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Examples

  • In a small and rude garden, surrounded by straggling elder-bushes, which formed a sort of imperfect hedge, sat near to the beehives, by the produce of which she lived, that “woman old” whom Lucy had brought her father hither to visit.

    The Bride of Lammermoor 2008

  • Princesses, let me tell you, if they are young, rich, and beautiful, have something else to think of; they are surrounded like rare plants by a hedge of fools, well-bred idiots as hollow as elder-bushes!

    Modeste Mignon 2007

  • No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low beneath the water.

    Adam Bede 2004

  • A scent of pine-wood from a tentlike pile of planks outside the open door mingled itself with the scent of the elder-bushes which were spreading their summer snow close to the open window opposite; the slanting sunbeams shone through the transparent shavings that flew before the steady plane, and lit up the fine grain of the oak panelling which stood propped against the wall.

    Adam Bede 2004

  • And the ground inside it, that was nice turf once, with the rill running down it that perhaps supplied the moat — all stony now, and overgrown, and tangled, with ugly-looking elder-bushes sprawling through the ivy.

    Springhaven Richard Doddridge 2004

  • Owing to this torpor of the stream, it has nowhere a bright, pebbly shore, nor is there so much as a narrow strip of glistening sand in any part of its course; but it slumbers along between broad meadows, or kisses the tangled grass of mowing-fields and pastures, or bathes the overhanging boughs of elder-bushes and other water-loving plants.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 Various

  • Here tombstones stand closely crowded together, or lean one against the other under the thickets of ancient elder-bushes; glints of sunlight flicker through the dense foliage over graven sign of stag, of vine or flower, or the hand upraised in benediction of some son of Aaron, light up Hebrew script in its severely decorative characters, inscriptions half effaced but not forgotten, for careful record has been kept.

    From a Terrace in Prague Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

  • This region is bordered by a little jungle of poke-berry and elder-bushes, sumachs and brambles, so dense and thrifty that they overtop and hide the fence; and there is a tradition among the school-boys, that somewhere in the copse there is a black-snake hole, the abode of an enormous monster, upon whom no one, however, has ever happened to set eyes.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics Various

  • Standing on the weedy margin, and throwing the line over the elder-bushes that dip into the water, it seems as if we could catch nothing but frogs and mud-turtles, or reptiles akin to them.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 Various

  • That evening when she sat at the door-step of her house and when the sun was setting behind the elder-bushes the Spae-Woman told Gilly the third part of the Unique Tale.

    The King of Ireland's Son Padraic Colum 1926

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