"Midsummer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... midsummer of the year 1816, I commenced in a far off way to give notice, that at Michaelmas I intended to abdicate my authority and power, to which intimations little heed was at first given; but gradually the seed took with the soil, and began ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... believe that he had fallen heir to slave property. That the terms of the bequest were imperfectly known, did not deter the opposition press from malevolent insinuations which stung Douglas to the quick. It was fatal to his political career to allow them to go unchallenged. In the midsummer of 1850, while Congress was wrestling with the measures of compromise, Douglas wrote to his friend, the editor of the Illinois State Register," It is true that my wife does own about 150 negroes in Mississippi on a cotton ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... man and beast; and, as soon as the crops came off, the fields became common for all the village to turn their stock upon, the arable fields being usually common from Lammas (August 1) to Candlemas (February 2) and the meadows from July 6, old Midsummer Day, to Candlemas[11]; but as in this climate the season both of hay and corn harvest varies considerably, these ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... had been the chief of Mr. Troy Wilkins's two stenographers for seven months now—midsummer of 1907, when she was twenty-six. She had climbed to thirteen dollars a week. The few hundred dollars which she had received from Captain Golden's insurance were gone, and her mother and she had to make a science of saving—economize on milk, on bread, on laundry, on tooth-paste. But ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... set out for Michillimackinac along with Louvigny and his men. On their way up the Ottawa, they met a large band of Iroquois hunters, whom they routed with heavy loss. Nothing could have been more auspicious for Perrot's errand. When towards midsummer they reached their destination, they ranged their canoes in a triumphal procession, placed in the foremost an Iroquois captured in the fight, forced him to dance and sing, hung out the fleur-de-lis, shouted Vive le Roi, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... place with the green water-fall Ralph's vision might have kept faith with him; but how could he hope to surprise it in the midsummer crowds of St. Moritz? Undine, at any rate, had found there what she wanted; and when he was at her side, and her radiant smile included him, every other question was in abeyance. But there were hours of solitary ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... speaks of a spirit which returned in his time, in the town of Epinal, about the year 1212, in the house of a burgess named Hugh de la Cour, and who, from Christmas to Midsummer, did a variety of things in that same house, in sight of everybody. They could hear him speak, they could see all he did, but nobody could see him. He said he belonged to Clexenteine, a village seven leagues from Epinal; and what is also remarkable is that, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... did not remain in England long after this; soon after the midsummer of 1422 he left this country. His motive for taking this step may have been that he ended by giving up all hope of exchanging his laborious living for a sinecure free benefice, or of obtaining a permanent appointment to a prebend that was ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... will thus fuse into one two kinds of love, which he sees as distinct—divided by a mountain of poetic fancy, that will melt away like the snow on a glacier under the beams of the midsummer sun." ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... Palmer, and offshore anchorages in Antarctica note: few ports or harbors exist on the southern side of the Southern Ocean; ice conditions limit use of most of them to short periods in midsummer; even then some cannot be entered without icebreaker escort; most antarctic ports are operated by government research stations and, except in an emergency, are not open to commercial or private vessels; vessels in any port south of 60 degrees south ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... finest poems about the sea from on shore, another the finest poem about the sea from at sea, and the other the finest poem about the earth from the heart of the woods. Even in Swinburne's work the series of nine ballades in long lines which bears the name of A Midsummer Holiday stands out as a masterpiece of its kind, and of a unique kind. A form of French verse, which up to then had been used, since the time when Villon used it as no man has used it before or since, and almost exclusively in iambic ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... for reasons best known to the all-wise beings who presided over its management, the principal examinations and "removes" of the year took place not, as in most schools, at the end of the Midsummer term, but at the beginning of the Autumn term, about Michaelmas; consequently now, with the examinations looming in the distance, everybody who had anything to hope for from hard work settled down to ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... a touch of respect in their voices—passed Gavin fallen forward on his face just when he was flying down grade under a full head of steam. It was duskily clear, with a great lake of crimson light dying into purple over the hills of midsummer heather. The driver was John Platt, the Englishman from Crewe, who had been brought from the great London and Northwestern Railway, locally known as "The Ell-nen-doubleyou." In these remote railway circles the talk is as exclusively of matters of the four-foot way as in Crewe ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... as they fell upon the shore. Whilst we sat there the great white moon appeared on the rim of the eastern horizon and slowly crept above the water, throwing a perfect flood of silver light upon the dancing waves. The stars shone with the soft light of a midsummer night, and the breaking of the low waves upon the shore added the charm of pleasant sound to the beauty of the night. Mr. Lincoln, whose home was far inland from the great lakes, seemed greatly impressed with the wondrous beauty of the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... grew to be quite the loveliest lass in all the world. Her hair was as black as the raven's wing, her eyes were as blue as the midsummer sea, and her skin was fair as the petal of a rose. One spring morning a little yellow bird flew into the cedar grove, and gave the dwarf a letter which ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... invader has been driven from the devastated scenes of his unholy conquest. The tide of conflict which during the dark days of midsummer threatened to overwhelm the allied forces has been turned into glorious victory. As the sounds of battle die away and the beaten foe hurries from the field it is fitting that the conquering armies should pause to give ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... the evergreens of old exclusively; they do indeed affect the holly, ivy, and (New Zealand) mistletoe, but they make up with umbrageous and rich ferns, lachipoden, lauristinas, Portugal laurels, and our own beautiful evergreen, Ngaio, and with all the midsummer flowers at command; then the clerk, the storeman, the merchant, and the mechanic indulge in 'trips,' or day excursions, in small steamboats, to the neighbouring bays surrounding small townships, and villages on the coast. Others again, take the train for a day's outing and play ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... administers justice desired by any member of the University, &c. In the latter, the Commissary acts by authority given him under the seal of the Chancellor, as well in the University as at Stourbridge and Midsummer fairs, and takes cognizance of all offences, &c. The proceedings are the same in ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... anyway he was on board the Elector as she overhauled the ketch. There was some show of fighting when the vessels first came alongside, of one another, and Maskew drew a pistol and fired it off in young David's face, with only the two gunwales between them. In the afternoon of Midsummer's Day the Elector brought the ketch into Moonfleet, and there was a posse of constables to march the smugglers off to Dorchester Jail. The prisoners trudged up through the village ironed two and two together, while people stood at their doors or followed them, the men greeting ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... wrathful drift laid the whole land in gloom; When war, enormous war, broke through the heavens, In sheets and streaking fire and thunderous clap, With shock on shock, that crushed the ripened corn, And swept the piled up midsummer to ruin. That wrenched great timbers of a thousand years, Shaking the strong foundations of the land. And when at last the terrible tempest fell, Wide heaven was emptied of the sun and stars, And void of more than ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... deep that wagons would sink up to the hubs, so that half a dozen horses could not move them. Then, of course, it was impossible for any one to get to work with dry feet; and this was bad for men that were poorly clad and shod, and still worse for women and children. Later came midsummer, with the stifling heat, when the dingy killing beds of Durham's became a very purgatory; one time, in a single day, three men fell dead from sunstroke. All day long the rivers of hot blood poured forth, until, with the sun beating down, and the air motionless, the stench was enough ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... somehow gone round that the minister's niece was "tending library," and things being rather dull in the midsummer pause of most of the activities of the place, no doubt more than one ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... Governor Dobbs commissioned Captain Hugh Waddell to erect the fort promised the Catawbas at the spot chosen by the commissioners near the mouth of the South Fork of the Catawba River. This fort, for which four thousand pounds had been appropriated, was for the most part completed by midsummer, 1757. But owing, it appears, both to the machinations of the French and to the intermeddling of the South Carolina traders, who desired to retain the trade of the Catawbas for that province, Oroloswa, the Catawba King Heygler, sent a "talk" to Governor ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... glory of that morning. The sky was blue and cloudless, the sun was as hot as though this were indeed a midsummer morning. The whole land, saturated still with the fast receding sea, seemed to gleam and glitter with a strange iridescence. Great pools in unaccustomed places shone like burnished silver, the wet ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... midsummer noonday the old Manton house was hardly true to its traditions. It was of the earth, earthy. The sunshine caressed it warmly and affectionately, with evident disregard of its bad reputation. The grass greening all the expanse in its front seemed to ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the same with some parts of some writers' labours, to be had separately, as Hamlet, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Macbeth, and the Merchant of Venice; and with a few detached or select compositions to which one has to thread one's way in a larger volume: a few songs scattered through the early dramatists and lyrists; Gray's Elegy; Tennyson's ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Along in midsummer, in the midst of Ellen's vacation, the mining stock dropped fast a point or more a day. Andrew's heart began to sink, though he was far from losing hope. He used to talk it over with the men who advised him to buy, and come ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of July, 1865, the final meeting of the board of the Woman's Central took place. Its members, though scattered by midsummer-heat, did not fail to appear. It was a solemn and touching occasion. The following resolutions, deeply felt and still read with emotion by its members, were ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... formerly held his lands of the manor of Ripley, by the payment of a red rose at Midsummer, and by carrying the boar's head to the lord's table all the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... scene suggested the heat of midsummer, it was far from being unrefreshing, especially to the eyes of one newly come. For this spot was near "cool Praeneste," one of the favourite resorts of Latium to the wealthy, invalid, or indolent of Rome, who shunned the excessive heat ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... midsummer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... a sultry, sweltering July afternoon in May, one of those escapades of the New York climate when the population finds itself in the grip of midsummer discomforts without having had time to get seasoned to them. I went into the Park. I had come away from the Chaikins' under the impression that if I could raise two or three thousand dollars I might be able, by means of perseverance ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... far-seeing persons to whom our present sudden mighty conflict may not have come as a surprise; but to all except these it is a prodigy as startling as it would be, if the farmers of the North should find a ripened harvest of blood-red ears of maize upon the succulent stalks of midsummer. We have lived for peace: as individuals, to get food, comfort, luxuries for ourselves and others; as communities, to insure the best conditions we could for each human being, so that he might become what God meant him to be. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... with 15,00 men, all eager for this Armageddon of the West. Perhaps there never has been any other occasion on which the pride and pomp of glorious war have been set in a scene of such wonderful peace and beauty. The midsummer day was perfectly calm. Not a cloud was in the sky. The lovely lake shone like a burnished mirror. The forest-clad mountains never looked greener or cooler; nor did their few bare crags or pinnacles ever stand out more clearly ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... boy who had one of the kindest of mothers, but whose father had died before his recollection. I think—indeed I know—he loved his mother, though he was sometimes thoughtless, and once in a while disobedient. One day, in midsummer, when the blackberries were ripe in the woods, and the trout were sporting merrily in the brook, Charles—for that was the name of the boy—came running to his mother, all out of breath, and said that Joseph Cone and Charley Corson had ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... reader and wronged his author. The purport of the passage amounts to this: the contents, or structure (to wit, of the show to be exhibited), breaks down in the performer's zeal to the subject which it presents. Johnson very properly adduces a much happier expression of the same thought from A Midsummer Night's Dreame: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... In midsummer the queen moved to Buckingham Palace, and on July seventeenth she took part in her first elaborate public ceremony—that is, she drove in state to dissolve Parliament. All were impressed with the manner in which she read her ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... midsummer holidays, when I was to leave the rectory for King's College. Mrs. Dale's and Ellen's pregnancies, daily becoming nearer to the period of parturition, were getting more difficult to conceal. We had long discussions ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... Midsummer Night's Dream. Edited by Sarah W. Hiestand. Illustrations after Smirke and the Droeshout portrait. Paper, 15 ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... has to tell us how in the Scritfin country there is little or no night in midsummer, little or no day in winter; and how the shadows there are exceeding long, and shorten to nothing as they reach the equator,—where he puts not merely Egypt, but Jerusalem. And how on Christmas days a man's shadow is nine feet long in Italy, whereas at Totonis ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... unkinde, and wilt thou leave me so.] Compare Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2, "why unkindly didst thou ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... settled; the rooks rose. The trees which they touched so capriciously seemed insufficient to lodge their numbers. The tree-tops sang with the breeze in them; the branches creaked audibly and dropped now and then, though the season was midsummer, husks or twigs. Up went the rooks and down again, rising in lesser numbers each time as the sager birds made ready to settle, for the evening was already spent enough to make the air inside the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... marriage, when the Stanifords, upon their arrival home from Europe, paid a visit to South Bradfield. It was in the depths of the winter following their union, and the hill country, stern and wild even in midsummer, wore an aspect of savage desolation. It was sheeted in heavy snow, through which here and there in the pastures, a craggy bowlder lifted its face and frowned, and along the woods the stunted pines and hemlocks blackened against a background of leafless oaks and birches. A northwest ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... the earth, in order to watch over and console love-sick virgins who were separated from their betrothed. To her request the god consented, giving to the maiden the figure of a swan. Since that time she visits the earth a short time after midsummer day; and you can hear her singing upon our great inland waters during the night, at any place between the lonesome stretches of the far north to the great southern lakes, from the middle of summer till the ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... suburbs, three or four miles long, adjoining each of the twelve gates," where merchants and strangers lived, each nation with separate "burses" or store-houses, where they lodged. From this centre to the land of Gog and Magog and the champaign-land of Bargu, the Great Khan travelled every year in midsummer for the fresh air of the plateau country of central Asia, as well as for a better view of the great Russian and Bactrian sub-kingdoms of his House. The six months of spring and autumn were spent in slow progresses through central and southern ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... no more exquisite corner than the Garden of the Luxembourg. At every season it is beautiful. The winter sunlight seems to linger on its stately Italian terraces after it has ceased to shine elsewhere. The first lilacs bloom here in the spring, and when midsummer has turned all the rest of Paris into a blazing, white wilderness, these gardens remain cool and tranquil in the heart of turbulent “Bohemia,” a bit of fragrant nature filled with the song of birds and the voices of children. Surely it was a gracious inspiration that selected ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... pungent salt air of the ocean. The air of winter is dense, hard, compressed. In the spring it has new vitality. It is light, mobile, and laden with a thousand palpitating odours from earth, grass, and sprouting leaves. The air of midsummer is dense, saturated, or dry and burning, as if it came from a furnace. When a cool breeze brushes the sultry stillness, it brings fewer odours than in May, and frequently the odour of a coming tempest. The avalanche of coolness which sweeps through the low-hanging air bears little ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... the next day other islands were seen. As the ships ranged along the coast a terrific sea rolled in on the shore, placing them in great danger, and both had considerable difficulty in weathering the points and reefs they met with. Though it was midsummer the weather was as cold as it is generally during the winter in the British Channel. At last a harbour was discovered, into which the ships beat and found good anchorage, an abundance of water, innumerable penguins and other birds, ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... put in the second-form," said the doctor, "and if you work hard, I see no reason why you should not get up into the third next midsummer. Now, good-bye. I hope you won't find the head master of Randlebury is as 'stiff and stuck-up a fellow' as you dreaded, and I trust I shall find you as honest and brave a fellow as I hoped you would turn out the first ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... assert her claim to it. Her reply, however, appears to have been anticipated, and the request was only preparatory to ulterior measures. For the sake of public decency, and certainly in no unkind spirit towards herself, a retirement from the court was now to be forced upon her. At Midsummer she accompanied the king to Windsor; in the middle of July he left her there, and never saw her again. She was removed to the More, a house in Hertfordshire, which had been originally built by George Neville, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... or the Scythian Shepherd.—The lunes of Tamburlaine are perfect midsummer madness. Nebuchadnezzar's are mere modest pretensions compared with the thundering vaunts of this Scythian Shepherd. He comes in drawn by conquered kings, and reproaches these pampered jades of Asia that they can draw but twenty miles a day. Till I saw this passage with my own eyes, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... followed were brilliant links in a fierce sequence of gaiety; and this though the weather was so hot that the very candles in their sconces drooped, dripping their melted wax on egrette and lace, scarlet coat and scarf. A sort of midsummer madness attacked the city; we danced in the hot moonlit nights, we drove at noontide, with the sun flaring in a sky of sapphire, we boated on the Bronx, we galloped out to the lines, escorted by a troop of horse, to see the Continental outposts beyond Tarrytown—so bold they had become, and ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... meal, and was early forth again. But, alas, as we climbed the interminable hill upon the other side, "Proot!" seemed to have lost its virtue. I prooted like a lion, I prooted melliflously [Footnote: Melliflously: sweetly. Find this allusion in "Midsummer Night's Dream," Act I, Scene 2.] like a sucking-dove; but Modestine would be neither softened nor intimidated. She held doggedly to her pace; nothing but a blow would move her, and that only for a second. I must follow at her heels, incessantly belaboring. A moment's pause in this ignoble ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Long-Ash Lane it was scarce recognizable as the track of his two winter journeys. No mistake could be made now, even with his eyes shut. The cuckoo's note was at its best, between April tentativeness and midsummer decrepitude, and the reptiles in the sun behaved as winningly as kittens on a hearth. Though afternoon, and about the same time as on the last occasion, it was broad day and sunshine when he entered Hintock, and the details of the Knap dairy-house ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... insistence of his descriptions. He would find adjectives for the blue sea, but probably he would refuse to search for words for the white. A white Mediterranean is not in the legend. Nevertheless it blooms, now and then, pale as an opal; the white sea is the flower of the breathless midsummer. And in its clear, silent waters, a few days, in the culmination of the heat, bring forth translucent living creatures, many-shaped ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... college plays with more zest than Wellesley. Perhaps because no college ever had such a perfect playground. Every hill and grove and hollow of the beautiful campus holds its memories of playdays and midsummer nights. ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Portugal, and I must say that I've never found a city to compare with Lisbon. The suburbs! . . . Why, this very morning I saw the city itself one pall of smoke. You'd have thought a main square was burning. Yet up here, in Buenos Ayres, it might have been midsummer. . . . The children, playing in the garden, called me out to look at the smoke. Was there a fire? I must ask ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "King Charles in the oak," and any one may see or think he sees the outlines of an oak tree. It was the bracken, or eagle fern, as some call it, which was supposed to bear the mysterious "fern seed," but only on midsummer eve ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... "They're not stars. They're more like the sun at noon in midsummer, when so many flowers are pourin' out perfume you can hardly keep ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... love, till she was changed to a fountain; Ovid, "Metamorphoses." lib. ix. Thisbe and Pyramus: the Babylonian lovers, whose death, through the error of Pyramus in fancying that a lion had slain his mistress, forms the theme of the interlude in the "Midsummer Night's Dream." Sir Tristram was one of the most famous among the knights of King Arthur, and La Belle Isoude was his mistress. Their story is mixed up with the Arthurian romance; but it was also the subject of separate ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... dwelling I ever saw. Upon the whole, I was much diverted with my journey. On my return I stayed but a single hour in London, saw no soul, and came hither to meet the deluge. It has rained all night, and all day; but it is midsummer, consequently midwinter, and one can expect no ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... she was able to go with him. It a lovely sunny day, one of those days which we sometimes have in May, summer days in advance of the main body, and more beautiful, perhaps, than any that follow, because they are days of anticipation and hope, our delight in the full midsummer being sobered by the thought of approaching autumn and winter. When they reached the bridge Mr. Bellamy remembered that he had forgotten his cheque-book and his money, and it was of no use to go ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... July 1575, when Queen Elizabeth made a progress through Warwickshire on a visit to her favourite, the Earl of Leicester, at his castle of Kenilworth. References have been detected in Oberon's vision in Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream' (II. ii. 148-68) to the fantastic pageants and masques with which the Queen during her stay was entertained in Kenilworth Park. Leicester's residence was only fifteen miles from Stratford, and it is possible that Shakespeare went thither ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... entertain for a visiting school friend one evening in midsummer sent out invitations to a Japanese Garden Party. She wrote them on the pretty little hand-decorated place-cards which are to be found in most shops now. The Japanese writing paper which comes in rolls ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... before had been one of those warm, midsummer days, beginning with a clear sky and a strong south wind. By noon heavy white clouds that looked like heaps of ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... 24th. Sunday. Midsummer Day. Up, but, being weary the last night, not so soon as I intended. Then being dressed, down by water to Deptford, and there did a great deale of business, being in a mighty hurry, Sir W. Coventry writing to me that there was some thoughts that the Dutch fleete were out or ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... notice of the little man, but left him to the entire superintendence of his own family. Then there came a large remittance from his father, and the child was asked by Uncle Newcome at Christmas. Then his father's name was mentioned in general orders, and Uncle Hobson asked little Clive at Midsummer. Then Lord H., a late Governor-General, coming home, and meeting the brothers at a grand dinner at the Albion, given by the Court of Directors to his late Excellency, spoke to the bankers about that most distinguished officer their relative; and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stampedes. Time and again swift riders spread the news that the redskins had dug up the tomahawk and had gone on the war path. These scares arose from isolated murders by the Indians, whose cupidity could not withstand the temptations of the white man's property. It was not, therefore, until midsummer of 1855 that hostilities began in earnest. A federation had been formed among all the tribes of Northern California, Southern and Eastern Oregon and Washington. The great leaders of this insurrection were Tyee John and his brother "Limpy," Rogue ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... hear it. Push it with all your might, and finish up so we can have a month on Atwater without coming back and forth. I feel as if I'd need about that much swimming to make me clean, as the young man here suggests; travelling over the west in midsummer is neither cool nor cleanly; but it's great, when things sell as ours did. Land seems to be moving, and there's money under the surface; nobody has lost so much, they are only economizing; we must do that ourselves, but Swain and I are both safe, so we shall enjoy a few years of work to recoup some ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... called St. Bede's, to which it was customary, almost as late as the middle of the last century, to convey diseased children, and, after dropping in a crooked pin, to dip them for the recovery of their health: round the Well, also, on every Midsummer Eve, was a great resort of the neighbouring people, with bonfires, music, and dancing. The mystical properties of the Well are not of difficult solution: since it was reasonable enough to associate the restorative effects ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... write cold where they say hot, and wet where they say dry, and always put the contrary to what they foretell; if he were to lay a wager, he would not care which side he took, excepting where no uncertainty could fall out, as to promise excessive heats at Christmas, or extremity of cold at Midsummer. I have the same opinion of these political controversies; be on which side you will, you have as fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to shock principles that are broad and manifest. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... from 54 deg. to 60 deg. F. Winter sets in about the 1st of December and the snow is gone save in the mountains by the 1st of May. The thermometer rarely registers below zero F. or above 75 deg. F.; the difference between the midwinter and midsummer averages is seldom more than 25 deg. . The summer is relatively dry, the autumn and winter wet. The vapour-laden sea air blowing landward against the girdle of snow and glaciers on the mountain barriers a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... enough in these hedges to make up for the loss of views; but we had views too, when, for a moment, a gate, a stile, a gap in the hedge itself, opened to us glimpses of such woods and dells as we read of in the Midsummer ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... year had passed away since those Christmas holidays when the wreck happened, and my brother and I were again to become inmates of Uncle Boz's unique abode. It was midsummer; the trees were green, the air warm and balmy, the wind blew gently, and the broad blue sea sparkled brightly, and seemed joyously ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... was supposed to endure a yearly banishment thither, during the summer months, when he was forced to resign his sway over the earth to Odin, the summer god, and there Balder came to join him at Midsummer, the date of his disappearance from Asgard, for then the days began to grow shorter, and the rule of light (Balder) gradually yielded to the ever encroaching ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... "This is midsummer madness, Raoul," answered Henri, with good temper. "Had I been unsuccessful, painful, fatal as the disappointment would have been, I should have resigned the lady to you ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... figure of the London boy it is that has restored to the landscape the human colour of life. He is allowed to come out of all his ignominies, and to take the late colour of the midsummer north-west evening, on the borders of the Serpentine. At the stroke of eight he sheds the slough of nameless colours—all allied to the hues of dust, soot, and fog, which are the colours the world has chosen for its boys—and he makes, ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... best feel the peculiar beauty of the Campagna on those mild days of winter when the mere quality and temper of the sunshine suffice to move the landscape to joy, and you pause on the brown grass in the sunny stillness and, by listening long enough, almost fancy you hear the shrill of the midsummer cricket. It is detail and ornament that vary from month to month, from week to week even, and make your returns to the same places a constant feast of unexpectedness; but the great essential features of the prospect preserve throughout the year the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... in writing from Kingstree, S.C., July 11th, 1867, in midsummer (laboring almost without any pecuniary reward), gave an account of a fearful catastrophe which had just occurred there in the burning of the jail with a number of colored prisoners in it. "It was a very sad affair. There was only one white prisoner and he got out. I believe ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... to be proud. Pete was an every-day man at ordinary times, and was even said, when his wife, who had been long ill, died, to have clapped his hands and exclaimed, "Hip, hip, hurrah!" adding only as an afterthought, "The Lord's will be done." But midsummer was his great opportunity. Then took place the rouping of the seats in the parish church. The scene was the kirk itself, and the seats being put up to auction were knocked down to the highest bidder. This sometimes led to the breaking of the peace. Every person was present ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... final days of travel at an altitude of about ten thousand feet, where the snow lies in midsummer; where there is no feed, no comfort, and the way is strewn with the bones of horses. This is known as the "Basin Trail." After taking it, you prefer the others—until ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... meat of the mature pigeon becomes quite tough and unpalatable. The breast is the only part of the bird that has meat on it in any quantity, and this meat is slightly lighter in color than that which comes from the remainder of the body. Midsummer is the best season for squabs, but they can be purchased at other times of the year. The cost of squabs is too high to allow them to be used extensively as a food in ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... can see your storms. We have none. When we want to change climate we can walk in less than a minute from midsummer to the depth of winter. But in the inside we have eleven different temperatures, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... drinking.' He went on giving me directions about the management of the men employed on the line, and no more was said then, or for several months, about his going to Rope Farm. He went off into —— Valley, a dark overshadowed dale, where the sun seemed to set behind the hills before four o'clock on midsummer afternoon. Perhaps it was this that brought on the attack of low fever which he had soon after the beginning of the new year; he was very ill for many weeks, almost many months; a married sister—his only relation, I think—came down from London ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... stay at Ashton Park: are you not glad, Emmy?" said Everard, as he joined Isabel, Emily, and the children, in their ramble, one bright day in the midsummer holidays. "Glad, I should think so!" returned Emily; "but when do ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... ran against him, or whether it was his being so weak, or whether it was everything together, or how it was exactly, there is no telling, but poor China Aster fell to the earth, and, striking his head sharply, was picked up senseless. It was a day in July; such a light and heat as only the midsummer banks of the inland Ohio know. China Aster was taken home on a door; lingered a few days with a wandering mind, and kept wandering on, till at last, at dead of night, when nobody was aware, his spirit wandered away into the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... It was midsummer when I came back again. I travelled up the river road, past our island refuge of that dark night; past the sweeping, low-voiced currents that bore me up; past the scene of our wreck in the whirlwind; past the great ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... we've just come?" I doubted it very much as it was black and raining; I had no coat, having been sent after the patrol immediately I came in from firing the King's huts, and although it was December, or midsummer south of the line, the rain chilled my fingers. Wilson said, "Come, I must have those men back." I told him I should need some one to lead my horse so as to feel the tracks made in the ground by our ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... another saucer, remove the cover from the boiling teakettle, and place the saucer in its place; let it steam until it is just heated through, as it must look rare when done, Give at first one teaspoonful and gradually work up to one tablespoonful, but do not begin this diet in midsummer. Give baby plenty of water to drink between meals, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... March, April, and May, these whales appear in great numbers in the open ports of Santa Barbara, San Pedro, &c., and hover off the coast, while a few find their way into the close harbors of San Diego and Monterey. They are all off again before midsummer, and make their appearance on the "off-shore ground.'' We saw some fine "schools'' of sperm whales, which are easily distinguished by their spout, blowing away, a few miles to windward, on our passage to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... heap of oyster shells. There were a few tallow dips lighted on the tables; but the real luminary of this tavern, that which played the part in this dram-shop of the chandelier of an opera house, was the fire. This cellar was so damp that the fire was never allowed to go out, even in midsummer; an immense chimney with a sculptured mantel, all bristling with heavy iron andirons and cooking utensils, with one of those huge fires of mixed wood and peat which at night, in village streets make the reflection of forge ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of Africa, who, among other cruelties, had attempted to silence some bishops by cutting out their tongues. To carry out Justinian's intention of the recovery of Africa, his general Belisarius sailed at midsummer, A.D. 533, and in November he had completed ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... like to speak my piece," answered Miss Celia, obeying a sudden impulse; and, stepping forward with her hat in her hand, she made a pretty courtesy before she recited Mary Howitt's sweet little ballad, "Mabel on Midsummer Day." ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... reported to the little woman she would not believe a word of it. She did not think we had tried to find it. Perhaps we had not gone deep enough. We should have waited until midsummer when we could have done better work; and a lot of other things of like description. When I insisted that we had done the very best we possibly could, and that there was positively no gold there, she still persisted ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... the sea moved steadily across the marshes filled with many pleasant odors. Here and there big bunches of marsh rosemary made spots of soft violet upon the brown grass, and now and then little flocks of sand-peeps rose from the ground and fluttered noisily away. But there was a pleasant midsummer stillness in the air, and by the time Anne had crossed the marsh and reached the shade of a low-growing oak tree she began to feel tired and content to rest a time before continuing her search for ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... will both feel parting with your sister, but I will do all I can to soften the blow. You can always look forward to meeting at Christmas and Midsummer, and I shall ask your father to bring you up in turns to visit us in London. Though Lettice is to be my special charge, I take a deep interest in you both, and shall hope to put many little pleasures in your way. And now, my dears, ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... striking twelve o'clock as we entered the lane where the carriage was drawn up. Rain, about the profoundest I had ever witnessed, was falling. Though near to midsummer, the night had been unusually dark to begin with, and from the increasing rain had become much more so. We could see nothing; and at first we feared that some mistake had occurred as to the station of the carriage—in which case we might have sought for it vainly through the intricate labyrinth ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... did the sanctity of Easter-tide; and from these two the Yule-boar and Yule-bread, the Easter pancake, Easter-sword, Easter-fire, and Easter-dance could not be separated. As faithfully were perpetuated the name and in many cases the observances of Midsummer. New Christian feasts, especially of saints, seem purposely, as well as accidentally, to have been made to fall on heathen holidays. Churches often rose precisely where a heathen god or his sacred tree had been pulled down, and the people trod their old paths to the accustomed site; ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... dark And violated silence, loud and fleet, Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp, The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O hark, Sweet, how the old mare's bit and chain Ring back a rough refrain Upon the marked and cheerful tramp Of her four shoes! Here is the Park, And O the languid midsummer wafts adust, The tired midsummer blooms! O the mysterious distances, the glooms Romantic, the august And solemn shapes! At night this City of Trees Tunis to a tryst of vague and strange And monstrous Majesties, ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... that waltz. He had hold of the violins and was weaving the air with scents and visions—visions of Ascot and Henley; green lawns, gay sunshades, midsummer heat, cool rivers flowing, muslins rippled by light breezes; running horses and silken jackets; white tables heaped with roses and set with silver and crystal, jewelled fingers moving in the soft candle-light, bare necks bending, diamonds, odours, bubbles in the wine; blue water ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... only what I anticipated," said the physician, meeting the captain at the door. "Though if he had remained in the South he might have lingered until midsummer. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... in the brightness of midsummer; for it was the eve of St. Magdalen; and sky and earth bore witness to the luxuriant month of July. The heavens were clear, the waters of the Forth danced in the sunbeams, and the flower-enameled green of the extended plain stretched its ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... his own image and superscription, and passes into currency with a value peculiar to itself. To speak accurately, the mind of Shakspeare could not create; and that of Milton invented with equal, or nearly equal, power and effect. If we admit, in the Tempest, or the Midsummer's Nights Dream, a higher flight of the inventive faculty, we must allow a less interrupted stretch of it in the Comus: in this poem there may be something, which might have been corrected by the revising judgment of its author; but its errors in thought and language, are so few and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... not flatter themselves that their mere glimpse of country life—their mere snatch at its midsummer beauty, the one free-drawn breath of their wearied spirit—is acquaintance with it. As well might one who had seen Rosalind, the most versatile of Shakspeare's heroines, only in her court-dress ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... well. Then that dandified silk frock for the new year that the dressmaker is waiting to try on can be put aside until midsummer." ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... descended the steep winding path the air became warmer, and when I reached the valley I found that it was already midsummer there, and the fruit was ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... the unreality of pain, but the logic of life has spoiled their plausible philosophizing. A man may carry many hallucinations with him to the grave, but a belief in the unreality of pain is hardly likely to be one of them. The laughing philosopher is quite invincible on his midsummer's day, but ere long fatality makes him sad. There is no screen to shut off permanently the spectacle of suffering. When Marie Antoinette passed to her bridal in Paris, the halt, the lame, and the blind ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... guard against several acts of Burgundian treachery." At this period, again, she said she was often warned by her voices of what must happen to her; she expected to be taken prisoner before St. John's or Midsummer-day (June 24); on what day and hour she did not know; she had received no instructions as to sorties from the place; but she had constantly been told that she would be taken, and she was distrustful ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... have introduced the first canto of Midsummer Idylls in a revised form, and it has been my especial care to correct, as far as it was consistent with the meaning of the passage, any hitch in the Iambic Measure which might offend the ear. An author ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... representative as California organist, World's Fair, St. Louis, 1904, giving two recitals. He has been president of the Musicians' club, twice a director of the Bohemian club, and composed the music for a forest play entitled St. Patrick at Tara, given at a midsummer jinks of the Bohemian club. At present he is dean of the Northern California Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, conductor of the Loring club and the choral section of the San Francisco Musical club, and is engaged ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... outward and obvious signs of character. But to the man who could see, to the man whose own soul had enough of spirituality to respond to hers, and whose eye could appreciate the subtlety of a beauty which is of the mind as well as of the body, there was not in all wide London upon that midsummer day a sweeter girl than Maude Selby, as she sat in her grey merino dress with the London sun tagging her brown ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... midsummer day had grown into a gray, firefly-lighted night, I laid me down on the narrow bed where I had slept as a child, and my mother kissed me as though I were a child. It seemed to purify me from all the sins of all the absent years, except, indeed, of that one unpardonable sin against ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... are in town abundance of people from Ireland; half a dozen bishops at least. The poor old Bishop of London,(5) at past fourscore, fell down backward going upstairs, and I think broke or cracked his skull; yet is now recovering. The town is as empty as at midsummer; and if I had not occasion for physic, I would be at Windsor still. Did I tell you of Lord Rivers's will? He has left legacies to about twenty paltry old whores by name, and not a farthing to any friend, dependent, or relation: ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... lips of Christian hero. Many a time afterward they were an inspiration to me. His face was bright that beautiful Spring morning with a joy that was not of earth. The night watches had been spent communing with God,—yes, face to face. Had he known that the midsummer sun would look down upon his grave, would his decision have been different? I think not. He knew too much of war and battles not to count the cost. From a Southern prison-pen his brave spirit went ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... power. l. 467. About Midsummer the new buds are formed, but it is believed by some of the Linnean school, that these buds may in their early state be either converted into flower-buds or leaf-buds according to the vigour of the vegetating branch. Thus if the upper part of a branch be ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... cricket-ground nine days later, in the golden afternoon of Midsummer Day, George Clement Cottrell, a boy beautiful alike in face and in character, was killed in an instant by a blow from a ball, which struck him behind the ear when he was umpiring in the Sixth Form game. On the 29th of June his five hundred school-fellows followed him to ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... mover of the figures and the audience, the puppeteer and the puppetee, the letter-writer and the letter-reader. The play presented is, therefore, a play within a play: like the Mousetrap in Hamlet, like Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream, like the romantic drama of Gayferos and Melisandra which Don Quixote witnessed with a select company of acquaintance at an inn. The temperament of this presented spectator, himself or herself a person of the scene, is always reflected in the ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... in fact, comes in midsummer, when New York is more inert than an analytic novel. This dinner, then, is one of those gifts of love which are all the more ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... instruct thee? Thou knowest that on midsummer-day, every year, before the shadow shrinks back to the base of the huaca {190} of Manoa, we must offer a maiden to lull the Earthquaker with a new song. Lo, now the shadow shrinks to the foot of the huaca, ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... midsummer before Denasia was strong enough to return to New York, though she was passionately anxious to do so. "We are so far out of the right way," she pleaded. "So far! In New York we are nearer home. In New York I ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the hands of our fellow prisoners, who, to a man, made it their daily business and pleasure to render our lives miserable. Gottlieb wasted away to a mere shadow and I became seriously ill from the suffocating heat and loathsome food, for it was now midsummer and the Tombs was crowded with prisoners waiting until the courts should open in the ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... for changing the time for closing the contract was that the company's business was less active at the end of the calendar year than in midsummer, and that it was easier to complete new arrangements for employment at that time. Another reason was that the company often made sales for an entire year, and consequently contracts for labor could be more safely ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... doses of quinine, proved very intractable and held him in its grip for months. He was unable to work and fell into a sort of mental coma. In a letter of November 13 he describes himself as eating Peruvian bark like bread; and six weeks later he was still suffering from the effects of his unlucky midsummer plunge into the miasmatic air of Mannheim. In other ways, too, the new situation proved a disappointment. Social demands involved him in expenditures far in excess of his modest calculations, while the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... afternoon of a midsummer day. Professor Thunder's Museum of Marvels was on show at 'Tween Bridges. The show was open for any casual sixpence but business in agricultural centres is dead at this hour, and the Professor and his wile slept in the tent of the Egyptian ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... succeeded on the ninth. He had thirteen other lawsuits of various kinds with the same defendant, during which he sold his furniture five times and his horse twice. In all, he had twenty auctions of sale previous to midsummer of this year. Part of the furniture was in several of these instances only bought back by the agent, Mr James Coyne, handing money privately to Ring to pay for it. This is the agent formerly spoken of, who at last gave up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... But the conditions needed for such an enterprise did not exist, and he was in no hurry. He concluded a very harmless Convention at Westminster, in January 1756; but he was not arming at a time when the scheme of Kaunitz was about completed. It was midsummer before he knew the danger that threatened him. Certain despatches which were opened as they passed through the Prussian Post Office, others which were stolen, revealed the whole plot. Without an ally, except the House of Hanover, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... drifting along. Unless Zero came sliding down again pretty soon from Boreal regions, the sheets that filled the coves and clung to the shores would also sail away southward, and the whole Hudson be left clear as in midsummer. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... had always to be made, with jokes thrown into the bargain—bad ones, which are invariably the most amusing; and what a pleasure it was to twirl the "baboon" with one's own little hand, and, if the hand got cold during the process, one did not feel it, for it seemed like midsummer with a swarm of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and seasons based upon that science, but many Christian ones, as Easter and Christmas are due to the same cause. The festival of St. John the Baptist takes place at the time of the sun's lowest southern declination, December 22. In like manner the festival of St. John the Evangelist occurs at midsummer day, when the sun reaches its highest northern declination. All those church periods are purely astronomical or astrological in character. The "Alpha" and "Omega" of Revelation contain profound ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... which really exist not, if they are founded on popular belief. Of this nature are fairies, pigmies, and the extraordinary effects of magic; for it is still an imitation, though of other men's fancies: and thus are Shakespeare's "Tempest," his "Midsummer Night's Dream," and Ben Jonson's "Masque of Witches" to be defended. For immaterial substances, we are authorised by Scripture in their description: and herein the text accommodates itself to vulgar apprehension, in giving angels the likeness of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... into the blue of the heavens. This is a glorious atmosphere, at least at this season, the air clear and bracing, the sky a beautiful blue and the sunsets golden. In winter it is cold, muddy and cheerless, and in midsummer the simoom which sweeps up the Marmora from Africa and the Syrian coast renders it very unhealthy for Europeans to remain in the city. The simoom is exceedingly enervating in its effects, and all who can spend the summer months on the upper Bosphorus, where the prevailing winds are from the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... buried language, or immured in the precincts of a church, had never produced a more elevating effect. No anthem from the world-renowned organ in that ancient city ever awakened more lofty emotions than did those ten thousand human voices ringing from the grassy meadows in that fervid midsummer noon. When all was silent again, the preacher rose; a little, meagre man, who looked as if he might rather melt away beneath the blazing sunshine of July, than hold the multitude enchained four uninterrupted hours long, by the magic ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one day many years ago, nigh upon Midsummer, lying out on the grassy slopes atop of old Pendle ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... passed over with merely the general statement that they went about much in the ocean, and passed the usual seasons in the usual places. It is mentioned that one midsummer the sea was so clear for about a week that they could see the marine animals lying at the bottom; and when Brendan sang, these came up ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... Midsummer brought a new set of guests to the Retreat, and filled the ramshackle old house to overflowing. The fishing fell off, but there were picnics and camping-parties in abundance, and Jacques was in demand. The ladies liked him; his manners were ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... up, waving his hat to me, his face lighted with a happiness most remarkable, and brighter, even, than the strong, midsummer sunshine flaming over him. Dressed in white as he was, and with the air of victory he wore, he might have been, at that moment, a figure from some marble triumph; youthful, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... arrived in Arlington Street. The dining-room looked a picture of comfort. The oval table, the low lamps, the clusters of candles under coloured shades, the great Oriental bowl of wild flowers—eglantine, honeysuckle, foxglove, all the sweet hedge flowers of midsummer, made a central mass of colour and brightness against the subdued and even sombre tones of walls and curtains. The room was old, the furniture old. Nothing had been altered since the time of Sir George's ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... before you?" said Helen, with a sigh of pleasure, as she looked from the balcony which overhangs the Rhine at the hotel of the "Three Kings" at Coblentz. Ehrenbreitstein towered opposite, the broad river glittered below, and a midsummer moon lent its ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott |
