"Prairie" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Canada knows the Robin, Crow, and English Sparrow; in the South most people are acquainted with the Mockingbird and Turkey Buzzard; in California the House Finch is abundant about the towns and cities; and to the dwellers in the Prairie States the ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... aborigines, and the scene of border warfare. These States have been unparalleled in their growth, both in the increase of population and property, and in the advance of intellectual and moral improvement. Such an extent of forest was never before cleared,—such a vast field of prairie was never before subdued and cultivated by the hand of man, in the same short period of time. Cities, and towns, and villages, and counties, and States never before rushed into existence, and made such giant strides, as ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... after telling how brilliant he had been before he "went to pieces"—"why all the cures on earth couldn't help him! He can go just so far, and then he can no more stop himself—oh, about as much as an ant could stop a prairie fire!" ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... widened, and the brook at its bottom, fed by a multitude of springs, increased in volume and in sound, but it was soon far beneath us, pursuing its headlong course till it reached level ground, where it flowed in the midst of a beautiful but confined prairie. There was something sylvan and savage in the mountains on the farther side, clad from foot to pinnacle with trees, so closely growing that the eye was unable to obtain a glimpse of the hill sides, which were uneven with ravines and gulleys, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... litter, brancard^, crate, hurdle, stretcher, ambulance; black Maria; conestoga wagon, conestoga wain; jinrikisha, ricksha, brett^, dearborn [U.S.], dump cart, hack, hackery^, jigger, kittereen^, mailstate^, manomotor^, rig, rockaway^, prairie schooner [U.S.], shay, sloven, team, tonga^, wheel; hobbyhorse, go-cart; cycle; bicycle, bike, two-wheeler; tricycle, velocipede, quadricycle^. equipage, turn-out; coach, chariot, phaeton, break, mail phaeton, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... uninteresting. The streets are narrow and dismal, nor have they any ancient buildings or architectural oddities, except the Round Church, to arrest the stranger's attention, as Shrewsbury and Chester have. The surrounding country is level as a prairie, broken only toward the southeast, by the ridiculous dustheaps called the Gog-Magog Hills. These hills belong to the curiosities of Cambridge, and are as famous in university annals as the colleges themselves. Robert Hale scarcely joked when he said to a friend who visited him during ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... attacking them in front, flank, and rear, pouring in their fire from every point of vantage, slaying them in hundreds, in thousands, as they moved hopelessly on. The despairing men fought bravely. Many of the foe suffered for their temerity. But they were like prairie-wolves around the dying bison; the retreating force lay helpless in their hands; two new foes took the place of every one ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... miles is the outer belt of the Coastal Plain, also called the "Timber Belt,'' whose soil is sandy and poor, but responds well to fertilization. North of this is the inner lowland of the Coastal Plain, or the "Black Prairie,'' which includes some 13,000 sq. m. and seventeen counties. It receives its name from its soil (weathered from the weak underlying limestone), which is black in colour, almost destitute of sand and loam, and rich in limestone and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... West" is the right name for these verdant deserts. On all the shores, interminable silent forest. If you land, there is prairie behind prairie, forest behind forest, sites of nations, no nations. The raw bullion of nature; what we call "moral" value not yet stamped on it. But in a thousand miles the immense material values will show twenty or fifty Californias; that a good ciphering head will make one where ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... its woods more extensive than at present. Some 300 acres of wood were destroyed by fire, through accident, about the year 1847. This happened at night, and, seen from a distance, it looked like a vast American prairie conflagration, the heavens being tinged with a lurid light far and wide. At that time the plantations opposite the Tower were of Scotch fir, so dense that the rays of the sun could scarcely penetrate. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... cramped the narrow space Your country's rule can own?" Ah! travel all its bounds and trace Each Alp unto its fertile base, Our realm of forests lone, Our world of prairie, like the face Of ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... several of the customers remarked, Miss Bell was in a fine temper that morning, and her tongue raged round like a prairie fire. This bad humour was ascribed by the public to the extra work entailed on her by the sensation caused by the murder, but the true cause lay with Gabriel. He had promised faithfully, on the previous night, to come round and see Mrs Mosk, but, to Bell's anger, had failed to put in an ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... for miles—as far as he could see in fact—stretched a gently-heaving, brown expanse. It looked like a vast prairie. From it rose the sharp, pungent odor peculiar to seaweed and the old mariner had no difficulty in recognizing the stunning fact that he was adrift in the Sargasso Sea of which he had heard so ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... four limbs for frost-bite, with recovery. The patient, aged twenty-six, while traveling to his home in Northern Minnesota, was overtaken by a severe snow storm, which continued for three days; on December 13th he was obliged to leave the stage in a snow-drift on the prairie, about 110 miles distant from his destination. He wandered over the prairie that day and night, and the following four days, through the storm, freezing his limbs, nose, ears, and cheeks, taking no food or ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... jes' stayed on de place. Mister Choate and Old Missy stayed too. After peace was made my mother and all of we went up to Prairie Grove to live. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... forests, I travelled twenty-three times through various parts of the vast northern woods, between Maine and Alaska, and covered thousands upon thousands of miles by canoe, pack-train, snowshoes, bateau, dog-train, buck-board, timber-raft, prairie-schooner, lumber-wagon, and "alligator." No one trip ever satisfied me, or afforded me the knowledge or the experience I sought, for traversing a single section of the forest was not unlike making one's way along a single street of a metropolis and then trying ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... from the town, brooding over her wheel, unhappily on and on till Metz had sunk over the edge of the flat horizon. The weary way to Thionville unfurled before them, furnaces to the left and flat grass prairie to the right—little villages and clustering houses went by them, and Thionville itself, with its tramlines and faint air of Manchester, drew near. Beyond Thionville the road changed colour abruptly, and stretched red and gravelly before them. The frost deepened, the wheels bit ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... the unknown wilderness a mighty empire arose, broad as an ocean, solid as a mountain-rock, and upon the scarcely rotted roots of the primitive forest, proud cities stand, teeming with boundless life, growing like the prairie's grass in spring, advancing like the steam-engine, baffling time and distance like the telegraph, and spreading the pulsation of their life-tide to the remotest parts of the world; and in those cities and on that broad land a nation, free as the mountain air, independent as the soaring eagle, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... this morning,' said Aunt Frances, as we were starting. 'If a storm comes on, make for cover. Don't try to get home across the prairie till it's over.' ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... hour. It has been used with brilliant success in various kinds of hunting, including coyote coursing on the prairies of Colorado, where it can run all around the bronco, formerly in favor, since it never runs any risk of breaking a leg in a prairie-dog hole. Educated automobiles have been trained to shell corn, saw wood, pump water, churn, plow, and, in short, do anything required of them except figure out where the consumer gets off ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... better class of our farmers are beginning to appreciate. A few days ago, a neighbor, a very intelligent farmer, assured me that from manuring eight to ten acres every year, his farm was now in better condition than when be broke up the prairie fifteen years ago. ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... country, covered with saw palmetto, dotted with pretty little lakes, what looks like a couple of acres of prairie ahead, and, oh yes, a lot of gopher holes all around us like the one you robbed ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... that I particularly admire," said Ardan, trying to laugh with freezing lips, "is that we can't complain of monotony. At one time we are frying with the heat and blinded with the light, like Indians caught on a burning prairie; at another, we are freezing in the pitchy darkness of a hyperborean winter, like Sir John Franklin's merry men in the Bay of Boothia. Madame La Nature, you don't forget your devotees; on the contrary, you overwhelm ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... the carriage that had to be sent around by Pierre, an extra distance of thirty-two miles, in order to cross on the bridge. Doctor and Mr. Frederick Riggs, from Santee, now joined us, and the day being pleasant, the prairie covered with the wild flowers so abundant here, we had a ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... ago he was riding back, alone, in the afternoon, from an unsuccessful search after strayed horses, and suddenly, all in the lifting of a hoof, the weird prairie had gleamed into eerie life, had dropped the veil and spoken to him; while the breeze stopped, and the sun stood still for a flash in waiting for his answer. And he, his heart in a grip of ice, the frozen flesh ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... the Canadian export trade. These interminable forests are principally composed of pines of large size, but which towards the northern boundary are of a very stinted growth. Another portion is the prairie country, reaching from Canada westward to the Rocky Mountains, and intersected by the boundary line of the United States. In general, the soil is rich alluvial, which being covered with luxuriant herbage, affords ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... constant terror of the emigrants in those days was Indians. Both the Pawnees, the Sioux, and the Snakes were warlike and powerful, and were jealous, revengeful, and merciless toward the whites. That night a fire somehow started in the prairie grass about half a mile from camp. The west wind, blowing fierce and strong, carried the flames in great surging gusts through the tall prairie grass. A resin weed grows in bunches in this part of the country, generally attaining the height of four or five feet. The night ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... or in a hamlet that was no more than a scattering of homesteads round a prairie's siding, His Royal Highness showed a particular keenness to meet these soldiers. They were his own comrades in arms, as he always called them, and when he said that he meant it, for he never willingly missed an opportunity of getting ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... discovered, he had gained money by his unworthy appeal to the meanly prosaic superstition of modern times. A long interval had then elapsed, and nothing had been heard of him, when a starving man was discovered by a traveller, lost on a Western prairie. The ill-fated Irish lord had associated himself with an Indian tribe—had committed some offence against their laws—and had been deliberately deserted and left to die. On his recovery, he wrote to his elder brother (who had inherited the title ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... Roads, traversable by artillery and excellent for cavalry, ran thence in every direction. Hobson would have had as little chance to intercept us, as a single hunter has to corner a wild horse in an open prairie. To rush across the Ohio river, as a means of escape, would have been the choice of an idiot, and yet such conduct has been ascribed to the shrewdest, most wide-awake, most far-seeing Captain (in his own chosen method of warfare), the greatest master of "cavalry strategy," ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... a vis de Montreal, du cote du sud est un endroit qu' on appelle la Prairie de la ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the kind of man to whom other people naturally happened. He was a human solar system in which many kinds of people wanted to gravitate, even to the ragged little girl on the prairie who picked him the wild flowers that he wore in his coat as far as she could see him on the train platform. He discovered early in life that he could interest other people much as some men find out they can juggle or sing. It was a fatal gift. Laurier was far too ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... plains to which the early French explorers of the West gave the name of Prairies. In Southern Michigan, they become more frequent; in the State of Indiana, still more so; and when we arrive in Illinois, we find ourselves in the Prairie State proper, three-quarters of its territory being open meadow, or prairie. Southern Wisconsin is partly of this character, and, on crossing the Mississippi, most of the surface of both Iowa and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... he obtained a view of intermingled forest, prairie, lake, and river, so resplendent that even his mind was for a moment diverted from its gloomy introspections, and a glance of admiration shot from his eyes and chased the wrinkles from his brow; but the frown quickly returned, ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... on a summer plain, the rosy breath of the sun bearing them up and scattering them like thistledown, he said that he would think no more of her; but, stooping to drink, he saw her face in the water, as in the hill spring at Tellavie, and he could not forget. When he rode swiftly through the long prairie grass, each pulse afire, a keen, joyful wind playing on him as he tracked the buffalo, he said he had forgotten, but he felt her riding beside him as she had done on the wide savannas of the south, and he knew that he could not forget. When he sat ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... Come Home with Me Now", was a sacred song then, not a peg for vulgar parodies and more vulgar "business" for fourth-rate clowns and corner-men. Then there was "The Prairie Flower". "Out on the Prairie, in an Early Day"—I can hear the digger's wife yet: she was the prettiest girl on the field. They married on the sly and crept into camp after dark; but the diggers got wind of it and rolled ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... unbroken soil, The iron bark that turns the lumberer's axe, The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil, The prairie, hiding the mazed ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... the breath of jasmine flowers that twine The pillared porches of his Southern home; One hears the coo of pigeons in the pine Of Western woods where he was wont to roam; One sees the sunset fire the distant line Where the long prairie sweeps its levels down; One treads the snow-peaks; one by lamps that shine Down the broad highways of the sea-girt town; And two are missing,—Cadets ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... artist sense, this Lois,—knew nothing of Nature's laws, as you do. Yet sometimes, watching the dun sea of the prairie rise and fall in the crimson light of early morning, or, in the farms, breathing the blue air trembling up to heaven exultant with the life of bird and forest, she forgot the poor vile thing she was, some coarse weight fell off, and something within, not the sickly Lois of the mill, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... in a scene of rural beauty, unusual at least for Illinois. The prairie around the village was broken into hills, one of them crowned by pine woods, grown up from a bag full of Norway pine seeds sown by my father in 1844, the very year he came to Illinois, a testimony perhaps that the most vigorous pioneers gave ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... let us glance at Montgomery County, Alabama, which, although not in the belt we are studying, is on the same prairie formation crossed by the Georgia Pacific Railway, on the edge of Mississippi. Compare it with Butler County, Ohio, which "shows the best record of any county in the West." In live stock Montgomery has $1,748,273; ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Kurumacho[u], that he came full out on the bay just lighting up with the coming day—a beautiful stretch of water, now spoiled by the ugliness of the railway and the filling in which has turned the haunt of thousands of wild fowl into a prairie, soon to be covered by hideous factories and other sites of man's superfluous toil. Close by the little saddle at Shinagawa, now a railway cutting, a stream came into the bay from the west. On the bridge the priest Dentatsu stopped for a moment. Throughout, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... this winter was one of those exceptions which are met with in every climate, and the first of December brought zero weather. Indeed, it had been unusually cold for several weeks. Then, to make matters worse, a genuine western blizzard came howling across the prairie, and whistled and screamed about the streets, from which it had driven everything that could find a place of shelter. The stores on Broadway were vacant, save a few shivering clerks. In the offices, men sat with their feet on the stove and called to mind the biggest storms ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... a moment's thought, "but life out west is all more or less of a chance and risk. You take a risk, every time you ride at more than a foot-pace, of your pony stepping into some prairie dog's hole and not only laming himself, but killing you. But you don't stop riding on ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... wuz a momsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de prairie all 'lone by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife. En bimeby she died, en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her. Well, she had a golden arm—all solid gold, fum de shoulder down. He wuz pow'ful mean—pow'ful; en dat night ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... side of the big hills a man fit to walk in the tracks of Uncle Sam, so large and good-hearted according to his lights, hard as a grizzly bear for a man to milk him, but soft in the breastbone as a young prairie-hen for all folk down ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... daily dairy daisy drain dainty explain fail fain gain gait gaiter grain hail jail laid maid mail maim nail paid pail paint plain prairie praise quail rail rain raise raisin remain sail saint snail sprain stain straight strain tail ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... His feet were encased in moccasins, and on his head, covered with strong dark hair, was carelessly donned a slouched hat of common black felt, with several plaited folds of the sweet grass, of the adjoining prairie for a band. He was seemingly a man of strong muscular power, while his stern dark eye denoted firmness ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... for the frost had bound the prairie in its iron grip, although as yet there was no snow. Rancher Winston stood shivering in a little Canadian settlement in the great lonely land which runs north from the American frontier to Athabasca. There was no blink of starlight ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... impious speculation if I were nephew of the blood—how has he behaved, in the rare latter event? As a man in the presence of a miracle done for his sole benefit. He has exulted, then doubted its reality, then betaken himself to the broad prairie, where he is most at home, to cool his blood in the north wind, and restore himself to the serenity, the freedom from entanglements, befitting an uncle at the head of his tribe. This, you say, is all conjecture, deduced from the behavior of those of his nephews who most resemble him? No. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... with folded hands looking out of the window, were all in strange contrast to the dreariness of the scene below, where the one long street of the little Manitoba town, piled high with snow, stretched away into the level, white, never-ending prairie. A farmer tried to force his tired horses through the drifts; a little boy with a milk-pail plodded bravely from door to door, sometimes laying down his burden to blow his breath ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... of the country that Blue Bonnet called "the other side of the hills,"—a land of sheep-ranches, for the most part; rather barren and level, unlike the rolling green prairie of the cattle-country she loved. They could see the Judson's wagon winding its way across the plain, until only a blur of dust marked ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... songs, "The Lyre and the Sword," were a cause of disagreement, for Caroline, like so many women, deified Napoleon, and her lover's lyric assaults upon him were so much sacrilege; while to him her adoration of that personified prairie-fire, who had devastated the Fatherland, was treason. The Brunetti, being well out of the running, Caroline found new cause of jealousy in the newly engaged actress, Christine Bohler. Indeed, Carl and Caroline did little but fight and make up for months, until ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... high cliffs on the west. Through these cliffs there is a considerable ravine, formed by the flowing of a small rivulet—On the summit, a wide prospect opens to the west, of a country whose base is level, but surface uneven. On this summit lay the French and Indians concealed by the prairie grass and timber, and from this situation, in almost perfect security, they fired down upon Braddock's men. The only exposure of the French and Indians, resulted from the circumstance of their having to raise their heads to peep over the verge ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... sold. But I heard them talk about selling em. They took em off to sell em. That was the worst part about slavery. The families was broke up. I never lived nowhere 'cept in South Carolina and Prairie County (Arkansas). My folks come here and they kept writing for me to come, and I come on the train. Mrs. Sellers son, Joe Sellers, killed himself, shot himself, one Sunday evening. Didn't know how come he done it. I was too little to know what they expected ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... a "prairie" district in the fur countries. The great table prairies of North America, that slope eastward from the Rocky Mountains, also extend northward into the Hudson's Bay territory. They gradually grow narrower, however, as you proceed farther ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... The prairie horse he rode, the mustang of the Pampas, wild as he was, had been trained to take part in at least one exercise. This was the accomplishment in which Mr. Richard now proposed to try himself. For this purpose he sought ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sail for Hudson Bay. This and the lands beyond were, however, by chartered right the hunting preserve of the Hudson's Bay Company, of which more will be said. Presumably this company interfered, for unofficial word came from England to Selkirk that the scheme of colonizing the prairie region west of Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes would not be pleasing to the government. Selkirk, however, quickly turned elsewhere. He secured land for his settlers in Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St Lawrence. The prospective ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... within its banks. Here and there, dotted over the surface, are little islands, on which grow stunted date-bushes and scraggy trees. The plains themselves are covered with a thick sward of grass, which conceals the water, and makes the flats appear like great pale yellow-colored prairie-lands, with a clear horizon, except where interrupted here and there by trees. The clear rain-water must have stood some time among the grass, for great numbers of lotus-flowers were seen in full blow; and the runs of water tortoises and crabs were ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... one bright morning Frankman and I started on one of our customary expeditions, going down La Pena Creek to a small creek, at the head of which we had established a hunting rendezvous. After proceeding along the stream for three or four miles we saw a column of smoke on the prairie, and supposing it arose from a camp of Mexican rancheros catching wild horses or wild cattle, and even wild mules, which were very numerous in that section of country along the Nueces River, we thought we would join the party and see how much success they were having, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... it always—the Call of the Prairie. The passing of sixty Winters has left me a vigorous man, although my hair is as white as the January snowdrift in the draws, and the strenuous events of some of the years have put a tax on my strength. I shall always limp a little in ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... that part of Western Kansas which is left blank on the maps. Two hunters, Thompson and Hughes, had joined us; and we were coming back from a buffalo-chase. We had been crawling lazily along, over prairie, through valley, up and down hill, since sunrise, and it ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... the procession came these girl acolytes, and, dividing themselves, they appealed to us and prayed. They were not beautiful perhaps, but they were women. We outcasts of the prairie and the camp fire and the streets had been greatly divorced from feminine sweet influences, and these succeeded where speech and prayer and song had failed. As one spoke to me I saw hard resolution ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... its supply of eggs on the numerous flocks of prairie chickens which were found in the abounding fields of grain, particularly barley. It was no trick to bag a half dozen of these birds at a shot, on account of their numbers, and, as before related, while Angel never ate any of them, he was the most persistent gatherer because the beautiful ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... I wish I could show you our country. Wouldn't you love to go galloping across a great prairie,—tearing ahead for illimitable miles,—breathing the air that has come, fresh and clean, straight ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... was a chilly night in early spring. The moon was hidden by clouds, so that one could see but a short distance on the open prairie. A fitful wind was blowing, adding to the discomfort of outdoors, and causing the interior of the cabin to be ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... in the distance. We stop to listen, the sound gets louder; everyone stops to listen—the sound approaches, and is now distinguishable as rifle-fire. The firing becomes faster and faster; then suddenly swells into a roar and now comes the phenomenon of trench warfare: "wind up"—the prairie fire ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... post-mundane berth a good deal warmer than his coffee and more sulphurous than his eggs. Afar off to the right the sun was rounding up from the Gulf and clearing the haze from his broad, red face, the better to look abroad over the glistening prairie and see if the silhouetted pines and cattle were where he had left them the day before. Glancing to the left, which was my side of the car, I became aware of a large bird suspended in the air, not motionless, for his wings were doing their best, but to all appearance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... inexplicable. Her father sold farming machinery in Huntington, Illinois, and she had grown up with no acquaintances or experiences outside of that prairie town. Yet from her earliest childhood she had not one conviction or opinion in common with the people about her,—the only people she knew. Before she was out of short dresses she had made up her mind that she was going to be an actress, that she would ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... be hard to say which we found most diverting, the long, long landscape that divided as we passed, through it and closed up in the rear, leaving only the shining iron seam down the middle; the beautiful, undulating prairie land; the hot and dusty desolation of the plains; the delicious temperature of the highlands, as we approached the Rockies and had our first glimpse of Pike's Peak in its mantle of snow: the muddy rivers, along whose ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... grow restless, though every physical want is supplied. They have a fancy that they would like to see again the homes of their youth, the farmhouse in the hills, the cottage in the river valley, the lonesome house on the wide prairie, the street that ran down to the wharf where the fishing-smacks lay, to see again the friends whom they left there, and perhaps to take up the occupations that were laid down when they seized the musket in 1861. Alas! it is not their home anymore; the friends are no longer there; and what ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... through the water and saw-grass to the camp. The wading was annoying and, to me, difficult; but at length we secured dry footing in the jungle on the island, and after a tortuous way through the tangled vegetation, which walled in the camp from the prairie, we entered the large clearing and the collection of lodges where the Indians were. These lodges, placed very close together and seemingly without order, were almost all made of white cotton cloths, which were each stretched over ridge ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... "De prairie-dog a mighty cur'ous somebody," he began one day, when they asked him for a tale. "Hit lives in de ground, more samer dan a ground-hog. But dey ain't come out for wood nor water; an' some folks thinks dey goes plumb down to de springs what feeds wells. I has knowed dem what say dey go fur ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... away out West, on a broad prairie, where Mr. Allis was busily engaged in "making a farm." Perhaps some of my young readers, who have always been accustomed to see farms already "made," will not understand what I mean by "making a farm;" and I will try ...
— The Allis Family; or, Scenes of Western Life • American Sunday School Union
... a little bit, like that. A pill no bigger than a couple of aspirins or an Alka-Seltzer. It's only in the morning you take it when it's old and strong like this, for a pick-me-up, a cure for a hangover, you know, like a prairie oyster ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... The Prairie View State Normal School for colored youth of both sexes has had an Industrial Department from its beginning years ago. A movement is now on foot to establish such a department as a portion of the public school system. Austin already has ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... extent, and variety of feature, in the country occupied by the fur-traders, they subsist, as may be supposed, on widely different kinds of food. In the prairie, or plain countries, animal food is chiefly used, as there thousands of deer and bisons wander about, while the woods are stocked with game and wild-fowl. In other places, however, where deer are scarce and game not so abundant, fish ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Frontier Day celebration. Hundreds of cars had poured up from Denver. Trains had disgorged thousands of tourists come to see the festival. Many people would sleep out in automobiles and on the prairie. The late comers at restaurants and hotels would wait long and take ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... the same sort meet us in stories told by the North American Indians. Thus the Navajoes tell of a certain mythical being called "the Maiden that becomes a Bear," who learned the art of turning herself into a bear from the prairie wolf. She was a great warrior and quite invulnerable; for when she went to war she took out her vital organs and hid them, so that no one could kill her; and when the battle was over she put the organs back in their places ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... "The prairie dogs always amuse me," said Mrs. Smith. "Look at that fellow! Every other one is eating his dinner as fast as he can but this one is digging with his front paws and kicking the earth away with his hind paws ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... apply ze wonderful science of ze prairie. I have heard of it, begar, and I shall be one very ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... live under such fortunate conditions that they have to do either a good deal of outdoor work or a good deal of what might be called natural outdoor play do not need the athletic development. In the Civil War the soldiers who came from the prairie and the backwoods and the rugged farms where stumps still dotted the clearings, and who had learned to ride in their infancy, to shoot as soon as they could handle a rifle, and to camp out whenever they got the chance, were better fitted for military work ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... over, creeping across. The saplings bent under his weight and made a downward curve, so that when he attempted so ascend on the opposite side it was a climb up, but with the ropes made of woven prairie grass and sticks and boughs he easily ascended. He had carried his lantern with him, and he flashed its light across his bridge and asked, "Who will ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)
... it is!" he said, as they stopped to leave him. It was,—a breathless quiet; the great streets of the town behind them were shrouded in snow; the hills, the moors, the prairie swept off into the skyless dark, a gray and motionless sea lit by a low watery moon. "The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... ought to go, anyhow," he went on. "In my opinion this war is going to spread like a prairie fire. The Kaiser got back to Berlin yesterday. He'll sign the mobilization orders to-day as sure as fate. For the past week, on the Berlin Bourse, Canadian Pacific stock has been dropping. That means they expect ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... between the realities of everyday care, and a myriad of shadowy phantoms which ever haunt me. In the crowded and thronged city; in the green walks and sunny forests of my native hills; on the broad and boundless prairie, carpeted with velvet flowers; on the blue and dreamy sea—it is the same. I look around, and perceive men and women moving mechanically about me; I even take part in their proceedings, and seem to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... them journey on to the great, smoking mountain lifting its snows into the blue, and its grave, not insolent, panache, he felt an immense sense of happy-go-lucky freedom with the empty days before him. His intellect was loose like a colt on a prairie. There was no one near to catch it, to lead it to any special object, to harness it and drive it onward in any fixed direction. He need no longer feel respect for a cleverness greater than his own, or try to understand ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Versions and Commentators ancient and modern, and from the ample et cetera of apparatus grammaticus and theological and Classical reviews and magazines—or rather, by means of occasional excursions into this vast prairie. ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... seemed wonderful that one who had just fought as he had could have kept control of breath and head. His voice did not even sound excited, though here was trembling. "Don't be scared," he went on. "The mean galoot! A prairie-dog could ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... buckboard, leaning forward with hunched shoulders, swaying easily to the pitching of the vehicle as it rattled along the trail which, especially where it passed over the round topped ridges, was thickly strewn with stones. Before them, now on the trail and now ranging wide over the prairie, ran a beautiful black and white ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... ago before much restriction was imposed on the sale of game it was possible to purchase many desirable things at the markets of Washington, D. C. Not only bear and deer, but elk, ptarmigan, arctic hares, sage and prairie grouse, fox squirrels, pileated woodpeckers and many other odds and ends were offered for sale as well as all the usual ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... delights in the elevated prairies, but near these prairies it must have rough or broken country to which it may retreat when pursued by its enemies. Before the days of the railroad and the settlements in the West, the sheep was often found on the prairie. It was then abundant in many localities where to-day farmers have their wheat fields, and to some extent shared the feeding ground of the antelope and the buffalo. Many and many a time while riding over the prairie, I have seen among the antelope that loped carelessly ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... were only blurs, a grim chauffeur-effect with blobs of fat womankind trailing snapping veils. The car trailed a long streamer of dust that tasted of the road. When this was penetrated they entered upon a stretch of pleasant travel for eyes and wheels, on a long, long channel through a fruitful prairie, a very allegory ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... was bitter, and the prairie which rolled back from Lander's in long undulations to the far horizon, gleamed white beneath the moon, but there was warmth and brightness in Stukely's wooden barn. The barn stood at one end of the little, desolate settlement, where ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... and clenched by a pull at Nathan's whisky flask, we prepared for departure. The Americans threw the choicest parts of the buck over their shoulders, and the old squatter again taking the lead, we resumed our march. The way led us first across a prairie, then through a wood, which was succeeded by a sort of thicket, upon the branches and thorny shrubs of which we left numerous fragments of our dress. We had walked several miles almost in silence, when Nathan suddenly made a pause, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... case the author has more reasons than it is worth while to repeat. If there is any one thing that is attracting the general attention of the American people, it is the art of music. It is a good sign. It shows we are getting beyond the mere tree-felling and prairie-clearing stages of our existence, and coming to something better. This true "Tale of a Violin" has to do with music. It is the story of a real musical life; not wholly American, and therefore instructive. It has much, also, to do with our people and country and our own times, and is therefore ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... live here? How often my mother had said that if she had only a house of her own she should be perfectly happy! Why should not we have a house of our own here, just as comfortable as if we had gone a thousand miles out on the prairie to build it, and a great deal nearer to the book-stores, to the good music, to her old friends, and to my good wages? We had talked a thousand times of moving together to Kansas, where I was to build a little hut for her, and we were to be very happy together. But why not do as the minister had ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... Westley were born and bred in that dugout. Their father and mother were long since dead, dying in the harness of the toil they had both loved, and which they bequeathed to their children. These two men had never seen the prairie. They had never left their mountain fastnesses. They had never even gone south to where the railway bores its ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... and his cowboys would have driven many herds into one big herd moving towards a wagon that had come out from the ranch. This wagon brought food for the men, and Mr. Roosevelt has remarked, "No meals ever tasted better than those eaten out on the prairie." ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... terrible broadsheet I read, was certain that he had read it also, and fancy ran riot over the ghastly fact. For him no hope, no rest, no peace, no touch of hands gentler than the hangman's; all the world is after him like a roaring prairie of flame! I thought of Doolan, weary, foot-sore, heart-sore, entering some quiet village of an evening; and to quench his thirst, going up to the public well, around which the gossips are talking, and hearing that they were talking of him; and seeing from the well ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the day before the murder on the Dollar Sign road," said Rogers. "Remember how we splashed through mud the day we ran out there and found that man staked down on the prairie?" ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... portly, dark browed and strong, stood at the door of the rude tent which for the time made her home. She was pointing down the road which lay like an ecru ribbon thrown down across the prairie grass, bordered beyond by the timber-grown ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... saddle, giving the horse the signal to run; and, as the animal obeyed and broke into his prairie run, she cast one fearful glance behind her. The man was pursuing her at a gallop! He was crossing the valley. There was a stream to cross, but he would cross it. He had determination in every line of his flying figure. His voice was pursuing her, too. It seemed ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... teams were flying wildly over the prairie, in spite of every effort of the teamsters ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... HENLEY,—I am sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party from Missouri going west for his health. Desolate flat prairie upon all hands. Here and there a herd of cattle, a yellow butterfly or two; a patch of wild sunflowers; a wooden house or two; then a wooden church alone in miles of waste; then a windmill to pump water. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... kitties Wandered away Into the prairie One summer day. One on two feet, Rosy and fair, Almost a baby,— ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... Betty. "The dealer said they were very hardy, and, anyway, I do want to try, Bob. We've been through such miles of prairie, and it's so deadly monotonous. Even if none of my seed grows near the railroad, the wind may carry some off to some lonely farm home and then they'll give the farmer's wife a gay surprise. Let's fling the seed from the ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... and Weissmann's mouth twitched. "You cannot head them off—these modern mind-specialists! They plunge into the subconscious like prairie-dogs into the sod, only to come up at a ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... not long before passed through a beautiful country. The narrative says:—"During the earlier part of the day our ride had been over a very level prairie, or rather a succession of long stretches of prairie, separated by lines and groves of oak timber, growing along dry gullies, which are tilled with water in seasons of rain; and perhaps, also, by the melting snows. Over much of this extent the vegetation was spare; ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... seemed to laugh to scorn all attempts at capture—of course these were horse-laughs—and led his pursuers a tremendous run; and had it not been for his master, late as he was in the field, the cob would not have been captured that night. As it was, Bart went off at speed, setting at defiance prairie-dogs' burrows, and other holes that might be in his way, and at last he contrived to cut off a corner so as to get nearer to his nag, when, taking the rein beneath his leg, he placed both hands to his mouth and uttered ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... is given "according to his several ability." Diversity of condition is accepted as a natural feature of human life, just as the hills and valleys make up the landscape. The parable does not make of life a prairie. ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... where he landed penniless, he turned his strong and capable hands to whatever labour he could find. He had intended to become a Unitarian minister. Instead of doing so he had to work as a farm-hand on the prairie, street-car conductor in Chicago, dairyman in Dakota; and he varied these pursuits by giving a series of lectures on French literature in Minneapolis. By that time he probably imagined that he was equipped for a more successful attack on the ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Onct we had a singin'-school teacher. Fellow by the name of Dawes come in there from Kansas, and he taught music. He used to sing a song called the 'Sword of Bunker Hill.' Used to have a daughter, and she sung, too. Her favoright song was 'Rosalie, the Prairie Flower.' They made quite a lot of money holdin' singin'-school. The gal, she got married and moved to Tularosa, and that broke up the singin'-school. There ain't been any kind of show at Heart's Desire for five years. But say, ma'am," he interrupted, "about that feller ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... low. It exposed to view all its shingles, with a prairie of sea-wrack as far as the edge of the waves. Grassy slopes cut the cliff, which was composed of soft brown earth that had hardened and become in its lower strata a rampart of greyish stone. Tiny streams of water kept flowing down incessantly, while in the distance the sea rumbled. It seemed sometimes ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... good yields. Live stock must be kept to maintain the fertility of the land, which deteriorates fast if hay and grain are continually sold. Some live stock can be kept on every farm very cheaply with the food that would go to waste otherwise. The specialization in stock raising in the prairie states ceased to be profitable when lands became more valuable. Specialization in wheat production in the states just west of the Mississippi is possible only so long as wheat will grow on the virgin soil without costly fertilizers. The cotton farmers of the South, especially the negro farmers, have ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... the stem of a tree, and once in a sort of cavern over which the broom straw waved. But omit not, O truthful and ecstatic one, to mention that dull rage which grew from small beginnings in the major's breast until it became furious and all-consuming, like a prairie fire. At this stage your narrative becomes heroic, and it might be in order for you, O capable and delectable one, to switch from humble stating to loud singing. Only don't do it. State on. State how ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... quivering, high in the air; they broke asunder in panic; there was never an end to it all. And far out in the distance the sun went down in a flame-red mist. A streak of cloud lay across it, stretching far out into infinity. A conflagration like a glowing prairie fire surrounded the horizon, and drove the hordes before it in panic-stricken flight, and on the beach shouted the naked swarm of boys. Now and again they sprang up with outspread arms, and, shouting, chased the wild horses back into ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... farmers who lived on soil whose returns were diminished by unrotated crops were offered the virgin soil of the frontier at nominal prices. Their growing families demanded more lands, and these were dear. The competition of the unexhausted, cheap, and easily tilled prairie lands compelled the farmer either to go west and continue the exhaustion of the soil on a new frontier, or to adopt intensive culture. Thus the census of 1890 shows, in the Northwest, many counties ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... more than any other is subject to destruction by fire. During strong winds extensive forests are destroyed, the flames leaping from tree to tree in continuous belts that go surging and racing onward above the bending wood like prairie-grass fires. During the calm season of Indian summer the fire creeps quietly along the ground, feeding on the needles and cones; arriving at the foot of a tree, the resiny bark is ignited and the heated air ascends in a swift current, increasing in velocity and dragging the flames upward. ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... shook his head and uttered an emphatic no in protest, but in his heart he was pleased. He was a sergeant who liked being a sergeant, and he was proud of all his wilderness and prairie lore. ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wide extent of unbroken and equally lofty virgin forest is necessary to the comfortable existence of these animals. Such forests form their open country, where they can roam in every direction with as much facility as the Indian on the prairie, or the Arab on the desert, passing from tree-top to tree-top without ever being obliged to descend upon the earth. The elevated and the drier districts are more frequented by man, more cut up by clearings and low second-growth jungle—not ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... stopped to watch. The great size and power of the locomotive appealed to his imagination, and he liked to think of the reckless courage of the men who drove the steel road through eight hundred miles of rugged wilderness to Port Arthur, and then on again through rocks and muskegs to the Western prairie. It was a daring feat, when one remembered the obstacles and that there was no traffic to ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... like a wedge, driving us farther and farther apart; and now that it is gone, and you will close up again, when you are kind and yielding to Henry—what a happy peaceful home you may make out in the prairie land!' ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had observed a smoky haze spreading slowly northward on the lightest of breezes; and it was coming across the Reservation. It was early June, and the prairie was too young and ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... front range, facing towards Rubeho. It was the home of the winds, which starting here and sweeping down the precipitous slopes and solitary peaks on the western side, and gathering strength as they rushed through the prairie-like Marenga Mkali, howled through Ugogo and Unyamwezi with the force of a storm, It was also the home of the dews, where sprang the clear springs which cheered by their music the bosky dells below, and enriched the populous district of Mpwapwa. One felt better, stronger, on this breezy height, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... neared the Wisconsin, they saw on an open prairie three Outagamies, who ran for their lives. The Hurons and Iroquois gave chase, till from the ridge of a hill they discovered the principal Outagamie village, consisting, if we may believe their ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... Algiers is a royal park; also a prairie, as "Rauz al-Sanajirah," plain of the Sinjars: Ibn Khaldun, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... was as lonely as a prairie, its silence only broken by the rustle of rabbits bolting to their holes, and the song ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
