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Sassafras   /sˈæsəfrˌæs/   Listen
Sassafras

noun
1.
Yellowwood tree with brittle wood and aromatic leaves and bark; source of sassafras oil; widely distributed in eastern North America.  Synonyms: Sassafras albidum, sassafras tree.
2.
Dried root bark of the sassafras tree.



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"Sassafras" Quotes from Famous Books



... hogs, and horned cattle; all kinds of poultry and game in great abundance; vegetables of every sort in perfection, and excellent fruit, particularly peaches and melons. Their vast forests abound with oak, ash, beech, chesnut, cedar, walnut-tree, cypress, hickory, sassafras, and pine; but the timber is not counted so fit for shipping as that of New England and Nova Scotia. These provinces produce great quantities of flax and hemp. New York affords mines of iron, and very rich copper ore is found in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... needs. Must we have a good understanding with one another's palates? as foolish people who have lived long together, know when each wants salt or sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate, as if I knew already. Every natural function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave hurry to slaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should recall,[425] however remotely, the grandeur ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... is a warm decoction of the bark of K[^u]nst[^u][']ts[)i] (Sassafras—Sassafras officinale), Kan[^u][n]si[']ta (Flowering Dogwood—Cornus florida), Ud[^a][']lana (Service tree—Amelanchier Canadensis), and Uni[']kwa (Black Gum—Nyssa multiflora), with the roots of two species (large and ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... finds excuses for going over there. But Rachel says he is needed here on the farm since uncle cannot work as he used, and that he shall neither go away to marry, nor bring a wife home here. They had a bitter quarrel one day. I was gathering sassafras and birch buds for her and they did not know I was there. And Rachel said if he married Clarissa, she would persuade uncle not to leave him any part of the farm. Ought not ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... refreshing in the summer season. Olives, grapes, cherries, citrons and plumbs will grow, though not cultivated in common; but apples, pears, pomegranates, chesnuts and walnuts are, or at least may be, raised in abundance. Many physical roots and herbs, such as China-root, snake-root, sassafras, are the spontaneous growth of the woods; and sage, balm and rosemary thrive well in the gardens. The planters distil brandy of an inferior quality from peaches; and gather berries from the myrtle bushes of which they make excellent candles. The woods ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... of this. After the great guns—and, per Baccho! what great guns they are!—you have nothing but the men engaged in commerce,—sharp, clever, shrewd, well-informed fellows; they are deep in flax-seed, cunning in molasses, and not to be excelled in all that pertains to coffee, sassafras, cinnamon, gum, oakum, and elephants' teeth. The place is a rich one, and the spirit of commerce is felt throughout it. Nothing is cared for, nothing is talked of, nothing alluded to, that does not bear upon this; and, in fact, if you haven't a venture in Smyrna ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... on the morning of the 11th of November, in the year of our Lord 1620, as described to us in the simple words of the pilgrims: "A pleasant bay, circled round, except the entrance, which is about four miles over from land to land, compassed about to the very sea with oaks, pines, junipers, sassafras, and other sweet weeds. It is a harbor wherein a thousand sail of ship may ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... in her purple and white striped mohair and her white lace neckerchief; and at three o'clock Uncle Titus walked in, with his coat pockets so bulgy and rustling and odorous of peppermint and sassafras, that it was no use to pretend to wait and be unconscious, but a pure mercy to unload him so that he might be able to ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... high, narrow forehead, resembling somewhat crumpled parchment; a dash of dry, brown hair relieving the ponderous border of her steeple-crowned cap, which she seems to have thrown on her head in a hurry; a moth-eaten, red shawl thrown spitefully over her shoulders, disclosing a sinewy and sassafras-colored neck above, and the small end of a gold chain in front, and, reader, you have the august Mrs. Swiggs, looking as if she diets on chivalry and sour krout. She is indeed a nice embodiment of several of those qualities which ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... their charmes and rattels, with an infernall rowt of words and actions, will seeme to sucke their inwarde griefe from their navels or their grieved places." Judging by other accounts written during the century concerning Indian medicine, the powdered root may well have been sassafras, of which there was an abundance in the Jamestown area. The priest dried the root in the embers of a fire, scraped off the outer bark, powdered it, and bound the wound after ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... eastern parts of the county, black jack, or barren oak, and dwarf oak, hickory, black and white walnut, white and yellow poplar, chestnut, locust, ash, sycamore, wild cherry, red flowering maple, gum, sassafras, persimmon, dogwood, red and slippery elm, black and white mulberry, aspin (rare), beech, birch, linn, honey-locust, sugar maple, sugar nut, yellow and white pine, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... for Gumbo.—Gather sassafras leaves, as late as possible in the season, before they turn red. Dry them in the shade and open air. When perfectly dry, pound thorn, sift the powder and bottle it ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman

... action. Transferred to his hand, some spent and rusty sentinel, long silent and useless, seemed to feel the warmth of the mender and resumed the round of duty. He would buy from the old estate halls on the Sassafras and the Chester rivers, tall, solemn clocks, dead to the purpose of their creation, their stately learned faces lost to former automatic expressions or waggery, and when exposed to the infectious influences of his shop, a gurgle of sound as of the inhalation of air into their ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... handful of hops, and twice as much of the chippings of sassafras root, in ten gallons of water; strain it, and pour in, while hot, one gallon of molasses, two spoonsful of the essence of spruce, two spoonsful of powdered ginger, and one of pounded allspice; put it in ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph

... late is the smoke of the First-day morning, It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences, It hangs thin by the sassafras and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool; It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill, And I hear the thrush's evening song and the robin's morning trill; So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know Where the sassafras and ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... from her that for the breach of a recent engagement he shall on his next visit have plain fare. Ralegh relied on Cecil to protect his monopoly of Virginian trade under his patent against unlicensed Adventurers. They cheapen, he complained, by their imports sassafras from its proper price of 20s. to 12s. a pound; they 'cloy the market;' 'they go far towards overthrowing the enterprise' of the plantation of Virginia, 'which I shall yet live to see an English nation.' In addition they introduced contraband ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... prepared chalk, finely powdered. Three-fourths ounce pulverized castile soap. One ounce powdered orris root. One-half dram oil of sassafras. ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... usquebaugh at Luckey Doughty's store. Well, we run the fox to earth in a Chickahominy village. Lord! I'm sorry for the half king of the Chickahominies! He'll have to answer to Governor and Council for letting red fox burrow in his village. Found him squatted in a sassafras patch. Snarled and fought and tried to bite like the beast he is. Woodson and the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... Flies from the House.—A good way to rid the house of flies is to saturate small cloths with oil of sassafras and lay them in windows and doors. The flies will ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... found the palm-tree, the cedar, the tamarind, the guaiacum, the sassafras, the hickory, the chestnut, the walnut of many different kinds, the wild cherry (sometimes a hundred feet high), and more than fifty different sorts ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich

... snow begins to melt away, he discovers the beautiful crocus struggling through the half-frozen ground; the snow-drops appear in all their chaste beauty; the buds of the swamp-maple shoot forth; the beautiful magnolia opens her splendid blossoms; the sassafras adds its evidence of life; the pearl-white blossoms of the dog-wood light up every forest: and while our stranger is rubbing his eyes in astonishment, the earth is covered with her emerald velvet carpet; rich foliage and brilliant colored blossoms adorn the trees; fragrant ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... trees, or other obstructions, the water is penned back. These places are often covered with canes and thickets and are called, in the corrupted American dialect, swamps. The sides of the hills are generally covered with oaks and hickory, or wild walnuts, cedar, sassafras, and the famous laurel tulip, which is esteemed one of the most beautiful trees in the world. The flat tops of the hillocks are all covered with groves of pine trees, with plenty of grass growing under them, and so free from underwood that you may gallop a horse for forty ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... of the forest, tribes of wandering boys broke up the simple tastes and quiet habits which old Mother Nature had always kept up in those parts. They pulled the young checkerberry before it even had time to blossom, rooted up the sassafras shrubs and gnawed their roots, fired off guns at the birds, and on several occasions, when old Dr. Bullfrog was leading a concert, had dashed in and broken up the choir ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... thereafter, the green corn or roasting-ear came into season, and I heard no more of the scurvy. Our country abounds with plants which can be utilized for a prevention to the scurvy; besides the above are the persimmon, the sassafras root and bud, the wild-mustard, the "agave," turnip tops, the dandelion cooked as greens, and a ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... his name, even in his own town, for it lingers there in Vineyard Point. Bartholomew Gosnold was one of the first white visitors here, for he landed in 1602, and lived on the island for a time, collecting a cargo of sassafras and returning thence to England because ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... had in Albany what they call in the English tongue a chemist's shop. It is such that I sought in the village, and I found it in one lodge, the owners of which were absent, and which I could reach at my leisure. Here is a gourd of Indian tea, very strong, made from the essence of the sassafras root. It will purge the impurities from your blood, and, in another day, your appetite will be exceedingly strong. Then your strength will grow so fast that in a short time you will be ready for a long journey. I have also brought a small sack filled ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Chinquapin bushes edged the road, the polished nut dark in the centre of each open burr; the persimmon trees showed their fruit, red-gold from the first frosts; the black haw and cedar overhung the ravines; there was much sassafras, and along the plashy streams the mint grew thick and pungent-sweet. In the deep and pure blue sky above them, fleecy clouds went past like ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... "I shall eat sassafras. I know a big tree of it, and Dan told me how squirrels dig up the roots and eat them, and I love to dig," returned Rob, undaunted ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... and Janet could easily tell sassafras and wintergreen by the pleasant smell of the leaves. They did not find any, however. They found a bird's empty nest, though, with broken egg shells in it, showing that the little birds had been hatched out and ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis

... to the zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence [41] The march of culture, setting limb and thorn As pikes against the ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... the other's head and poked the pillow to a more comfortable shape. "Now you lay perfectly still," she commanded in the hectoring tone of the born nurse; "I'm goin' to run down and make you up a good hot cup of sassafras tea." ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... tinc. of opium 2 oz., tinc. of belladonna 2 oz., powdered camphor 2 oz., oil of turpentine 2 oz., oil of sassafras 2 oz., oil of origanum 2 oz., and tinc. of capsicum 1 ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... roasting sweet potatoes under the wash-pot, and you could smell those, too, mingled with the soapy odor of the boiling clothes, which she sloshed around with a sawed-off broom-handle. Other smells came from over the cove, of pine-trees, and sassafras, and bays, and that indescribable and clean odor which the winds bring out ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... Pass commenced. We had now penetrated to the actual foot of the Pass without the smallest difficulty, it now remained to ascend by a steep slope to the level of its entrance. This slope is occupied by a very close wood, in which red cedar, sassafras, palms, and other ornamental inter-tropical trees are frequent. Through this shaded wood lye penetrated, climbing up a steep bank of a very rich loose earth, in which large fragments of a very compact rock are embedded. At length we gained ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... regulating intercourse with them, and educating their children, and preparing some of the most promising boys "for the college intended for them; that from thence they may be sent to that work of conversion"; for regulating agriculture, tobacco, and sassafras, then the chief merchantable commodities raised. Upon Captain Powell's petition, "a lewd and treacherous servant of his" was sentenced to stand for four days with his ears nailed to the pillory, and be whipped each day. John Rolfe complained that Captain Martin had made unjust charges against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... pattern. This bundle I secreted in the barn and then hied me to the hornet's nest. Approaching the swinging home of the hornets very softly, so as not to disturb the inmates, I stuffed the entrance to the hornet castle with sassafras leaves, and taking the great sphere in my arms I bore it to a back window of the kitchen where the black beldame was vigorously at work within and contentedly ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... and swamp, the two returned ones could tell nothing of the two unreturned except that neither of them, dead or alive, was anywhere on the ground of the fight or flight as they knew it. For days, inside the enemy's advancing lines, they had prowled in ravines and lain in blackberry patches and sassafras fence-rows, fed and helped on of nights by the beggared yet still warm-hearted farm people and getting through at last, but with never a trace of Kincaid or Charlie, though after their own perilous search they had ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... told me all about it. You must pick out the straightest, cleanest sassafras pole in the hen-house, and get Preston to saw it up into sticks one inch square and five and a quarter feet long. Then bring them over here, and Stuart will show you how to make a bow. Stuart will have a lot of pine and spruce sawed up for arrows, and you must get all the goose and ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... half my fields are grown up in sassafras brush. I rented out a thousand acres to the best niggers I had, and I give 'em mules and machinery and a stake at the store, and I told 'em to go ahead, and we'd split even at the end of the year. It's no use. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... day our hero, having hired a capital saddle-horse, a little the worse for age, was finding his way eastward along the sandy roads. The country was full of color; the sassafras and gum trees and oaks were all ablaze with red and yellow. Now and then he caught a glimpse of a sail on one of the wide reaches of the river which lay to the northward; now and then he passed a broken gateway or the ruins of a cabin. He carried a light ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... lies, and the cock o' the woods; Where the izard flits fine through the cold solitudes; Where the bear lurks perdu; and the lynx on his prey At nightfall descends, when the mountains are gray; Where the sassafras blooms, and the bluebell is born, And the wild rhododendron first reddens at morn; Where the source of the waters is fine as a thread; How the storm on the wild Maladetta is spread; Where the thunder is hoarded, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... the answer. "I want to get all my old stock off hands. Sugar water comes next, and then the giddy sassafras and spring roots rush me, and after that, harvest begins full force, and all my land is teeming. This is going to be a big year. Everything is sufficiently advanced to be worth while. I have ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... sassafras grew thick on either side, while ledges of rocks here and there pierced the foliage of the cedar-crowned banks 'round which tumbled and roared the mad waves, leaping like frightened does in wild confusion to their final plunge. The narrow Indian trails, winding ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah

... us that this was not the fact. He says: 'Neither of them spake with the people,' that is, with the lost Virginian colonists, 'but I do send both the barques away again, having saved the charge in sassafras wood.' From the same letter we find that Gilbert and Gosnoll went off without Raleigh's leave, though in his ship and at his expense, and the latter therefore prays that his nephew may be stripped of his rich store of sassafras and cedar wood, partly in chastisement, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... temperatures chloric ether became solid, and carefully prepared chloroform exhibited a granular pellicle on its surface. Spirits of naphtha froze at 54 degrees below zero, and oil of sassafras at 49 degrees. The oil of winter-green was in a flocculent state at 56 degrees, ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... were worn, much too large, and the soles contained several layers of paper. We called them 'program' shoes, because the paper used for stuffing, consisted of discarded programs. We gathered herbs from which we made medicine, snake root and sassafras bark being a great remedy ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... Mis Poor. He's in this ere jail fer debt. He's kinder pulin like, Zadkiel is, an I jess fetched daown some yarbs fer him. He's been uster takin on em, an they doos him good, specially the sassafras. An I thort mebbe, marm, I mout git tew see him, bein ez he ain't a well man, an never wuz sence I married him, twenty-five year agone ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... with the nodding violets, and ornamented her head with dandelion curls. This was indeed a happy summer. Her rambles were unlimited, and each day she was rewarded by new discoveries and delightful secrets—how the May-apple is good to eat, that sassafras root makes tea, that birch bark is very like candy, though not so sweet, and slippery ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... to take you for a quiet spin in the country, to make the better acquaintance of Madame Spring-in-Carolina," he said. A few minutes later he swung the car into a lonesome and lovely road edged with pines, and sassafras, and sumach, and cassena bushes, and festooned with vines. Madame Spring-in-Carolina had coaxed the green things to come out and grow, and the people of the sky to try their jeweled wings in her fine new sunlight. The Judas-tree ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... open, and hear his steps coming down his stairway and hear him lift the big wooden latch that held the door shut, and then when he'd see us, he'd say, "Well, well, well, well, the Sugar Creek Gang—" then he'd name every one of us by our nicknames, and say, "Come on in, boys, we'll have some sassafras tea," which all of us, especially Little Jim, liked ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens

... and nearly trampling me. Meanwhile, the battle seemed to be raging all around me. Most of the heavy fighting that day was done in the woods, and the losses were big on both sides. Well, I dragged myself to a little clump of sassafras, not caring much whether I lived or died, I was that played out, and my leg burning and stinging just as though it was being touched up with a red-hot poker. I had been there about fifteen minutes when a blue-coat rose up in front of me—right out of the ground ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... soft water; one quart of wheat bran; a large handful of dried apples; half a pint of molasses; a small handful of hops; half a pint of strong fresh yeast, and a piece of sassafras root ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... on the country side that old Simon knew lost secrets of woodcraft taught by the early man;—in what moon to fell the shingle timber that it might not curl on the roof; on what face of the hill the sassafras root was red; how to know the toughest hickory by hammering on its trunk; when twigs cut from the forest would grow, if thrust in the earth; and that secret day of all the year when an axe, stuck into the bark of a tree, would deaden it to ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... various long, dainty sticks of candy, exceedingly toothsome in their looks. There were checkerberry-pipe and licorice-pipe and sassafras-pipe, and—how Wort's eyes did glisten and his mouth water as he imagined the ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand

... him always, at his side as he watched them, was one to whom he gave his heart and soul in love—a twin brother. Together they strolled along the banks of the stream; together explored the fields lying farther away from it, and gathered pungent mints and sticks of fragrant sassafras in the hills overlooking all—beyond which lay the Realm of Conjecture, and from which, looking southward across the great river, they caught glimpses of the Enchanted Land. Hand in hand and heart in heart they two, the only children of a widowed mother, walked in paths of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... ever taste the bark of the sassafras-tree?" asked Paul. "If not, here is one; and I will break off a twig for you to chew. The color of the inner bark, near the root, is red, like cinnamon. A beer is made from it; and it is ...
— The Nursery, September 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 3 • Various

... stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witchhazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... stretched a deserted Virginia road, with its look of brooding loneliness, as if it had waited patiently through the centuries for a civilization which had never come; and on the right of it, beyond a waste of scarlet sumach and sassafras and a winding creek screened in elder bushes, the dawn was breaking slowly under a single golden-edged cloud. Somebody on Virginia's left—a large, raw-boned, passionate huntsman, in an old plum-coloured overcoat with a velvet collar—was complaining loudly that they ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... are old enough to care for themselves. Then they gather in large flocks and go for a holiday in the wild cherry trees. When the cherries are gone, they visit the sassafras and pepperidge trees, and the woodbine tangles. Then comes a course of dogwood, with ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... the spruce, and the balsam trees, 'will give our gums and our balsam.' The slippery elm offered its bark; the sassafras its roots; the cherry tree its bark and its berries. One after another, the other trees and shrubs offered their berries, their bark, their leaves, or their roots as medicine to heal ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... of their true love's eyes, the hair? Or, "Tell me, Aunt Lindie"—a lovelorn one begged—"will I have a mate at all or die unwed?" And the old woman, sipping a cup of sassafras tea made tasty with spice-wood sticks, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... ships came in, but they were small, belated craft. The most had left England before the sailing of the Santa Teresa; the rest, private ventures, trading for clapboard or sassafras, knew nothing of court affairs. Only the Sea Flower, sailing from London a fortnight after the Santa Teresa, and much delayed by adverse winds, brought a letter from the deputy treasurer to Yeardley and the Council. From Rolfe I learned its contents. It spoke of the stir ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... put med'cines all in, But known this secret, they had never (Of which they will be guilty ever) Been murderers of so much paper, Or wasted many a hurtless taper; No Indian drug had e'er been famed, Tabacco, sassafras not named; Ne yet, of guacum one small stick, sir, Nor Raymund Lully's great elixir. Ne had been known the Danish Gonswart, Or ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... Flowers. We have accurate cuts of the skeletonized leaves of the American Swamp Magnolia, Silver Poplar, Aspen Poplar, Tulip Poplar, Norway Maple, Linden and Weeping Willow, European Sycamore, English Ash, Everlasting Pea, Elm, Deutzia, Beech, Hickory, Chestnut, Dwarf Pear, Sassafras, Althea, Rose, Fringe Tree, Dutchman's Pipe, Ivy and Holly, with proper times of gathering and individual processes of manipulation for securing success with each. 'Fanciful though expressive,' says our author, 'is the appellation of 'Phantom' or 'Spiritual' Flowers; it was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... which he saw running about among the branches of a sassafras, just as it had seized a grasshopper. He caught the creature, which was then of a green hue; but, on placing it on an old log, the colour changed to a brownish-black. He was told, that if placed on a green leaf it would again become green. In a short time, after remaining ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... forest, with a green sward beneath their feet, made beautiful by the white euphorbia, the golden rod, and the purple aster. Sometimes, however, the great trunks closed in upon them, and they had to grope their way in a dim twilight, or push a path through the tangled brushwood of green sassafras or scarlet sumach. And then again the woods would shred suddenly away in front of them, and they would skirt marshes, overgrown with wild rice and dotted with little dark clumps of alder bushes, or make their way past silent woodland lakes, all streaked and barred with the tree shadows ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Mulberry, and sassafras, and juniper, would have dished the poetry. The cross-streets are all called by numbers; thus any domicile is readily found. The principal traverse street is an exception, being called "Broad;" it looks its name well, and extends beyond the town into the country: strange as it ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... weary sea league. Gosnold and his men had seen Cape Ann and Cape Cod, and had built upon Cuttyhunk, among the Elizabeth Islands, a little fort thatched with rushes. Then, hardships thronging and quarrels developing, they had filled their ship with sassafras and cedar, and sailed for home over the summer Atlantic, reaching England, with "not one cake of bread" left but only "a little vinegar." Gosnold, guiding the Goodspeed, is now making his last voyage, for he is to die in ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... possesses no papaw, no linden or basswood, no locust-trees, no cherry-tree large enough for a timber tree, no gum-trees, no sorrel-tree, nor kalmia; no persimmon-trees, not a holly, only one ash that may be called a timber tree, no catalpa or sassafras, not a single elm or hackberry, not a mulberry, not a hickory, or a beech, or a true chestnut. These facts would seem to indicate that the forest flora of North America entered it from the east, and that the Pacific States possess only those fragments of it that were able to struggle ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... of quarts of boiling water with a pint and a half of molasses. Stir in five quarts of cold water, then add ten drops of the oil of sassafras, ten of spruce, fifteen of winter-green, and a tea-spoonful of essence of ginger. When just lukewarm, put in half a pint of fresh lively yeast. When fermented, bottle and cork it, and keep it in a cool place. ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous

... moment," continued the unthoughtful Lizzy; "here's a beautiful sassafras sapling, and I can't pull it up by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... scarce ever shadowed by a cloud; a sun whose fierce, fervid beams become softened as they fall amid the foliage of evergreen oaks; among clustering groves that show all the varied tints of verdure, disporting upon green glassy glades, and glinting into arbours overshadowed by the sassafras laurel, the Osage orange, and the wild China-tree, laced together by a trellis of grape vines. A lake in the centre of this luxurious vegetation, placid as sleep itself, only stirred by the webbed feet of waterfowl, or the wings of dipping swallows, with above and below a brawling ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... down stream leisurely, to try their flies for an hour or two. The others elect to amuse themselves about the camp, cutting small timber with their little hatchets, picking fresh browse, or skirmishing the mountain side for wintergreen berries and sassafras. The fishermen return in a couple of hours, with a score of fair-sized trout. They remark apologetically that it is blazing hot—and there are plenty of trout ahead. Then they lean their rods against the shanty, and lounge on the blankets, ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... store. In the very same Iland where wee were seated, being fifteene miles of length, and fiue or sixe miles in breadth, there are fewe trees els but of the same kind; the whole Iland being full. [Sassafras.] ...
— A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land Of Virginia • Thomas Hariot

... to return to England in his vessel, the "Concord," with a cargo of native products, such as sassafras, cedar, etc., those who had planned to remain and settle returned with him, fearing that they might not share in the expected profits. But they could not take back with them the cellar to the house they had built, and what little vestige ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... voices coming from the direction of the Gullettsville road. Presently Sis and Woodward came in sight. They walked slowly along in the warm sunshine, wholly absorbed in each other. Woodward was leading his horse, and that intelligent animal improved the opportunity to nip the fragrant sassafras buds just appearing on the bushes. Teague looked at the two young people from under the brim of his hat and chuckled, but when Sis caught sight of him, a little while after, he was rubbing his rifle ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... 435.) Writing to Asa Gray in 1856 with respect to the United States flora, Darwin said that "nothing has surprised me more than the greater generic and specific affinity with East Asia than with West America." ("More Letters", I. page 434.) The recent discoveries of a Tulip tree and a Sassafras in China afford fresh illustrations. A few years later Asa Gray found the explanation in both areas being centres of preservation of the Cretaceous flora from a common origin. It is interesting to note that the paper in which this was enunciated at once established ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... native settlement, comprising two hundred savages, who were cultivators of the soil, which was prolific in corn, beans, melons, pumpkins, tobacco, and grapes. The harbor was environed with fine forest trees, as hickory, oak, ash, cypress, and sassafras. Within the town there were several patches of cultivated land, which the Indians were gradually augmenting by felling the trees, burning the wood, and after a few years, aided by the natural process of decay, eradicating the stumps. The French were ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... drawling out its hum— Like some great sleepy bee, above a bloom, Made drunk with honey—while, grown big with grain, The bulging sacks receive the golden rain. Again I tread the valley, sweet with hay, And hear the bob-white calling far away, Or wood-dove cooing in the elder-brake; Or see the sassafras bushes madly shake As swift, a rufous instant, in the glen The red-fox leaps and gallops to his den; Or, standing in the violet-colored gloam, Hear roadways sound with holiday riding home From church, or fair, or bounteous ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... currant, holly, strawberry, red-berried elder, winter berry, honeysuckle, and many more. Where the leaves are liable to become red in autumn the berries are often blue. Of such, notice wild grapes, blueberries, and berries of sassafras, though the flowering dogwood has red leaves as ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... confinement of a long voyage; and it was necessary to disembark with all possible speed, and erect huts to shelter them from the daily increasing inclemency of the weather. For this purpose, the forests of oak, pine, juniper, and sassafras, that had grown undisturbed for centuries along the coast, furnished them with abundant materials; and the woods soon echoed to the unaccustomed sound of the hatchet and the saw, at which all the men, of every ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... there, doing it first in 1602 and coming again, as we all must, once we know the region. Gosnold and his men got the eerie feel of the place too when the winter approached. They colonized Cuttyhunk and did very well through the summer, digging sassafras by day and retreating to their fort on the little island in the pond on the bigger island every time the goblins chased them: But the shouting of warlocks in the autumn gales was too much for them and they reembarked for England, glad to get away from the land which ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... winter. For a brief season Indian summer came to re-illumine the despairing days, and the larches, set aflame by her hand, flashed like lights. Then through the softly tinted wood broke the Autumn brightness upon delicate shimmering birch trees, red sumachs, purple tinged sassafras, golden rod and asters; but now the oaks and beeches had changed their velvet green raiment to dull brown, and all the wild woods, after the pitiless and well-nigh perpetual rains of Fall, were stricken and discoloured. Madame and Mademoiselle DeBerczy had ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... forming a seat with a back and footstool. And this thicket, so full of a natural art, was in the immediate vicinity, within a few rods, of the dwelling of Madame Deluc, whose boys were in the habit of closely examining the shrubberies about them in search of the bark of the sassafras. Would it be a rash wager—a wager of one thousand to one—that a day never passed over the heads of these boys without finding at least one of them ensconced in the umbrageous hall, and enthroned upon its natural throne? Those who would hesitate at such a wager, have either never been boys themselves, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... twenty grains; milk of almonds, three ounces; oil of sassafras, three drops. Mix and apply two ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... and mortar. We stretched a deer-skin over a hoop, burned holes in it with the prongs of a fork, sifted our meal, baked our bread, eat it, and it was first-rate eating, too. We raised, or gathered out of the woods, our own tea. We had sage, bohea, cross-vine, spice, and sassafras teas in abundance. As for coffee, I am not sure that I ever smelled it for ten years. We made our sugar out of the water of the maple-tree, and our molasses, too. These were great luxuries in those days. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... horses cantering over to the post for the half-mile dash. It was a race for legitimate cow-ponies and she knew Jeff's "Sassafras" was running in it. She meant to bet on Jeff's horse. It mattered nothing to her what other horses were running. She knew little enough of their claims. She had one thought in life. Anything to do with Jeff Masters, anything ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... until lately, uncultivated, the trees having been cleared away to afford pasturage. It is now closely planted with beeches, none of great size, and extends to a tangled thicket of fieldpines and cedar and sassafras and blackberry bushes, which again masks a drop of some ten ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... throne was reared upon the grass, Of spice-wood and of sassafras; On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell Hung the burnished canopy,— And over it gorgeous curtains fell Of the tulip's crimson drapery. The monarch sat on his judgment-seat, On his brow the crown imperial shone, The prisoner Fay was at ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... your ma? Land, she'll get well. All she wants is a bit o' boneset tea, or sage an' sassafras. I'll go yarb hunting to-morrow, if I get my garden ploughed. Cleena'll stew it. Say, have you heard my new one? ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... dissipate my languors and restore me to health. At least while I had power, I was bound to exert it to the wisest purposes. I resolved to seek the City Hall immediately, and, for that end, crossed the intermediate fields which separated Sassafras from Chestnut Street. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... the woods and their balmy light— One hour on the top of a breezy hill, There in the sassafras all out of sight The Blackbird is splitting his slender bill For the ease of his heart: Do you think if he said "I will sing like this bird with the mud colored back And the two little spots of gold over his eyes, Or like to this shy little ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous

... continent, in the region of Virginia and Maryland. They are small in stature and primitive in structure. Some are of generalised forms that are now unknown; some have leaves approaching those of the oak, willow, elm, maple, and walnut; some may be definitely described as fig, sassafras, aralia, myrica, etc. Eastern America, it may be recalled, is much higher than western until the close of the Cretaceous period. The Angiosperms do not spread much westward; they appear next in Greenland, and, before the ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... experiment; but it proved unsuccessful, and molasses made from the cane was the only sweetening. The boys, however, never liked anything sweetened with molasses, so they gave up everything that had molasses in it. Sassafras tea was tried as a substitute for tea, and a drink made out of parched corn and wheat, of burnt sweet potato and other things, in the place of coffee; but none of them were fit to drink—at least so the boys thought. The wheat crop proved a ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page

... and ordered the boat to drop lower down a few miles through a forest of stately timber trees. I had a few of them cut down and brought on board...I brought Governor King specimens of light woods and a species of sassafras discovered by my second mate...On our way down the river we stopped at the place where we had passed the preceding night and found our fire still burning. To this spot we gave the name of The Halfway House, being halfway ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... Podospermum laciniatum. Cirsium arvense. Carduus heterophyllus tataricus. Campanula, sp. Convolvulus sepium. *Primula officinalis, var. cult! acaulis. elatior. Gentiana campestris. *Petunia violacea! Lycium europaeum. Laurus Sassafras. Tulipa Gesneriana. Convallaria maialis. ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... sprang up again and with it, borne on it, came the click—click—click of a hammer tapping a rock. It was a small gladey valley through which a gulley ran. Boulders cropped out here and there, and haws, red and white elms, and sassafras ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... and we hope soon to report that the goose remains suspended at a favorable altitude. People who have tried to run a funny paper and entertain a congregation of large piebald measles at the same time will understand something of the tact, finesse, and hot sassafras tea required to do so. We expect to get out the paper regularly from this time on, but are forced to be very careful, as improper treatment and deleterious after-effects of measles, combined with the high price of paper and presswork, have been known to cause a relapse. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... Rheumatism. Take of garlic two cloves, of gum ammoniac, one drachm; blend them by bruising together. Make them into two or three bolus's with fair water and swallow one at night and the other in the morning. Drink strong sassafras tea while using these. It banishes also contractions of the joints. 100 pounds been ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... character. Daniel Neall was the president of this association, and William Dorsey the secretary. The hall, one of the finest buildings in the city, was situated at the southwest corner of Delaware, Sixth, and Harris streets, between Cherry and Sassafras streets. ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... the odor of gasoline out of freshly cleaned garments, use oil of sassafras in the gasoline to the proportion of about five drops to ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler

... has proved useful in cases of erysipelas. Take two ounces of sarsaparilla, one of sassafras, one of burdock root, and one of liquorice; boil them slowly in three pints of water, keeping it covered close, until reduced to one-half. Take two ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... scratch'd the place where the Lameness chiefly lay, till the Blood came, bathing it, both before and after Incision, with warm Water, spurted out of his Mouth. This done, he ran into his Plantation, and got some Sassafras Root, (which grows here in great plenty) dry'd it in the Embers, scrap'd off the outward Rind, and having beat it betwixt two Stones, apply'd it to the Part afflicted, binding it up well. Thus, in a day or two, the Patient became sound. This day, we pass'd through a great many Towns, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... a jack dat am sho' good, git snakeroot and sassafras and a li'l lodestone and brimstone and asafoetida and resin and bluestone and gum arabic and a pod or two red pepper. Put dis in de red flannel bag, at midnight on de dark of de moon, and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... things! I remember the receipt for Seminole soup; we ought to try that out here, if we could find the ingredients. 'Take a squirrel, cut it up and put it on to boil. When the soup is nearly done add to it one pint of picked hickory- nuts and a spoonful of parched and powdered sassafras leaves, or the tender top of a young pine tree, which gives a very aromatic ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... cabin the girl lingered for a moment by the sassafras bushes near the spring. Some deep craving for sympathy moved her to alien speech. She turned upon him with an imperious, fierce tenderness in ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... upwards of twenty different botanical families, and are obtained from all parts of the world. Thus, from Africa we have geranium and clove oils; from America, bay, bois de rose, Canadian snake root, cedarwood, linaloe, peppermint, petitgrain, and sassafras; from Asia, camphor, cassia, cinnamon, patchouli, sandalwood, star anise, ylang-ylang, and the grass oils, viz., citronella, lemongrass, palmarosa, and vetivert; from Australia, eucalyptus; while in Europe there are the citrus oils, bergamot, lemon, and orange, produced by Sicily, aspic, ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... noise" as they probably thought would scare away the devil of sickness. Winslow gave him some conserve, washed his mouth, scraped his tongue, which was in a horrid state, got down some drink, made him some broth, dosed him with an infusion of strawberry leaves and sassafras root, and had the satisfaction of seeing him rapidly recover. Massasoit, full of gratitude, revealed the plot which had been formed to destroy the colonists, whereupon the Governor ordered Captain Miles Standish to see to them; who thereupon, as everybody remembers, stabbed Pecksuot ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... employed ourselves in getting sassafras, and the building of our fort. The second, third, and fourth, we wrought hard to make ready our house for the provision to be had ashore to sustain us till our ship's return. This day from the main came to our ship's side a canoe, with their lord or chief commander, for that ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... economic salvation, tobacco. In the first years of the settlement every effort had been made to find products in the New World that would assure financial success for the settlers and the Company. Pitch, tar, timber, sassafras, cedar, and other natural products were sent in the returning ships. Attempts to produce glass on a paying scale proved futile, as did early efforts to make silk, using the native mulberry trees growing in abundance. The glass ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... more explain what fascinated him than he could understand what caused the melancholy quiet which hung over the glades and hollows. He had pictured a real forest so differently from this. Here was a long lane paved with springy moss and fenced by bright-green sassafras; there a secluded dale, dotted with pale-blue blossoms, over which the giant cottonwoods leaned their heads, jealously guarding the delicate flowers from the sun. Beech trees, growing close in clanny groups, spread their straight limbs gracefully; the white birches gleamed like ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... I sells sassafras and little things along to help out. My wife died. My two sons left just before the World War. I never hear from them. I married ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... aren't they horrible! Run, girls, run back, or you'll be eaten up!" and she beat such a hasty retreat, meanwhile wildly flinging her arms up and around her head, that she collided with Margaret, and nearly toppled her into a sassafras bush. ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... was used burnt rye, okra, corn, bran, chickory and sweet potato peelings. For tea, raspberry leaves, corn fodder and sassafras root. There was not enough bacon to be had to keep the soldiers alive. Sorghum was ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts



Words linked to "Sassafras" :   flavorer, flavoring, genus Sassafras, flavouring, seasoning, flavourer, seasoner, laurel



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