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Nettles   Listen
noun
Nettles  n. pl.  (Naut.)
(a)
The halves of yarns in the unlaid end of a rope twisted for pointing or grafting.
(b)
Small lines used to sling hammocks under the deck beams.
(c)
Reef points.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nettles" Quotes from Famous Books



... ashore at the tents, where they seemed to thrive very well; at last, the ram was taken with fits bordering on madness. We were at a loss to tell whether it was occasioned by any thing he had eaten, or by being stung with nettles, which were in plenty about the place; but supposed it to be the latter, and therefore did not take the care of him we ought to have done. One night, while he was lying by the centinel, he was seized with one of these ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... not take him away with me. But if I left him exposed, he would undoubtedly be found and buried and thus an excellent specimen would be lost to science. There was only one thing to be done. The middle of the chalk-pit was occupied by a large area covered with nettles and other large weeds. Probably no human being trod on that space from one year's end to another, for the stinging-nettles, four or five feet high, were enough to keep off stray children. Even now the spring ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... their brains addled by brooding on some fancied wrong, or their minds have lost their even poise by dwelling on insane reforms or visionary projects. All this may have its use, but the subscriber has preferred to look at things in a more cheerful way, to pluck roses rather than nettles, and neither to throw filth ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... not contented with assaulting a demi-lune, had taken une lune toute entiere. We had a siege of the Fort Bombadero, inaccessible, and with mortars firing double-hand grenades. They were dandelion clocks, and there were nettles to act the part of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw and considered it well; I looked upon ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... ready spelkt, rubd and the hole made for their passage (I vse no hole in the Hiue, but a piece of wood hoal'd to saue the hiue & keep out Mice) shake in your Bees, or the most of them (for all commonly you cannot get) the remainder will follow. Many vse smoke, Nettles, &c. which I vtterly dislike: for Bees loue not to be molested. Ringing in the time of casting is a meere fancie, violent handling of them is simply euill, because Bees of all other creatures, loue cleanlinesse and peace. Therefore handle them leasurely & quietly, and ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson

... rattletrap thing away, John, and go in and help they. Never wasted money in all my life over such a thing as that before. What be he going to do all the winter? Bide and rust, I 'spose. Can you put un to cut off they nettles along the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... Collier that I know at least one fact about the Goths who took Rome, 'having reduced the citizens to feed on mice and nettles, A.D. 546,' a diet to which many of the hotel proprietors in the imperial city ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... under which the torrent glances, tumbling into the white basin below, where the clear water contrasted beautifully with the muddy stream of the river. Its outlet was covered with a rank growth of canes, and a variety of unusual plants, and nettles, (urtica canabina,) which, before they were noticed, had set our hands and arms on fire. The temperature of the spring was 58 deg., while that of the river was 51 deg.. The perpendicular height of the place at which this stream issues is 45 feet above the river, and 162 feet below the summit ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... seeing Petrus in the tavern, and at an hour when good men go to morning mass; and she stared at him as though in a dream, when he demanded a jug of brandy, about half a pailful. But the poor fellow tried in vain to drown his woe. The vodka stung his tongue like nettles, and tasted more bitter than wormwood. He flung the jug from him upon the ground. "You have sorrowed enough, Cossack," growled a bass voice behind him. He looked round—Basavriuk! Ugh, what a face! His hair was like a brush, his eyes like those of a bull. "I know what you lack: ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various

... passed on he relit the cigar, forgotten during his meeting with Masterson, and Pluto, who had been on nettles of anxiety to get away from his duties all the evening, seized the opportunity when no one was looking, and followed closely the light of the cigar as it moved along the hedge past ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... Frost, is full of Thomas's fidelity to little things, things as unglorified as the unfreezing of the "rock-like mud," a child's path, a list of quaint-sounding villages, birds' nests uncovered by the autumn wind, dusty nettles—the lines glow with a deep and almost ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... swept past the ranch, leaving Dell on nettles. The importance of the message was urgent, and saddling up a horse, he started up the Beaver in search of Joel and Sargent. They were met returning, near the dead-line, and after listening to the breathless report, the trio ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... the depth of winter, I have sometimes passed part of the night entirely naked in the snow, or in tubs of icy water. I have besides often gone among thorns so that I have been torn by them; at other times I have rolled in nettles, and I have passed whole nights defying my enemies to attack me, and assuring them that I was resolved to defend myself with the grace of God." With her confessor's permission, she also had an iron girdle made, with spikes, and wore this day and night for nearly six months until the spikes so ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... again, and the guide thought he had had plenty of it, and must return for the afternoon milking; and just then, as good luck would have it, we stumbled upon an immense clump of nettles which had been one of our landmarks two days before, so that he was no longer necessary, and we ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... sat through this exordium as if he sat on nettles, but wisely held his tongue, while the brazen-faced proprietor leaned carelessly over, and whispered to his counsel. Phipps, on his distant seat, grew white around the lips, and felt that he was on the verge of the most ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... image of the old house for a moment stood before her, with its peculiar malign, sacred, and skulking aspect, as if it had drawn back in shame and guilt under the melancholy old elms among the tall hemlock and nettles. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... own fair hands—he produced a screen cunningly woven with grasses and weeds which he swore would defy the most lynx-eyed pilot. He even went so far as to place in the centre of it a large bunch of nettles, which he contended gave it an air of insouciance and lightheartedness that ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... cabbages, the four sunflowers in the little circle in the centre of the path; and, close beside her, on the edge of the stream, the patches of grass covered with dog's mercury, the white heads of the nettles against the wall, the washerwomen's boxes, the bottles of lye and the bundle of straw scattered about by the antics of a puppy just out of the water. She gazed and dreamed. She thought of the past, having her future on her knees. With ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... generally 'mucking about.' There were purple vetches in the hedges, meadowsweet, honeysuckle, belated brambles—but the dog-roses had already gone; there were green and red blackberries, stellarias, and dandelions, and in another place white dead nettles, traveller's-joy, clinging bedstraw, grasses flowering, white campions, and ragged robins. One cornfield was glorious with poppies, bright scarlet and purple white, and the blue corn-flowers were beginning. In the lanes the trees met overhead, and ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... "to taunt thus bitterly, or else I'll pull off your page's apparel, and whip you, as Venus doth her wantons, with nettles." ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... zoophytes there were Portuguese men-of-war known by the name Physalia pelagica, like big, oblong bladders with a pearly sheen, spreading their membranes to the wind, letting their blue tentacles drift like silken threads; to the eye delightful jellyfish, to the touch actual nettles that ooze a corrosive liquid. Among the articulates there were annelid worms one and a half meters long, furnished with a pink proboscis, equipped with 1,700 organs of locomotion, snaking through the waters, and as they went, throwing ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... two-double. And I heard it on the very hearthstone of the Mayor's cottage, one afternoon, as we sat and smoked in the shadow of the crumbling mud wall, with a square of blue sky for roof, and for carpet a tangle of brambles, nettles, and rank grass. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... moved the lips, no pulse stirred, no sight or sound would enter those eyes or ears more. While I looked at it, I saw no pain was there; it seemed to smile at the short pang of life which was over: but I could not bear the coffin-lid to be closed—it seemed to stifle me; and still as the nettles wave in a corner of the churchyard over his little grave, the welcome breeze helps to refresh me, and ease ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... to all the active part of her interior life. One example will help to explain our meaning. When Anne Catherine, while yet a child, was employed in weeding, she besought God to root up the cockle from the field of the Church. If her hands were stung by the nettles, or if she was obliged to do afresh the work of idlers, she offered to God her pain and her fatigue, and besought him, in the name of Jesus Christ, that the pastor of souls might not become weary, and that none of them might cease to labour ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... lawn was changed to a muddy field by the tramping of many feet, and furrowed with deep ruts where the artillery had passed and repassed; fences, hedge-rows, shrubbery—all had disappeared; and the fields, once cultivated with great care, were overgrown with weeds and nettles. ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... garden. So luxuriant were the flowers that they even strayed through the railings and made bright borders among the grass at the edge of the road; forget-me-nots were mixed up with dandelions, and wallflowers bloomed side by side with dead-nettles. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... a poor play, or any kind of a play, though to the twins to lie there in a bed of nettles with their eyes full of hot cotton and their throats full of pepper, and the air full of people making up dreadful faces at them, all with sore ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various

... that dark grey form moving among the tombstones? Was it the village witch gathering the nettles that grew on the suicide's grave, in order to work her mystic spells and secret charms? Was that sound I heard her dark laughter, as she plucked the mugwort ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... cheese-cloth on a sieve, put the curd on it, and let the whey drain; break the curd a little with your hand, and put it into a vat with a 2 lb weight upon it; let it stand twelve hours, take it out, and bind a fillet round; turn every day till dry, from one board to another, cover them with nettles or clean dock leaves, and put between two pewter-plates to ripen. If the weather be warm, it will be ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... nest of weeds and nettles, Lay a violet, half hidden; Hoping that his glance unbidden Yet might fall upon her petals. Though she lived alone, apart, Hope lay nestling at her heart, But, alas! the cruel awaking Set her little heart a-breaking, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... ladies nearly related to them partook. Before the dinner proper came sea-hedgehogs; fresh oysters as many as the guests wished; large mussels; sphondyli; fieldfares with asparagus; fattened fowls; oyster and mussel pasties; black and white sea-acorns; sphondyli again; glycimarides; sea-nettles; becaficoes; roe-ribs; boar's-ribs; fowls dressed with flour; becaficoes; purple shell-fish of two sorts. The dinner itself consisted of sow's udder; boar's-head; fish-pasties; boar- pasties; ducks; boiled teals; hares; roasted fowls; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... and the woods, which are become forests, all the rest is ruin, desolation, confusion, disorder, debts, mortgages, sales, pillage, villany, waste, folly, and madness. I do not believe that five thousand pounds would put the house and buildings into good repair. The nettles and brambles in the park are up to your shoulders; horses have been turned into the garden, and banditti lodged in every cottage. The perpetuity of livings that come up to the park-pales have been sold—and every farm let for half ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... little bit of looting on our own. First we had a great meal of lunch-tongue, bread, wine, and stewed pears. Then we carefully took half a dozen bottles of champagne and hid them, together with some other food-stuffs, in the middle of a big bed of nettles. A miscellaneous crowd of cows were wandering ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... archaic villages and towns, the vestiges and marks of which lie scattered over our plains and mountain sides—always near a stream, or lake, or good spring—usually marked by groups of shallow pits or excavations (the foundations of their old circular houses) and a few nettles—generally protected and surrounded on one or more sides by a rath or earth-wall—often near a hill-fort—and having attached to them, at some distance in the neighbourhood, stone graves, and sometimes, as on the grounds about Morton Hall, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... a few years ago, in the state of Tennessee, "Two human bodies were found in a copperas cave in a surprising state of preservation. They were first wrapped up in a kind of blanket, supposed to have been manufactured of the lint of nettles, afterwards with dressed skins, and then a mat of nearly 60 ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes

... Once five graceful, sleek, brown pheasants ran out towards the hedge, then lost their nerve, turned and went running back. The sun shone steadily; sheaves picked up by the labourer made his hands smell oily, their string band raised a blister on his forefinger. Very often he grabbed hold of nettles and sharp thistles, and the backs of his hands were swollen and covered with stings. Blue butterflies twirled in front of his face, pale moths flew out. When his hat fell off he had no time to get it. The sweat ran down his egg-shaped forehead to his long, square, hairy chin (though ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... and cropped here and there by the cows, and his potatoes rooted up by the pigs.—The garden, indeed, had a few cabbages, and a ridge of early potatoes, but these were so choked with burtlocks and nettles, that ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... lived in fear; in the second, they rest in faith; in the third, they shall burn with love. The first saw the shining of the stars; the second sees the whitening of the dawn; the third will behold the glory of the day. The first produced nettles, the second gives roses, the third will be the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even at that height. He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a pond. It is a whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles. Presently he will go out to the island apple tree and back again in a minute or two; the pair of them are so fond of each other's affectionate company they cannot ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... (Actinidia polygama) with a profusion of white leaves, which, at a distance, look like great clusters of white blossoms. But the rank undergrowth of the forests of this region is not attractive. Many of its component parts deserve the name of weeds, being gawky, ragged umbels, coarse docks, rank nettles, and many other things which I don't know, and never wish to see again. Near the end of this descent my mare took the bit between her teeth and carried me at an ungainly gallop into the beautifully situated, precipitous village of Ichikawa, which is absolutely ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... house was there no more, for Lir, their father, was dead. Only stones, round which grew rank grass and nettles, and where no human creature had his habitation, marked the place for which they had longed with an aching, hungry longing, through all their weary years of doom. Their cries were piteous as the cries of lost children as they looked on the desolate ruins, but all ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... back door, which looked out upon some fields, and give three taps. I arrived, and as soon as I raised my hand to give the signal, was seized by four men in masks, who gagged and bound me. They then stripped off my friar's dress, and scourged me with nettles, until I was almost frantic with the pain. When their vengeance was satisfied, they cast me loose, removed the gag, and ran away. As I then suspected, and afterwards discovered to be true, I was indebted to the young officer for this treatment, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... me, Meg, for I could box his ears this minute. I should certainly have boiled over if I hadn't stayed among the nettles till I got my rage under control enough to hold my tongue. It's simmering now, so I hope he'll keep out of my way," returned Jo, biting her lips as she glowered at Fred ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... so callous and insensible a member as the world's posteriors, whether you apply to it the toe or the birch. Besides, most of our late satirists seem to lie under a sort of mistake, that because nettles have the prerogative to sting, therefore all other weeds must do so too. I make not this comparison out of the least design to detract from these worthy writers, for it is well known among mythologists that weeds have ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... woman—"it was he who bound her—he who plunged her in the river, he who swam her. But I will pinch and plague him for it, I will strew his couch with nettles, and all wholesome food shall be poison to him. His blood shall be as water, and his flesh shrink from his bones. He shall waste away slowly—slowly—slowly—till he drops like a skeleton into the grave ready digged for him. All connected with him shall feel my fury. I would ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... heat they both get into, and the wrongheaded contest that ensues; for they are quite knowing in each other's ways and in the art of teasing and fretting each other. Notwithstanding these doughty brawls, however, there is nothing that nettles old Christy sooner than to question the merits of his horse; which he upholds as tenaciously as a faithful husband will vindicate the virtues of the termagant spouse that gives him a curtain lecture every ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... architecture. North of this lay a mass of fallen masonry, a long line of grass-grown, weed-encumbered stone, which was evidently the ruin of a wall; here and there in the clearing were similar smaller masses. Rank weed, bramblebush, beds of nettles, encumbered the whole place; it was a scene of ruin and desolation. But a mere glance was sufficient to show me that we had come by accident on a once ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... bread made of bran, which was doled out to them by Bessas at a quarter of the price of wheat. Before long even this bran became a luxury beyond their power to purchase. Dogs and mice provided them with their only meals of flesh, but the staple article of food was nettles. With blackened skin and drawn faces, mere ghosts of their former selves, the once proud and prosperous citizens of Rome wandered about the waste places where these nettles grew, and often one of them would be found dead with hunger, his strength having suddenly failed him while attempting ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... all be in the ditch presently,' said Bessie. 'Never mind. It's only a dry bed of dock and used-up stinging nettles. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... quiet that night he stole to the bedchamber where the girl was lying asleep, threw a great robe over her head to stifle her cries, and carried her off. She fainted away from fright and the Blackamoor thinking her dead tossed her into a field of nettles in the outskirts ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore

... last woe; the actual death-agony of ancient Rome. The famine grew and grew. The wretched Romans cried to Bessas and his garrison, either to feed them or to kill them out of their misery. They would do neither. They could hardly at last feed themselves. The Romans ate nettles off the ruins, and worse things still. There was not a dog or a rat left. They even killed themselves. One father of five children could bear no longer their cries for food. He wrapped his head in his mantle, and sprang into the Tiber, while the children looked on. The survivors wandered ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... (H.CHO{2}). The name "formic" is derived from the Latin formica, signifying ant. This name was given to the acid because it was formerly obtained from a certain kind of ants. It is a colorless liquid and occurs in many plants such as the stinging nettles. The inflammation caused by the sting of the bee is ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... level fields, lying waste and desolate with rank, overgrowing weeds. As they approached that historic village, they saw on every hand the cruel marks of war. On either side of the road were roofless and shattered cottages, grown around with nettles and briars. Among these ruins, as they found on a later day, were the old garden flowers, pansies and daisies, bravely trying to hold their own. Among the rank weeds was to be seen the half-hidden debris of broken farm gear. Here and there stood the ruins of what had been a thrifty homestead, with ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... the early settlers, when they made the first allotments of land. It is a square area of two acres in extent, inclosed by a mossy picket paling, so rickety that the neighbors' sheep sometimes leap through the gaps from the adjacent pastures, and feed among the graves upon the long grass and nettles. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... Killer, and the like. And I used to lie by the wall, and mope; and my spirits used to come upon me suddenly, and in a flood;—and then I was accustomed to run up and down the churchyard, and act over again all I had been reading on the docks, the nettles, and the rank grass. At six years of age I remember to have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarles; and then I found the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, one tale of which, (the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin,) made so deep ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... a parcel, he says, was a red-letter event; the problem of how much to eat at a time, and how much to save out of his rations for the provision of another apology of a meal, was a big one. Boiled nettles and dandelions for dinner and tea on Whit Sunday, 1917, proves what the fare actually was; quarters of eggs were unaccustomed luxuries. "I have picked mouldy crusts off the ground, and prunes off ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward

... up at the door. I got out, and had a good look at the front of the house; it was a large and melancholy mansion, with signs of long neglect upon it; great wooden shutters, in the old fashion, were barred, outside, across the windows; grass, and even nettles, were growing thick on the courtyard, and a thin moss streaked the timber beams; the plaster was discolored by time and weather, and bore great russet and yellow stains. The gloom was increased by several grand old trees that crowded close ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... their faces sank the first line again, so suddenly that an onlooker might have thought that everyone of them had been shot, and as Dennis found himself in a bed of stinging nettles close to the ruins of a cottage, with the corporal and the commandant on either side of him, he caught the distant sound of an English yell away to the left, and knew that the British raid had been well timed, and was acting in concert ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... thicket, Where the level meets the hill, Where the mealy alder-bushes Crowd around the ruined mill, Where the thrushes whistle early, Where the midges love to play, Where the nettles, tall and stinging, Guard the vine-obstructed way, Where the tired brooklet lingers; In a quiet little pool, Mistress Salmo Fontinalis[A] ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... right, that is a fair price, but I will not speak till I have good protection, for if the Dermotts lay their hands upon me in any boreen after sundown, or in Cool-a-vin by day, I will be left to rot among the nettles of a ditch, or hung on the great sycamore, where they hung the horse-thieves last Beltaine four years.' And while he spoke he tied the reins of his garron to a bar of rusty iron that was ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats

... gardens, or yards, as the inhabitants called them, of different sizes, where (for it is Sixty Years Since) the now universal potato was unknown, but which were stored with gigantic plants of kale or colewort, encircled with groves of nettles, and exhibited here and there a huge hemlock, or the national thistle, overshadowing a quarter of the petty inclosure. The broken ground on which the village was built had never been levelled; so that these inclosures presented declivities of every degree, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... inflamed cunt with stinging nettles, which increased her excitement till she seemed mad with erotic delirium, and Mr. Etheridge, to my horror, proposed that we should injure her as a finish to our ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous

... board retained the position it was meant to hold, but everything was twisted from its purpose, like its owner, and degraded and debased. In this homestead of the sluggard, behind the ruined hedge, and sinking away among the ruined grass and the nettles, were the last perishing fragments of certain ricks: which had gradually mildewed and collapsed, until they looked like mounds of rotten honeycomb, or dirty sponge. Tom Tiddler's ground could even show its ruined water; for, there ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens

... The hop gardens are dwarfed and stunted, and presently hops, corn, and pasture give place to fields of turnips, which show up like masses of jade on the chocolate-coloured soil. The bleak churchyard of Cooling, overgrown with nettles, lies amongst these desolate reaches, which resound at evening with the shrill, unearthly notes of sea-gulls, plovers, and herons. Beyond the churchyard are the marshes, "a dark, flat wilderness", as ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... stopped by the violent crying of a child; and turning toward the voice, he saw a little girl of six or seven, who had strayed from her mother, scrambling out of the ditch, and wringing her hands in an agony of pain and terror. The poor little thing had fallen into a bed of nettles, and was very much frightened, and not a little hurt. The constable caught her up in his arms, soothing her as well as he could, and hurrying along till he found some dock-leaves, sat down with her on his knee, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... Stephen awoke in her bed of nettles, and sitting up with her back to the wall, pressed her hands to her temples and tried to think. She could not. For the moment the strain had broken her, and her mind ran only on trifles—her wardrobe, a hundred small odds ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society. For all this loss and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... leaves of the vine-tree, with mallows, wool-blade, which is a tail-scarlet, with lettuce, and with spinach leaves. All this did very great good to my leg. Then with mercury, with parsley, with nettles, with comfrey, but that gave me the bloody flux of Lombardy, which I healed by wiping me with my braguette. Then I wiped my tail in the sheets, in the coverlet, in the curtains, with a cushion, with arras hangings, with a green carpet, with a table-cloth, with a napkin, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... saw many wigwams of the natives, and several of their dogs, who, as soon as we came in sight, ran away. We also saw some ostriches, but they were beyond the reach of our pieces: We gathered mussels, limpets, sea-eggs, celery, and nettles, in great abundance. About three miles up this river, on the west side, between Mount Misery and another mountain of a stupendous height, there is a cataract which has a very striking appearance: It is precipitated from an elevation of above four hundred yards; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... what churlish secrets of hers they have wrung from her. You will find the gardener's and the farmer's reports, and not the physician's and the surgeon's only, inserted in his books of policy and ethics. The 'nettles' theory of the rights of private life, and his policy of foreign relationships, appears to this learned politician to strengthen his case a little, and the pertinacious refusal of the 'old crab ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... externals—parents, social sets or legal tarradiddles. Such things are very slight obstacles. I mean the tremendous obstacles inside you: the mass of your inherited shrinkings and shynesses and delicacy; a whole quickset hedge of brambles and nettles and thistles, behind which your naked soul is hiding in a sort of terror; and you can't do it! I was in that position, because, so far, Rosa had made no reference to her birth except to say that, although Rebecca wasn't her mother, she ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... him, in spite of his leg and his deceit, just to pass time like. I've known some on 'em do as mich, and some o' t' bonniest and mimmest-looking, too—ay, I've seen clean, trim young things, that looked as denty and pure as daisies, and wi' time a body fun' 'em out to be nowt but stinging, venomed nettles." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... tried to imagine myself a preacher, but with poor success. The sermon would bother me no little, to make no mention of the other functions. I think I never could get through with a marriage ceremony, and at a christening I'd be on nettles all the while, fearing the baby would cry and thus disturb the solemnity of the occasion and of the preacher. I'd want to take the baby into my own arms and have a romp with him—and so would forget about ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... of their bodies, generally on the right arm, but sometimes on the leg also, not as a proof of manly fortitude, but because they believed that the custom "added greater strength to the nerves, and gave a better pulse for the management of the bow." Afterwards "they were whipped with nettles, and covered with ants, that they might become robust, and the infliction was always performed in summer, during the months of July and August, when the nettle was in its most fiery state. They gathered small bunches, which they fastened together, and the poor deluded Indian was chastised, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... points to the fact that "those of value which lay few at a time sit the oftener, as the woodcock and the dove." He breaks decidedly from the doctrine that noxious things in Nature are caused by sin, and shows that they, too, are useful; that, "if nettles sting, it is to secure an excellent medicine for children and cattle"; that, "if the bramble hurts man, it makes all the better hedge"; and that, "if it chances to prick the owner, it tears the thief." "Weasels, kites, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... and then almost sinking under the weight, he drew the statue into the garden. There was a sunken, dried-up well, within it, into which he lowered the Psyche, threw earth upon it and covered the fresh grave with small sticks and nettles. ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... grow only alders, elders, and weeds. Everywhere docks thrust up heads through cracks in the fences to catch at the legs or the skirts of passers-by, while masses of nettles squeeze their way under fences to sting little children. Apropos, the latter are all thin and hungry, in the highest degree quarrelsome, and addicted to prolonged lamentation. Also, each spring sees a certain proportion of their ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... sometimes puts the hated footgear on; but as soon as the prison-doors are passed he slings the boots round his neck and goes merrily home with his brown feet moving freely. He will charge through a clump of nettles quite indifferently; and this wondrous power strikes civilized children with awe. The fisher-boy's language is a strange mixture. No southerner can understand him; for, besides using old words, the fisher speaks ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... nothing whatever remained. The apse, the last pillars, the giant piers themselves were felled! The wind had swept away their dust, and it would have been necessary to search the soil beneath the brambles and the nettles to find a few fragments of broken statues, marbles with mutilated inscriptions, on the sense of which learned men were unable to agree. And, as formerly, on the Capitol, among the buried remnants of Jupiter's temple, goats ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... was exhausted; the lights had gone out; there was neither fuel nor water. Dogs, cats, mice, all had disappeared— even the nettles on the outskirts had been plucked by famished urchins as vegetable for soup. Into the cookhouses, whence cutlery had vanished, crowded old men in bowlers and bonneted old women, whose bony fingers clutched convulsively at ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... snake— Invertebrate and rattling ache.... Then suddenly Eternity Drowns all the houses like a sea And down the street the Trump of Doom Blares madly—shakes the drawing-room Where raw-edged shadows sting forlorn As dank dark nettles. Down the horn Of her ear-trumpet I convey The news that "It is Judgment Day!" "Speak louder: I don't catch, my dear." I roared: "It is the Trump we hear!" "The What?" "THE TRUMP!" "I shall complain! ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... Poulton and Sanders ("Report of the British Association" (Bristol, 1898), London, 1899, pages 906-909.) were made with 600 pupae of Vanessa urticae, the "tortoise-shell butterfly." The pupae were artificially attached to nettles, tree-trunks, fences, walls, and to the ground, some at Oxford, some at St Helens in the Isle of Wight. In the course of a month 93 per cent of the pupae at Oxford were killed, chiefly by small birds, while at St Helens 68 ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... revolved vague but ever-expanding thoughts in his mind. He would pause for long minutes, now before a field of wheat, now on the verge of a leafy wood, now on the margin of a river whose waters glistened in the sunshine, and now amid the nettles of some stony moorland. All sorts of vague plans then rose within him, uncertain reveries of such vast scope, such singularity, that he had as yet spoken of them to nobody, not even his wife. Others would doubtless have mocked at him, for ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... starued with cold, and hunger: hee was of stature meane, of constitution leane, of face freckled, of composition, well proportioned, of diet, naturally, spare, and cleanely inough; yet, at his masters bidding, he would deuoure nettles, thistles, the pith of Artichokes, raw, and liuing birds, and fishies, with their scales, and feathers, burning coles and candles, and whatsoeuer else, howsoeuer vnsauorie, if it might be swallowed: neither this a little, but in such quantitie, as it often bred ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... plenty of nettles to be found in a neglected corner of the garden, and I quickly applied the remedy, which worked, as the saying is, 'like magic,' for the Grand Panjandrum's Chief Cook's face resumed its normal size at once, ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow

... everything with my dear allies, on whom Nature has lavished virtue, grace, boldness, cleverness, and whose wisely directed energy is going to save the State. Oh! my good, gallant Lysistrata, and all my friends, be ever like a bundle of nettles; never let your anger slacken; the winds of ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... here. Do the Shawnees hurt the friends of the Pack-Horse-Man? I give you a belt to wash the red paint from your faces. I give you a belt to make the road smooth between the Greenbriar and the Scioto. By this belt the nettles and rocks shall be removed from the road. I will cover the bones of your dead, if any fell ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... years, we realize at once what effect the competition of hardy natives has upon our carefully tended and unstable exotics. In a very brief time the dahlias and phloxes and lilies have all disappeared, and in their place the coarse-growing docks and nettles and thistles have raised their heads aloft to monopolize air and ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... know when and how: but I think you need not ask why, if you live some days of the week upon boiled nettles, as many of your neighbours do. Those that have looked into the matter say that the country people (they who really do the work of the land) possess only one-third of the country, and yet pay three-fourths of the taxes. One does not see why this should go on, when once they choose that ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau

... slope of the ground produces a thousand picturesque accidents; the grass, brightened by a spring which at a little distance plays a thousand pranks over the rocks, flourishes in rich luxuriance; the burdock, with large velvet leaves, the stinging nettles, the hemlock with greenish umbels; the wild oats—every weed prospers wonderfully. No stranger approaches the enclosure, whose denizens are two or three little deer with tawny coats ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... that Brantome calls it L'isle des Chevaux, and that it was probably 'a SAFER stable' than many others in his time. The fort, with an inscription on it, MARIA RE 1564, is strongly built. Dr Johnson examined it with much attention. He stalked like a giant among the luxuriant thistles and nettles. There are three wells in the island; but we could not find one in the fort. There must probably have been one, though now filled up, as a garrison could not subsist without it. But I have dwelt too long on this little spot. Dr Johnson afterwards bade me try to write a description of our discovering ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... from the end, which will leave about the length for pointing, unlay the rope to the stop and then unlay the strands. Split a number of the outside yarns and make a nettle out of each yarn. (A nettle is made by laying up the yarns with the finger and thumb left-handed.) When the nettles are made stop them back on the standing part of the rope; then form the point with the rest of the yarns by scraping them down to a proper size with a knife, and marl them down together with twine; divide the nettles, taking every other one up and every ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum

... seem to be nothing but a den of dragons, an emblem of hell, and a place of total darkness. Now did Mansoul lie almost like the barren wilderness; nothing but nettles, briars, thorns, weeds, and stinking things seemed now to cover the face of Mansoul. I told you before, how that these Diabolonian doubters turned the men of Mansoul out of their beds, and now I will add, they wounded them, they mauled them, yea, and almost brained many of them. Many did I say, yea ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... said to me, "You shall see and hear." I therefore in spirit went out of the house, and saw before me an opening, which I approached; and looked down; and lo! there was a ladder, by which I descended: and when I was down, I observed a level country set thick with shrubs, intermixed with thorns and nettles; and on my asking, whether this was hell, I was told it was the lower earth next above hell. I then continued my course in a direction according to the exclamations in order; first to those who exclaimed, "O HOW JUST!" where I saw a company ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... malice, Mr. Fox sought to give general annoyance, by a polite insolence toward the others, which they with difficulty ignored, and a lover-like gallantry toward Edith, which was like nettles to Gus, and nauseating to her; but she did not dare resent it. He could at least ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... to the mansion; but it looked sad and desolate, and the entrance, choked with brambles and nettles, seemed almost to repel our steps. The summer-house, the beautiful summer-house, was free and open, and inviting, commanding from the unglazed windows, which hung high above the water, a reach of the river terminated by a ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... followed their stock within, and the watcher surmising that all were housed for the night cautiously made his way down the slope, but on a sudden all three reappeared, and the watcher dropped like a shot rabbit straight into a bed of thistles and nettles, ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... poured forth in intolerable clouds; but we submitted, powerless to protest. Alexandra, with all her clothes on, seemed not to feel the heat. She administered a merciless yet gentle massage to every limb with her birch rods,—what would it have been like if she had used nettles, the peasants' delight?—and rescued us from utter collapse just in time by a douche of ice-cold water. We huddled on all the warm clothing we owned, were driven home, plied with boiling tea, and put to bed for two hours. At the end of that time we ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... (a birthday present) struck five, Gwendolen French sprang out of bed and plunged her face into the clump of nettles which grew outside her lattice window. For some minutes she stood there, breathing in the incense of the day; then dressing quickly she went down into the great oak-beamed kitchen to prepare breakfast for her father and the pigs. As she went about ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... lay down, he felt as if he had become a hundred times heavier, yet he had never rested so well; but it seemed to the empress as if she were lying on thorns and nettles, so that she could not sleep ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various

... aquarum), before the main entrance (of the church) of the blessed Paul." One century later the whole structure had become a heap of ruins. Fra Giocondo da Verona looked in vain for the inscription of Leo I.; he could only find a fragment "lying among the nettles and thorns" (inter orticas et spineta). The same indifference was shown towards the edifices by which the basilica was surrounded. They fell, or were overthrown, one ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... tried to use straw as a material in 1800, and the same idea occurred to Seguin in France in 1801. Those sheets in your hand are made from the common rush, the arundo phragmites, but I shall try nettles and thistles; for if the material is to continue to be cheap, one must look for something that will grow in marshes and waste lands where nothing else can be grown. The whole secret lies in the preparation of the stems. At present my method is not ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... Sheelah is more firmly fixt, Than strongest weeds that grow those stones betwixt; My spud these nettles from the stones can part; No knife so keen to weed ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... lilac bushes, behind which no one ran, but Katiousha, turning toward Nekhludoff, motioned him with her head to join her there. He understood her, and ran behind the bushes. But here was a ditch overgrown with nettles, whose presence was unknown to Nekhludoff. He stumbled and fell, stinging and wetting his hands in the evening dew that was now falling, but, laughing, he straightened himself and ran into ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... Madge and other wise folk would have it; but he was too old by that time for the egg shells, for he could talk, talk, and ask questions enough to drive you wild. So they took him out under the privet hedge, Madge and her gossip Deborah Clint, and had got his clothes off to flog him with nettles till they changed him, when the ill-favoured elf began to squall and shriek like a whole litter of pigs, and as ill luck would have it, the master was within hearing, though they had watched him safe off to one of his own 'venticles, but it seems ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was better than his word; for, just before the post was reached, Bab, blinded by tears, tripped over the root of a tree, and, rolling down the bank, landed in a bed of wet nettles. Ben had her out in a jiffy, and vainly tried to comfort her; but she was past any consolation he could offer, and roared dismally as she wrung her tingling hands, with great drops running over her cheeks almost as fast as the muddy little rills ran ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... of sparkling champagne being called for, "success to the launch" was drank, and then a majority of the party sought the boat, gained the ship, and turned in. "Let the toast be dear woman," danced through my brain upon sparkling beams of champagne, and the vibration of the nettles in the clews of my hammock ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... glad of Charles's other arm; but Charles, though in very good humour with her, was out of temper with his wife. Mary had shewn herself disobliging to him, and was now to reap the consequence, which consequence was his dropping her arm almost every moment to cut off the heads of some nettles in the hedge with his switch; and when Mary began to complain of it, and lament her being ill-used, according to custom, in being on the hedge side, while Anne was never incommoded on the other, he ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... the great rice field on which the Malhominis had their village to the west. The swamp was flooded so that it would bear a canoe, and it teemed with fish. I took the net,—it was ingeniously woven of nettles pounded to a fibre and then spun into cords,—and showed the Indian how to swing it across an eddy and draw it under with a swift, circular sweep that would entangle any fish. I had success, and the Indian warmed to the sport and tried it himself. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... the commonalty, that may be seen whenever we choose, painted properly; but all of lovely and wonderful, which we cannot see but at rare intervals, painted vilely: the castles of the Rhine and Rhone made vignettes of for the annuals; and the nettles and mushrooms, which were prepared by nature eminently for nettle porridge and fish sauce, immortalized by art as reverently as if we were Egyptians, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... weren't at home thought to enjoy herself prodigious. But she came out red as a biled lobster. With the best intentions things don't always turn out as expected," said Mrs. Verstage, "and the irritation was like sting nettles and—wuss." Then, after a pause, "I don't know how it is, all my life I have wished to have Iver by me. He went away because he wanted to be a painter; he has come back, after many years, and is not all I desire. Now he is goyn away. I could endure that if I were sure ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... is, that it would be useless to commence cultivating their gardens before the month of July, although, to his certain knowledge, June was as beautiful as it can possibly be in the most favoured climate, and though, according to Captain King, wild garlic, cellery, and nettles, were gathered for his crew in the month of May. The inference from this last circumstance seems obviously correct. "If," says Krusenstern, "in the middle of May so much is already produced without any cultivation at all, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... new stories and loved to sit late with their wine. As they waited for dinner many tempting dishes were passed among them. There were oysters, mussels, spondyli, fieldfares with asparagus, roe-ribs, sea-nettles, and purple shellfish. When they came to their couches, the dinner-table was covered with rare and costly things. On platters of silver and gold one might have seen tunny fishes from Chalcedon, murcenas from the Straits ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... a little olive offshoot grows Beneath its orchard elders' shady rows, No budding leaf as yet, no branching limb, Only a rod uprising, virgin-slim— Then if the busy gardener, weeding out Sharp thorns and nettles, cuts the little sprout, It fades and, losing all its living hue, Drops by the mother from whose roots it grew: So was it with my Ursula, my dear; A little space she grew beside us here, Then Death came, breathing pestilence, and she Fell, stricken lifeless, by her ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski

... native plants. For asthma, he advised the sufferer to "live a fortnight on boiled Carrots only"; for "baldness, to wash the head with a decoction of Boxwood"; [9] for "blood-spitting to drink the juice of Nettles"; for "an open cancer, to take freely of Clivers, or Goosegrass, whilst covering the sore with the bruised leaves of this herb"; and for an ague, to swallow at stated times "six middling ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... was sinking, she did not show it. She went on speaking at intervals. "Let me lie here and look at it.... Yes, put the candle near.... That was the deep hole, below the wheel, where the fish leapt.... Father would not allow us near it, for the danger.... There were steps up, and so many nettles.... Then above we got to the big pool where the alders were ... where the herons came...." A pause; ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Frutilla, did not behave very nice, and I had to avenge my honour; in fact, I'm open to any offers, however humble. Going at an alarming sacrifice! Come to my box" (and he pointed to a filthy clay cottage, all surrounded by thistles, nettles, and black boggy water), "and ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... patience and desperate expedients. The country was suffering much more than France, because of the cessation of the overseas supplies on which it had hitherto relied. His troops were given bread, dried fish, and boiled nettles at Dover, and marched inland to Ashford and paid off. On the way thither they saw four men hanging from the telegraph posts by the roadside, who had been hung for stealing swedes. The labour refuges of Kent, he discovered, were feeding ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... accordance with the cruel policy of the great Eastern despotisms, which had so much to do with weakening them by their very conquests. The land had lain desolate and uncultivated for many years, savage beasts had increased in the untilled solitudes, even as weeds and nettles grew in the gardens and vineyards of Samaria. At last the king of Assyria resolved to people the country; and for this purpose he sent a mixed multitude from the different nationalities of his empire to the land of Israel. They were men of five nationalities, most of them recently conquered. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... in the coral groves, making love to the mermaids. Or, racing round, make a mad merry night of it with the sea-urchins:—plucking the reverend mullets by the beard; serenading the turtles in their cells; worrying the sea-nettles; or tormenting with their antics the touchy torpedos. Sometimes they went prying about with the starfish, that have an eye at the end of each ray; and often with coral files in their hands stole ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... midst of which, covered with ivy and tufted plants, now ruddy with autumnal tints, stood the ruined walls of a little chapel. In the dilapidated vault close by lay buried many of his ancestors, and under the little wavy hillocks of fern and nettles, slept many an humble villager. He sat down upon a worn tombstone in this lowly ruin, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground, he surrendered his spirit to the stormy and evil thoughts which he had invited. Long and motionless he sat there, while his foul fancies and schemes ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... ceased rising, and I am grievously entangled in these nettles. Come, Scholar, but warily, lest ye fright my fish, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... Lancaster; and of suppressing the miracles at his tomb. For all which deeds Sir Hugh le Despenser was sentenced to die as a wicked and attainted traitor; and immediately after he was drawn to execution in a black gown, with his scutcheon reversed, and a wreath of nettles around his head—but, happily, nearly insensible from exhaustion—and was hanged on a gallows fifty feet high. His son Hugh, a spirited young man of nineteen, held out Caerphilli Castle manfully, until he actually obtained a promise of safety, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... or any kind of grain, and pick up worms, &c., in their run. Stinging-nettles are ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown

... attenuated before, has assumed the figure, size, and general appearance of a ripe gooseberry, so much blood has it drawn from your veins. Immediately after it has left you the part begins to swell up and burn as if stung by nettles. That the pain should come after and not during the operation is an arrangement very advantageous to the vinchuca, and I greatly doubt whether any other blood-sucking parasite has been equally favoured by ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... plantain, the Wallich palm, and gigantic bamboos; while the great Cedrela Toona, figs of several species, melastomas, balsams, pothos plants, peppers, and gigantic climbing vines and orchids, were intermixed with speedwell, common bramble, forget-me-not, and stinging-nettles, just such as might have been met with in a European field! Tree ferns were seen rising up and towering high above the common brake-fern of the English moors; while the wild strawberry of Britain was seen covering ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... of hearing, and Isom sat where he was. His elbows dropped to his knees. His face dropped slowly into his hands, and the nettles of remorse began to sting. He took the back of one tremulous hand presently to wipe the perspiration from his forehead, and he found it burning. A sharp pain shot through his eyes. He knew what that meant, and feeling dizzy, he rose and started a ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.

... as employed by many physicians in order to impart embonpoint to thin, meagre persons; and Galen informs us that slave merchants used it as a means of clearing the complexion of their slaves and plumping them up. Alædeus of Padua, recommends flagellation with green nettles, that is, urtication, to be performed on the limbs of young children for the purpose of hastening the eruption of the small pox. Thomas Campanella[168] attributes to flagellation the virtue of curing intestinal obstructions, and adduces in proof to his ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... first week of his apprenticeship, before he had been diverted from his purposes by an unsuitable woman. He wondered if the inscription were legible still, and going to the back of the milestone brushed away the nettles. By the light of a match he could still discern what he had cut so enthusiastically ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... not only knew the beginning, but they knew the end. They knew that life had one path and one road. They knew that the path, grass-grown and narrow, filled with thorns and nettles, infested with vipers, wet with tears, stained by bleeding feet, led to heaven, and that the road, broad and smooth, bordered with fruits and flowers, filled with laughter and song, and all the happiness of human love, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... got rid of Moses, which surely was no very sublime achievement either. I often think ... it is pretty much all that science in this age has done. ... Protoplasm (unpleasant doctrine that we are all, soul and body, made of a kind of blubber, found in nettles among other organisms) appears to be delightful to many.... Yesterday there came a pamphlet published at Lewes, a hallelujah on the advent of Atheism.... The real joy of Julian (the author) was what surprised me, like the shout of a hyaena on ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... finding so delicious a spot in so unexpected a place. I said to the gardener, "I understood Mr. Beckford had planted everything on the Down, but you surely found those apple trees here. They are fifty years old." "We found nothing here but an old quarry and a few nettles. Those apple trees were great trees when we moved them, and moving them stopped their bearing. They blossom in the spring and look pretty, and that is all master cares about." We left this charming enclosure, passing under the archway before mentioned. And here I must pause a moment ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown

... the beach of the sea, towards where the salt-pans were smoking, in by the Esk mouth. No doubt there was a by-ordinary bonny blink of morning sun on Arthur's Seat and the green Pentlands; and the pleasantness of the day appeared to set Alan among nettles. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... shall really enjoy life," said he, exultingly, and spread out his branches; but, alas! they were all withered and yellow. It was in a corner that he lay, among weeds and nettles. The golden star of tinsel was still on the top of the Tree, and glittered in ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... with nations as it is with individuals; a boy very soon fancies himself a man; he takes a switch in his hand, rides a muck against thistles and stinging nettles, cuts off their heads, might and main, and then fancies himself a Wellington or a Nelson. Young nations have the same notions, and age tames both the one and ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... of the park was, this portion seemed much more uncivilized, in spite of the ragged remains of box and laurel hedges that stood here and there amidst the nettles and brambles, and the luxuriant swarm of tall wild-flowers, valerian, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... into decay, a skeleton of a hut with only two rotting walls, and a riddled thatch for a roof. And it was worse than no habitation at all, for what might have been a green and lovely vale was made desolate and rank with disused things, rusting among the lumber of bricks and nettles. It was enough to have been there once never to go again. And Hobb ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... scatter Its nettles on thy tomb, And even Christian bosoms Deny thy memory room; For lying lips shall torture Thy mercy into crime, And the slanderer shall flourish As the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... just then. But a tremendous surprise met him. For Don Tiburcio had changed his mind. The rascal was firing in another direction entirely, firing rapturously, firing at his very allies, at the little imps themselves among the boulders and nettles. And the little imps were positively leaping up to be shot. They ran frantically, but straight toward the traitor, and on past him up the trail. The Storm Centre could not shoot lunatics any more than he could babies. He only ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... and switch, and retraced his steps towards Overcombe Mill, knocking down the brambles and nettles as he went with gloomy and indifferent blows. When he got within sight of the house he beheld David in ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... said he with joy, and spread out his branches; dear! dear! they were all dry and yellow. It was in a corner among weeds and nettles that he lay. The golden star of tinsel was still on top of the Tree, and shone in the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... Unbid to his sweet arms—so, gracious Pan, May ne'er thy ribs and shoulderblades be lashed With squills by young Arcadians, whensoe'er They are scant of supper! But should this my prayer Mislike thee, then on nettles mayest thou sleep, Dinted and sore all over from their claws! Then mayest thou lodge amid Edonian hills By Hebrus, in midwinter; there subsist, The Bear thy neighbour: and, in summer, range With the far AEthiops 'neath the Blemmyan rocks Where Nile is no more seen! But O ye Loves, ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... score of lines in which some old idea, as worn out as the Wandering Jew, and vilely clad in rags cribbed from the literary dust heap, danced clumsily on the tight rope of paradox. On reading through these lines Rodolphe was as bewildered as a man who sees nettles spring up in a bed in which he thought he had planted roses. He would then tear up the paper, on which he had just scattered this chaplet of absurdities, and trample it under foot in ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... interest in their fellow-creatures beyond that of a cheap and merely external curiosity. If they heard a man's name and business, they seemed to think they had the heart of that mystery; but they were as eager to know that much as they were indifferent to the rest. Some of them were on nettles till they learned your name was Dickson and you a journeyman baker; but beyond that, whether you were Catholic or Mormon, dull or clever, fierce or friendly, was all one to them. Others who were not so stupid, gossiped a little, and, I am bound ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... done that, he began to wonder what was inside of the little door at the back of the room. First he wondered; then he began to grow curious; then he began to itch and tingle and burn as though fifty thousand I-want-to-know nettles were sticking into him from top to toe. At last he could stand it no longer. "I'll just go down yonder," says he, "and peep through the key-hole; perhaps I can see what is ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... Roche-Mauprat. This portcullis was broken; the drawbridge was never raised, and the only things that crossed it now were peaceful flocks and their careless shepherds. The fosses were half-filled, and the bluish osiers were already spreading out their flexible branches over the shallow waters; nettles were growing at the foot of the crumbling towers, and the traces of the fire seemed still fresh upon the walls. The farm buildings had all been repaired; and the court, full of cattle and poultry and sheep-dogs and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... repeated Sartliff; "and why weeds and nettles? Was there ever such arrogance! Man in his boundless conceit and ignorance, after having ruined his powers, snuffs and picks about, and finds the use of a few insignificant things, which he pronounces good; all the rest he pushes off in a mass as weeds ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... blighted country, and not town; and, here, among a few tall chimneys belching smoke all day and night, and among the brick-fields and the lanes where turf is cut, and where the fences tumble down, and where the dusty nettles grow, and where a scrap or two of hedge may yet be seen, and where the bird-catcher still comes occasionally, though he swears every time to come no more—this second home is ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... tasteless and unwholesome mixture, in which the bran thrice exceeded the quantity of flour, appeased the hunger of the poor; they were gradually reduced to feed on dead horses, dogs, cats, and mice, and eagerly to snatch the grass, and even the nettles, which grew among the ruins of the city. A crowd of spectres, pale and emaciated, their bodies oppressed with disease, and their minds with despair, surrounded the palace of the governor, urged, with unavailing ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... of young nettles picked in the spring make a delicious vegetable, somewhat resembling spinach. They are excellent for sufferers from ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel

... a burning red, looked down upon an utterly deserted garden, and the silence that was over all the place seemed to rise, like streaming mist, from the heart of the nettles that grew ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... boy of twelve—unripe fruit for such a tree, Uncle, and a fearsome danger to the peace of France. Tristan does well to keep the roads safe from such swaggerers. Twelve years of life, twelve years of a pinched stomach, and—the justice of the King to end it all! And what of the woman who gathered nettles for the pot from the river-bank? The archers shouted to her, but she was hungry, poor starved soul, and gathered on, bent to all-fours like a beast. Then they shot her—like a beast. Down she went with an arrow through the bent ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... platform, saw Antonio approaching while it was still twilight. All at once he was surrounded by servants of his own house, who had been waiting for him in ambush. Before he could move, half a dozen daggers sank into his body. Amid the thorns and nettles he sprawled lifeless, under the eyes of his beloved. As the assassins dragged his body away, there burst from the platform a prolonged ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... is nothing of Christianity got by idleness. Idleness clothes a man with rags, and the vineyard of the slothful is grown over with nettles. (Prov 23:21, 24:30-32) Profession that is not attended with spiritual labour cannot bring the soul to heaven. The fathers before us were "not slothful in business," but "fervent in spirit, serving ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... unscientific, for a bad person to be truly happy; just as impossible as it would be for one to be comfortable while lying on a bed of nettles which are constantly pricking him. There is no way under heaven by which a person can be really happy without being good, clean, square, and true. This does not mean that a person is happy because he ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... in early spring are delicious. Later they are not so palatable. Pick the nettles in gloves. Grasp them firmly, and wash well. Put a small piece of butter or nutter with a little pounded thyme into the saucepan with the nettles. Press well down and cook very slowly. A very little water may be added if desired, ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel

... that at first she did not notice another little door in the orange tree, but presently it opened and she found herself in a field of thistles and nettles. It was encircled by a muddy ditch, and a little further on was a tiny thatched cottage, out of which came the Yellow Dwarf with a very jaunty air. He wore wooden shoes and a little yellow coat, and as he had no hair and very long ears he looked ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... Nettles and Laudanum Will Help.—"Take the juice of common nettles inwardly and mix a little laudanum with the juice and rub the parts outwardly. Cancer has often yielded to this treatment." This remedy will no doubt help an ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... nettles left behind Which I so fondly handled in my play; I deemed the friend who warned me true and kind, And in great haste I threw the weeds away, But soon the burning flesh reminded me 'Twere safer far from all such weeds ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... second bread, Who keep'st no proud mouth for delicious cates: Hunger makes coarse meats delicates. Canst, and unurg'd, forsake that larded fare, Which art, not nature, makes so rare, To taste boil'd nettles, colworts, beets, and eat These and sour herbs as dainty meat, While soft opinion makes thy Genius say, Content makes all ambrosia. Nor is it that thou keep'st this stricter size So much for want as exercise: To numb the sense of dearth, which should sin haste it, Thou might'st ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick



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