"Tuft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stands a small ruin that looks like the remains of a religious house; it is overgrown with ivy, and were it not that the arch of a window or gateway may be distinctly seen, it would be difficult to believe that it was not a tuft of trees growing in the shape of a ruin, rather than a ruin overshadowed by trees. When we had walked a little further we saw below us, on the nearest large island, where some of the wood had been cut down, a hut, which we conjectured to be a bark hut. It appeared to be on the shore of a little forest ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Commander-in-chief. This officer is in appearance the least prepossessing of the Confederate generals. He is very thin; he stoops, and has a sickly, cadaverous, haggard appearance, rather plain features, bushy black eyebrows which unite in a tuft on the top of his nose, and a stubby iron-grey beard; but his eyes are bright and piercing. He has the reputation of being a rigid disciplinarian, and of shooting freely for insubordination. I ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... Englishmen he had known on the former voyage. Cook, after the usual compliments, presented him with a shirt, a hatchet, some nails, and other trifles. But of all his presents, that which appeared most precious to him, and which excited most cries of admiration from his followers, was a tuft of red feathers mounted upon ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... grew in vast quantities in the stagnant pools formed by the inundations of the Nile. The plant consists of a single stem, rising sometimes to the height of ten cubits; this stem, gradually tapering from the root, supports a spreading tuft at its summit. The substance of the stem is fibrous, and the pith contains a sweet juice. Every part of this plant was put to some use by the Egyptians. The harder and lower part they formed into cups and other utensils; the upper part into staves, or the ribs of boats; the sweet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... showed him how to trim the shafts as smooth and true as possible with a cleft or notch at one end into which I set one of my rusty nails, binding it there with strips from my tattered shirt; in place of feathers I used a tuft of grass and behold! my arrow was complete, and though a poor thing to look at yet it would answer well enough, as I knew by experience. So we fell to our arrow-making, wherein I found Sir Richard very quick and skilful, as I told him, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... and, as she did so, was aware of a scent about her, not strong, but deliciously clean and fragrant. It came from a tuft of wild thyme on which her palm had ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wetting required some skill and time. She tried this way—she tried that; but the flower was just out of reach. She went to the next alder-bush for a bough, which answered her purpose; and she had drawn the tuft of flags towards her, and laid hold of the iris, when Sydney shouted her name from a distance, and summoned ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... than most Plyncks; about the size of a small peacock. Of course you would know without being told that her plumage was of a delicate rose color, except for the lyre-shaped tuft on the top of her head, which was of the exact color and texture of Bavarian cream. Her beak and feet were golden, and her eyes were golden, too, and very bright and wild. The wildness and brightness of her eyes would have been rather ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... and was silent, sitting gazing past the boy and through the window, so full of thought that he broke off another grape, raised it to his lips, and then threw it through the opening into a tuft of flowers beyond. ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... that he begins to feel a change in the landscape. The fields broaden into rolling downs, watered by clear and running streams; the green Swiss thistle grows by riverside and cowshed; pines begin to tuft the slopes of gently rising hills; and now the sun has set, the stars come out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights; and he feels—yes, indeed, there is now no mistake—the well-known, well-loved magical fresh air, that never ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... them—nightcaps, of course. The old fellow was a subject for a painter. He was as thin as a lath, had wrinkles clustering round his eyes and mouth, and long bony fingers, and bushy grey eyebrows: over the left eye hung quite a tuft of hair, and that did not look very handsome, though it made him very noticeable. People knew that he came from Bremen; but that was not his native place, though his master lived there. His own native place was in Thuringia, the town of Eisenach, close by the Wartburg. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... roof and went hissing along the soaked ground; it sprayed out as the grass bent and parted under it; every hollow tuft was a water spout. The fields were dim behind the shining, glassy bead curtain of ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... the semi-detached is besieged by a lady and gentleman in search of a home. The gentleman, dressed in a very tight frock-coat, dusty and worn; a highly-glazed cap, the strap of which dangled above a tuft of hair, that graced his chin, its peak resting upon the tip of his nose, affording him little more than a view of his boots, with a portion of the hose protruding therefrom; his tightly-strapped trowsers ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... swinging long, jewel-hung branches from far overhead. In one place, from a broad low arch at the crag's base, a clear spring rushed forth. One could see some yards within the arch, discern rare ferns, a shimmer of ghostly lilies, and one vigorous tuft of maiden-hair that dropped a veil of tremulous green lace almost to the water's edge. Still, vines and vines, and in this little garden of the grot what a magnificent growth of canes, cannas and pampas-grass; with walks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary, took his ticket; and the Duke of Cambridge held open the door. Considering how little Gordon cared about grandees, it is amusing to note that he was waited on in a way that many tuft-hunters would envy. ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... these three names what is indicated is that Mahadeva is a householder, it Sanyasin and a forest-recluse. House-holders bear a tuft of hair on their heads, Sanyasins have bald heads, while forest recluses ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that, having taken out the food, she thought well to make her own meal, for she went a few steps farther on, and, sitting down on the grass with her back to the paling, began to eat. A large tuft of weeds grew midway between him and her. Truly we can foresee consequences but a very little way in our dealings with a fellow-creature, and this man, as he stood munching his bread, uncertain how to proceed in winning favour from the bold beauty, was hardly pleased with the result of his ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... Vall turned from the body of the nighthound, which he had just dragged in, and considered the inert form of another animal—a stump-tailed, tuft-eared, tawny Canada lynx. That particular animal had already made two paratime transpositions; captured in the vast wilderness of Fifth-Level North America, it had been taken to the First Level and placed in the Dhergabar Zoological Gardens, and then, requisitioned on the authority of Tortha Karf, ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... surprised. We stopped and looked at her—I see her now, as though it were yesterday, though it is nearly twenty years ago. She wore the dark costume of our Breton women, with the usual white head-dress, and she was seated on a large tuft of broom in blossom, ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to find that Zack Bunting's eldest son is called Nimrod, familiarized to "Nim,"' said Robert. 'I never saw a more remarkable likeness to a parent, in body and mind, than that youth exhibits; every tuft of ragged beard and every twinkle of the knowing ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... generations. The tail varies greatly in length; I have seen a cat which always carried its tail flat on its back when pleased. The ears vary in shape, and certain strains, in England, inherit a pencil-like tuft of hairs, above a quarter of an inch in length, on the tips of their ears; and this same peculiarity, according to Mr. Blyth, characterises some cats in India. The great variability in the length of the tail and the lynx-like tufts of hairs on the ears are apparently analogous ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... It was strong and fierce, thin and clean-cut—marred only, in his estimation, by the funny little tuft of hair on the lower lip. He liked the wavy, rough, up-turned moustache, but not that silly tuft. How nice he would look with his hair cut, his lower lip shaved, and his ridiculous silks, velvet, and lace exchanged for ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... happened, maidens, which when told Will fill your minds with awe and wonderment. The tuft of wool, fresh shorn and bright, wherewith I spread the ointment on that robe of state, By no one of my household train destroyed, But self-consumed, has vanished out of sight. And on the pavement melted quite away. That thou may'st know the whole, let me proceed. Of all the ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... Banaks make the following sign for themselves: Brush the flat right hand backward over the forehead as if forcing back the hair. This represents the manner of wearing the tuft of hair backward from the forehead. According to this informant, the Shoshoni use the same sign for ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... in this vale." Then seizing on his hinder scalp, I cried: "Name thee, or not a hair shall tarry here." "Rend all away," he answer'd, "yet for that I will not tell nor show thee who I am, Though at my head thou pluck a thousand times." Now I had grasp'd his tresses, and stript off More than one tuft, he barking, with his eyes Drawn in and downward, when another cried, "What ails thee, Bocca? Sound not loud enough Thy chatt'ring teeth, but thou must bark outright? What devil wrings thee?"—" Now," said I, "be ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... border. I suppose that French and English men have sanctified every part of that narrow ribbon by dying there. But the grass of those old paddocks grows unkempt like a shock head of hair. And it has covered with a kindly mantle most of the terrible relics of the past. A tuft, perhaps thicker than the rest, is all that marks where last year lay a British soldier whose death represented the latest effort of the world to cross the line the ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... begin to do anything until the sentiment is universal." That was in August 1854; and the break-down in the Crimea that winter much embittered his radicalism. "I am hourly strengthened in my old belief," he wrote (3rd of February 1855) "that our political aristocracy and our tuft-hunting are the death of England. In all this business I don't see a gleam of hope. As to the popular spirit, it has come to be so entirely separated from the Parliament and Government, and so perfectly apathetic about them ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Territories, and in the neighborhood of the great lakes, and inhabits the regions as far [Page 220] north as the Arctic Sea. Its color is yellowish brown. The fur is thicker in winter than summer, and on the neck of the animal the hair is very coarse and hangs in an immense tuft of over a foot in length. The flesh is most excellent food and is much esteemed by trappers. The habits of the moose are in most respects identical with the deer, already described, and like them they form "yards" during ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... always of an ingratiating humorousness and endeared himself by an apparent readiness to enter into any joke that was going, especially that of startling the pedestrian by his own sudden apparition from behind a tuft of grass or withered stalk. I will not be sure, but I think we began to see his kind as soon as we got out of Yalladolid, when we began running through a country wooded with heavy, low-crowned pines that looked like the stone-pines of Italy, but were probably not the same. After twenty miles ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... his person, which was attired in flesh coloured silk, so as to resemble the ordinary idea of an Indian prince. He wore sandals, fastened on with ribands of scarlet silk, and held in his hand a sort of fan, such as ladies then used, composed of the same feathers, assembled into a plume or tuft. ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... slender, and, as the guide informed them, the wood was of so very brittle a nature that if the tree had not been protected from the winds by the high hills which encircled it, it would have been snapped off ages ago. Under the broad tuft of leaves that formed its top, the boys saw hanging large clusters of the precious fruit; great nuts as big ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... calm but expressive gestures of an Indian engaged in debate. His body, which was nearly naked, presented a terrific emblem of death, drawn in intermingled colors of white and black. His closely-shaved head, on which no other hair than the well-known and chivalrous scalping tuft* was preserved, was without ornament of any kind, with the exception of a solitary eagle's plume, that crossed his crown, and depended over the left shoulder. A tomahawk and scalping knife, of English manufacture, were in his girdle; while a ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... fashion in "oversea" hair cuts. The victims sat on a ration box while the barber mowed great swaths through tangled thatch with a pair of close-cutting clippers. But instead of making a complete job of it, a thick fringe of hair which resembled a misplaced scalping tuft was left for decorative purposes, just above the forehead. The effect was so grotesque that I had to invent an excuse for laughing. It was a lame one, I fear, for Shorty looked at me warningly. When we had gone on a ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... the women, who were habited in a coarse red camlet jacket, with a high apron before, long flying lappets to their caps, and were mounted upon large heavy wooden shoes, upon each of which a worsted tuft was fixed, in rude imitation of a rose. The appearance and clatter of these sabots, as they are called, leave upon the mind an impression of ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... unknown, remain, and still remain, the bravest soldiers. Our manliest—our boys—our hardy darlings; no picture gives them. Likely, the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds, thousands,) crawls aside to some bush-clump, or ferny tuft, on receiving his death-shot—there sheltering a little while, soaking roots, grass and soil, with red blood—the battle advances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by—and there, haply with pain and suffering (yet less, far ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... is the highest part among the ornaments of a coat of arms. It is called crest from the Latin word crista, which signifies comb or tuft. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... frequently cut their hair short, not appearing to take any pride in it; the women encourage theirs to a considerable length, and I have known many instances of its reaching the ground. The men are beardless and have chins so remarkably smooth that, were it not for the priests displaying a little tuft, we should be apt to conclude that nature had refused them this token of manhood. It is the same in respect to other parts of the body with both sexes; and this particular attention to their persons they esteem a point of delicacy, and the contrary an unpardonable neglect. The boys ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... thing I want to ask you," she began, tugging at a tuft of grass, "and it's very—difficult, and you mustn't tell any one I asked you; at least, I'd rather ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... flower in his buttonhole. As Syme drew nearer to him step by step, he did not even move a hair; and Syme could come close enough to notice even in the dim, pale morning light that his face was long, pale and intellectual, and ended in a small triangular tuft of dark beard at the very point of the chin, all else being clean-shaven. This scrap of hair almost seemed a mere oversight; the rest of the face was of the type that is best shaven—clear-cut, ascetic, and in its way noble. Syme drew closer and closer, ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... heart out; you'd always get what you wanted somehow, and you wouldn't wait for it either; and I'm just the same. I'm not built for giving up, and enduring, and sacrificing. I'm naturally just a tuft of thistle-down, Mark; but living beside Waitstill all these years I've grown ashamed to be so light, blowing about hither and thither. I kept looking at her and borrowing some of her strength, just enough to make me worthy to be her sister. Waitstill is like a bit of Plymouth ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... around the neck, while the rest of the body is of a purple colour; except the tail, which is azure, with long feathers intermingled of a roseate hue; the throat is adorned with a crest, and the head with a tuft of feathers. The first Roman who described this bird... was the senator Manilius.... He tells us that no person has ever seen this bird eat, that in Arabia it is looked upon as sacred to the sun, that it lives five hundred and forty years, ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... clearly against the pale yellow of the sky. There was a white dusty road or rather a track between two rough fences, with a wide space of green grass on each side, and here and there could be seen the cattle wandering idly homeward, lingering every now and then to pull at a particularly tempting tuft of bush grass growing in the moist ditches which ran along each side of the highway. Scattered over this pastoral-looking country were huge mounds of white earth, looking like heaps of carded wool, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... been taken at Amoy in China, and in the Himalaya at an elevation of 5500 ft. Many are provided with a frontal sac behind the nose-leaf, rudimentary in females (see fig. 7), which can be everted at pleasure; the sides of this sac secrete a waxy substance, and its extremity supports a tuft of straight hairs. Rhinonycteris, represented by R. aurantia from Australia, and Triaenops. by T. persicus from Persia and other species from Africa and Madagascar, are closely allied genera. Triaenops (fig. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... lay about, also, among a wreck of broken glass, some bottles of Bass's beer which had escaped their notice. I found an assegai, cleaned it in the ground which it needed, and opening one of the tins, lay down in a tuft of grass by a dead man, or rather between him and some Zulus whom he had killed, and devoured its contents. Also I knocked the tops off a couple of the beer bottles and drank my fill. While I was doing this a large rough dog with a silver-mounted collar on its neck, I think ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... products whose basic elements were brought together in this laboratory, and, by a scientific reproduction of the functions of creation, endowed with the life principle, which is merely mind-electrons." He smoothed his long tuft of hair nervously. "Would you like to see how life springs from a wedding of matter, energy, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... discouraged, but were still growing. I recalled it because I had wondered why one knocks off the tops of thistles; and then I had thought of Tarquin; and then I had recited most of Macaulay's VIRGINIA to myself, for I was young. And then I came to a tattered edge where the very tuft had whitened with the sawdust and brick-dust from the new row of houses; and two or three green stars of dock and thistle grew spasmodically about the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... and her voice was a bellow that frightened even herself. She saw her father and her sisters, went near them, and suffered them to pat her back, and heard them admire her beauty. Her father reached her a tuft o gras, and she licked the outstretched hand. She longed to make herself known to him, and would have uttered her wish; but, alas! words were wanting. At length she bethought herself of writing, and inscribed her name it was a ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... with the history of this bird is his oven-shaped nest. It is commonly placed on the ground, under a knoll of moss or a tuft of grass and bushes, and is formed almost entirely of long grass neatly woven. It is covered with a roof of the same materials, and a round opening is made at the side, for the bird's entrance. The nest is so ingeniously covered with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... dropped into the chair, his thin, wrinkled face drawing into a queer smile. He let the package fall across his knees, and his hat dropped from his trembling fingers. He stroked a tuft of whisker under ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... and down the wide, smooth walk, made of dirt and small stones with much labor, where, through the summer at least, not a tuft of grass was permitted to grow. How lovely it was! The house stood on quite an elevation. One could see Mount Airy and Clieveden and other summer homes, and the Schuylkill winding placidly about, peeping through its embowered banks ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... that a multitude of peculiarities may be thus directly caused by unknown external agencies. But in breeds, characterized by an extra limb or claw, as in certain fowls and dogs; by an extra joint in the vertebrae; by the loss of a part, as the tail; by the substitution of a tuft of feathers for a comb in certain poultry; and in a multitude of other cases, we can hardly attribute these peculiarities directly to external influences, but indirectly to the laws of embryonic growth and of reproduction. When we see a multitude of varieties (as has often been ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... became the object of each to drown his antagonist, and the efforts to accomplish this were continued for some time with alternate success;—first one and then the other, being under water. At length, catching hold of the long tuft of hair which had been suffered to grow on the head of the chief, Poe held him under water, until he supposed him dead; but relaxing his hold too soon, the gigantic savage was again on his feet and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the son of Audun the Bald, the son of Thorolf Butter, the son of Thorstein the Unstable, the son of Grim with the Tuft. The mother of Gudmund was Hallberg, the daughter of Thorodd Helm, but the mother of Hallbera was Reginleifa, daughter of Saemund the South-islander; after him is named Saemundslithe in Skagafirth. The mother of Eyjolf, Gudmund's father, was Valgerda Runolf's daughter; ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... stir with the uneasy movement of one who is struggling against the effect of a fixed gaze bent upon him. Then, with a shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders, he sat up in his chair. He tossed his hat back from his forehead, and a tuft of wavy brown hair tumbled over it. His head was held down, and his eyes were on the fire. Hugh Ritson took a step toward him and put one ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... returned Will, "and come on to the barn. There's something I must see you about at once," and while the other went in search of the light, he stood impatiently uprooting a tuft of grass as he whistled a college ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... lying at his side when he dropped asleep. "It must be Caleb," he thought, and stared around. No Caleb was in sight, but he noticed that the sun was dropping towards the west, and noticed also, not fifty yards to the left, and quietly cropping a tuft of ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lack of dignity the squirrel retired and stood, with erect tail, behind a tuft of coarse grass, wondering what ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... four of us hunted for that elusive but useful article. Miss Harding found it in a tuft of grass, and I stood and stupidly watched her while she put it in place, adjusted the collar ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... oddity, that above the nape of his neck was a whitish tuft which, though he took great pains to conceal it, continually obtruded through the darker hair like the cottontail on the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... beautiful bird should not be known on the Continent, abundant as it is on the moorlands of Scotland, England, and Ireland. The breeding season of the red grouse is very early in spring, and the female deposits her eggs, eight or ten in number, in a high tuft of heather. The eggs are peculiarly beautiful, of a rich brown colour, spotted with black, and both herself and her mate attend the young with great assiduity. The brood continue in company during the winter, and often unite ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... he toiled up a steep incline, where he could feel beneath him neither moss nor herb. Now and then his feet brushed through a soft tuft of parsley fern: but soon even that sign of vegetation ceased; his feet only rasped over rough bare rock, and he was alone in a ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Alice, deceived by the man's air and manners, and hoping to secure education for her son, had married, and the effect had been that, while Harold was provoked into fierce insubordination, Eustace became imbued with a tuft-hunting spirit, a great contrast to what might have ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an artist of so quick feeling the details of a mountain foreground should not prove irresistibly attractive, and entice him to greater accuracy of study. There is not a fragment of its living rock, nor a tuft of its heathery herbage, that has not adorable manifestations of God's working thereupon. The harmonies of color among the native lichens are better than Titian's; the interwoven bells of campanula and heather are ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... projected themselves upon the solitary, rickety carry-all, so that Ransom could read his own fate, while the ruminating conductor of the vehicle, a lean, shambling citizen, with a long neck and a tuft on his chin, guessed that if he wanted to get to the hotel before dusk he would have to strike out. His valise was attached in a precarious manner to the rear of the carry-all. "Well, I'll chance it," the driver remarked sadly, when Ransom protested against its insecure position. He ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... and the opportunity for the enterprising middleman. He appeals to a tuft-hunting instinct so deep in human nature that the mere surface difference of republic or monarchy hardly touches it. In a London church you will see a pew full of ladies' maids, and presently there is a great crowding and squeezing, and a low whisper ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... his grate Watches the waving of the grass-tuft small, Which, having colonized its rift i' th' wall, Accepts God's dole of good or evil fate, And from the sky's just helmet draws its lot Daily of shower or sunshine, cold or hot;— Whether the closer captive of a creed, Cooped up from birth to grind out endless chaff, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... sleep perhaps, thus to fool this wild, elusive creature, and bring all its cunning to naught! He is so much smaller and keener-sighted, able to fly, to perch far up above me, to shift his position every minute or two, masking his small figure with this or that tuft of leaves, while still keeping his eyes on me—in spite of it all to have him so close, and without moving or taking any trouble, to see him so much better than he can see me! But this is a legitimate trickery of science, so innocent that we can laugh at our dupe when we practise it; nor do we afterwards ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... between the father and the son and if the greatness of the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father there shall be love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science. In the beauty of poems are the tuft ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... evolutions with surprising celerity; whence comes the trivial name of 'kill-dog' bestowed upon it in some localities. Pursued to extremity, it casts itself into the water, swims with ease, and dives at the moment its enemy is about to seize it; or it conceals itself in a tuft of reeds or a bush, and by this means often escapes with impunity. It loves to breed among the reeds, and in long and thick grass, frequently in small companies of its own species, or of the Stellaris. The female lays her eggs on an inartificially constructed platform of decayed leaves ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... from her and made him strange to her and utterly pathetic. And then, there was the back of his head, sunk like lead into his pillow. The cropped hair had begun to grow. You could see a little greyish tuft. You wouldn't have known that it was ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... pass, full of rugged rocks and seamed with roaring torrents—indeed, the very pass of Bally-Brough in which the reivers had last been spied—across weary and dangerous morasses, where Edward had perforce to spring from tuft to tussock of coarse grass, Evan Dhu led our hero into the depths of the wild Highland country,—where no Saxon foot trod or dared to tread without the leave of Vich Ian Vohr, as the chief's foster-brother took occasion to inform ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Ord, and I, camped on the bank of the American River, abreast of the fort, at what was known as the "Old Tan-Yard." I was cook, Ord cleaned up the dishes, and Warner looked after the horses; but Ord was deposed as scullion because he would only wipe the tin plates with a tuft of grass, according to the custom of the country, whereas Warner insisted on having them washed after each meal with hot water. Warner was in consequence promoted to scullion, and Ord became the hostler. We drew our rations in kind from the commissary at San Francisco, who sent them up to us by ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... two clear feet. Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may be ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... afterwards to restore their enchanted vision. A Carnarvonshire story, probably incomplete, makes no mention of the ointment conferring supernatural sight; but when the midwife is to be dismissed she is told to rub her eyes with a certain salve, whereupon she at once finds herself sitting on a tuft of rushes, and not in a palace: baby and all had disappeared. The sequel, however, shows that by some means she had retained the power of seeing fairies, at least with one eye; for when she next went to the town, lo and behold! busily ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... still looked like The Lower Depths. Martin is Village Stanislavsky rather than Ye Olde English Stage Traditions. But above that ... well, all it really amounted to was that he was stripped to the waist and had shaved off the small high tuft of chest hair and was wearing a black wig that hung down in front of his shoulders in two big braids heavy with silver hoops and pins. But just the same those simple things, along with his tarpaper-solarium tan ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... steps. The white-scrubbed hall detained him several minutes before he returned with a large man who smoked a crooked-stemmed pipe during the conference. The man held the bowl of the pipe in his hand which was fat and red. So was his face. He had a mighty tuft of hair on his upper lip. His shirt sleeves shone like new snow ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... or office; the pale, smiling gentleman, who lounged in a cushioned chair, a comb in one hand, and in the other a small pocket mirror, by the aid of which he was attending to a diminutive tuft of flaxen whisker; and a woman, in threadbare garments, who crouched upon a bench beside the opposite wall, her face bowed upon her hands, her whole frame shaken by great, heart-broken, gasping sobs,—a sound full of misery, and of ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smile went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning
... sat on a tuft of grass, eating something that looked very nice; but, all of a sudden, she dropped her bowl, and ran away, looking ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... On the fourteenth day, at dawn, the mariners perceived what appeared to be a tuft of wood rising out of the sea. They joyfully steered for it, supposing it to be an island. They were not mistaken. As they drew near, the rising sun shone upon noble forests, the trees of which were of a kind unknown to them. Flights of birds also ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... camp until after the termination of another day's journey. The soil, as from experience we had reason to expect, had become very soft, and the rain pouring in torrents it became so more and more. The wheels however did go round, and the party followed me over a plain which scarcely supported even a tuft of grass on which I could fix my eye in steering by compass through the heavy rain. At length I distinguished half a dozen trees, towards which we toiled for several hours, and which grew, as we found when we at length got to them, beside a pond of water; the only one to be seen on these plains. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... caused Ling, who had in the meantime closed his eyes and lost Canton and all else in delicate thoughts of Mian, to look up. That which met his attention on doing so filled him with an intelligent wonder, for the person before him held in his hand what had the appearance of a tuft of bright yellow hair, which shone in the light of the sun with a most engaging splendour, but which he nevertheless regarded with a most undignified expression ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... diamond sparks. Countless insects (butterflies and bees mostly) lay in masses dead on the snow; they had ventured too high, or the wind had borne them thither, but to breathe their last in these cold regions. A threatening cloud hung over the Wetterhorn, like a fine, black tuft of wool. It lowered itself slowly, heavily, with that which lay concealed within it, and this was the "Foehn,"[A] powerful in its strength when it broke loose. The impression of the entire journey, the ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... all times wait the words of true poems, The words of true poems do not merely please, The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty; The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers, The words of true poems are the tuft and ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... multitude of deep scarlet-blossomed creepers, so thickly interlaced in their living cordage, that neither sun nor storm could penetrate them; or if a wandering beam found entrance through the thick natural trellice-work, it was only enough to cover some little tuft of violets or strawberries, its own offspring, growing up in its genial warmth with a strength and vigour pre-eminent amidst the pale and sickly brood of the neglected children of the shade. Nothing I had ever imagined of the loveliness of nature equalled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... little beyond good models are required to set them on the right track. But it is certain that, as a nation, we have yet to acquire nearly all that belongs to the art I have mentioned that lies beyond avenues of trees, with an occasional tuft of shrubbery. The abundance of the latter, that forms the wilderness of sweets, the masses of flowers that spot the surface of Europe, the beauty of curved lines, and the whole finesse of surprises, reliefs, back-grounds and vistas, are things so little ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... the pole with the trap on it to hold for a few minutes, the old man quickly moved back to a spot where some tall, slender live balsams were growing. Cutting one down, he trimmed off all the branches except a mere broom-like tuft at the top, taking care all the time not to touch any of those remaining with his hands. Returning with this long, broom-like affair, he vigorously used it on a spot some yards away. Then he took the long pole from the ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... upwards. Everybody should endeavour to stand as well as he can in the world, and if I had a choice of acquaintance between a sugar-baker and a peer, I should prefer the peer,—unless, indeed, the sugar-baker had something very strong on his side to offer. I don't call that tuft-hunting, and it does not necessitate toadying. It's simply growing up, towards the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... it first in the slanting light of a redly setting August sun; the little tuft of green shrubbery that crests its summit was black against the crimson of sea and sky, and its colossal base of grey stone ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... array'd, And clad in green, and on their temples wore The chaplets white and red their ladies bore. Their instruments were various in their kind, Some for the bow, and some for breathing wind; The sawtry, pipe, and hautboy's noisy band, And the soft lute trembling beneath the touching hand. A tuft of daisies on a flowery lea 360 They saw, and thitherward they bent their way; To this both knights and dames their homage made, And due obeisance to the daisy paid. And then the band of flutes began ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... were shut. I noticed that there was a pair of them in each jaw, broad, strong, and shaped like chisels. The ears of the animals were short, and almost buried in the hair, which although long was not shaggy, but presented a smooth appearance over all parts of their bodies. There was a tuft of stiff bristles growing out on each side of the nose, like the whiskers of a cat; and their eyes were small, and set high up, like those of the otter. Their fore limbs were shorter than the hind ones, and both ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... gilt paper pasted to each button, and a red sash tied about the waist, in which were two table-forks and a wooden sword, the latter article interfering sadly with his knees when he walked. On his head he wore a huge paper cap that had been painted red, white, and blue, and ornamented with a tuft of feathers that had once done service in a dusting-brush. He also had a gun, and the weight of it was about as much as he could stagger under when he tried to carry it over his shoulder, so he dragged it along behind him, very ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... Evening Press table and through a scattering huddle of newspaper reporters, stepping on the balls of his feet as lightly as a puss-cat, emerged Major Putnam Stone. His sleeves were turned back off his wrists and his vest flared open. His head was thrust forward so that the tuft of goatee on his chin stuck straight out ahead of him like a little burgee in a fair breeze. His face was all a clear, bright, glowing pink; and in his right hand he held one of the longest cavalry revolvers that ever was made, I reckon. It had a square-butted ivory handle, and as I saw ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... nearly noon of a summer's day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down in the first convenient shade and await the coming up of the stage-coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a little tuft of maples with a delightful recess in the midst, and such a fresh bubbling spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any wayfarer but David Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty lips and then flung himself along the brink, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... United States Infantry, at our post, who has had much experience among the Indians on the plains, I learn some things which give a clue to the matter, which agree with all I can hear. He says that each Indian wears a "scalp-lock" (see engraving), which is a long tuft of hair, into which the Indian inserts his medicine, which consists generally of a few quills of eagle's feathers. This "medicine" is simply a "charm," as we call it, gotten by purchase of the medicine-man of the tribe. The medicine-man is the most influential man in each tribe. He professes ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... successful and victorious knight, Prince Baldwin. First, she dazzles him in blue and silver, with a rich turban; then appears in purple satin, fringed and looped with gold, with white feathers in her hair; next, in green silk and emeralds; anon, in pale straw-color, with a tuft of flowers; next, in pink and silver, with varied plumes, white, carnation, and blue; then, in brown, with a splendid crescent. As the fortunate Prince beholds each transformation, he is bewildered (as well he may be) to choose which array ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... fig. 4. The black coloring and the shape of the bill otherwise suggest the black vulture, though perhaps the crest would indicate the harpy eagle. Similarly, Pl. 19, fig. 14, is provided with a sort of tuft or crest, but its general appearance is suggestive of the vulture. A pottery whistle (text fig. 2) from the Uloa Valley evidently represents a black vulture. The head of the bird shows the characteristic wrinkled appearance seen in ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... and share the swag, for they had got nigh seventy pound. They met and quarrelled over the sharing up; and the elder one drew out a pistol, and shot the younger dead. The poor boy was sitting much where you are sitting now, and that long tuft of grass ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Sumachs and Cornel-bushes have usurped the place of the exotic shrubbery in the old garden; and the only ancient companions of the Poplars, now remaining, are here and there a straggling Lilac or Currant-bush, a tuft of Houseleek, and perhaps, under the shelter of some dilapidated wall, the White Star of Bethlehem is seen meekly glowing in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... upon the loveliness or the sublimity of this scene, but, assisting her where it was requisite, began the steep and difficult ascent of the lower part of the cliff. The maiden's ingenuity in vain endeavored to assign reasons for this movement; but when they reached the tuft of trees, which, as has been noticed, grew at the ultimate point where mortal footstep might safely tread, she perceived through their thick branches the recess in the rock. Here they entered; and her guide pointed to a mossy seat, in the formation of which, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Pastor Tuft was walking up and down his study, composing his Sunday sermon. He was a handsome man, with a long, fair face, and dreamy eyes; his wife, Josephine, in the days when she thought she was in love with him, used to call him Melanchthon—that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... fell before his pitiless stare. She began with fingers that trembled to pluck the primroses that grew in a large tuft close to ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... and a half: this is, perhaps as much as an ox could, in fairness, be made to do. A ride-ox can be tied up by his nose-bridle; but, if wild or frightened, he will assuredly struggle till the nose-stick be torn out of his nose, and he becomes free. It is, therefore, better to tie the bridle to a tuft of grass, or a slender twig, rather than to a tree or to the saddle-bags. Mounting an ox is usually a troublesome business, on account of his horns. To make ride-oxen quiet and tame, scratch their backs and tails—they dearly love it—and hold salt in your hands for them to lick. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... somewhat like the ringlets of the Polish Jews, are both vain "Bida'at," or innovations, and therefore technically termed "Makruh," a practice not laudable, neither "Halal" (perfectly lawful) nor "Haram" (forbidden by the law). When boys are first shaved generally in the second or third year, a tuft is left on the crown and another over the forehead; but this is not the fashion amongst adults. Abu Hanifah, if I am rightly informed, wrote a treatise on the Shushah or long lock growing from the Nasiyah (head-poll) which is also a precaution lest the decapitated ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... shaved off his mustaches and the tuft on his chin, and the whole look of him was changed. A year had gone for every stroke of the razor; he seemed such a boy, so particularly guileless! He had stained his face so well that it looked for all the world as though the Southern sun had done it for ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... He took hold of a book, clad in a marvellous binding, which Seguin had fetched from a bookcase and tendered with religious care. On the cover of soft snow-white leather was incrusted a long silver lily, intersected by a tuft of big violet thistles. The title of the work, "Beauty Imperishable," was engraved up above, as in a corner of ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... of gentlemen with titles and estates Fame, that most tuft-hunting of divinities, is always distending her cheeks, and blowing the very finest flourishes her old ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... his master's ears What he had seen; and murmur'd to the sod: But bury'd close the confidential words Beneath the turf again: then, all fill'd up, Silently he departed. From the spot Began a thick-grown tuft of trembling reeds To spring, which ripening with the year's full round, Betray'd their planter. By the light south wind When agitated, they the bury'd words Disclos'd, betraying what the monarch's ears. Latona's son, aveng'd, high Tmolus leaves, And cleaving liquid air, lights ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... it was! After it had been hollowed to a suitable depth, Chick had brought in a tuft of white hair that a rabbit had left among the brambles. Mrs. Chick had found some last year's thistle-down and some this year's poplar cotton, and a horse-hair from the lane. Then Chick had picked up a gay feather that had floated ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... fish-hook: what is the use of this claw I was never able to discover. When startled or hunted, the weka glides, for it can scarcely be called running, with incredible swiftness and in perfect silence, to the nearest cover. A tussock, a clump of flax, a tuft of tall tohi grass, all serve as hiding-places; and, wingless as she is, the weka can hold her own very well against her enemies, the dogs. I really believe the great desire of Brisk's life was to catch a weka. He started many, but used to go sniffing and barking round the ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... I stared at him in wonder. It amazed us that in such a moment a man should think of this trifle. And now he was turning his soiled pouch inside out and wiping it with a tuft of grass, grumbling the while. It was plain that the danger had ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... from Selection, and also much that may very well have been preserved and so in a sense constituted by Selection. Here the matter is likely to rest. There is a passage in the sixth edition of the Origin which has I think been overlooked. On page 70 Darwin says, "The tuft of hair on the breast of the wild turkey-cock cannot be of any use, and it is doubtful whether it can be ornamental in the eyes of the female bird." This tuft of hair is a most definite and unusual structure, and I am ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... eyes to the royal box, where sat a stout, middle-aged man, with a dull, good-humored face, a star and ribbon on his breast, and by his side a woman, ample and motherly, with an ugly tuft of feathers on her head, and a diamond tiara, which lit up her heavy Dutch features like a torch. The King, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... him. But, excepting some young plantain trees that lay before him, and upon the awning under which he sat, I could observe nothing by which he might be distinguished from their other chiefs. Omai presented to him a tuft of red feathers, tied to the end of a small stick; but, after a little conversation on indifferent matters with this Bolabola man, his attention was drawn to an old woman, the sister of his mother. She was already at his feet, and had bedewed them plentifully ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... Snick'er, to laugh in a half-suppressed manner. 4. Crest, a tuft growing on an animal's head. 5. Di-vine'ly, in a supreme degree. 6. Mor'al, the practical lesson which anything is ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... profession be what it may, who can receive overtures of friendship from dukes without some elation. Mark, too, had risen in the world, as far as he had yet risen, by knowing great people; and he certainly had an ambition to rise higher. I will not degrade him by calling him a tuft-hunter; but he undoubtedly had a feeling that the paths most pleasant for a clergyman's feet were those which were trodden by the great ones of the earth. Nevertheless, at the moment he declined the duke's invitation. He was very much flattered, he said, but the duties of his parish ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... an emergency. However by the skill of Engineer Morro, we got things going once more. All the time we lay there I saw a hydroplane floating between us and the British coast. I can understand how a mouse feels when it is in a tuft of grass and sees a hawk high up in the heavens. However, all went well; the mouse became a water-rat, it wagged its tail in derision at the poor blind old hawk, and it dived down into a nice safe green, quiet world where there ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you receive nothing but damage at our house," said Mrs. Talbot politely. "Hast drawn blood? Oh fie! thou ill-mannered Tib! Will you have a tuft from a beaver ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... even with the ground; others present a stump just high enough to form a seat; and others are, perhaps, a man's height from the ground,—and all are mossy, and with grass and weeds rooted into their chinks, and here and there a tuft of flowers, giving its tender little beauty to their decay. The material of the edifice is a soft red stone, and it is now extensively overgrown with a lichen of a very light gray line, which, at a little distance, makes the walls look as if they ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... impunity ransack the entrails." What a slow and horrible agony for the paralysed victim, should some glimmer of consciousness still linger in its puny brain! What a terrible nightmare for the little field-cricket, suddenly plunged into the den of the Sphex, so far from the sunlit tuft of thyme which sheltered ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... they drew near to the break in that interminable gangway. A spur of coral sand stood forth on the one hand; on the other a high and thick tuft of trees cut off the view; between was the mouth of the huge laver. Twice a day the ocean crowded in that narrow entrance and was heaped between these frail walls; twice a day, with the return of the ebb, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that when he was born he had a little tuft of hair upon his head. For this reason he was called Ricky of the Tuft, Ricky being his ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... after a breathing spell, his eye fell on a tuft of limp, bruised daisies, flattened to the earth by the heel of his clumsy shoe. There were acres of ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and stood holding on by a tuft of coarse sedge, watching him as he threw himself on his side, and went off pretty close to the bank, where the water was eddying; and the next minute he was beyond a clump of sedge that projected into the ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... brought her sketch-book, for she was a well-educated girl, and understood music, and a number of other things besides. She laughingly observed that a few strokes would quickly picture the surrounding scenery. She amused herself with copying a huge tuft of the tussock-grass which grew near, and then made me stand and sit, now in one position, now in another, while she took my portrait. Then telling me to play about near her, and to take care not to tumble off the rock, she sat down to meditate. ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... lax hold of these sands had hitherto been unable even to take root, against the unbroken sweep of the winds. M. Bremontier, after many experiments, conceived the idea of planting with the pine seeds the seeds of the common broom, whose hardy tuft should protect the tiny sapling until it could stand by itself. The result surpassed hope; pine forests, protecting in their turn, have sprung up and endured throughout the Landes; they have broken forever the power of the wind-storms; and their pitch and timber are even a source ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... a true lover of the open. Born in a mountain town in the Pyrenees he would rather camp on a bed of pine needles in the forest than lie on a tuft of down. He preferred his beloved Bayonne ham, spiced with garlic, to a sumptuous dinner in Jarnet house, a famous Paris tavern of the day; and had rather quench his thirst with a quaff of the wine of Jurancon than the finest cru ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... the Totem Dances also wear handlets which are carved and painted to represent the particular totem they seek to honor. These too are fantastically decorated with feathers, usually of the loon. The central feather is stripped, and crowned with a tuft of white down. Both men and women wear armlets and fillets of skin or feathers according to the animal character they represent. When in the full swing of the dance with fur and feathers streaming they present a pleasing spectacle, a picture ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... tuft of soft earth, sat Rusialka. All the little white fairies sat in a circle round her. And Ivy and Christmas Rose took one another by the hand ...
— The Dumpy Books for Children; - No. 7. A Flower Book • Eden Coybee
... stiffly and went out, leaving Colonel Dodd staring after him with his square face twisted into an expression of utter astonishment, his little eyes goggling, his tuft of whisker sticking up like ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... tendency to turn in, so as to be painful, the nail should always be kept scraped very thin, and as near the flesh as possible. As soon as the corner of the nail can be raised up out of the flesh, it should be kept from again entering, by putting a tuft of ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... of Botafogo Bay there is a delightful drive, beneath a splendid avenue of imperial palms, extending to the gates of the Botanical Gardens. Each specimen rises straight up like the column of an Egyptian temple, and is crowned with a feathery tuft of large shiny dark green leaves, some thirty feet in length. The clumps of bamboos, too, were very fine, and nearly all the trees seemed to be full of curious orchids and parasites ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... passage, spoken of in other chronicles, which opened into the inner towers of the ancient castle of the Herons. He found himself among rugged, heathy ground, the hollow palm of the island, now suffused with milky opalescence, for the sun was setting. Hardly could Stair see from one tuft to another, but out of the tinted mist swooped first two and then three birds like angels appearing out of a white heaven. Magnified by the mist Stair hardly recognized the green and black summer uniform of the golden plover, but he heard ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... motionless as if dead. They commenced working their way slowly but surely toward the river, while she, unconscious of the murderous stratagem, patiently awaited the turn of affairs which would free her from her terrible thralldom. Finally, an Indian, who was squatted behind a tree, gained a view of a tuft of her hair and brought his rifle to his shoulder. The sunlight that scintillated along the barrel of his weapon made it resemble a burnished spear, poised in his hand, while following it up to the stock, not only his crooked arm which supported the gun, but his ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... stood compassionating the affliction of the widow and orphans, it was the most impressive and solemn spectacle that could be witnessed. The very house seemed to have a condemned look; and, as a single wintry breeze waved a tuft of long grass that grew on a seat of turf at the side of the door, it brought the vanity of human enmity before my mind with melancholy force. When the keening ceased, Kelly's wife, with her children, knelt, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... a part of joyous Spring: A gown of grass-green silk she wore, Buckled with golden clasps before; A light-green tuft of plumes she bore ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Ramphastos, Buceros,[5] and numerous other rasorial types. On each side the breast, the present specimen exhibits two prominent naked protuberances, as in the female bust, perfectly destitute of hair or feathers. On each side of these protuberances, and higher up on the neck, is a tuft of feathers, having their shafts considerably elongated and naked, gently curved, and tipped with a pencil of a few black radii; they are placed much behind the naked protuberances, and do not appear intended to cover them when not inflated. On the sides of the neck, and across ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... graces, seemed the essential voice of the kirk itself upraised in thanksgiving, "Everything's alive," he said; and again cries it aloud, "thank God, everything's alive!" He lingered yet a while in the kirk-yard. A tuft of primroses was blooming hard by the leg of an old black table tombstone, and he stopped to contemplate the random apologue. They stood forth on the cold earth with a trenchancy of contrast; and he was struck with a sense of incompleteness in ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been drawn of the slights and indignities to which boys, whose means are inferior to those of their schoolfellows, are subject. I am happy to believe that this is a libel. There are, it is true, toadies and tuft hunters among boys as among men. That odious creature, the parasite of the Greek and Latin plays, exists still, but I do not believe that a boy is one whit the less liked, or is ever taunted with his poverty, provided he is a good fellow. Most of the miseries ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... worn away the hair round his neck, in his constant struggles to escape. See how he has browsed the scanty grass of that dry pasture, in the little circle to which he is confined, and is now trying to reach an uncropped tuft, just beyond his tether. And the sun is beating down upon him, and there is not the shade of a leaf for him to creep into, this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... outer circle of about 50 pale bluish-violet ray florets; the disk florets greenish yellow. Stem: Simple, erect, hairy, juicy, flexible, from 10 in. to 2 ft. high, producing runners and offsets from base. Leaves: Spatulate, in a flat tuft about the root; stem leaves narrow, more ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Dresden and Paris manuscripts. The figures of women mentioned under I with the serpent on their heads, are especially not to be regarded as identical with goddess O, for she never wears the serpent, but a tuft of hair bound high up on her head and running ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... and friend of poets, if thy glass Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass, Let this slight token of the debt I owe Outlive for thee December's frozen day, And, like the arbutus budding under snow, Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May When he who gives it shall have gone the way Where faith shall see ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... at the grey tuft on his chin and looking keenly at me a moment over his glasses,—"Those flowers," he said hesitatingly, "you might move those flowers from the room, perhaps. Their perfume is a trifle strong ... It might be better." Again he looked sharply at me. There was an odd ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... put forward, as involving a nice question in the treatment of an animal, is that of going toward a loose horse with a proffered tuft of grass in one hand, and a halter for his capture concealed behind the back in the other hand. It is right to conceal the halter, and to proffer the grass, provided they are used severally in their proper relations. If the grass be held forth as an assurance of ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin! And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as if my great-grandsire, Starting ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... expressed in the lineaments of his face. How much the constant use of oatmeal could produce such an effect, was plainly visible in the countenances of McGibbet and his lady-love. Both had an unmistakable equine cast; McGibbet, wild, scraggy, and scrubby, with a tuft on his poll that would not have been out of place between the ears of a plough-horse, stared at us, just as such an animal would naturally over the top of a fence; while his gentle mate, who had more of the amiable draught-horse ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the question; I dared scarce to breathe. I held myself ready to make a gesture as soon as she should look, and she looked in every possible direction but the one. She was interested in the vilest tuft of chickweed, she gazed at the summit of the mountain, she came even immediately below me and conversed on the most fastidious topics with the gardener; but to the top of that wall she would not dedicate a glance! At last she began to retrace her steps ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broad landscape I turn to the wayside flowers: the agrimony, the little lotus, the candy-tuft—getting rare now that I have left the arid stony region—the blue scabious, and, pleasanter than all, the purple ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... reached the River Corgo Fundo (elev. 1,250 ft.), along the banks of which the laminae of red-baked rock could be observed with thin white layers between. Above was a lovely green pasture with a tuft of deep green trees, which looked exactly like a bit of a well-kept English park. We mounted up again to 1,430 ft., then went down another descent into a large plain with campos, upon which grew ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... she was walking through a great, great wood, one day she felt tired, and sat down on a mossy tuft and fell asleep. Then she dreamt that she went deeper and deeper into the wood, till she came to a little wooden hut, and there she found her brothers; just then she woke, and straight before her she saw a worn ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... would at one time be in the highest spirits, and the next pensive, as if occupied by a world of thought—"I declare if that one isn't the very image of Mr Trotter, our curate at Allington! He has the same little tuft of hair on top on his head; and, besides, he has the identical same way of popping it on one side when he used to speak, and staring at you with his little round eyes. Is he not like Mr Trotter, father?" and she pointed out ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... outside the barn. The fighting is done by means of weeds specially prepared for the purpose. The weeds commonly called redroot or iron-weed are very good for this. The stems, measuring about a foot and a half in length, are stripped except for a small leaf or tuft of leaves at one end. On the opposite end the root is cut away so as to leave only a small knob which will serve ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... he proceeded quickly to lop off all the horizontal branches close to the stem, clearing them quickly away all but the thick top, where he left a tuft, and on finishing, had provided himself with a rough lance whose green brush-like top furnished him with the weapon of offence and defence with which he intended to protect ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... at La Boisselle was a wonderful sight. One morning I was wandering about the old battlefield, and I came across a great wilderness of white chalk—not a tuft of grass, not a flower, nothing but blazing chalk; apparently a hill of chalk dotted thickly all over with bits of shrapnel. I walked up it, and suddenly found myself on the lip of the crater. I felt myself in another ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... the ladies, the prowess of the 'champions' and the 'striking and jovial personality' of Sir Morton Pippitt. And if the fact of that 'striking and jovial personality' were not properly insisted upon, Sir Morton went himself to see the editor of the 'Riversford Gazette,' an illiterate tuft-hunting little man,—and nearly frightened him into fits. He had asserted himself in this kind of autocratic fashion ever since he had purchased Badsworth, when he was still in his forties,—and it may be well imagined that at the age of sixty he was not prepared to be thwarted, even ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli |
