"Soil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... significance and divine providence in and behind this marvelous migration of peoples, and so see Christian obligation as to rise to the mission of evangelizing these representatives of all nations gathered on American soil.—The Author. ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning .. tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But once ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... sterner, drier, more dreadful. We see how deluges outpoured from thunder-storms bring down their viscous streams of loam, destroying in an hour the terraces it took a year to build, and spreading wasteful mud upon the scanty cornfields. The people call this soil creta; but it seems to be less like a chalk than a marl, or marna. It is always washing away into ravines and gullies, exposing the roots of trees, and rendering the tillage of the land a thankless labour. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... years have passed away, as many as I formerly devoted to the publication of this paper—since I have allowed myself to commit my opinions to this soil so rich in memories. Often in spite of an overstrained productive activity, I have felt moved to do so; many new and remarkable talents have made their appearance, and a fresh musical power seemed about to reveal itself among the many aspiring ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... has been the main conservative influence in the mother-tongue, holding it fast to many strong, pithy words and idioms that would else have been lost. In 1415; some thirty years after Wiclif's death, by decree of the Council of Constance, his bones were dug up from the soil of Lutterworth chancel and burned, and the ashes cast into the Swift. "The brook," says Thomas Fuller, in his Church History, "did convey his ashes into Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... same plant, when found in lower situations, where it wants the soil and moisture of the mountains, is so altered in appearance that the natives call it the "heen-pus-wael;" and even botanists have taken it for a distinct species. The beautiful mountain region of Pusilawa, now familiar as one of the finest coffee districts in Ceylon, in all probability takes its name ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Air as Disinfectants; Foods contaminated from Leaky Plumbing; Utensils for Storage of Food; Contamination from Unclean Dishcloths; Refrigeration; Chemical Changes that take Place in the Refrigerator; Soil; Disposal of Kitchen Refuse; Germ Diseases spread by Unsanitary Conditions around Dwellings due to Contamination of Food; General Considerations; Relation ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... pity!" replied he. "You should go there one day. It is a very curious place, I assure you. The diamond valley is an isolated spot in the vast empire of Brazil, something like a park of a dozen leagues in circumference, which in the nature of its soil, its vegetation, and its sandy rocks surrounded by a circle of high mountains, differs considerably from the neighboring provinces. But, as I have told you, it is one of the richest places in the world, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... transformed the whole plain into a quaking bog and stopped all railway work for the time being. Indeed, the effect of a heavy downpour of rain in this sun-baked district is extraordinary. The ground, which is of a black sub-soil, becomes a mass of thick mud in no time, and on attempting to do any walking one slides and slips about in the slush in a most uncomfortable manner. Innocent-looking dongas, where half an hour previously not one drop of water ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... to his opinion, and was kind and amiable, and yet they were strangers and had never seen each other before. Perhaps what most appealed to the prince's impressionability was the refinement of the old man's courtesy towards him. Perhaps the soil of his susceptible nature was really predisposed to receive a ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... other gathers up the reins of the nigh, and the horses, their tails tightly braided and deprived of all movement, seem as mechanical as the driver. Happy are the ladies at the hotel who have a perpetual volante at their service! for they dress in their best clothes three times a day, and do not soil them by contact with the dusty street. They drive before breakfast, and shop before dinner, and after dinner go to flirt their fans and refresh their robes on the Paseo, where the fashions drive. At twilight, they stop at friendly doors and pay visits, or at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... inexorable wall of volcanic rock to the rear of the plateau and on its right and left flank forbade the carrying out of any such scheme; still, the place was big enough for their house, besides affording room for a tidy-sized garden—that is, when the two had time to dig up the soil and plant the potatoes and other seed which the skipper had provided them with, so that they might have a supply ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ribbons, looking very much as if a rainbow had been shivered there—looking at the rich people's little children, with their silken hose, and plumed hats, and velvet tunics, tip-toeing so carefully along, and looking so frightened lest somebody should soil their nice clothes—when a little, plaintive voice struck upon ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... have resisted, better than other races, the disease which has recently devastated the silk-districts. Lastly, the races differ constitutionally, for some do not succeed so well under a temperate climate as others; and a damp soil does not equally injure all the races. (8/85. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... conditions. To use an analogy somewhere employed by Professor James, our conscious minds are like the leaves of the trees which whisper together, but the roots of the trees are all embedded in the same soil and are interlaced inextricably. So our minds, though they appear to be so separate and apart, may really be at basis fundamentally one. There must be, it is said, some common ground of interaction; possibly a sort of universal fluid, in which all ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... races admire those personal characteristics which climate and circumstances have impressed on them is not borne out among Australians. An arid soil and a desiccating climate make them thin as a race, but they do not admire thinness. "Long-legged," "thin-legged," are favorite terms of abuse among them, and Grey once heard ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... contemptible thing to suggest; but any one who stoops, as I was letting myself do, to use a cat's-paw to work out his ends will surely soil his fingers. The sword is the clean weapon. I felt that even this Indian would look at me with disdain, but she did not. She thought a moment, then ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... contented to cultivate his native soil: a giant Antaeus who, as the myth tells us, ever had to touch Mother Earth to regain ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... addresses; and whether its object in entering into discussions would be only to agree upon the practical details of their application. He also suggested that so long as the armies of the Central Powers were upon the soil of the governments with which the United States was associated, he would not feel at liberty to propose a cessation of arms to those governments. He also inquired whether the Imperial Chancellor was speaking merely for the constituted authorities ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... behind the screen of cypress trees. Four of them watched in silence, or with no more than a whispered word now and then while the fifth worked. This man worked methodically, replacing each stone as he took it up and examined the soil beneath it. So far nothing had resulted, but he was by that time working at some distance from the tomb, and Bryce, who had an exceedingly accurate idea of where the spot might be, as indicated in the measurements on the scrap of paper, nudged Harker as the ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... trees were old and bent and twisted in fantastic shapes— some were small and partly dead, but most were fit for some festival of the gods; and as she went in and out among them, her feet making but slight impression on the moist springy soil, grass-grown and sprinkled with petals, pink and white, she stopped now and then and touched first one and then the other, for a swift moment laid her cheek on the rough bark as if to send a message to ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... fact, to study the seasons, the weather, the probable market prices, the import of grain and cattle, and to keep an eye upon the agriculture of the world. The harvest and the prices concern it quite as much as the actual farmer who tills the soil. In good seasons, with a crop above the average, the business of the bank expands in corresponding ratio. The manager and directors feel that they can advance with confidence; the farmer has the means to pay. In bad seasons and with short crops the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... rescued, "Where," you say, "Shall we the relics of Aratus lay?" The soil that would not lightly o'er him rest, Or to be under him would feel oppressed, Were in the sight of earth ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... book entitled "The Book of Wonders," ascribed to Aristotle, contains the following: "When the Carthagenians, who were masters of the western ocean, observed that many traders and other men, attracted by the fertility of the soil and the pleasant climate, had fixed there their homes, they feared that the knowledge of this land should reach other nations, a great concourse to it of men from the various lands of the earth would follow, that the conditions of life, then so happy on that island, would not only ...
— Prehistoric Structures of Central America - Who Erected Them? • Martin Ingham Townsend
... this vast people almost immediately set themselves in families; and for over thirty years they have been busily engaged hunting up the lost roots of their family trees. We know the pit whence the Afro-American race was dug, the rock whence he was hewn; he was born here on this soil, from a people who in the classic language of the Hebrew prophet, could ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... do to live, whence it cannot move to obtain what it wants or likes, but must stretch its unfortunate arms here and there for bare breath and light, and split its way among rocks, and grope for sustenance in unkindly soil; it would be hard upon the plant, I say, if under all these disadvantages, it were made answerable for its appearance, and found fault with because it was not a fine plant of the kind. And so we find it ordained that ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... There, in the free wide solitude of that fair land whose youthful face "seems wearing still the first fresh fragrance of the world," the fadeless traces of character, peculiar to the dwellers of the olden climes, are brought into close contrast with the more original feelings of the "sons of the soil," both white and red, and are there more fully displayed than in the mass of larger communities. Of political, or depth of topographical information, the writer claims no share, and much of deep interest, or moving incident, cannot now ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... Bolingbroke in Richard II. who betrays most effectively the tranquillising influence of patriotism. In him the patriotic instinct inclines to identity with the simple spirit of domesticity. It is a magnified love for his own hearthstone—a glorified home-sickness. The very soil of England, England's ground, excites in Bolingbroke an overmastering sentiment of devotion. His main happiness in life resides in the thought that England is his mother and his nurse. The patriotic instinct thus exerts on a character which is naturally cold and ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... on the Platte, we have had the river on one side and the ever varying mounds on the other, and have traveled through the bottom lands from one to two miles wide, with little or no timber. The soil is sandy, and last year, on account of the dry season, the emigrants found grass here scarce. Our cattle are in good order, and when proper care has been taken, none have been lost. Our milch cows have been of great service, indeed. They ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... I wish it could be ascertained, which there is some grounds for believing, that Michael Drayton was the author of this piece. It would add a worthy appendage to the renown of that Panegyrist of my native Earth; who has gone over her soil, in his Polyolbion, with the fidelity of a herald, and the painful love of a son; who has not left a rivulet, so narrow that it may be stepped over, without honorable mention; and has animated hills and streams with life and passion beyond the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... said that they ought to go home for Alice's sake, they both understood that they were going home experimentally, and not with the intention of laying their bones in their native soil, unless they liked it, or found they could afford it. Mrs. Pasmer had no illusions in regard to it. She had learned from her former visits home that it was frightfully expensive; and, during the fifteen years which they had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... enthusiastic? They actually see fulfilled before their eyes the prophecy of Isaiah, "The desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose." The explanation is, however, simple. The land is really rich. The ingredients are already here. Instead of being worthless, as was once supposed, this is a precious soil. The Aladdin's wand that unlocks all its treasures is the irrigating ditch; its "open sesame" is water; and the divinity who, at the call of man, bestows the priceless gift, is the Madre of the Sierras. A Roman conqueror once said that he had ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... between two rivers on the borders of Scotland, but still on English soil, the tents of a little army extended. It was midnight. Some Highlanders were listlessly keeping watch. The moon, which was partially obscured by heavy clouds, now and then lit up the muskets of the sentinels, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which rain down From such a height as mocks our vision, this man Was, in the freshness of his being, such, So gifted virtually, that in him All better habits wonderously had thrived He more of kindly strength is in the soil, So much doth evil seed and lack of culture Mar it the more, and make it run to wildness. These looks sometime upheld him; for I showed My youthful eyes, and led him by their light In upright walking. Soon as I had reach'd The threshold of my second ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... attractive in its appearance. Here and there were low scrubby woods, and the country generally was covered with thick patches of tussack grass, which, at a distance, gave it the appearance of being green and fertile. Between the patches, the soil was dry and sandy, so that it cost us much fatigue to make ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... glen! rise, crag and wood! rise up on either hand,— Again upon the Garry's banks, on Scottish soil we stand! 60 Again I see the tartans wave, again the trumpets ring; Again I hear our leader's call: 'Upon them for the King!' Stay'd we behind that glorious day for roaring flood or linn? The soul of Graeme is with us still,—now, brothers, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... his seventieth year. Perhaps, therefore, if he had been content to live in close retirement, and to shun places of public resort, even zealous Royalists might not have grudged the old Republican a grave in his native soil. But he had no thought of hiding himself. It was soon rumoured that one of those murderers, who had brought on England guilt, for which she annually, in sackcloth and ashes, implored God not to enter into judgment with her, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... crowded moments of our passing lives that are recorded only in our under-consciousnesses, to rise in other years in character formed, in traits established, in events fructified. And in the years when the evil days came not, John Barclay's tragedy was stirring in the soil of his soul. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... endeavors to fulfil my instructions met with but little encouragement or support; and although I labored hard at my task, I must confess that the soil was a most ungrateful one. The cavalry were, it is true, composed mostly of young fellows well-appointed, and in most cases well-mounted; but a more disorderly, careless, undisciplined set of good-humored fellows never formed ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... choke the tender flower of life; which declines in us as those weeds flourish. We ought, therefore, to begin early to study what our constitutions will bear, in order to root out, by temperance, the weeds which the soil is most apt to produce; or, at least, to keep them down as they rise; and not, when the flower or plant is withered at the root, and the weed in its full vigour, expect, that the medical art will restore the one, or destroy the other; when that other, as I hinted, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... tillage is perhaps not worth more than English grass would be, thanks to that small-farm system much be-praised by some who know not wheat from turnips. Then along a road, which might be a Devon one, cut in the hill-side, through authentic "Devonian" slate, where the deep chocolate soil is lodged on the top of the upright strata, and a thick coat of moss and wood sedge clusters about the oak-scrub roots, round which the delicate and rare oak-fern mingles its fronds with great blue campanulas; ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... have lain there a considerable time, for, notwithstanding the antiseptic properties of that sort of soil, mixed with the decayed bark and fibre of trees, a portion of the flesh of the hand was decomposed, and the naked bone disclosed. On the little finger something ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... costly and inconvenient site for the colony's capital, and that that of Williamstown, with its healthful level, like New York, might have been better, and, still better than either, Geelong, with its beautiful ready-made harbour, its immediate background of rich soil, and its direct access to all the superior capabilities of the west and north-west. But there Melbourne is, and in spite of all obstacles it is already the prominent city of the Southern Hemisphere, and Fawkner is justly its father. When Melbourne's father died, now a good many years ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... dark soil, of great depth, bespoke uncommon fertility; while the varieties of the gum tree—then quite new to him—with their bark of every diversity of colour, gave a primeval grandeur ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... accident that put him in the advance guard of Anglo-Saxon civilization, then just starting on its westward march from the shores of Massachusetts Bay. The position had awaited the man. When he set up his anvil and with skilful blows hammered out the first plough-shares to compel the virgin soil of the Nashaway valley to its proper fruitfulness, he was all unwittingly helping to forge the destinies of this great republic;—was in his humble sphere a true builder of the nation. His neighbors and friends, John Tinker, Ralph Houghton, and Major Simon Willard, doubtless ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... direction of a valley which he had seen two or three miles to westward. In time he came to a sloping hillside and looking beyond he saw a splendid stream of swiftly flowing water. At the foot of the hill was a narrow tract of about four acres almost bare of trees, though deep grass spoke of the soil's fertility. Rising above the river was a large knoll sloping down to the ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... improvised for her a luxurious couch of hay and rugs, and in this fragrant retreat Evadne studied her strange new book. She brought to it a mind absolutely untrammeled by creed or circumstance, and in this virgin soil God's truth took root. Slowly the light dawned. Hers was no shallow nature to leap to a hasty conclusion and then forsake it for a later thought. Gradually through the darkness, as God's flowers grow, this human flower lifted itself towards ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... sometimes wander in through the iron gates of the Copp's Hill burial-ground. You love to stroll round among the graves that crowd each other in the thickly peopled soil of that breezy summit. You love to lean on the freestone slab which lies over the bones of the Mathers,—to read the epitaph of stout William Clark, "Despiser of Sorry Persons and little Actions,"—to stand by the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of all Nations at all times, especially such as at present exist in our Confederacy, to make every effort to develop its internal resources, and to diminish its tribute to foreigners by supplying its necessities from the productions of its own soil. This observation may be considered peculiarly applicable to the appropriation of our indigenous medicinal substances of the vegetable kingdom, and with the view of promoting this object the inclosed pamphlet embracing many of the more important medicinal plants has been issued for ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... about the yard, poking at a weed here, a plant there. A terrible loneliness was upon him; a loneliness for the soil he had deserted. And slowly, resistlessly, the soil pulled at him with its black strength and its green tendrils down, down, until he ceased to struggle and lay there clasped gently to her breast, the mistress he had ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... adaptation. It is only too obvious when our attention is directed to it, but it is something which may have escaped our notice because it is so natural and universal. The trunk of a tree bears the limbs and branches and leaves above the ground, while the roots run out into the surrounding soil from the foot of the trunk; they do not grow up into the air. An animal walks upon its legs, the wings of a bird are just where they should be in order that they may be useful as organs of flight. And these mechanical adjustments ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... heere's my drift, And I belieue it is a fetch of warrant: You laying these slight sulleyes on my Sonne, As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i'th' working: Marke you your party in conuerse; him you would sound, Hauing euer seene. In the prenominate crimes, The youth you breath of guilty, be assur'd He closes with you in this consequence: Good sir, or so, or friend, or Gentleman. According to the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... river, it is reported there are now at least fifty towns and villages under water, and a territory extending from 100 miles north of Memphis to 200 miles south, and from 5 to 40 miles wide, is submerged. Hundreds of thousands of acres of cultivated soil, with growing crops, are included in the submerged territory. In this section alone there are from 50,000 to 60,000 people whose property has been destroyed and whose business has been suspended. Growing ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... and affording ready means of sustenance. The crops cultivated must be simple, such as tobacco, rice or cotton, and hence admitting of easy mastery by the slave as well as the efficient organization and direction of gangs of laborers. The soil must be very fertile and unlimited in extent to assure a profit on the unskilled routine labor of the slave, which makes rotation of the crops impossible and soon exhausts the soil so that the worn out lands must be abandoned for new. The industrial cycle passed through by the great slave-estates ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... never sent a letter since the day he left home. But very often there is no need for letters to keep remembrance green. 'Tis a plant what thrives best on a soil ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... to find my island. It is in latitude about—South, and in longitude about—West, as nearly as I had the means of ascertaining; and is uninhabited, and, I should say, unknown; for during my entire stay there, I never observed one solitary sign of man's foot having ever pressed the soil. You will readily recognise the island from the fact that it has a remarkable isolated group of seven cocoa-nut trees growing closely together on the extreme northernmost point of the island. The central ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... as they passed by. They went on in a great deep water, sometimes very broad, sometimes more narrow, on the sides whereof were huge rocks, and here and there little trees growing out of the clefts of them, with small heaps of earth lying on them, but they increase not much in that soil. ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... both I believe, that faith is necessary to a man, and that without faith sight even is feeble: but I also believe that a man is as much a part of the religious, moral, and social system in which he lives, as is a plant of the soil, situation, and climate in which it exists: and that external applications have just as much power to change the belief of the man, as they have to alter the structure of the plant. A faith once in a man, it is there always; and, though unfelt even by himself, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... them. He found his throat spray and dosed himself liberally in preparation for his return to civilization. "Of course, the natives are going to be wondering what kind of idiots they're dealing with to sell them pure refined extract of Venusian beefsteak in return for raw chunks of unrefined native soil. But I think we can afford to just let them wonder ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... world, the flowers that, in the excitement of the dance, had fallen from the hair of his mistress, and the finery which had been caught in the trees which she had brushed through in the park. He also preserved there the narrow footprint left upon the clay soil by ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... I have alluded is the following: the social condition and the constitution of the Americans are democratic, but they have not had a democratic revolution. They arrived upon the soil they occupy in nearly the condition in which we see them at the present day; and this is ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... profitably. It is plain that we should be far richer if we could give our attention chiefly to the production of grain for ourselves and for you, and derive from you the supplies we need to meet our demand for manufactured articles. For here the soil yields for an equal amount of labour and capital ten times as much as among you, while few manufactures here yield a larger return for labour and capital than they do abroad. But, on account of the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... standard, we will unite in a labor hard but glorious like that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their separateness, refusing the ease of falsehood.' They have wealth enough to redeem the soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill of the statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade. And is there no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian Europe tingle with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... negativing design in the theists view. He believes that the earths surface has been very gradually prepared for man and the existing animal races, that vegetable matter has through a long series of generations imparted fertility to the soil in order that it may support its present occupants, that even beds of coal have been stored up for mans benefit Yet what is more accidental, and more simply the consequence of physical agencies than the accumulation of vegetable matter in a peat bog and ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... we sound al alyk. But of it we have sundrie diphthonges: oa, as to roar, a boar, a boat, a coat; oi, as coin, join, foil, soil; oo, as food, good, blood; ou, as house, mouse, &c. Thus, we commonlie wryt mountan, fountan, quhilk it wer more etymological to wryt montan, ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... later come back in, against the wishes of the German nation—we should break off diplomatic relations with all communist countries; deny all representatives of all communist nations access to United Nations headquarters which are on United States soil; and exert maximum pressures throughout the world to isolate all communist countries, economically and diplomatically, from ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... within a cow, a horse, a man, an elephant, or any other animal, or within a worm or an insect. The good deeds an individual performs in a particular body produce rewards that the individual enjoys in that particular body. A soil, apparently drenched with one particular kind of liquid, supplies to each different kind of herb or plant that grows on it the sort of juice it requires for itself. After the same manner, the Understanding, whose course is witnessed by the soul, is obliged to follow ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the land of rice, of teak, and of oil. These are the triple sources of Burmese industry, commerce, and wealth. Never was a land richer than this in alluvial soil, in refreshing rains, and in bountiful rivers. It is one great expanse of living, paddy green. The teak timber furnished by the mighty forests of this land is carried to many lands. The extent of this trade may be imagined from the statement that the Bombay-Burma Trading Company ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the slope, the hedge did bound The yield wi' blossom-whited zide, An' charlock patches, yollow-dyed, Did reach along the white-soil'd ground, An' vo'k, a-comen up vrom meaed, Brought gil'cup meal upon the shoe; Or went on where the road did leaed, Wi' smeechy doust from heel to tooe. As noon did smite, wi' burnen light, The road ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... either side of the inlet was backed by ranges of hills extending inland as far as the eye could see, but whereas the low, flat country between the shore and the base of the hills was less than a mile wide on the northern bank, it ranged from five to twelve miles wide on the southern side. The soil was everywhere grass-clad, the grass seeming to be very luxuriant and about three feet high, while dotted about pretty thickly all over the plains were clumps of palmetto, palms, trees of various kinds—some of which would probably ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... a pastoral landscape distorted by the paralysis of suffering and death, and Jeb realized that not for many years would these tortured fields regain their tranquillity. Where were rises, now lay depressions; the loamy top soil was blown into dust and scattered to the winds, while sterile clay and pebbly strata had been boiled up from below to take its place. Mixed with this mass of unprofitable earth, strewn over its surface and buried ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... vast amount of practice. A great deal depends on the kind and the state of the ground and the weather. For example, if on a dry, windy day you follow a certain track over varying ground, you will find that on light sandy soil, for instance, it will look old in a very short time, because any damp earth that may have been kicked up from under the surface will dry very quickly to the same color as the rest of the surface, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... was admitted to the Union, why black sheep eat less than white ones, the height of the highest mountain and the length of the longest river in the world, when the first potato was dug from American soil, when the battle of Bull Run was fought, who invented the first fire-escape, how woman suffrage has worked in Colorado and California, the number of trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, the principle of the Westinghouse brake and the Jacquard loom, the difference ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... annual increment, we should now have reached our present position. But while we have been advancing with this portentous rapidity, America is passing us by as if in a canter. Yet even now the work of searching the soil and the bowels of the territory, and opening out her enterprise throughout its vast expanse, is in its infancy. The England and the America of the present are probably the two strongest nations of the world. But ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... easily enough now, and very cautiously, with the soil growing softer and the ruts more deeply cut, as if several guns had passed along our way. Then I stopped, and went down on one knee ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... distinction of individual physiognomy, and recently a great painter has sought to represent them under this aspect in a modern picture. This is an error; the Egyptians, in spite of their aversion to foreigners and their strong attachment to their native soil, were one of the most intellectual and active people of antiquity; and he who would represent them as they lived, and to that end copies the forms which remain painted on the walls of the temples and sepulchres, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cried out in impassioned tones: "On her soil I was born; on her bosom I was reared; into her arms I hope to fall in death; and I shall not from fear of losing popular favor desist from pointing out the natural sources from which her sins arise, so that ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... I ought to have said something about the travelling in those wild countries, which is anything but pleasant. The soil is a species of clay, hard as a flint when the weather is dry, but running into a slippery paste as soon as moistened. It is, therefore, very fatiguing, especially in wet weather, when the soldiers slip about in a very laughable manner to look at, but very distressing to themselves. ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... and inscriptions have all long since passed away, even the very spot itself has changed; new soil has been formed, and there are miles of solid ground between Mount ita and the gulf, so that the Hot Gates no longer exist. But more enduring than stone or brass—nay, than the very battle-field itself—has been the name of Leonidas. Two thousand three hundred years have sped since he ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... foot on English soil has need of a good deal of patience. The custom-house officials made a minute, vexatious and even an impertinent perquisition; but as the duke and ambassador had to submit, I thought it best to follow his example; besides, resistance would be useless. The ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... they attached themselves to the soil and tried to take root there, were essentially an urban population. They owned real estate and devoted themselves to all sorts of industries. They were allowed to be workmen and to practice every handicraft, inasmuch as the guilds, those associations, partly religious ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... (l. 50) are certainly more appropriate to a journey from London to Sockburn, than from Goslar to Gottingen; and what follows, the "green shady place" of l. 62, the "known Vale" and the "cottage" of ll. 72 and 74, certainly refer to English soil.—Ed.] ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... sheaves. In lieu of hand tedding, haymaking machines are employed, tossing the grass into the air, so as to thoroughly aerate it, taking advantage of every brief interval of fine weather; and seed and manure are distributed by machine with unfailing accuracy. The soil is drained by the aid of properly constructed plows for preparing the trenches; roots are steamed and sliced as food for cattle; and the thrashing machine no longer merely beats out the grain, but it screens it, separates it, and elevates the straw, so as to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... Rayado by these Apaches. This occurred only a few months after he had formed one of the party to pursue and recover the animals stolen from their ranche. When he was attacked, New was engaged tilling the soil on his own farm. The rascally Indians surrounded him before he became aware of their presence. Having an empty rifle with him, he succeeded, for some time, in keeping his assailants at bay, by pretending ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... are universally recognized, and tiles are for sale everywhere. Mowing and reaping machines have ceased to be a novelty upon our plains and meadows. The natural fertilizers have been analyzed, and artificial nutrients of the soil have been contrived. The pick and pride of foreign herds have regenerated our neat stock, and the Morgan and the Black-Hawk eat their oats in our stalls. The sheepfold and the sty abound with choice blood. Sterling agricultural journals are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... mightier warrior, An earl more lordly than is he the chief of you; He is no common man; if looks belie him not, He is a hero bold, worthily weaponed. Anon must I know of you kindred and country, Lest ye of spies should go free on our Danish soil. Now ye men from afar, sailing the surging sea, Have heard my earnest thought: best is a quick reply, That I may swiftly know ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... been a courteous, a grateful, and, under all points of view, an ORTHODOX Visitor. It seems however, from the language of the French Typographer, that I acted under a gross delusion; and that it was necessary to have recourse to his sharp-set sickle to cut away all the tares which I had sown in the soil of his country. Upon the motive and the merit of his labours, I have already given my unbiassed opinion.[A] Here, it is only necessary to observe, that I have not, consciously, falsified his opinions, or undervalued his worth. Let the Reader ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... eventually established for him in history. Moreover, subsequent events were to exhibit the utter baseness of his character more signally than it had been displayed during his previous career, however vacillating. No more ignoble yet more dangerous creature had yet been loosed upon the devoted soil of the Netherlands. Not one of the personages who had hitherto figured in the long drama of the revolt had enacted so sorry a part. Ambitious but trivial, enterprising but cowardly, an intriguer and a dupe, without religious convictions or political principles, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... arranged. Leaving the Wondership on the edge of the clearing, they made camp on the flat ledge of sandy soil interspersed with rocks that Jack had selected. From it they had a good view in both directions. Above them was a small island, and below them the river leaped and roared in a ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... the right to the services of all its women in the cultivation of the soil. Each gens has the right to the service of all its male members in avenging wrongs, and the tribe has the right to the service of all its male ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell
... They'd almost peck the seeds out of my hand, and the minit I'd turn my back they was over into that patch, right foot, left foot, kick heel and toe, and swing to pardners—and you couldn't see the sun for dirt. And at every rake that rooster lifts soil enough to fill ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... village, you might see cattle-dealers with cows and oxen for sale, and pig-drovers, with herds of squeaking swine, and farmers, with cart-loads of cabbages, turnips, onions, and all other produce of the soil. Now and then a farmer's red-faced wife trotted along on horseback, with butter and cheese in two large panniers. The people of the village, with country squires and other visitors from the neighborhood, ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well remembered in his childhood. The Venus mountain stood out gray and bare, overshadowing the valley beneath. He would have been glad to call out "Lady Halle, Lady Halle, unlock the mountain. I would fain remain here always in my native soil." That was a sinful thought, and he offered a prayer to drive it away. Then a little bird in the thicket sang out clearly, and old Anthony thought of the minstrel's song. How much came back to his remembrance as he looked through the tears once more on his native town! ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... father, the old grey-haired Virginian aristocrat, he could see him still. "Take this sword, Eggleston," he had said, "use it for the State; never for anything else: don't cut string with it or open tin cans. Never sheathe it till the soil of Virginia is free. Keep it bright, my boy: oil it every now and then, and you'll find it ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... Jutland, a long way into the country, and not far from the clear stream, rises a great ridge of land, which stretches through the wood like a wall. Westward of this ridge, and not far from the river, stands a farmhouse, surrounded by such poor land that the sandy soil shows itself between the scanty ears of rye and wheat which grow in it. Some years have passed since the people who lived here cultivated these fields; they kept three sheep, a pig, and two oxen; in fact they maintained themselves very well, they had quite enough ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Thomas Browne, and Dr. John Brown, and—may we not add Dr. Weir Mitchell?—Dr. Holmes excellently represents the physician in humane letters. He has left a blameless and most amiable memory, unspotted by the world. His works are full of the savour of his native soil, naturally, without straining after "Americanism;" and they are national, not local or provincial. He crossed the great gulf of years, between the central age of American literary production—the time of Hawthorne and Poe—to our own time, and, like Nestor, he reigned ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... at present reminded of those times of fright, when during the clearing and tilling of the soil, a small roughly made horseshoe is found in Southern Germany, about as far as the water boundary of the Thuringian forest, and occasionally on, but principally around Augsburg, and in France as far ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... the greatest of them all. We have gone far into the enemy's country, where we have struck him a terrible blow, and now, of our own choice— understand it is of our own choice—we withdraw and challenge him to come and repeat on our own soil our exploit if he can. It is like a skilled and daring prize fighter who leaps back and laughingly bids his foe come on. Am ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... resemblance to dogs, either in formation or habits. They are, in fact, the marmot, and in size are little larger than squirrels, which animals they resemble in some degree. They burrow under the light soil, and throw it up in mounds ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... just finishing. In a burst of impetuous and impassioned eloquence he was pointing to the future glory of the United States, when Great Britain would own no foot of soil from the North Pole to the Gulf. The audience applauded tumultuously. Douglas stepped from the rude platform into the arms of bewitched admirers. He freed himself and came to me. He brought with him a Mr. DeWitt Williams who had prevailed upon Douglas to accept ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... and moose followed their beaten tracks to the streams that had been theirs before ever Frenchman pierced the forest; beaver dove into their huts above the dams their own sharp teeth had made; moles nosed under the rich soil, and left a winding track behind; frogs croaked and bellowed from some backset of the river,—and all blended, not, perhaps, so much into a sound, as into a sense of movement,—an even murmur ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... citizens, when I think of my clients in this case. My clients are the children; my clients are the next generation. They do not know what promises and bonds I undertook when I ordered the armies of the United States to the soil of France, but I know, and I intend to redeem my pledges to the children; they shall not be sent upon a ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... for the size of it, is valuable, more for its situation than the quality of its soil; though that is good for farming, with a considerable proportion of ground that might very easily be improved into meadow. It lies on the great road from the city of Washington, Alexandria, and Georgetown, to Leesburgh and Winchester, at Difficult Bridge, nineteen miles from ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... faint noises from the camp, and in the other direction the trot of farmers on the road to the town, for it was market-day. She observed that her frequent visits to this corner had quite trodden down the grass in the angle of the wall, and left marks of garden soil on the stepping-stones by which she had mounted to look over the top. Seldom having gone there till dusk, she had not considered that her traces might be visible by day. Perhaps it was these which had revealed her ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... wonderful enough—but when we compare what we have done with what there is to do, then our past accomplishments are as nothing. When we consider that more power is used merely in ploughing the soil than is used in all the industrial establishments of the country put together, an inkling comes of how much opportunity there is ahead. And now, with so many countries of the world in ferment and with so much unrest every where, ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... arrived at the conviction that there was hardly anything truly historical about his Saints and that the miracles ascribed to them were insipid, and might be the inventions of their friends; such legends, he felt, would take no root on English soil, at all events not in the present generation. In consequence he informed Newman that he could not keep his promise, or that, if he did so, he must speak the truth, tell people what they might believe about these Saints, and what was purely fanciful in the accounts of their lives. ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... execute them. The deep snows of Quebec had not cooled his ardor. The fetid stench of an English prison ship could not abate his love of liberty and country. The blood and carnage of Saratoga and of Monmouth had given him confidence. The blood-stained soil of Valley Forge had inured him to hardships to which ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... appropriate in themselves to the accomplishment of the end intended. The appliance must be water, and not sand—or rather water or sand, with judgment, discrimination, and tact; for the gardener often finds that a judicious mixture of sand with the clayey and clammy soil about the roots of his plants is just what is required. The principle is, that the appliance must be an appropriate one—that is, one indicated by a wise consideration of the circumstances of the case, and of the natural characteristics of ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... than she knew, there; the soil is good and the seed is taking root," she told herself as she turned with a light ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... with the northern face rose two rocky ridges called the Great and Small Teson, the nearest within 600 yards of the city ramparts, and crowned by a formidable redoubt called Francisco. The siege began on January 8. The soil was rocky and covered with snow, the nights were black, the weather bitter. The men lacked entrenching tools. They had to encamp on the side of the Agueda farthest from the city, and ford that river every time the ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... example of good educational practice in this connection is the way in which Francis W. Parker, a progressive educator of a former generation, taught geography. When he desired to show how water running over hard rocky soil produced a Niagara, he took his class down to the creek behind the school house, built a dam and allowed the water to flow over it. When he wished to show how water flowing over soft ground resulted in a deltoid Nile, he took the class to a low, flat portion ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... My father was in the old High School the last year, and walked in the procession to the new. I blush to own I am an Academy boy; it seems modern, and smacks not of the soil. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ruin and wasted fields; but the little valley ran into the wood of Becourt and sheltered there, and there you saw scarcely any signs of war. It might almost have been an English valley, by the side of an English wood. The soil was the same brown clay that you see in the south Of England above the downs and the chalk; the wood was a hazel wood, such as grow in England, thinned a good deal, as English hazels are, but with several tall trees still growing; and plants were there and late flowers, such ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... the soil—the richest soil in the world. Just dry enough to keep it from leaching. Natural possibilities for irrigation ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... difference between the beautiful Tuscan city and the sea-city of the Adriatic. Florence, as Mrs. Oliphant points out, is a city full of memories of the great figures of the past. The traveller cannot pass along her streets without treading in the very traces of Dante, without stepping on soil made memorable by footprints never to be effaced. The greatness of the surroundings, the palaces, churches, and frowning mediaeval castles in the midst of the city, are all thrown into the background by the greatness, the individuality, the living power and vigour ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... BOLOGNA, silence in the streets, The squares, when hark, the clattering of fleet hoofs; And soon a courier, posting as from far, Housing and holster, boot and belted coat And doublet stain'd with many a various soil, Stopt and alighted. 'Twas where hangs aloft That ancient sign, the Pilgrim, welcoming All who arrive there, all perhaps save those Clad like himself, with staff and scallop-shell, Those on a pilgrimage: and now ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... everywhere, from top to bottom of the spacious palace, and all to no purpose. But, after a great deal of perplexity, they espied, in front of the portal, two venerable trees, which nobody could remember to have seen there the day before. Yet there they stood, with their roots fastened deep into the soil, and a huge breadth of foliage overshadowing the whole front of the edifice. One was an oak, and the other a linden tree. Their boughs—it was strange and beautiful to see—were intertwined together, and embraced one another, so that each tree seemed ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Suppose the soil dry, and the artillery capable of moving, the action would have begun at six o'clock in the morning. The battle would have been won and ended at two o'clock, three hours before the change of fortune ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... self-sacrificing labours. By the beginning of 1621 they had a comfortable residence on the bank of the St Charles, on the spot where now stands the General Hospital. Here they had been granted two hundred acres of land, and they cultivated the soil, raising meagre crops of rye, barley, maize, and wheat, and tending a few pigs, cows, asses, and fowls. There were from time to time accessions to their ranks. Between the years 1616 and 1623 the fathers Guillaume Poullain, Georges le ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... they appeared singly and at long intervals; then in twos and threes, as the drive continued to advance. They leaped across the plain, and stopped in the distance, sitting up with straight ears, then ran on again, were joined by others; sank down flush to the soil—their ears flattened; started up again, ran to the side, turned back once more, darted away with incredible swiftness, and were lost to view only to be replaced by ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... Father to his fiery and disobedient Son, "a hot temper is the soil of remorse. Promise me that when next you are angry you will count one hundred ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... we were able to plough and seed 144 acres by May 10. Lots Nos. 8, 12, 13, and 14 were planted to corn, and No. 15 sowed to oats, and the 10 acres on the home lot were divided between sweet fodder corn, potatoes, and cabbage. The abundant water in the soil gave the crops a fair start, and June proved an excellent growing month, a rainfall of nearly four inches putting them beyond danger from the short water supply of July and August. Indeed, had it not been for the generosity of June we should have been in a bad way, for ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... Greeks!" he said sadly. "They simply can't go straight. This brand of Turk used to be made of a tobacco grown on a slope above Salonica. A strip of sun-baked soil built up a reputation which is now being bartered for filthy lucre by ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... be Measuring and cleaving the Ground, And commending the Soil for the Sculls shall be found, Whose thickness alone, not the Soil makes them sound, With a ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... knife they cut away the turf, and set to work eagerly to dig with two pieces of pot. The soil flew about their heads as they ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the valve out, bore a hole in a board about I/2 inch deep and large enough to permit the valve to be turned. Drop a little emery dust in this hole. If you haven't any emery dust, scrape some grit from a common whetstone. If you have no whetstone, put some fine sand or gritty soil in the hole, put the valve on top of it, put your brace on the valve and turn it vigorously for a few minutes, and ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... orthodox standing, for he viewed the Bible as a purely human collection of imperfect writings, the wonder-stories concerning the birth and death of Jesus as deserving no credence, and denied to Christianity any supernatural foundation. Polytheism was shown to be the soil from which all trinitarian conceptions naturally spring—the Brahmanic, Zoroastrian, Homeric, Plotinian, as well as the Christian trinity—the latter being a Greek idea engrafted on a Jewish stalk. The author's conclusion, by which he reached "an ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... and the monstrous creation of blood and iron overthrown. Such is the plainest dictate of the instinct of self-preservation. It is also the plainest dictate of justice. Germany must be paid that she has deserved. When the triumphant Allies shall have made good their footing on her soil, they will not indeed rival her exploits or violating women and butchering children, of murdering prisoners and wounded, of slaying unoffending and peaceful peasants, of destroying shrines of religion and learning. But they will assuredly shoot or hang such of the chief perpetrators ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... rulers—is a question for antiquarians to decide. There can, however, be no doubt that the monuments of the Lombard style, as they now exist, are no less genuinely local, no less characteristic of the country they adorn, no less indigenous to the soil they sprang from, than the Attic colonnades of Mnesicles and Ictinus. What the marble quarries of Pentelicus were to the Athenian builders, the clay beneath their feet was to those Lombard craftsmen. From it they fashioned structures as enduring, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... went to inspect the land, then in grain. The tract was hardly as much as was requisite for horticultural purposes and a large home, but the situation was charming; so, without consulting any one as to the nature of the soil, I promised to do my utmost to earn a quit title to the land. I worked indefatigably for several months before being able to secure a promissory deed, but finally, after much effort and persuasion, I succeeded in obtaining the latter. Then I worked harder ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... slowly around the boulder marked "Palace Hotel, Rates Reasnible," that he came upon the place where a horse had stood, on the side best sheltered from the storm. Deep hoof marks closely overlapping, an over-turned stone here and there gave proof enough, and the rain-beaten soil that blurred the hoofprints farthest from the rock told him more. Lone backed away, dismounted, and, stepping carefully, went close. He could see no reason why a horse should have stood there with his head toward ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... attachment to a disarranged checker-board. And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling for Old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be content to call affection. The sentiment is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has stuck into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement which has since become a city. And here his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their earthly substance ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... under the charge of thirty-six Franciscan friars, under whom the most extraordinary progress in civilization took place; since in little more than thirty years, upwards of thirty-three thousand Indians were baptized, and eight thousand marriages had taken place. The soil being fertile and the climate more benign than in the other California, in eighteen missions established there, they cultivated corn, wheat, maize, etc., and introduced vegetables and fruit-trees from Spain; amongst these the vine and the olive, from which excellent wine and oil were ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... acts of injury done to animals are in no way distinguished from foeticide. People regard the profession of agriculture to be sinless. That profession, however, is certainly fraught with cruelty. The iron-faced plough wounds the soil and many creatures that live in the soil. Cast thy eyes, O Jajali, on those bullocks yoked to the plough. Kine are called in the Srutis the Unslayable. That man perpetrates a great sin who slays a bull or a cow.[1161] In days of yore, many Rishis ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... rather than of words,—more intent on the making of history than the recording of it. They are the noblest body of men and women that ever yet went forth to do service, for our Great King, on American soil. ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... It was a pleasant scene that lay before Martha's window—a long reach of stubble field, stretching away to the bank of the Souris, flanked by poplar bluffs. It was just a mile long, that field, a wonderful stretch of wheat-producing soil; but to Martha it was all a weariness of the flesh, for it meant the getting of innumerable meals for the men who ploughed ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... beautiful, and attractive cities of the whole world. Its climate is salubrious, with as much sunshine as any city of America. The country immediately about it is naturally beautiful and romantic, especially up the Potomac, in the region of the Great Falls; and, though the soil be poor as compared with that of my present home, it is susceptible of easy improvement and embellishment. The social advantages cannot be surpassed even in London, Paris, or Vienna; and among the resident population, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the nineteenth century the first English missionaries in the South Seas thanked God for a safe passage from their homes to Tahiti, and for a virgin soil and an affrightingly wicked people to labor with. The English, however, did not seize the island, but left it for the French to do that, who first declared it a protectorate, and made it a colony of France, in the unjust way of the mighty, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... and the big black looked at me, threw back his head, and laughed, and laughed again, as he drove the spade deeply into the rich loamy soil; and when the bread and bacon came he laughed, and bit with those great white teeth of his, and munched and chewed like the lying-down oxen, and dug and dug, till my father said, "No more to-night," and bade me carry in ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... he organized his army into several parts and thought out a system by means of which soldiers might always be on guard duty to withstand an invasion, while the rest of the people were peacefully tilling the soil. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... unfavourable soil in which a character of singular beauty and devout consecration may be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... been right in his idealistic way of looking at life and labor. She had always thought so until this minute, and many a thrill of pride had she experienced in thinking of her parents and their days of struggling. They had been and were, the real Empire-builders who subdued the soil and made it serve human needs, enduring hardships and hunger and cold and bitter discouragements, always with heroism and patience. The farm on which they now lived, had been abandoned, deserted, given ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... seemed emptied out to hear Him. No illusions as to the depth or worth of this excitement beset Him. Sadly He looked on the eager multitudes, because He looked through them, and saw how few of them were bringing 'an honest and good heart' for the soil of His word. Just because He saw the shallowness of the momentary enthusiasm, He spoke this pregnant parable from a heavy heart, and as He tells us in His explanation of it to the disciples (ver. 10), uses the parabolic ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to "Hungaria." I met friend Bosendorfer the day before yesterday in Frankfort: we began at once of course to talk about Sophie Menter and her new thickly-leaved Petersburg laurels. Similar plants will bloom for you everywhere according to the capacity of the soil, and will always shade your artistic peregrinations ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... files deep upon the Rue St. Honore press up to the Bank of France, old women and old men with their little all tied in handkerchiefs and stockings to take up the tribute required by Bismarck to rid the soil of the detested German. They did it. Alone they did it—the French people—the hard-working, frugal, loyal commonalty of France—without asking the loan of a sou from the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson |
