from the vessel's shoreward battery. It meant that Blackbeard ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... (754/2. "On the Origin of the Flora of the European Alps," "Geogr. Soc. Proc." Volume I., 1879, page 564. See Letter 395, Volume II.)—it is, as you say, like Sir W. Thomson's meteorite. (754/3. In 1871 Lord Kelvin (Presidential Address Brit. Assoc.) suggested that meteorites, "the moss-grown fragments from the ruins of another world," might have introduced life to our planet.) It is really a pity; it is enough to make Geographical Distribution ridiculous in the eyes of the world. Frank will be ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... battle proceeded thus. And soon there began to flow many mighty rivers of the bloody currents. And they abounded with the heads of combatants that formed their rocks. And the hair of the warriors constituted their floating weeds and moss. Bones formed the fishes with which they teemed, and bows and arrows and maces formed the rafts by which to cross them. Flesh and blood forming their mire, those terrible and awful rivers, with currents swelled by blood, were thus formed there, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... reciting to himself a spectacular bit of logic from one of his idols, wedged between a piece of Aristotle quartz and Plato marble. The sound of it was good in his ears. He mouthed it as greedily and happily as though he was not sitting on the edge of a volcano instead of the moss- grown limestone on a hill ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... snow-bird's nest I ever saw was built beside the Crawford bridle path, on Mount Clinton, just before the path comes out of the woods at the top. It was lined with hair-moss (a species of Polytrichum) of a bright orange color, and with its four or five white, lilac-spotted eggs made so attractive a picture that I was constrained to pause a moment to look at it, even though I had three miles of a steep, rough footpath to descend, with a shower threatening to overtake ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... itself from the hunter's pursuit. The peculiar cast of the sky, which never seems to be certain, butterflies flitting over snowbanks, probing beautiful dwarf flowerets of many hues, pushing their tender, stems from the thick bed of moss which everywhere covers the granite rocks. Then the morasses, wherein you plunge up to your knees, or the walking over the stubborn, dwarfish shrubbery, making one think that as he goes he treads down the forests of Labrador. The unexpected Bunting, ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs

... cemetery nestled in a curve of the road between wheat fields on every side. A gray, moss-covered, lichen-hung wall surrounded it. The five American graves were under the shadow of the Western wall, and the sun was slowly sinking in his glory as the company of soldiers escorted the women into the cemetery. They passed between the ponderous ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... does not get larger and stronger, year by year, is not that a sure sign that it is unhealthy, and that decay has begun in it, that it is unsound at heart? And what happens then? It begins to become weaker and smaller, and cankered and choked with scurf and moss till it dies. If a tree is not growing, it is sure in the long run to be dying; and so are our souls. If they are not growing they are dying; if they are not getting better they are getting worse. This is why the Bible compares our souls to trees—not out of a mere pretty fancy ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... pigeons cooed and bowed and gurgled to their ladies, cows lowed from the byres, cocks crew, and the mill-wheel, already launched upon the business of the day, panted from its dark habitation of dripping moss and fern. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... three years at a time from him and Virginia would be more than sufficient, and that I was very happy where I was, as Bramble and little Bessy were almost equal to another father and another sister. A rolling stone gathers no moss, they say, father. I have entered into the pilot service, and in that ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... of almost insufferable length and coldness; * * there are but a few inconsiderable spots fit to cultivate, and the land is covered with a cold spongy moss in place of grass. * * Winter continues at least seven months in the year; the country is wrapt in the gloom of a perpetual fog; the mountains run down to the sea coast, and leave but here and there a spot to inhabit." Some of the officers, embarking at New York for Nova Scotia, are said to ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... the first person we met was a marmot hunter. The wild scenery was soon enlivened by the marvellous swirl and headlong rush of a mountain river called the Tosa, which at one spot breaks into a superb waterfall with three distinct branches. After the moss and reeds had, in the course of our continuous descent, given place to grass and meadows, and the shrubs had been replaced by pine trees, we at last arrived at the goal of our day's journey, the village of Pommath, called Formazza by the Italian population, which is situated in a charming valley. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... from the shade Which their own leaves have made: Men scent our fragrance on the air, Yet take no heed Of humble lessons we would read. But not alone the fairest flowers: The merest grass Along the roadside where we pass, 20 Lichen and moss and sturdy weed, Tell of His love who sends the dew, The rain and sunshine too, To ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... human beings I had ever beheld. It was not the traditional white-pillared mansion. It was more wonderful. The bricks had aged a rich, red purple, and were rimmed and splotched with soft green and gray moss under traceries of vines that were beginning to put out rich russet buds. The windows were filled with tiny diamond panes of glass, which glittered in the gables from the last rays of the sun setting over Old Harpeth, and ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... l'Universite, and looked out between the curtains upon the rather grimy little garden, where a few not very prosperous cypresses and chestnuts stood guard over the rows of lilac shrubs and the box-bordered flower-beds and the usual moss-stained fountain. She was thinking of the events of the past month, the month which had elapsed since the evening of the De Saulnes' dinner-party. They were not at all startling events; in a practical sense there were no events at all, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... some railway potentate, having taken a fancy for the ancient college of Glasgow, as a bauble to hang about his wife's neck, (no accounting for tastes,) has offered, (or will offer,) such a price, that the good old academic lady in this her moss-grown antiquity, seriously thinks of taking him at his word, packing up her traps, and being off. When a spirit of galavanting comes across an aged lady, it is always difficult to know where it ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... the Southern Cross, Will, when like Perry, they have reached the Pole, Search under it to find thy banished soul, O Canada, and tell it of thy loss In letting a foul dead body, which the moss Of the deep sea should hide, loom as thy whole And rule, as dead things rule, with death for toll, As pierced ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... supper roots; my bed was moss and leaves; But weariness in little rest found ease: But when the purple morning night bereaves Of late usurped rule on lands and seas, His loathed couch each wakeful hermit leaves, To pray rose they, and I, for so they please, I congee took when ended was the same, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... disappeared with the dawn. The first few hundred feet of the ascent were covered with a tall grass quite six feet high; and then came a slope of a thousand feet or so of short grass succeeded by a quantity of moss; but even this soon disappeared, and the whole of the upper part of the mountain proved entirely barren. We reached the summit about one o'clock. It was covered with fissures which gave out sulphurous gases and steam in ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... a new constitution was promulgated in Norway, and Prince Christian was proclaimed king. While the British maintained the blockade Sweden attempted to gain its ends by negotiation. At last, on July 30, the Swedes invaded Norway. After some Swedish successes a convention was signed at Moss on August 14, which recognised the new Norwegian constitution, but provided for a personal union of the crowns of Sweden and Norway. This constitution was accepted by Charles XIII. of Sweden in ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... was so tiny,)—she made its dress with her own slender fingers, laughing the while, because she was so awkward a little dress-maker. There is her straw hat,—she made that oak-leaf wreath about the crown one bright summer day, as we sat on the soft moss in the cool fragrant wood. Nelly liked the woods. She liked to lie with her ear to the ground and make believe hear the fairies talk; she liked to look up in the tall trees, and see the bright-winged oriole dart through the branches; she ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... not live at "Nab Cottage" now—a moss-covered slab marks his resting-place up at the Grasmere Churchyard, and only a step away in a very straight row are similar old headstones that token the graves of William, Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth. Hartley Coleridge had most of the weaknesses of his father, and only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... Tad pulled her gently by her sleeve. Thereupon she partly opened her eyes and raised herself on her elbow. When she found herself lying on a bed of moss surrounded by dwarfs she thought what she saw was nothing but a dream, and she rubbed her eyes to open them, so that instead of this fantastic vision she should see the pure light of morning as it ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France

... since with originality enough to start a fresh one. For they ARE a pretty limited lot, you will admit that? Originality is not in their line; they can't think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old moss-grown dullness of the language lesson and put life and "go" into it, and charm and grace ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Hamilton frae Moss End. But I'm taking the play. Ma auld tittie has dee'd and left me some siller,' Merton dragged a handful of dirty notes out of his trousers pocket. 'I've been to see the auld Bowers, but Lairdie ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... to be told that Eric and his thrall Jon rode hard up Stonefell and across the mountains and over the black sand, till, two hours before sunset, they came to the foot of Mosfell, having Hecla on their right. It is a grim mountain, grey with moss, standing alone in the desert plain; but between it and Hecla there is ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... to clear it of a certain foreign taste, then steep it in milk, keeping it just at the point of boiling or simmering for an hour, or until a rich yellow colour is given to the milk, without cream or eggs; 1 or 1-1/2 oz. of moss is enough for a gallon of cream, and this will do to steep twice. Sweeten and ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young



Words linked to "Moss" :   pleurocarp, Moss Hart, spike moss, floating-moss, arctic moss, black moss, acrocarpous moss, club-moss, Irish moss, moss campion, reindeer moss, moss locust, long moss, beard moss, Spanish moss, staghorn moss, pleurocarpous moss, mossy, moss-grown, scale moss, moss family, rose moss, peat moss, moss pink, Iceland moss, moss-trooper, sphagnum, club moss, little club moss, acrocarp, bog moss, moss phlox, moss genus, bryophyte, moss green, sphagnum moss, moss agate



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