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More "Bird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who gallops in front, and while the animal pursues him, the others rush in and hamstring him with their knives. Ostriches are caught by throwing down poison at the spots where they feed. The Somali also hunt them, on the backs of their hardy little ponies. The ostrich is a shy bird, and is so blind at night that it cannot feed. A Somali, knowing this, providing himself with provisions for two or three days, sets off in search of them; showing himself to the ostriches, he is discovered, but takes care to keep at a distance. They stalk off, and he follows at the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the night he heard a voice more sweet than the sighs of the bird of passion, or than the warbling phoenix. No words seemed adequate, he felt, to describe the beauty of this song. Walking out from his cabin, he found that the music came from a junk not very far ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... of which I had become conscious at the moment of my arrival, was emphasized now that the residents in the district had retired to their scattered habitations. No sound of bird or beast disturbed the silence. From the time that the footsteps of Martin the landlord had passed my door as he mounted heavily to his bed-chamber, no sound had reached me but the muffled ticking of a grandfather's clock ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... numbered. The whole world had been ransacked to produce the viands named in it; neither the frozen recesses of the north nor the sweltering regions of the south had been spared: every form of food, animal and vegetable, bird, beast, reptile, fish; the foot of an elephant, the hump of a buffalo, the edible bird-nests of China; snails, spiders, shell-fish, the strange and luscious creatures lately found in the extreme depths of the ocean and fished for with dynamite; in fact, every form of food pleasant to the palate ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... was late, culpably late. But Mrs. Downey was proud of that too, as arguing that the poor bird of passage had stayed to smooth her ruffled plumage. Mrs. Downey approved of all persons who thus voluntarily acknowledged the high ceremonial character of the Dinner. She was glad that Mr. Rickman would appear to-night in full evening dress, to rush away in the middle of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... fallen in a Titanic tragedy of color beyond Prince's Bay. The fierce bird, leisurely occupied in tearing to pieces the little twitterer, was a suitable accompaniment to the bloody drama in the clouds. Watching keenly, I gradually began to picture to myself the sensation of walking unseen to the murderous fowl and suddenly clasping his smooth back with both hands. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... his brain, joined as by some thin filament. He thought somehow of her soul, and then wondered what a soul was like. And then he thought of a dove, and then of a bat fluttering through the dark, and then of a bird lost at twilight. He thought of it as some lonely flying thing with a long journey before it and no place to rest. He could imagine it uttering the vibrant, plaintive cry of a peewit. And then it struck him with a great sense of pity ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... indeed favoured it, or whether Priam himself was not going into danger. King Priam took the cup from his wife and he poured out wine from it, and looking towards heaven he prayed, "O Father Zeus, grant that I may find welcome under Achilles' roof, and send, if thou wilt, a bird of omen, so that seeing it with mine own eyes I may go on my way trusting that ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... it. Let 'em larn what a man can do. I am a man, I know all about yer...." Jimmy threw himself further away on the pillow; the other stretched out his skinny neck, jerked his bird face down at him as though pecking at the eyes. "I am a man. I've seen the inside of every chokey in the Colonies ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... knight so fiercely, that the latter began to entertain apprehensions for his personal safety, and meditated a precipitate retreat. Yet he did not dare to move, lest the action should bring upon him the hurt he wished to avoid. Thus he remained, like a bird fascinated by the rattlesnake, until the young man, whose power of speech seemed taken from him by passion, went on, in a tone of deep and concentrated rage, that communicated a hissing sound to ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... skill of Hokosa is great, and well he knows how to set a snare; but I think that if by his counsel I should springe the bird, he will be too clever a man to keep upon the threshold of my throne. He who sets one snare may set twain, and he who sits by the threshold may desire to enter the house of kings wherein there is no space ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... there isn't Candace!" said Miss Prissy; "I do believe Miss Marvyn has sent her with something for the quilting!" and out she flew as nimble as a humming-bird, while those in the house heard various exclamations of admiration, as Candace, with stately dignity, disinterred from the wagon one basket after another, and exhibited to Miss Prissy's enraptured eyes sly peeps ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... could be deduced by men of natural powers of observation and little science from the action of clouds and smoke, the airplane, the Winged Victory of our day, waited upon two things—the scientific analysis of the anatomy of bird wings ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... grandeur of the very wastes around her as mounting guard over the freedom of her thoughts. There was no living speck on the trail, which she knew lay across the expanse of parched earth to the edge of the blue dome; there was not even a bird in the air. Undisturbed, she might think anything, pray for anything; she might feed the flame of revolt till the fuel of many weeks' accumulation had burned itself out and left her calm in the wisdom and understanding that reconciled her to her portion ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... it. I've tried it before and I haven't become used to it yet. No, sir. In the first place, a man has got no business up here. If he were meant to fly, he'd have wings, like a bird. I claim it's tempting Providence to go floating about through space in ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... man relinquished his hold, and the girl, with the quick movement of a humming-bird, dived into the foliage, and would have disappeared, had he not with equal celerity intercepted her, again imprisoning ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... this thing ought to be done, and another thought that. Some tried to lift the helpless bird by catching its wings in their beaks; but this failed, and such a chattering and ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... close to them a shotgun will do as well as anything, and we can't waste a shell on every bird or rabbit. Those shells of yours are precious. You other fellows will have to turn fishermen for a while. Your pistols are ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... down the bird," said Doctor Portsoaken. "You say you had no interest in his death. We shall ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... put it in a cage, And do thy best and utmost to engage The bird to love it; give it meat and drink, And every dainty housewives can bethink, And keep the cage as cleanly as you may, And let it be with gilt never so gay, Yet had this bird, by twenty-thousand-fold, Rather be in a forest wild and cold, And feed on worms ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... daily life and believed that in the pastoral kingdom of Theocritus they had found the promised land. Inevitably it followed that the figure of Orpheus, singing through the earth, and bringing under his dominion the beast and the bird, the very trees and stones, should become the picture of their fondest dreams. He was the hero of Arcady "where all the leaves are merry." In his presence the dust of dry theology and the cruel ban ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... the holy Vedas, year after year, and I have asked the devote Samanas, year after year. Perhaps, oh Govinda, it had been just as well, had been just as smart and just as profitable, if I had asked the hornbill-bird or the chimpanzee. It took me a long time and am not finished learning this yet, oh Govinda: that there is nothing to be learned! There is indeed no such thing, so I believe, as what we refer to as 'learning'. There is, oh my friend, just one knowledge, this is everywhere, this is Atman, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... what matter—say!— The shuddering trees, The Easter-stricken day, The sodden leas? The good bird, wing and wing With Time, finds heart to sing, As he were hastening The swallow o'er ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is coextensive with the star-spangled banner and American christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman's gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are{357} put in peril. Your broad republican domain is a hunting-ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... a good listener. He loved to catch a theory of life, hold it in his hand like a struggling bird while he discoursed about it, and let it go free into the sunshine again. Sypher admired ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... strange, but it was so), there broke out in the stone pine by my window a chorus of little birds whom the sunbeams had awakened; and they sang so sweet and so loud (like the white bird that sang to the monk Felix), that earthly cares seemed to fade away, and I fell asleep, and slept the first sound, dreamless sleep that had blessed me ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the Saracen Grandonie, Bestriding his charger Marmorie; He was son unto Cappadocia's king, And his steed was fleeter than bird on wing. He let the rein on his neck decline, And spurred him hard against Count Gerein, Shattered the vermeil shield he bore, And his armor of proof all open tore; In went the pennon, so fierce the shock, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... me back from my contemplation of that infernal old bird my lowered eyes looked on the doorway. The door was wide open, and a girl stood framed in the gap, gazing at me. Lord, how the blood rushed into my face with wonder and delight, for I thought then that I had never seen anything before so beautiful! Indeed, I think now ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... literature have never been didactic, and there is no reason to believe they ever will be. The only semblance of didacticism which can enter into literature is that which conveys such lessons as may be learned from sea and sky, mountain and valley, wood and stream, bird and beast; and from the broad human life of races, nations, and firesides; a lesson that is not obvious and superficial, but so profoundly hidden in the creative depths as to emerge only to an apprehension equally profound. For the chatter and affectation of sense disturb ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... the boy was, he was obliged to take care of the goats, and if he who can climb with them is a good guardian, well then indeed was Rudy. Why he climbed even higher than they! He loved to take the bird's nests from the trees, high in the air, for he was bold and daring; and he only smiled when he stood by the roaring water-fall, or when he heard ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... whirling-bright clouds"; and the "curls of hundred-headed Typho"; and the "hard-blowing tempests"; and then "aerial, moist"; "crooked-clawed birds, floating in air"; and "the showers of rain from dewy Clouds". And then, in return for these, they swallow "slices of great, fine mullets, and bird's-flesh of thrushes." ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... lovely lady came out on the balcony clad in light summer attire, with white lace sleeves, and stood there like a statue. When a gay paroquet flew out of the room and lighted on her hand, Anton's admiration went on increasing; but when a young girl followed the bird, and wound her arms around the lovely lady's neck, and the paroquet kept wheeling about them, and perching now on the shoulder of one, and then on that of the other, his feeling of veneration became such that he blushed deeply, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... beautiful caged little bird. I can say no more at present, but that she shall not suffer through any neglect ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... their actions to avoid. No longer was it possible to watch and chart the daily advance of a single body so a partially accurate picture could be formed of what might be expected tomorrow. Instead of one mass there were countless ones; at the whim of a chance wind or bird, seeds might alight in an area apparently safe and overwhelm a community miles away from the living glacier. No place was out of range of the attack; no square foot of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... stirred. The silence was weird, oppressive, and awe-inspiring; and when, at more or less lengthened intervals, a dry twig snapped, a withered leaf crackled, when the soft wafting of the wings of some nocturnal bird was heard among the branches overhead, or the sudden, brief rustling which betrayed the presence of some wild creature smote upon the ear, the effect upon the nerves was startling in the extreme. Through these alternate stretches of gloom and brief illuminated ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... we can as little think of a fearing or trembling which is the consequence of the knowledge of deep sinfulness and unworthiness, is shown by the parallel passage in chap. xi. 11: "They tremble as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of Assyria." The bird and the dove are here an emblem of helplessness. Substantially parallel is also chap. v. 15: "In their affliction they will seek Me." Their trembling ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... Ham-Cam is built up with such splendors as "goose liver paste and Madeira wine jelly," "fried calves' kidney and remoulade," "Bombay curry salad," "bird's liver and fried egg," "a slice of red roast beef" and more of that red Madeira jelly, with anything else you say, just so long as it does ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... Carried along by the waves of the qualities darkened in his imagination, unstable, fickle, crippled, full of desires, vacillating he enters into belief, believing I am he, this is mine, and he binds his self by his self as a bird with a net. Therefore, a man being possessed of will, imagination and belief is a slave, but he who is the opposite is free. For this reason let a man stand free from will, imagination and belief—this is the sign of liberty, this is the path that leads to Brahman, this is the opening ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... fly this kite. It goes up straight from the hand like a bird. Will fly in a moderate breeze, and yet no wind short of a gale is too strong for it. It is made of strong, selected wood, and the finest ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 33, June 24, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... What an eddying of stragglers about this new-found focus of attraction! what amazement, and curiosity to find him out, if, indeed, he be find-out-able, and not, as the unmistakable papaverian odor suggests, some Stygian bird, hailing from the farther side of Lethe. But, Stygian or not, neither Hermes nor Pan (nor Panic, his namesake) could muster such a rabble at his heels, supposing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "shouting," "fell," and "passionate," are exactly the words, and all the words, which could be demanded in an ideal word-picture by those who have been familiar with the scene itself. And to make the ideal twice ideal, the very sound of the bird is brought before one's mind after a score of years, by the whole passage, and particularly in the reiterated "Why, why, why." If there is more consummate simplicity of art anywhere contained in as small a compass of words, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... break her fast with the paying guest, however: she's an early bird, though her pet aversion is a worm. I sent a message to her room (the smallest in the house) and was invited to go up. There was a cloud of cigar smoke in the air, and as Pat doesn't smoke, I deduced a miraculously matinal call from Larry. That ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... train them to pity even towards brute beasts, forbidding certain things to be done to animals which seem to touch upon cruelty. And therefore He forbade them to seethe the kid in the mother's milk (Deut. xiv. 21), or to muzzle the treading ox (Deut. xxv. 4), or to kill the old bird with the young." ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... night Mademoiselle had lain awake, wondering why the bird had not come hopping into the trap; and through the other half she had wondered anxiously if the bird would come to-morrow, with excuses which she might graciously accept. At last she had fallen asleep and dreamed ecstatic dreams about diamond necklaces and thousand franc notes. When the procession ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... affliction. A civilian with the toothache could not expect the consideration of a hero with a shrapnel wound. Moreover, this was her first appearance in the role of hostess at a large party, and she fluttered about like a distracted humming-bird. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... have been a tailor!—Charge, my fine fellows, and throw the constables out of the window, and the stewards after them. Every man his bird; and here goes for my Cock Robin." With that he made a grab at his Lilliputian antagonist, but missed him, as he slid away amongst the women like an eel, while his pursuer, brandishing his wooden arm on high, to which I now perceived, for the first ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... was! Not a sound—even the cry of a bird; only a faint silvery rippling tinkle somewhere near; a sound which set the boy creeping, to find it low down between some rocks slippery with green moss which grew all about a tiny pool, into which after lying flat upon his chest he plunged his lips, and drank again ...
— Our Soldier Boy • George Manville Fenn
... and ruling the state, cannot he proceed without any (purpose of) action? In the opening and shutting of his gates of heaven, cannot he do so as a female bird? While his intelligence reaches in every direction, cannot he (appear to) be ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... are you coming Forth to the fields with me? The very air is gaily ringing With hum of bird and bee, And crowds of swallows now are chirping Up in our ancient thorn, And earth and air are both rejoicing, On this ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... ploughed land. He remembered how the huge machine with its stench of oil and fire had forced its way through the furze and ferns and wild roses and myrtle, and torn them up, and flung them on one side, and scattered and trampled all the insect life, and all the bird life, and all the hares, and field mice, and stoats, and hedgehogs, who made their home there. "A fine sight," a man had said to him; and he had answered, "A cursed wickedness." Was this what they would do to the vale of Edera? If they took ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... mother," said the princess, "what bird is a roc, and where may one get an egg?" "Princess," replied the pretended Fatima, "it is a bird of prodigious size, which inhabits the summit of Mount Caucasus; the architect who built your ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... intent and listening, and he would spring to his feet and dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the forest aisles and across the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched. He loved to run down dry watercourses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the woods. For a day at a time he would lie in the underbrush where he could watch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down. But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... However, one must live, you know; and here our living consists very mainly of wild ducks, wild geese, wild turkeys, and venison. Nor, perhaps, can one imagine the universal doom overtaking a creature with less misery than in the case of the bird who, in the very moment of his triumphant soaring, is brought dead to the ground. I should like to bargain for such a finis myself, amazingly, I know; and have always thought that the death I should prefer would be to break ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... are moments When the heart is not one's own, When we fain would clip its wild wing's tip, But we find the bird has flown. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... away; but the stranger had not altered her position. There she hung, like a dark shadow, indistinctly visible, yet causing no doubt of something ominous of evil being there, as some bird of prey hovering about, ready to pounce down any moment, and ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Phantom Valley, in de Indian Territory, what am now call Oklahoma. Us live in a Indian hut. My pappy Blue Bull Bird and mammy Nancy Will. She come to de Indian Territory with Santa Anna, from Mississippi, and pappy raise in de Territory. I don' 'member much 'bout my folks, 'cause I stole from dem when I a real li'l feller. I's a-fishin' in de Cherokee River ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... it or not. There is an air of neatness, order, arrangement, grace, and refinement, that gives a thrill of pleasure, though you cannot define it, or explain how it is. There is a flower in the window, or a picture against the wall, that marks the home of taste. A bird sings at the window-sill; books lie about; and the furniture, though common, is tidy, suitable, and, it may ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... sacred regard to the principles of justice forms the basis of every transaction, and regulates the conduct of the upright man of business. The following statements afford a bird's-eye view, as it were, of his habits, practice, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the letter into his pocket, The editor called his trip north a "wild-goose chase." He little knew that it was a chase of a different kind, and the bird was a fascinating girl. "I guess I shall have to tell Harmon that the bird I'm after is not a wild goose, but a new species, found solely up here, and with only one known specimen in existence. But I must write to him, anyway, and tell him something about my ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... ornithology— All I know about the birds Is a bunch of etymology, Just a lot of high—flown words. Is the curlew an uxorial Bird? The Latin name for crow? Is the bulfinch grallatorial? ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... was indeed a merry chap As ever made a trigger snap, And ne'er a bird its wing could flap— And get away; Whenever Barber smashed a cap, It ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... might have seemed but the sport of chance had it not rested there, though undetained, and refused to part even when flight was free. If it is granted to the loving sister to hope for better things, and if prayers can move the lord of the world, this bird perchance has come to thee from Sardinia's shore of exile to announce the speedy return ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... you wait, my mother? Who but a spirit or a bird of the air could have told you that I was coming, seeing that I sent ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... if I had been younger I could have smiled at Miss Martha, as Susy Gatchell and her graceless friends did, but somehow she appeared to me a creature trying to peck at the world and peek at the stars through the bars of a bird-cage. That's why, when I met her a morning or two before the Morenas exhibit, I asked her if she wouldn't like to see it. I knew that, once asked, she could be kept away by nothing short of an ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... him to see the violent passions she inspired, to hear her low thrilling voice weigh down her meaningless murmurs with significance. To many of her victims the very incompleteness of her sentences was a form of divine loyalty. One young poet had described her soul as a fluttering, desperate bird beating its wings on the bars of her marvellous loveliness. At this her lazy smile looked very wise. She thought my father an ideal husband. He was always right about her clothes and after all he was the greatest living expert on her beauty. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... of me," he said again, throwing the end of his cigar into the bushes with an irritated jerk of his arm,—"for the life of me, I cannot see what you have to complain of; and I shall certainly not give up any bird in the hand for two such birds in the bush as you promise me." He rose as he spoke, and shook out first one leg and then the other to straighten his trousers. "I'm going out," he added. "I've a patient to see. Ta! ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... and as if moved by a common impulse they strolled out of the dancing-room into the cool, quaint garden, where jessamines gave out an overpowering perfume, and a caged mocking-bird complained melodiously to the full moon ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... finally decided to intrust him would surely respond. She took his small hand in hers as they reached the street, and after an instinctive movement of withdrawal, like the startled fluttering of a bird, he suffered it to remain there. Together they walked to the nearest corner, and stood awaiting the coming of a trolley-car, the heat of an August sun blazing upon them, the stifling odors of the tenement ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... detain me as I was going down below, 'this wasn't a h'English ghost as I sees just now. It was the most outlandish foreign reptile you ever see. A long, big, black snake like a crocodile, only twice the length of the old corvette; with a head like a bird, and eyes as big and fiery as our side-lights. It was a terrible creature, Jim, and its eyes flamed out like lightning, and it snorted like a horse as it swam by the ship. I've had a warning, old shipmate, and I'll be a dead man before to-morrow ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... big fer convenience, an' not so old as to be too set in his ways an' too proud to larn. I had three good men with me, an' we scattered ourselves over a big bit o' ground, lookin' fer a likely trail. When I stumbled on to that chap in the cage yonder, what Captain Bird admires so, I knew right off he wasn't what I was after. But the queer thing was that he didn't seem to feel that way about me. He was after me before I had time to think of anything jest suitable to ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... welcome day; With night we banish sorrow; Sweet airs, blow soft; mount, larks, aloft, To give my love good-morrow. Wings from the wind to please her mind, Notes from the lark I'll borrow; Bird, plume thy wing, nightingale, sing, To give ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... wild woods came a cry as the two stood there. It might be a wolf or fox, if any were there, or some strange night-bird, or a woman in pain. It rose, it seemed, to a scream, melancholy and dreadful, and then died again. The two heard it, but said nothing, one to the other. No doubt it was some beast in a snare or a-hunting, ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... smell! the woods have been ransacked, that their tenants, who possess succulent and juicy flesh, may contribute to appease the hunger of the outlaws—bird and beast are there, and soon will be beautifully cooked. Nor are edible herbs wanting, such at least as can be gathered in the woods or grown in the small plot of cultivated ground around the buildings; which the men leave entirely, as do all ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... his bonds before the royal palace, and leaned on a certain tree for grief, with many others, who were in bonds also; and as a certain bird sat upon the tree on which Agrippa leaned, [the Romans call this bird bubo,] [an owl,] one of those that were bound, a German by nation, saw him, and asked a soldier who that man in purple was; and when he was informed that his name was Agrippa, and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... love those sounds; for they stir up in them fierce feelings, and a desire for blood," returned the Pathfinder, totally unmoved. "I thought them rather frightful when a mere youngster; but they have become like the whistle of the whippoorwill or the song of the cat-bird in my ear now. All the screeching reptyles that could stand between the falls and the garrison would have no effect on my narves at this time of day. I say it not in boasting, Jasper; for the man that lets in cowardice through the ears must have but a weak heart ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... your eye," said her husband. He steadied the telescope, having pointed it for her. "See that suit of sails? Ain't they grand? And the taper of them masts? She's a bird!" ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... house wrote me the only congratulatory letter I ever got from him in my life. He was so well pleased with what I had done that he didn't kick very hard even on the bill that I had slashed. But that next week—oh, my! I didn't sell enough to buy honeysuckles for a humming bird. I began to think that maybe that Sunday bill had ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... that hour, naughty fellow. Oh, what a tame ending to your romance! Your beautiful ghost come to visit you from unknown regions, clad in white and rustling garments, has resolved itself into a lame bird, rather poverty-stricken in the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... joy is set with great poetic insight the precisely opposite image of a love which delights in expression, and rejoices over its object with singing. The combination of the two helps to express the depth and intensity of the one love, which like a song-bird rises with quivering delight and pours out as it rises an ever louder and more joyous note, and then drops, composed and still, to its nest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Preciozi, the Pope. Not the popinjay, but the Pope in white. What a very marvellous bird! He has a feather fan like a peacock's tail; he speaks like the cockatoo, only he differs from them in being infallible; and he is infallible, because another bird, also marvellous, which is called the Holy Ghost, tells him by night everything that takes ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... turn had come, so small a thing, and yet it sent the blood tingling through every vein, racing and pulsing with headlong impetus like a locked stream suddenly set free. It was no more than the flight of a startled bird from the tree ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... finds the partridge in the puttock's nest, But may imagine how the bird was dead?" —SHAK.: ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the land of slumber, and as the hours drew on no sound arose to waken them; indeed, outside all was still save the gurgle of the great river near at hand, the swishing of running water against the sturdy bow of the shanty-boat, a hoarse cry from some bird that fluttered along the shore looking for food, possibly a night heron passing over, and once or twice the hoarse whistle of some steamboat breasting the current of the ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... in this world; so are the men of this world: they must have all their good things now, they cannot stay till next year, that is, until the next world, for their portion of good. That proverb, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," is of more authority with them than are all the Divine testimonies of the good of the world to come. But as thou sawest that he had quickly lavished all away, and had presently left him nothing but rags; so will it be with all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the south wind The elm-leaves softly stirred, And in their pale green clusters There straightway bloomed a bird! ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... poor wretch spoke of a Demon. Who can tell? Nature herself is a grand destroyer. See that pretty bird, in its beak a writhing worm! All Nature's children live to take life; none, indeed, so lavishly as man. What hecatombs slaughtered, not to satisfy the irresistible sting of hunger, but for the wanton ostentation of a feast, which he may scarcely taste, or for the mere sport that he finds ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... You must live with them to catch the magic. No painter, for instance, can translate to canvas the elusive and ever-changing verdure of the dense forests under the brilliant tropical sun, nor can those elements of mystery with their suggestion of wild bird and beast that lurk everywhere at night, be reproduced. Life flows on like a moving dream that ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... to be avoided, and in shorter they may be indulged, because the train of the composition may naturally involve them, or the scantiness of the subject allow little choice. However, what is borrowed is not to be enjoyed as our own, and it is the business of critical justice to give every bird of the ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... I said; "but I have never forgotten your voice, nor a lovely song you sang which I have never heard since, called 'Happy Birdling of the Forest.' And your trill! Just like the bird itself!" ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... melody. The chant was determined by curious signs printed under the words, and the signs that made nice music were rather rare, and the nicest sign of all, which spun out the word with endless turns and trills, like the carol of a bird, occurred only a few times in the whole Pentateuch. The child, as he listened to the interminable incantation, thought he would have sprinkled the Code with bird-songs, and made the Scroll of the Law warble. But he knew this ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... replied the physician, tapping his caba with his long forefinger, "that which will render the bite of the snake as harmless as the peck of a bird that flies in the air, but barely three minutes remain in which ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... cricketers, actresses, and statesmen beset him in vistas. He trod a maze of death that had not lived. There were very few school treats about, for the fashionable school treat season had not yet fully set in. So the man had the wax almost entirely to himself. He spread his wings to it like a bird to the air. By degrees, as he wandered—pursued by the distant music from the drenched volcanoes—a feeling of suffocation overtook him. All these men and women about him stared and smiled, but all were ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... us on several hunting expeditions, but he was much less expert than we were in the use of the rifle. He could shoot very well when he got his weapon on a rest, but could never manage to bring down game on the wing. The first time he saw me kill a bird flying, he expressed his astonishment. He had been accustomed to the bow from his boyhood, he said, and, that his people never attempted to shoot at any creature except on the bough of a tree, or running along ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... could so far unbend as to outline his experience in this business. Whereupon the Head Examiner proceeded with his writing and left the author, in a state of coma, facing an expectant assistant examiner, who resembled some predatory bird only waiting for life to be extinct before falling upon the victim. Somewhat to his own surprise, however, the victim showed signs of returning animation, and began to utter strange, semi-articulate noises. The Head Examiner wrote on with ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... there are fresh beauties stirred; As the sunned bosom of a humming-bird At each pant shows some fiery hue, Burns gold, intensest green or blue: The same, yet ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... delight, but how I never wot, I in a slumber and a swoon was caught, Not all asleep and yet not waking wholly; And as I lay, the Cuckoo, bird unholy, Broke silence, or I heard him in my ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... "The early bird gets the worm, and success comes to the man who creates his own opportunities. I thought it all up out of my own head, Cappy, and then tried it out on Ford & Carter. It knocked 'em cold for a minute; but that was only ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... "ffull-anthems," all in engrossing hand and the most uncompromising of black ink. Therein was a generous table of contents— Mr Batten and Mr Gibbons, Mr Mundy and Mr Tomkins, Doctor Bull and Doctor Giles, all neatly filed and paged; and Mr Bird would incite singers long since turned to churchyard mould to "bring forthe ye timbrell, ye pleasant harp and ye violl," and reinsist with six parts, and a red capital letter, "ye pleasant ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Vitelot (Sonet's partner's wife) were eagerly prodigal of efforts to revive him. Topinard stayed. He had seen Fraisier in conversation with Sonet's agent, and Fraisier, in his opinion, had gallows-bird ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... But I have paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for no other purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with your perpetual communications. You tug the string, and I feel that I am a tethered bird. You pursue me all over Europe with the little vexations that I came away to avoid. There is no discharge in the war of life, I am well aware; but shall there not be so ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stood at the gate and watched Lee and Caroline saunter down the moon-flecked street a mocking bird in the tallest of the oak twins that are my roof shelter called wooingly from one of the top boughs and got his answer from about the same ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... barren, sub-Antarctic islands were transferred from the UK to Australia in 1947. Populated by large numbers of seal and bird species, the islands have been ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... he crossed the ocean wide, he flew by France and Spain; Covered the Mediterranean, spanned the Suez Canal,— "I'll reach my home to-night," he thought, "oh, yes, I'm sure I shall." He skimmed the Red Sea like a bird,—the Indian Ocean crossed (But once, in Oceanica, he feared that ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... Pecksniff, happening to catch his eye in its descent; for until now it had been piously upraised, with something of that expression which the poetry of ages has attributed to a domestic bird, when breathing its last amid the ravages of an electric ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... for this mischance. She twitters like a bird along with the birds who are twittering already ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... of Hokosa is great, and well he knows how to set a snare; but I think that if by his counsel I should springe the bird, he will be too clever a man to keep upon the threshold of my throne. He who sets one snare may set twain, and he who sits by the threshold may desire to enter the house of kings wherein there is no space for ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... sang in the spaces; but I was aware of a fringe of sparrow-chirpings sharply edging their song next the street; and where the squares were reduced to crescents, or narrow parallelograms, or mere strips or parings of groves, I suspect that this edging was all there was of the mesh of bird-notes so densely ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... suddenly started up, rubbed his eyes, and sprang upon deck like a man alarmed. He had heard, or fancied he had heard, a cry. A voice once well known and listened to, seemed to call him in the very portals of his ear. At first he had listened to its words in wonder, entranced like the bird by the snake, the tones recalling scenes and persons that had once possessed a strong control over his rude feelings. Presently the voice became harsher in its utterance, and ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... on to a chimney ledge, she had an excellent view. She could not see the courtyard, but she could command the bottom of the orchard, the moat, the fields that led to the river, and the cliffs and woods beyond. It was quite a bird's-eye prospect. She seemed to be looking on to the top of everything. The cattle in the meadows appeared mere specks, and a cart and horses passing over the bridge were like a child's toy. It was fascinating to watch them ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... horizontal bands of green, yellow, red, black, red, yellow, and green with a white isosceles triangle edged in black with its base on the hoist side; a yellow Zimbabwe bird representing the long history of the country is superimposed on a red five-pointed star in the center of the triangle, which symbolizes peace; green symbolizes agriculture, yellow - mineral wealth, red - blood shed to achieve independence, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... from our swords, and I felt that I had met a master of fence, I knew it was Simon despite his mask. There lived not a man like him. Tall and thin, with long, bird-like limbs and a stooping back, with the features concealed by the white mask all but the eyes, which glittered like those of an angry asp, he seemed more spirit than man; and I felt as if I were crossing blade with some uncanny phantom of the woods rather than ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... thought Mr Enderby. "How perfectly unlike what I had fancied! This dragon, which was to devour the Hopes, seems a pretty harmless creature. Why he looks a mere boy, and with hair so light, one can't see it without spectacles. What will he do with himself in my mother's good house? Fanny Grey's bird-cage would suit him better;—and then he might hang in Rowland's hall, and be always ready for use when the children are ill. I must have out what I mean to say to him, however; and, from his looks, I should fancy I may do what I ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... caught and held by the flight of one of those enormous vultures of the Andes, which was descrying a circle in the air directly over the valley at his feet. Smaller and smaller grew the orbit of this dark bird while he watched, until suddenly it ended its gyrations and swooped ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... to see a vigorous young girl run a race, with her head thrown back, her limbs moving more friskily than they need, and an air between that of a bird and a young colt. But Priscilla's peculiar charm, in a foot-race, was the weakness and irregularity with which she ran. Growing up without exercise, except to her poor little fingers, she had never yet acquired the perfect use of her legs. Setting buoyantly ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... what is known as pseudo-Oriental character, which shows amongst the usual exquisite scrolling no less than seven different figures on each piece—viz., an Indian, a violinist in dress of Louis XIV. period, a lady riding on a bird, two other ladies, one with a pet dog and the other a parrot, a lady violinist, and another lady seated before a toilet-table. These little figures are not more than three-quarters of an inch high, ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... designed to expel the water taken into the hold for the purpose of bringing the craft to the bottom were powerful, so that she seemed to sink and rise as easily as does a bird on the wing. At top speed she would make ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Cave had been speedily directed to the bird-like creatures he had seen so abundantly present in each of his earlier visions. His first impression was soon corrected, and he considered for a time that they might represent a diurnal species of bat. Then he thought, grotesquely enough, that they might be cherubs. Their heads were round and ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... ears have waxed heavy and they cannot hear. God speaks to us by the Voice of Nature. This world has a myriad of voices for those who have ears to hear. There is the voice of praise and thanksgiving going up from singing bird, and rustling forest, and rushing waterfall. Every flower is an altar of pure incense, offering its sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savour. "Earth, with ten thousand voices, praises God;" and yet some of us hear nothing of these things because we are spiritually ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... went on the old hag in a half-threatening, half-coaxing whisper, as she came up quite close, and fastened on her victim like a bird of prey. ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... fell from the woman's heart. There was nothing the matter with her beautiful white hen. She caught hold of the bird, and, pressing it [Pg 172] in her arms, caressed and stroked it in spite ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... quieted its turbulent raging. Very cold and quiet, the whole white night-world seemed. Of a sudden, the solitude was pierced by a hoarse sound from a sleepy fowl in the great barn below in the meadows. A night bird uttered a shrill, belligerent cry and sank to silence in his tree top. Tess turned her head sharply. These life-sounds out of the dusky beyond came from her friends. She wasn't afraid, only cold and chilled to her body's depths. Slowly, she went down the drifted driveway to the Trumansburg road ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... at the garden gate, by Mr. Wythan's orders, informed Carinthia that her mistress had opened her eyes: There was a hope of weathering the ominous third time. But the hope was a bird of short flight from bush to bush until the doctor should speak to confirm it. Even the child was under the shadow of the house. Carinthia had him in her arms, trusting to life as she hugged him, and seeing innumerable darts out of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bath," smiled Knickerbocker. "Come, Mr. Flutter, get out of that, and find your rod and line, and come along. I have a good breakfast in this basket, which we will eat in some dewy nook of the woods, while we are waiting for a nibble. The early bird catches ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... work, were dispersed in noisy groups over the wharf, buying food from the open-air merchants, and settling themselves on the pavement, in shady corners, to eat, Grichka Tchelkache, an old jail-bird, appeared among them. He was game often hunted by the police, and the entire quay knew him for a hard drinker and a clever, daring thief. He was bare-headed and bare-footed, and wore a worn pair of velvet trousers and a percale blouse torn at the neck, showing his sharp ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... Sah-luma hears thee with pleasure, Zoralin," replied the Laureate gently. "Thou dost speak more sweetly than many a bird doth sing!" ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... "Huerta's bird men might be able to give us a surprise like that," Trent suggested. "That may prove to be one of the new problems that we shall have ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... Folly replied: "Well, I was the flower-girl once in a great hit, and I played 'The Nun' last season, you remember. As for spirits, I had the refusal of one of the spirit parts in the first "Blue Bird" show, but there were too many of them, so I turned it down. I'd have felt as though I'd gone back to the chorus. Libertine," she ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... said Rosamund to herself, as she looked down on the little creature who nestled up almost like a wild bird in her arms, "that I have burnt my boats, and that I cannot go back. But there is one thing certain: I will tell the Professor the ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... flock of sea gulls, which to us appeared to be the same birds following our vessel to pick up the scraps thrown overboard. I could see them any day and I therefore believed they were the same sea gulls. They can fly farther than any other bird. ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... said the monument man. "Many people lose their hats up here, and unless it's a man's stiff one, or unless it's raining or snowing, little harm comes to them. I guess your little girl's hat just fluttered to the ground like a bird, and you can ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope
... it possible that he has come down specially to see this Hilda?" He thought enviously of Charlie as a free bird ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... most accomplished the New England States have ever produced, taking very strong grounds against the prosecution of the Mexican war, and published the Bigelow Papers, so well known in American literature, to show the ferocity and criminality of war. That poet made Mr. Bird-o'-Freedom Sawin sing: ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... silent. Occasionally a winter bird circled through the air, or a frightened squirrel ran from a tree branch to his hollow, and twice they caught a fair view of a bunch of rabbits, nibbling at some tender shoots of brushwood. The young hunters could have shot the rabbits with ease, but now they were after larger game, and they knew ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... amateurs and females must have filled the minds of the ordinary officer and the ordinary military surgeon. They could not understand it— what had women to do with war? Honest Colonels relieved their spleen by the cracking of heavy jokes about 'the Bird'; while poor Dr. Hall, a rough terrier of a man, who had worried his way to the top of his profession, was struck speechless with astonishment, and at last observed that Miss Nightingale's appointment was ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... every year puts a few more sticks on his nest, and brings up his family in perfect safety, which is what no other bird can do, neither the rook, nor the hawk, nor the crow, nor could even the raven, when he lived in this country. This is a very great advantage to Kapchack, for he has thus a fortress to retreat to, into which no one ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... for thee have we sought. Hail, noble child and flower that all thing hast wrought. Hail, full of favour, that made all of nought. Hail! I kneel and I cower! A bird have I brought To my bairn. Hail, little tiny mop, Of our creed thou art crop,* I would drink to thy health, Little ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... of North America, which is somewhat larger than an ordinary mouse, is, according to Brehm, also as swift as an arrow or a low-flying bird. This exceptional velocity is not all that reminds us of a bird, for there is also a strong resemblance in the formation of certain parts of the bodies of the two creatures; but, after consideration, this should not seem strange, because ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... near Sparta, Ga., Toombs met, by appointment, his friends, Linton Stephens, R. M. Johnson, W. W. Simpson, Jack Lane, Edge Bird, and other kindred spirits. It was a royal reunion, a sort of Lucretia Borgia feast for Toombs—"eat and drink to-day, for to-morrow ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... waiting our appearance. It must be eaten, though under the penalty of being thought moon-struck rhymers by the whole State. Come, Ned; if you are sufficiently satisfied with looking at the Wigwam in a bird's-eye view, we will descend and put its beauties to the severer test of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... The ocean-streams—this makes one voyage more— Yet even so mine eyes have ne'er beheld A mighty captain steering at the stern Like unto thee. Loud roars the surging flood, Beats on the shore; this sea-boat is full fleet; It fareth foamy-necked most like a bird, And glides upon the deep. I surely know, I never saw upon the ocean-road Such wondrous skill in any seafarer. 500 It is as though the ship were on the land, Where neither storm nor wind can make it move, Nor water-floods can break it, lofty-prowed; ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... act of swooping down upon the fish-hawk, to rob him of his hard-earned booty. In the next scene a raccoon is attempting to seize a robin, which he has frightened off her nest. The thief had crawled out on the limb on which the nest was placed, intending, no doubt, to make a meal of the bird; but mother Robin, ever on the watch, had discovered her enemy, and flown off just in time to escape. The next scene is a large "dead-fall" trap, nicely set, with the bait placed temptingly within; and before it crouches a sleek marten, ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... business of a Cabinet Minister to work his department. His business is to see that it is properly worked. If he does much, he is probably doing harm. The permanent staff of the office can do what he chooses to do much better, or if they cannot, they ought to be removed. He is only a bird of passage, and cannot compete with those who are in the office all their lives round." Sir George Lewis was a perfect Parliamentary head of an office, so far as that head is to be a keen critic and rational corrector ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... son, then should not want Retaliation; for he slew not him Skulking, but standing boldly for the wives, The daughters fair, and citizens of Troy, 275 Guiltless of flight,[6] and of the wish to fly. Whom godlike Priam answer'd, ancient King. Impede me not who willing am to go, Nor be, thyself, a bird of ominous note To terrify me under my own roof, 280 For thou shalt not prevail. Had mortal man Enjoin'd me this attempt, prophet, or priest, Or soothsayer, I had pronounced him false And fear'd it but the more. But, since I saw The Goddess with ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the Atlantic Ocean was known as the Outer Sea or the Sea of Darkness. There was nothing to be gained by venturing upon it, much to be dreaded. It was said that huge and horrible sea-dragons lived there, ready to wreck and swallow down any vessel that might venture near. An enormous bird also hovered in the skies waiting to pounce upon vessels and bear them away to some unknown eyrie. Even if any foolhardy adventurers should defy these dangers, and escape the horror of the dragons and the ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... of pity for the dead? Look o'er the ravage of the reeking plain: Look on the hands with female slaughter red; Then to the dogs resign the unburied slain, Then to the vulture let each corse remain; Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird's maw, Let their bleached bones, and blood's unbleaching stain, Long mark the battle-field with hideous awe: Thus only may our sons conceive the scenes ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... cry that echoes shrill From some lone bird disconsolate; A corncrake calling to its mate; The answer ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... to pay," he said, "so you shall choose the supper. Personally, I'm for a few oysters, a hot bird, and ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... what he would do, and I did not like it. He made blunder on blunder. He never wrote to me, and only thought of flight. It was disgraceful. But now my love for him revives. Books and philosophy please me no more. Like the sad bird, I gaze night and day over the sea, and long to fly away.[21] Were flight the worst, it would be nothing, but I dread this terrible war, the like of which has never been seen. The word will be, 'Sylla could do thus and thus; and why should not I?' Sylla, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Concealing herself with the remainder behind some shrubs, grief suggested to her a stratagem of exquisite revenge; she extended herself on a heap of earth, as if dead, within sight of the plunderer, and (as success always increases avidity) the bird immediately seized her and flew away, but soon fell down dead by the bite of ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... silvered, instead of gilt, rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of the living bird. The recess in which it is placed is lined with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace; and from the columns that support the frieze of the recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are hung, which, when ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... softly.] Alfhild! Alfhild! She is nowhere to be seen! Like a bird she disappeared from my view into ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... genuine sorrow. The grandson, the present Emperor William II., has been called "a modern man, notwithstanding certain proclivities which still adhere to him, like pieces of the shell of an egg from which the bird has issued." He is yet an unsolved problem, but may be regarded not without hope for a wise, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... as I saw the Chief, I knew him at once. He was "White Bird," and he had not met me in a year, but he recognized me as quickly as I did him. He invited me into his wigwam and asked me to eat supper with him, which was ready in a short time. As we sat eating, ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... It was truly said of the first edition of this little volume, that no more captivating story of bird-life was ever written, and that passages in it were worthy of comparison with those found in "Rab and his Friends." It is the autobiography of a canary bird, and every lover of the bird kind will read it with enthusiastic ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... within reach. Their usual food, in a wild state, is seeds, herbage, and insects; the flesh is a reddish brown, and if young, not of bad flavour. A great many eggs are laid in the same nest. Some accounts exonerate the ostrich from being the most stupid bird in the creation. This has been proved by the experiment of taking an egg away, or by putting one in addition. In either case she destroys the whole by smashing them with her feet. Although she does not attend to secrecy, in selecting a situation for her ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... diameter almost exactly one-eleventh part of its length. The framework, built of aluminium, consisted of sixteen hoops, connected by longitudinal pieces, and kept rigid by diagonal wire stays. Before it was covered it resembled a vast bird-cage, and looked as frail as a cobweb, but was stronger and stiffer than it looked. It was divided by aluminium bulkheads into seventeen compartments; of these all but the two end compartments contained separate balloons or gas-bags. Two or three of these might collapse without completely ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... some notes about Leonardo's bird observations in the back of that "Renaissance" book that White Pigeon appropriated. I can not recall just what they were—I think I'll hunt White Pigeon up the next time I am in Paris, and get ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... that some of her statements had been held open to suspicion. In the first place, she asserted that a certain fly, the Fulgoria Lantanaria, emitted so much light that she could read her books by its aid. Still further, that one of the large spiders called Mygale, entered the nests of the humming-bird in Surinam, sucked its eggs and snared the birds. To all the contention which arose over these statements, Madame Merian could oppose only her word. Men who knew that her statements in regard to Europe were indisputable, decided that her word could not ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... or Gledstanes, which was the original family name, was of Scottish origin. The derivation of the name is obvious enough to any one familiar with the ancestral home. A gled is a hawk, and that fierce and beautiful bird would have found its natural refuge among the stanes, or rocks, of the craggy moorlands which surround the "fortalice of gledstanes." As far back as 1296 Herbert de Gledstane figures in the Ragman Roll as one of the lairds who swore fealty to ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... toil and pain, Signs will I show to those who rule the land That I am child of hers; and all shall understand, Hearing the doubtful tale of the dim past made plain. And, ere the end shall be, Each man the truth of what I tell shall see. And if there dwell hard by One skilled to read from bird-notes augury, That man, when through his ears shall thrill our tearful wail, Shall deem he hears the voice, the plaintive tale Of her, the piteous spouse of Tereus, lord of guile— Whom the hawk harries ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... that one," said Josephine, after she had eyed it a moment, with her head on one side, like a canary-bird. "How much is it?" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... me it has been an experience like that of the monk Felix in Longfellow's 'Golden Legend.' The monk went out into the woods one day, where he saw a snow-white bird, and listened to its sweet singing until the sound of the convent bell warned him that it was time to return. When he reached the convent he was amazed to find the faces of the monks were all strange to ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... been brought about. The changes have been wrought, he said, through the unceasing efforts of each organism to meet the needs imposed upon it by its environment. Constant striving means the constant use of certain organs. Thus a bird running by the seashore is constantly tempted to wade deeper and deeper in pursuit of food; its incessant efforts tend to develop its legs, in accordance with the observed principle that the use of any organ tends to strengthen and develop it. But such slightly increased development of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of the day waxed with its waning. It was nearly six o'clock when the door slowly opened and Aholibah entered. She was alone. Her scarlet plumage was wet, and she was painted like a Peruvian war-god. She did not appear so brilliant a bird of paradise—or elsewhere—as at the aviary across the water. Yet her gaze was as forthright as ever. She sat on a divan between two domino parties, and was hardly noticed by the fanatics of that bony diversion. Recognizing Ambroise, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... fortunately good—Judge Rush was rather pleased than otherwise that a young clergyman should be so taken up with his work as to forget his interests. But Reed was most anxious that this evening's appointment should go off successfully, while Rex was as light-hearted as a bird. Any one would have thought it was Reed's own future he was laboring over instead of that of the youngster who had a gift of making men care for him and work for him without ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... strange and unpleasant day's business. The evening before I had my pocket picked in Karnac by two men who hung about me, one to sell a bird, the other one of the regular 'loafers' who hang about the ruins to beg, and sell water or curiosities, and who are all a lazy, bad lot, of course. I went to Seleem, who wrote at once to the Sheykh-el-Beled of Karnac to say that we should go over next morning at eight o'clock to investigate ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... of the transition, the pointed arch having made its way into the great constructive arcades, but not into any of the smaller arches. But the taste of those who designed its capitals must have been singular. Any kind of man, beast, or bird, it has been said, can put himself into such a posture as to make an Ionic volute. When the volutes are made by the heads of eagles, well and good; but it is certainly strange to make them out of the heads of cranes, who are holding down their long necks to peck each one at a human ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... sahib. It will be no easy work to get the lady away. There will be guards and women to look after her. A lady is not to be stolen out of a zenana as a young bird is ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... up to Tony's horn out of the wood. Then there was plain sailing and there were very few before them. "He's one of the old sort, my lord," said Tony as he pressed on, speaking of the fox. "Not too near me, and you'll go like a bird," said his lordship. "He's a nice little horse, isn't he? When I'm going to be married, he'll be the first present I shall ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... no obligation to me. A wee bird told me you were in trouble and I am glad to have been in time to ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... us, only much more prettily!" said Zaidie. "And look what funny little faces they've got! Half bird, half human, and soft, downy feathers instead of hair. I wonder whether they talk or sing. I wish you'd open the doors again, Lenox. I'm sure they can't possibly mean us any harm; they are far too pretty for that. What lovely soft eyes they have, and what a thousand pities ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... the matter-of-fact world I lived in. My sturdy little feet felt the solid earth beneath them. I grew with the sprouting grass, and enjoyed my life as the buds and birds seemed to enjoy theirs. It was only as if the bud and the bird and the dear warm earth knew, in the same dumb way that I did, that all their joy and sweetness came to ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... the princess, "what bird is a roe, and where may one get an egg?" "Princess," replied the pretended Fatima, "it is a bird of prodigious size, which inhabits the summit of mount Caucasus; the architect who built your palace can get ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... Davie's "Sermons" the last Sunday which was this:— Suppose a bird should take one dust of this earth and carry it away once in a thousand years, and you was to take your choice either to be miserable in that time and happy hereafter, or happy in that time and miserable hereafter, which would you choose? Write me an answer ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... disappeared. We all three looked at one another, speechless. Then from outside came the sound of light footsteps, and a laugh as from the throat of a singing bird. The door was thrown open, and ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and the things that pleased her brother; she was afraid of the hawks, and liked to stroke a horse and kiss his soft nose better than to ride him. But, after all, Anthony liked to watch the towering bird, and to hear and indeed increase the thunder of the hoofs across the meadows behind the stomping hawk; and so she did her best to like them too; and she was often torn two ways by her sympathy for the partridge on the one hand, as it sped low and swift across the standing corn with that ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... plunge; all at once we realise that the foundations are laid, that the wall is beginning to rise above the rubbish and the debris; we must build a home for the new-found joy, even if as yet it only sings drowsily and faintly within our hearts, like the awaking bird in the dewy thicket, when the fingers of the dawn begin to raise the ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... cross, and perhaps others. There are also some rebuses, and some lettering. On the north wall, in six several squares, are the letters of the name Ashton interwoven with scrolls; the letters AR before a church, and a bird on a tun occur more than once. This certainly refers to Abbot Robert Kirton; but what the bird means is not clear. In the moulding over the large arch to the south choir aisle are four sets of letters. They form the last verse of the psalter. The words are contracted: ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... remarked in passing that he considered a moustache incompatible with effective speaking—"Why should a man hide one of the most expressive features of his face?" With regard to the still more expressive eyes, Lecky ruefully remarked that Gladstone's glance was that of a bird of ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... wounded tiger that has been baulked of its prey but gets it into its power at last, the Laidley Worm came to meet him, and all who watched thought his last hour had come. But like the white flash of a sea-bird's wings as it dives into the blue sea, the Prince's broad sword gleamed and fell on the loathsome monster's flat, scaly head, and in a great voice he cried aloud on all living things to witness that if this creature of evil magic did him any harm, he would strike her dead. Then ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... thieves and outcasts who are imprisoned here with me are in many respects more fortunate than I am. The little way in grey city or green field that saw their sin is small; to find those who know nothing of what they have done they need go no further than a bird might fly between the twilight and the dawn; but for me the world is shrivelled to a handsbreadth, and everywhere I turn my name is written on the rocks in lead. For I have come, not from obscurity into the momentary notoriety of crime, but from a sort of eternity ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... without causing any particular sensation; but the single string made his fortune. Sivori is one of the cleverest artists of the present day, who resorts to tricks with his violin, and wonderfully does he perform them. At a concert last season, he imitated the singing of a bird with the strangest and happiest skill. The 'severe' shook their heads, but smiled as they did so, and owned that the trick was clever enough, and withal agreeable to hear. But it is gentlemen who make one instrument produce the sounds of another, or, at ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... on a taller hilltop and gave voice to his lordliness in a neigh that rang and re-rang down a hollow. Then he canted his head and listened. A bull bellowed an answer fainter than the whistle of a bird from the distance, and just on the verge of earshot trembled another sound. Alcatraz did not know it, but it made him shudder; before long he was to recognize the call of the lofer wolf, that grey ghost which ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... the bed as bravely as he had done the fowl; and, as he had as good an inclination to sleep as he had had to eat, he took scarcely longer time to be snoring harmoniously than he had employed in picking the last bones of the bird. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Squire Pemberton, when he should come up to the attic chamber to wreak his vengeance upon him. He could see the magnate of Pinchbrook start, compress his lips and clinch his fists, when he found the bird ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... and, being a dangerous person, was committed on the 1st of September to the Fleet. Ferrars, of St. David's, left in prison by Northumberland for other pretended offences, was deprived on the same grounds, but remained in confinement. Bird, having a wife, was turned out of Chester; Archbishop Holgate out of York. Coverdale, Ridley, Scory, and Ponet had been already disposed of. The bench ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... that shaking the rattles had a strange effect on certain animals. A canary bird sings and a rattler rattles. Perhaps they both think they are improving the ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... in the case of the man in the fairy tale who could not forget the merry tune of the forest bird which he had heard as a boy. We gladly permit ourselves to be led, occasionally, out of the rude realities that surround us, into a beautiful world that knows no care but lies forever bathed in the sunshine of cloudless happiness,—a world in which every loveliness of which ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... recesses of my soul like an echo, and I was terrified at myself. "Her love," and how had I deserved it? She hardly knows me, and even if she could love me, must I not confess to her I do not deserve the love of an angel? Every thought, every hope which arose in my soul, fell back like a bird which essays to soar into the blue sky and does not see the wires which restrain it. And yet, why all this blissfulness, so near and so unattainable? Cannot God work wonders? Does He not work wonders every morning? Has He not often heard ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... not my sort, anyhow. And fancy a great gawk like Flossie Bird taking on with a little man who doesn't reach up to her elbow. It was simply ridiculous. What did you say her name ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... down to be happy at being together again, you see. Our little kid, the last, a five-year-old, entertained us a treat. He wanted to play soldiers with me, and I made a little gun for him. I explained the trenches to him; and he, all fluttering with delight like a bird, he was shooting at me and yelling. Ah, the damned young gentleman, he did it properly! He'll make a famous poilu later! I tell you, he's quite got ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... of moaning went up. I watched individual lips to see where the sound came from. I caught no movement. The noise was the sighing of tired animals. Every one had some treasured possession. Here was an old man with an alarm-clock; there an aged woman with an empty bird-cage. A boy carried half-a-dozen sauce-pans strung together. Another had a spare pair of patched boots under his arm. Quite a lot of them clutched a bundle of umbrellas. I found myself reflecting that these were ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... fowls that follow her. But first she taketh her own portion and part. And therefore oft other fowls follow the eagle for hope and trust to have some part of her prey. But when the prey that is taken is not sufficient to herself, then as a king that taketh heed to a community, she taketh the bird that is next to her, and giveth it among the others, ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the proper course while taking long walks in pursuit of physical development. That would have been a fine time in which to fight out the whole problem—the time when optimism and the will to do are as natural as the laughter of a child, or the song of a bird. That was the time when the world appeared roseate and beautiful, when success lay just beyond the turn of the road, when failure seemed something illusory and improbable. Then was the time to jump in with both feet and a big hearty laugh to solve ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... owls, which stood as sentries over some horrible secret asleep within. The front of this house looked up the road toward the Rappahannock, but did not face it, and on that side a long Virginia porch protruded, where, in the summer, among the honeysuckles, the humming bird flew like a visible odor. Nearest the main road, against the pallid gable, a single-storied kitchen stood, and there were three other doors, one opening upon the porch, one in the kitchen gable, and one in the ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... who for many years kept a bookseller's shop—"The Johnson's Head," in Bird-street, Lichfield, possessed several articles that formerly belonged to Johnson, which have been handed down by a clear and indisputable ownership. Amongst them is his own Book of Common Prayer, in which are written, in ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... and grasses for decoration, but it was exemplified most strikingly in the Dakota's Woman's Department, arranged by Mrs. J. M. Melton of Fargo. Among the industrial exhibits was a carriage robe sent from a leading furrier to represent the skilled work of women in his employ. There were also bird fans, a curtain of duck skins and cases of taxidermy, all prepared and cured by women, and a case of work from women employed in the printing office of the Fargo Argus. Four thousand bouquets of grasses ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... sneaking regard for that "cunning old bird, Kayser Bill." Our treatment of prisoners explains the Christmas Truce. The British soldier, except when he is smarting under some dirty trick, suffering under terrible loss, or maddened by fighting or fatigue, treats his prisoners with a tolerant, rather ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... big woman, who possessed three bird-cages, two holding birds, and the third imprisoning ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... animal gods always precede anthropomorphic gods in evolution, we reply that, in the most archaic of known races, the deities are represented in human guise at the Mysteries, though there are animal Totems, and though, in myth, the deity may, and often does, assume shapes of bird or beast. {68} ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... gave of their summer outing was tantalising to the tired and jaded girl. She imagined the hushed and shady places, the murmuring mystery of bird and insect life. She could see them going forth in the mornings with their painting materials, sitting at their easels under the tall trees, intent on their work or lying on rugs spread in the shade, the blue smoke of cigarettes curling and going out, or later ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... Mr. Longface, that God made horses as they are, and gave them such grandeur of appearance when in action, and put such an eagle-like spirit between their ribs, so that, quitting the plodding motions of the ox, they can fly like that noble bird, and come sweeping down the course as ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... indicavit aut finxit." It is a fictitious autobiography, narrating the adventures of the author's youth; how he was tried for the murder of three leather-bottles and condemned; how he was vivified by an enchantress with whom he was in love; how he wished to follow her through the air as a bird, but owing to a mistake of her maids was transformed into an ass; how he met many strange adventures in his search for the rose-leaves which alone could restore his lost human form. The change of shape gave him many chances of observing men and women: among other incidents he is treated ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... of her voice, enhanced as this is by her other natural and attractive attributes, one might almost believe that nightingales have surrounded the cradle presided over by Euterpe, for never has bird sung so sweetly as the gifted subject of my memoir, and while the Fates smiled on the birth of their favorite, destined to become the unrivalled Queen of Song throughout the civilized world, fanciful natures might conceive a poetical vision, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... the head of the town. You came to it by a row of tall elms standing up along Mr. Hancock's wall. Behind the last tree its slender white end went straight up from the pavement, hanging out a green balcony like a bird cage above ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... either the lips or, more probably, the ears. 'The sound of the grinding,' which is 'low,' is by some taken to mean the feeble mastication of toothless gums, in which case the 'doors' are the lips, and the figure of the mill is continued. 'Arising at the voice of the bird' may describe the light sleep or insomnia of old age; but, according to some, with an alteration of rendering ('The voice riseth into a sparrow's'), it is the 'childish treble' of Shakespeare. The ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... together from different quarters of the world, perhaps a little strangely interwoven; each, that is to say, partaking of the nature of the other, in a similar manner to that which you must have seen in our Arabian carving! A moving flower, a bird growing on a branch, a fountain gleaming with fiery sparks, a singing twig—these are truly no hateful things!" "He must avoid temptation who does not wish to be overcome by it," said Heimbert very gravely; "I am for the desert. Will ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... be depicted as covered all over with tongues instead of feathers, and in the figure of a bird. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... regard to food is, Give a very little at a time, and avoid vulgar abundance. The sight of the loaded plate will discourage a weak appetite, and the delicate stomach will revolt at the suggestion of accepting such a mass. A small bird, a neatly trimmed French chop, a bit of tenderloin steak, or tender broiled chicken, will be eaten, when, if two chops or half a steak were offered, not a mouthful would be swallowed. To the well and strong this may seem like folly, but let us, in our strength, pity and humor the ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... bursting shells had become almost unendurable to our nerves, which were already strained to the snapping-point by the lack of action and the expectancy. Suddenly there appeared a thin dark line on the horizon which moved rapidly towards us, looking not unlike a huge running bird with immense outstretched wings. We looked through our field glasses; there could be no doubt,—it was Russian cavalry, swooping down upon us with incredible impetus and swiftness. I quickly glanced at our colonel. He stared open-mouthed. This was, indeed, good fortune for ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... been altogether a bird of ill omen. He had told her that the American market was glutted with "war stuff." The public was sick of it. Some of the magazines were advertising that they would read no more of it. She had told him that her material was magnificent and he had replied: ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... by statute. But the law is violated. Occasionally an example is made of one or more transgressors, but as a rule the officers of the law, whose business it should be to prevent it, manifest no interest whatever in its execution. The bird trappers as well know that it is against the law, but so long as they are unmolested by the police, they will continue the wholesale trapping. A contemporary recently said: "It seems strange that this bird-catching industry should increase ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... rope, the great ungainly beast mincing and blinking as it gently put down, one after the other, its soft, spongy feet, which seemed to spread out on the gravelled road, while their high-shouldered owner kept on turning its bird-like head from side to side, muttering and whining discontentedly, as if objecting to be seen by such an elongated crowd, and murmuring against being made the one visible object of ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... Other Ballads, 1913, pp. 13-14. The actions described in the earlier stanzas follow closely those of the opening stanzas of The Cruel Step-dame; whilst the incident of the lover cutting a piece of flesh from his own breast to serve as bait to attract his mistress, who, in the form of a bird, is perched upon a branch of the tree above him, is common to both the ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... of paper are handed round and each player draws at the top of his sheet a head. It does not matter in the least whether it is a human being's or a fish's head, a quadruped's, a bird's, or an insect's. The paper is then turned down, two little marks are made to show where the neck and body should join, and the paper is passed on for the body to be supplied. Here again it does not matter what kind of body is chosen. The paper is ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... elbow stood the tiny round table, with its exquisite appointments of glass, and porcelain, and silver; its chocolate, its toast, its eggs, its little broiled bird. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... save the rushes kissing the reeds, the water lapping the sides of the boat, the little fishes chattering beneath, and the rhythmic music of Radley's graceful feathering, which sounded like the flutter of a bird upon the wing. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... father's house three days after the marriage; nor was the Bau-Bhat ceremony performed. But Jogesh was on the alert; he managed to communicate with her by bribing a maid-servant, and one morning Amarendra Babu's household discovered that the half-starved bird had flown. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... began with the attic, which is full of trunks of old clothes and battered-up furniture and cobwebs, and has two rooms for the hired girls to sleep in. Gussie's room is just suburb! It's dec'rated with the queerest looking old bird of a bedstead—" ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... new thought of mischief which flew into her mind, like a trapped bird. "I've heard you're rich in hospitality," she said. "I'll go with you to your hut, for it will be a chance ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... his boyhood at Des Vaches. It intensified him in his dear-bought Americanism to the point of wishing to commit lese majesty in the teeth of some local dignitaries who had snubbed him, and who seemed to enjoy putting our eagle to shame in his person; there was something like the bird of his step-country in Stoller's pale ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Home of Industry one of varied and incessant labour; one day may serve as a specimen. Before the usual hour for morning service, two of the lady-workers start for the Fenchurch Street Station, to hold a Bible-class with the railway porters; others at the same time leave for Bird Fair. Bird Fair would he a sad sight to witness on any day in any place, how humiliating it is to behold on that which is called the Lord's Day in a so-called Christian land. Here, from eleven till one, dog-stealers parade their ill-gotten prey, and crowds through which it is scarcely ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... long before we had finished reading the discourse we understood full well why the people were interested. Another letter: "The Missions of the A. M. A. occupied our attention last monthly concert. I gave a bird's eye view of the whole field and then selections were read from the papers and addresses given at Salem. By this time the brethren were quite ready to turn on the streams of their own thought. We ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various
... that wretched Scharfenebbe—Sharpbeak—the crow's wife. It is well that there are two sides to every story. A poor weary fox, it seemed, was not to be allowed to enjoy a quiet sleep in the sunshine but what an unclean carrion bird must come down and take a peck at him. We can feel no sympathy with the outcries of the crow husband over the fate of the unfortunate Sharpbeak. Wofully, he says, he flew over the place where, a few moments before, in the glory of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... affection on this wild, reckless boy; he seldom missed an opportunity of being impertinent, and yet Mammy invariably said that 'Fred had a saucy tongue, but a good heart.' This good-heartedness probably consisted in drowning kittens, worrying dogs, and throwing stones at every bird he saw. Fred always had the warmest seat, the most thickly-buttered bread and the largest piece of pie. I remember one day on watching Mammy cut the pie, I observed, as usual, that she ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... day In the merry month of May, Sitting in a pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring; Everything did banish moan Save the Nightingale alone: She, poor bird, as all forlorn Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn, And there sung the dolefull'st ditty, That to hear it was great pity. Fie, fie, fie! now would she cry; Tereu, Tereu! by and by; That to hear her so complain Scarce I ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... and new ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress. Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from other birds. "The Kingdom of God is within you." It does not come rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing across the seas, however ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... light I heard a loud sound of much singing. And when I came nearer I saw one with closed eyes, singing, and his fellows were standing round him; and the light on the closed eyes was brighter than anything I had seen in Heaven. I asked one who it was. And he said, "Hush! Our singing bird." ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... Bengal reading is Sura-vyala. The Bombay texts reads Sulav-yala. I adopt the latter. Vajinas, in Prani-vaji-nishevitam, is explained by Nilakantha to mean fowl or bird. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sentiment and pompous reflection are too often deplorable, because inanimate and stilted. When he warns a heroine against an error of judgment by shouting, "'Tis the madness of the fawn who gazes with adoration on the lurid glare of the anaconda's eye," or murmurs, "Farewell, my lovely bird; I'll soon return to pillow in thy nest," we need all the stimulus of his irony and his velocity to carry us over ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... likely now that I would stay in that close, stifling schoolroom when the sun was shining and there was a bird on a tree outside singing to me as loud as ever it could? And I had made an arrangement with Gwin Harley to walk up and down with her during recess, and the darling girl had put off two others for me, and was waiting for me. Don't you think it was about natural that I should disobey ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... bystander would ask the question, "How did he know such a dangerous body was approaching?" He finds on the most crucial examination, that the sense of hearing is wholly without reason. The same is true with all the five senses pertaining to man, beast, or bird. This being the condition of the five physical senses, we are forced by reason to conclude there is a superior being who conducts the material man, sustains, supports and guards against danger; and after all our explorations, we have to decide that ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... the low sectaries, the miracle-mongers, jugglers,[40] and ascetic whimsicalities, which together stand under the phallic standard of Civaism. Ancient and recent observers enumerate a sad list of them. The devotees of the 'highest bird' are a low set of ascetics, who live on voluntary alms, the result of their affectation of extreme penance. The [U]rdhvab[a]hus, 'Up-arms,' raise their arms till they are unable to lower them again. The [A]k[a]camukhas, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... vanities of the world, retired to a hut, where he lived in prayer and fasting. While thus living he was visited by a tempter, who sought to rekindle his desire for the good things of this life. Thereupon Praboe sent for a large bird and four vestal virgins to defend him against the evil spirit. By a miracle he transformed himself into a flower, around which the vestal virgins danced. By chance, however, a princess passed that way, and, seeing a vase with beautiful flowers ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... detail their attitudes, their muscles, their scarcely altered colours, and endow them again with life and youth. There is no part of the wall, in this immense place, but is covered with divinities, with hieroglyphs and emblems. Osiris in high coiffure, the beautiful Isis in the helmet of a bird, jackal-headed Anubis, falcon-headed Horus, and ibis-headed Thoth are repeated a thousand times, welcoming with strange gestures the kings and priests ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... our great Father will let the Winnebagoes make a path through our hunting grounds: they will subsist upon our game; every bird or animal they kill will be ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... indeed, seem to be true that folded away in some convolution of our brain are the faculties of the fish and the bird. Those latent powers are expanding daily. The submarine has already gone far beyond the practical achievement of aerial craft. But why, in the name of humanity, should every such development of ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... thanksgiving, in certain birds, when drinking, is caused and supported by a physiological arrangement; and yet, perhaps, both alike would bend so far to the legendary faith as to allow a child to believe, and would perceive a pure childlike beauty in believing, that the bird was thus rendering a homage of deep thankfulness to the universal Father, who watches for the safety of sparrows, and sends his rain upon the just and upon the unjust. In short, the faith in this order of the physico- miraculous is open alike ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... tiller in my hand, and stared at my wife in some consternation. This was not the tame pigeon, the rosy, humble, domestic creature who was to make me a home and rear me children. A sea bird with broad white wings swooped down upon the water, now dark and ridged, rested there a moment, then swept away into the heart of the gathering storm. She was liker such an one. Such birds were caught at times, but ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... mean a dead spirit but a living one! I saw the vision of a book I mean to do. It came to me suddenly, magnificently, swooped down on me as that big white moon swooped down on the black landscape, tore at me like a great white eagle-like the bird of Jove! After all, imagination WAS the eagle that ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... world in preventing C—— from launching forth upon his flying machine from that stupendous pier into mid air, and quite as infallibly mid ocean. With infinite entreaties they finally persuaded him to send forth his machine, unfreighted with human life, on its experimental trip. He did so, and his bird, turning ignominious somersaults on its way, at length found a perch, and folded its wings on a hoary rock-anchored tree that stretched out an arm of succor to it above the abyss, and there, perhaps, it still ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... said a clear, manly voice, and the speaker entered the door; "so my little bird has become restive since her taste of city life, and longs ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... always curious to the point of their undoing came out and investigated our tracks as soon as the noise of the stragglers had ceased. The Armenians took no notice of the wild life; persecuted people seldom do, having their own hard case too much in mind; but Fred knew the name of nearly every bird and animal that showed itself, and even ceased smoking as ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... suspected of, and never would show, that first summer at Hollywell, and a very touching vision of his fair young mother. Except a translation or two, some words written to suit their favourite airs (a thing that used to seem to come as easily to him as singing to a bird), and a few lively mock heroic accounts of walks or parties, which had all been public property, there was no more that she could believe to have been composed till last year, for he was more disposed to versify in sorrow ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to acknowledge that Birmingham is any worse than other large towns in the matter of crime and criminals, and the old adage respecting the bird that fouls its own nest has been more than once applied to the individuals who have ventured to demur from the boast that ours is par excellence, a highly moral, fair-dealing, sober, and superlatively honest community. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... very birds guilty of the crime of being extinct. There are belated attempts on the part of our governors to read us pious homilies about disinterested love of learning, while the old machinery goes on working, whose product is not education but certificates. It is good to remind the fettered bird that its wings are for soaring; but it is better to cut the chain which is holding it to its perch. The most pathetic feature of the tragedy is that the bird itself has learnt to use its chain for its ornament, ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... convulsively with her nails. Such was the intensity of the situation that she left her beloved sister in that piteous state, and even hoped she would faint dead away, and so hear no more. She came back white, and told Camille it was only a bird got into the tree. "And to think you should be wounded," said she, to divert his attention ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... with a face like a young saint in some old picture, she thought. She often wondered how her wild, sparkling sister Kate dared to be so familiar with him. She had ventured the thought once when she watched Kate dressing to go out with some young people and preening herself like a bird of Paradise before the glass. It all came over her, the vanity and frivolousness of the life that Kate loved, and she spoke ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... did not love the birds. It was useless to pretend. Whatever one may say about other birds a cuckoo is a low detestable cad of a bird. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... is an easy bird to begin with, and readily obtained at any poulterer's. Draw out the tail feathers and place them quite flat in some paper till required. Do the same with the right wing and the left, keeping each separate and putting a mark on the papers that you ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... a fish. I cannot quite make out what it is. It makes curious, devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo" when it is. It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the formation of pens or enclaves into which the attenuated roving bands of Boers were to be herded and dealt with severally and severely. The work of extension was taken in hand in July, 1901. The Boers in the veld watched it with the detachment and unconcern of a wild bird on the branches looking down upon the fowler laying his ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... eyes with her handkerchief, and bit her lips until they were red again. "If you're nothing but a bird of omen," she said to herself, "at least you needn't show it! Oh, this world!" then, "What if he ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... nose. Scattered boulders seemed to move gently. He closed his eyes for an instant. When he opened them he thought he saw a movement in the brush below. The heat burned into his back, and he shrugged his shoulders. A tiny bird flitted past and perched on the dry, dead stalk of a yucca. Again Waring thought he saw a ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... the scene appears devoid of life, but suddenly the call of a jay bird is heard faintly and far up the trail that leads to the right among the rocks. It is repeated nearer at hand, perfectly imitated but with a nuance that advises of human origin, and two or three half-naked Indians are seen to be making their way toward the bottom ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... above the heads of the vast concourse a flock of birds was allowed to escape from the cages in which they had been brought to the spot. In return for a few copecks charitably offered by some good people, the bird-fanciers opened the prison doors of their captives, who flew out in hundreds, uttering ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... land, we were visited by the local chapmen, whose goods appeared rather mixed—polished cowhorns and mildewed figs, dolls in costume and corrosive oranges; by the normal musical barber, who imitates at a humble distance bird and beast; and by the vendor of binoculars, who asks forty francs and who takes ten. The captain noted his protest at the Consulate, and claimed by way of sauvetage 200l. The owners offered 200 lire—punds Scots. Briefly, noon had struck before we ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... there may be something ... lying in the woods. Hidden under a bush, with two feet just showing. Perhaps one high heel catching the sunlight, with a bird perched on the end of it; and the other—a stockinged foot, with blood ... that's dried into the openwork stocking. And there's a man walking about somewhere, and talking, like us; and he woke up this morning, and looked at the weather. ... And he killed her.... (Smiling, looking ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... sketch! A multum in parvo! A bird's-eye view, as one may say,—and not entertaining, certainly. What other branches have you pursued? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pure pen-holder of a man, melancholy and mild, who taught the most complicated flourishes—great scrolls of them met our view in the form of surging seas and beaked and beady-eyed eagles, the eagle being so calligraphic a bird—while he might just have taught resignation. He was not at all funny—no one out of our immediate family circle, in fact almost no one but W. J. himself, who flowered in every waste, seems to have struck me as funny in those years; but he was to remain with me a picture of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... surprise," Sheila said presently, "do you think we could go down to see my father in his studio, after we have shopped? I feel like seeing my father to-day. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I think of Hitty and my breakfast, and the canary bird, and of you, Miss Dear, fast asleep where I can hear you breathing in your room—if I listen to it—and then other mornings I wake up thinking only of my father, and how he looks in his shirt-sleeves and necktie. I was thinking of him this morning like that. ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... the woods yesterday, where boys should not be on Sundays, and, in climbing a tree after a bird's nest, ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... lone bird at day's departing hour Sings in the sunbeam of the transient shower, Forgetful though its wings are wet ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... "No native intelligence on a hunting world, Gentlehomo. That is assured before the planet is listed for a safari. However, a bird or flying thing, perhaps with metallic plumage or scales to catch the sunlight, might under the right circumstances seem a flash of light. That ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... fact that people really believe no part of a partridge is ever taken away after being set before him. Neither bones nor sinews remain: so fond is he of the brown bird. Having eaten the breast, and the juicy leg and the delicate wing, he next proceeds to suck the bones; for game to be thoroughly enjoyed should be eaten like a mince-pie, in the fingers. There is always one bone with a sweeter ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... be one or the other, you know, or you'll be like the bat in the fable who was neither bird nor beast, and so was out of all the fun on both sides. I may be prejudiced, but I advise you to be a cadets' lady. And you'd better decide ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... months almost without ceasing, and then I told myself that if I would be strong and resist I must weep no more. If a bird in a cage once takes to pining he is sure not to live long. There are few of us here the news of whose death would not give pleasure to those who shut us up, and I for one resolved that I would ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... noble instinct, chant their seraphic music, and angels with tails hold their most holy councils? Don't you see? And, while monarchs and potentates become a prey to moths and worms, to have the honor of receiving visits from the royal bird of Jove. Moritz, Moritz, Moritz! beware of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the bird that carries the soul to the object in which his mind is immersed, and thus his ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... Queen for destroying them. These new travels are simple, and do tell you a little more than late voyagers, by whose accounts one would think there was nothing in Spain but muleteers and fandangos. In truth, there does not seem to be much worth seeing but prospects; and those, unless I were a bird, I would never visit, when the accommodations ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... inland bird First by the seaworn sailor heard; And like road sheltered from life's sea Thine honest heart ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This bird's-eye view and lack of information about the details do less than justice to the crucial battle, which Maud'huy under Foch's general direction waged against the Germans round Arras and both they and the French regard as one of the decisive incidents in the ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... swept over the ocean and the stars were beginning to pale before the pink glory flung broadcast through the sky by the yet invisible sun, the sailor was aroused by the quiet fluttering of a bird about to settle on the rock, but startled by ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... indigo bunting, that tiny bird of blue so intense that the very skies look pale beside it and among all the blue flowers of our land only the fringed gentian can rival it. With no attempt to hide his gorgeous self he perched in full view on a branch of the tree and began to sing in rapid notes. What the song lacked ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... Brigslade, with no lookings back towards Monkhaven; for, indeed, their greatest wish was to leave it as quickly as possible far behind them. They were a good way off fortunately before clever Superintendent Boyds and his assistants found out that their bird was flown, and when they did find it out they went after him in the wrong direction; and it was not till three days after the children had been safe at home that formal information, which doubtless would have been very cheering to poor Grandpapa, came to him that the police at Monkhaven ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... "Of course I am not afraid. But"—he eyed the large aeroplane dubiously—"but a man was not made to fly about in the air like a bird, particularly a man of my weight. Besides, I do not like great height. If I stand upon a precipice, I am immediately struck with the notion that I must jump off. If I jumped from an aeroplane I might ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... to win her. A jongleur arrived with stories of the courts where love was the only ruler; where the knights willingly suffered grief and want, if by so doing they could serve their lady; where the lover, in the shape of a beautiful blue bird, nightly slipped through the barred windows into the arms of his mistress. But the jealous husband had drawn barbed wire across the window, and the lover, flying away at dawn, bled to death before the eyes of his grief-stricken lady. The jongleur would tell of the knight who had ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... carefully replaced it on his head, and then flew aloft out of sight. Tanaquil is said to have joyfully welcomed this omen, being a woman well skilled, as the Etruscans generally are, in celestial prodigies, and, embracing her husband, bade him hope for a high and lofty destiny: that such a bird had come from such a quarter of the heavens, and the messenger of such a god: that it had declared the omen around the highest part of man: that it had lifted the ornament placed on the head of man, to restore it to him again, by direction of the ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... the Owl, That bird of solemn phiz, That truly awful-looking fowl, To represent her wis- Dom, little recked the goddess of The time when she would howl To see a Peanut set on ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... into her modest room, which was bright and sunny with a flowered paper on the walls, potted plants and a bird-cage. She then began a recital of the interview she had had with Susy. This threw no fresh light upon the case and ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... the sea lions, the honk of the wild geese, the skulking coyote who knows that each beast is his enemy and has not even a flea to help him "forget that he is a dog," the leap of the salmon, the ecstasy of the mocking-bird and bobolink, the nesting of the field-mice, the chatter of the squirrel, the gray lichen of the oak, the green moss on the log, the poppies of the field and the Mariposa lilies of the cliff—all these and ten thousand more pictures which could be ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... least, that you must make it your own by thoroughly understanding both the nature and the art you are dealing with. If you do not heed this, I do not know but what you may not as well turn to and draw laborious portraits of natural forms of flower and bird and beast, and stick them on your walls anyhow. It is true you will not get ornament so, but you may learn something for your trouble; whereas, using an obviously true principle as a stalking-horse for laziness of purpose and lack of invention, will but injure art all round, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... she rejoined quickly. 'See how I can gallop. Now, Pansy, off!' And Elfride started; and Stephen beheld her light figure contracting to the dimensions of a bird as she sank into ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... generally very direct, steering for the densest, most impenetrable places,—leading you over logs and through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,—the complete triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... a kind of outcast among the birds. I think they regard him as a half reptile, who has not yet climbed high enough in the bird scale to deserve recognition; so they let him severely alone. Even the goshawk hesitates before taking a swoop at him, not knowing quite whether the gaudy creature is dangerous or only uncanny. I saw ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... completely to rights. He intended to be gone a year, but returned at the end of six weeks, fulminating abuse of European cooking. Nearly his entire time had been spent in Paris; but of this sojourn he had brought back but two souvenirs, an electro-plated bill-hook and an empty bird cage which had tickled his ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... might look through the bunch of letters it contained addressed in English, and I was made glad by receiving an epistle from the little woman who has since taken my name upon her for life. After reading my letter, I went out and walked up the mountain side far enough to get a bird's-eye view of the city, and it was a fine sight the rich growth of green trees presented in contrast with the brown earth all around. Returning to the city, I walked about the streets, devoting some of my time to the bazaars, ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... with his wine glass in a nervous kind of way—"you want money, and you think I'm sure to give it, because it wouldn't be pleasant just now to have discreditable stories going about concerning the future Mrs. Ascott's relatives. You're quite right, it wouldn't. But I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff for all that. You must rise very early in the ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... room a powerful and delicious fragrance. She inhaled the odour, she laved her temples with the liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring up from the previous faintness,—to spring, to soar, to float, to dilate upon the wings of a bird. The room vanished from her eyes. Away, away, over lands and seas and space on the rushing desire flies ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... within sight of the German lines. From a wooded spur of the hills he looked down upon the enemy's left flank and beyond to the British lines. His position gave him a bird's-eye view of the field of battle, and his keen eyesight picked out many details that would not have been apparent to a man whose every sense was not trained to the highest point of perfection as were the ape-man's. He noted machine-gun ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... interest for the crack of the revolver that would put a period to the quarrel between Soapy Stone and young Flandrau. It was known that Curly had refused to leave town, just as it was known that Stone and that other prison bird Blackwell were hanging about the Last Chance and Chalkeye's Place drinking together morosely. It was observed too that whenever Curly appeared in public he was attended by friends. Sometimes it would be Maloney and Davis, sometimes his uncle Alec ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... and prayed at night—prayed for the time which she hoped was dawning now! There were some trifles there, which she would have liked to take away, but that was impossible. She wept bitterly to leave her poor bird behind, until the idea occurred to her that it might fall into the hands of Kit, who would keep and cherish it for her sake. She was calmed and comforted by this thought, and went to ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... and retire a few rods behind the shelter of a log-house." On the adjacent hill stood one Blodget, who seems to have been a sutler, watching, as well as bushes, trees, and smoke would let him, the progress of the fight, of which he soon after made and published a curious bird's-eye view. As the wounded men were carried to the rear, the wagoners about the camp took their guns and powder-horns, and joined in the fray. A Mohawk, seeing one of these men still unarmed, leaped over the barricade, tomahawked the nearest Canadian, snatched his gun, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... other part was a pagan Grandones, Son of Capuel, the king of Capadoce. He sate his horse, the which he called Marmore, Never so swift was any bird in course; He's loosed the reins, and spurring on that horse He's gone to strike Gerin with all his force; The scarlat shield from's neck he's broken off, And all his sark thereafter has he torn, The ensign blue clean through his body's gone, Until he flings him dead, on a ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... do not allow you to forget them, even if one desired to forget a bird that is so intimately connected with the city and with a great ceremony of that ancient republic which has passed away. They belong so entirely to the place, and especially to the great square; they have made their homes for so many generations among the carvings ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... knowledge of Heraldry and the Peerage must be aware that the noble family of which, as we know, Helen Pendennis was a member, bears for a crest, a nest full of little pelicans pecking at the ensanguined bosom of a big maternal bird, which plentifully supplies the little wretches with the nutriment on which, according to the heraldic legend, they are supposed to be brought up. Very likely female pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their young ones: it is certain ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heart of the old Apostle was stirred by that soul in suffering, which, like a bird in a cage, was struggling toward air and the sun; hence, stretching his hand to Vinicius, he said,—"Whoso knocketh, to him will be opened. The favor and grace of God is upon thee; for this reason I bless thee, thy soul and thy love, in the name of ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... droop each little head, Nor let your wings with joy be spread, My Lesbia's favourite bird is dead, Which dearer than her eyes she lov'd: For he was gentle and so true, Obedient to her call he flew, No fear, no wild alarm he knew, But lightly o'er ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... outside and stood gazing over the autumn-tinted country. A stray bird twitted among the trees, but the great silence was settling down every hour as the feathered immigrants mounted from copse and dell into the blue ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... victims of amorous heat, as quails, for instance, or partridges, which, at the cry of the hen-bird, with lust and expectation of such joys grow wild, and lose their power of computing dangers: on they rush, and fall into the ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... in its kind must pass out beyond and transcend its kind. It must be an inimitable something of another and a higher nature. In many of its tones the nightingale is only a bird; then it rises up above its class, and seems as if it would teach every feathered ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in the blood; the fevers of the brain; the creeping paralysis of nerve-exhaustion; above all, we must be able even now from a few bare facts, to re-create a man and make him live and love again for the reader, just as the biologist from a few scattered bones can reconstruct some prehistoric bird or fish or mammal. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... had fancied! This dragon, which was to devour the Hopes, seems a pretty harmless creature. Why he looks a mere boy, and with hair so light, one can't see it without spectacles. What will he do with himself in my mother's good house? Fanny Grey's bird-cage would suit him better;—and then he might hang in Rowland's hall, and be always ready for use when the children are ill. I must have out what I mean to say to him, however; and, from his looks, I should fancy I may do what I please with him. ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... a long winter for Annie Hempstead. Letters did not come very regularly from Tom Reed, for it was a season of heavy snowfalls and the mails were often delayed. The letters were all that she had for comfort and company. She had bought a canary-bird, adopted a stray kitten, and filled her sunny windows with plants. She sat beside them and sewed, and tried to be happy and content, but all the time there was a frightful uncertainty deep down within her heart as to whether or not she was doing right. She knew that her sisters were ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... She stood superior to them all, Hath swept the marble where her feet Gleam'd whiter than the mountain sleet Ere from the cloud that gave it birth It fell, and caught one stain of earth. The cygnet nobly walks the water; So moved on earth Circassia's daughter— The loveliest bird of Franguestan! As rears her crest the ruffled Swan, And spurns the waves with wings of pride, When pass the steps of stranger man Along the banks that bound her tide; Thus rose fair Leila's whiter neck:— Thus arm'd with beauty would she check Intrusion's glance, till Folly's ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... and has gone," Max thought; and an instant later assured himself that she had done so, for the pegs at the back of the tent had been pulled out of the sand. The bird had flown, but Max feared that it might only be from one danger to another. In spite of the friendly reception given to the caravan at Dardai, a young woman straying from camp into the oasis would not be safe for an instant if seen; and in the desert beyond Sanda might be terrified by jackals or ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... kept them covered with their rifles, Selim ran to the gate, uttering the shrill cry of a night bird. There was a rush of feet inside the walls, subdued exclamations, and then a ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... wish I did know where Charlie Gray is!" said Dotty, looking through the open window at a bird flying far ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... said Downy, I should like To sail on yonder sea, And with that pretty milk-white bird, Skim o'er ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... few days the keeper's existence was enlivened by visits from what appeared to be a most enthusiastic bird's-nester. By no other theory could he account for it. Only a boy with a collection to support would run ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... direct dependence of sexual pigmentation on the primary sexual glands is well illustrated by a true hermaphroditic adult finch exhibited at the Academy of Sciences of Amsterdam (May 31, 1890); this bird had a testis on the right side and an ovary on the left, and on the right side its plumage was of the male's colors, on the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... philanthropist on the largest scale, yet is so selfish that he would willingly see the world perish, if he could but secure paradise to himself. Indeed he can think of no other being; and his child, his canary bird, his cook-maid, or his cat, are the most extraordinary of God's creatures. This is the only consistent trait in his character. In the same sentence, he frequently joins the most fulsome flattery and some insidious question; that asks the person, whom he addresses, if he do not confess himself ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the gift of advancing, without bias or unsteadiness, throughout their search, from premise to conclusion, from text to doctrine; that they have sought aright, and no one else, who does not agree with them; that they alone have found out the art of putting the salt upon the bird's tail, and have rescued themselves from being the slaves of circumstance and the creatures of impulse. It is undeniable, then, if the popular feeling is to be our guide, that, high and mighty as the principle of private judgment is in religious inquiries, ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... remarks, Lady Merthyr Tydvil had been gazing rather fixedly at Austin, with her head on one side like an enquiring old bird, and a puzzled ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... our privilege—said at least to be so—to look before and after? I am not sure, however, that I always think this a privilege. I long sometimes to be any bird of the air, that I might live for ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... was a change. Opposite her seat was the door, upon which her eyes presently became riveted like those of a little bird upon a snake. For, on a peg at the back of the door, there hung a hat; such a hat—surely, from its peculiar make, the actual hat—that had been worn by Charles. Conviction grew to certainty when she saw a railway ticket sticking up from the band. Charles had put the ticket ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... triumph, as a social nomad camping on the No Man's Land of society, at the thought of the justification of the human against the conventional, in his scaling of the giddy heights of superiority, and, on one of its topmost peaks, taking from her nest that rare bird in the earth, a landed and titled marchioness. But such thoughts were only changing hues on the feathers of his love, which itself was a mighty bird with great ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... invariably found a hopeless tangle of the rankest tropical vegetation, with humidity so high that trees were draped with ferns, orchids, and thick moss, and dripping with moisture. However, I knew that the mere presence of pine and oak trees would mean the occurrence of special bird species feeding upon their seeds, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... was a little two-storied house, whose four rooms looked exactly, as four rooms are represented in section on the stage, the front wall having been blown clean away, and the furniture and inmates swept out; the very fender and fire-irons had been carried away: a bird-cage, a clock, and a grate were left hanging to the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Dished. Where's Long Pole Wellesley?[602] Diddled. Where's Whitbread? Romilly? Where's George the Third? Where is his will?[603] (That's not so soon unriddled.) And where is "Fum" the Fourth, our "royal bird?"[604] Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled Unto by Sawney's violin, we have heard: "Caw me, caw thee"—for six months hath been hatching This scene of royal ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... distinguished a part to the remote village of Burnham Thorpe;" but the interest seems by their account to be limited to the energy with which he dug in the garden, or, from sheer want of something to do, reverted to the bird-nesting of his boyhood. His favorite amusement, we are told, was coursing, and he once shot a partridge; but his habit of carrying his gun at full cock, and firing as soon as a bird rose, without bringing the piece to his shoulder, made him a dangerous companion in a shooting-party. His own ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... it very wrong,' said the Teakettle- he was the kitchen singer, and half brother to the Tea Urn-'that that rich and foreign bird should be listened to. Is that patriotic? ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... Frankfort, and this afternoon we have been driving out to see the lions, and in the first place the house where Goethe was born. Over the door, you remember, was the family coat of arms. Well, while we were looking I perceived that a little bird had accommodated the crest of the coat to be his own family residence, and was flying in and out of a snug nest wherewith he had crowned it. Little fanciful, feathery amateur! could nothing suit him so well as Goethe's coat of arms? I could fancy the little thing to be the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is no rest for our hearts but on the bosom of some one that is dear to us, and in whom we can confide. But ah, brother! every tree in which the dove nestles is felled down sooner or later, and the nest torn to pieces, and the bird flies away. But if we turn ourselves to the undying Christ, the perpetual revelation of the eternal God, then, then our love and our faith will bring us rest. There will be peace in trusting Him whom we never can trust and be put to shame. There ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... would undertake that with the aid of two active men to hold the ropes for us. We have both done plenty of bird- nesting in the woods of Hedingham, and are ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... the Van Diemen we saw some well constructed huts of the natives; they were made of branches arched over in the form of a bird-cage, and thatched with grass and the bark of the drooping tea-tree. The place where we encamped had been frequently used by the natives for the same purpose. Our attention was particularly attracted by a large heap of chaff, from which the natives ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... many writers of these tracts the playwright of Nuremberg, Hans Sachs, took a prominent place. In 1523 he published his poem on "the Nightingale of Wittenberg, whose voice sounds in the glorious dawn over hill and dale." This bird is, of course, Luther, and the fierce lion who has sought his life is Leo. [Sidenote: Hans Sachs] The next year Hans Sachs published no less than three pamphlets favoring the reform. They were: 1. A Disputation between a Canon and a Shoemaker, defending the Word of God and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... because his mouth was full of coal dust. While he was spluttering, William, who had just discovered that his bird had ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... Boy, thus, when his Sparrow's flown, The Bird in Silence eyes; But soon as out of Sight 'tis gone, Whines, whimpers, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... the author could so far unbend as to outline his experience in this business. Whereupon the Head Examiner proceeded with his writing and left the author, in a state of coma, facing an expectant assistant examiner, who resembled some predatory bird only waiting for life to be extinct before falling upon the victim. Somewhat to his own surprise, however, the victim showed signs of returning animation, and began to utter strange, semi-articulate noises. The Head Examiner wrote on with increasing speed; the assistant examiner, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... — N. traveler, wayfarer, voyager, itinerant, passenger, commuter. tourist, excursionist, explorer, adventurer, mountaineer, hiker, backpacker, Alpine Club; peregrinator[obs3], wanderer, rover, straggler, rambler; bird of passage; gadabout, gadling[obs3]; vagrant, scatterling[obs3], landloper[obs3], waifs and estrays[obs3], wastrel, foundling; loafer; tramp, tramper; vagabond, nomad, Bohemian, gypsy, Arab[obs3], Wandering ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Mrs. Fisher disliked more than having to look on while sensible, intelligent men, who the moment before were talking seriously and interestingly about real matters, became merely foolish and simpering—she had seen them actually simpering—just because in walked a bit of bird-brained beauty. Even Mr. Gladstone, that great wise statesman, whose hand had once rested for an unforgettable moment solemnly on her head, would have, she felt, on perceiving Lady Caroline left off talking sense and horribly ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the mountain! lyre of bird and tree! Pomp of the meadow! mirror of the morn! The soul of April, unto whom are born The rose and jessamine, ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... cedar bird, busy in the near-by shrubbery, wakened her with a care-free note. She started up and gazed out with that sudden wonder and terror which at times seize upon us when we awake in strange environment. Youth and vitality resumed sway. ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... have originated with Petherton. Petherton, in spite of his meek old-fashioned manners, is as sharp an old bird as you'll find in London! He fastened at once on what Bassett Oliver said to that fisherman, Ewbank. A keen nose for a scent, Petherton's! And he 's determined to find out who it was that Bassett Oliver met in ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... here after this, or if other words were added to these by the hostess or the guest, there is no report. But I can imagine that in such an hour, even between these two, little could be said. Yesterday I saw on a monument a little bird perched, quite content, and still, so far as song went, as the dead beneath him and around me. He was throbbing from far flight; silence and rest were all he could now endure. But by-and-by he shook his wings and was off again, and nobody that saw him could tell where in the sea of air the voyager ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... they had wandered. Near them was a grove of oleander bushes, loaded with beautiful blossoms. Every branch was adorned by the presence of two or more beautiful green sugar-birds,—the certhia (Nectarinia) famosa. Nothing in nature can exceed in splendour the plumage of the sugar-bird. The little vale in which the hunters had encamped seemed a paradise, bathed in golden sunlight; and even the cattle appeared to leave it with ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... not in my line. Pick this bone of chicken," says Mr. Brummell, trifling with a skeleton bird before him. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... drudging at exercises and laboring at scales. Canaries, indeed, are trained to sing, and even young birds to fly. Yet the training is but showing them how to give themselves free play. To express entire facility we say that an act is done as naturally as a bird sings. Not less naturally does Cecilia play. You listen, and the song which you knew seems to sing itself, but enveloped with a richness and fulness of flowing accompaniment which is like the harping of aerial choirs. Then with others she plays the great music, concerted Bach or Beethoven, Chopin, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... not be as long as Ethel's," said the doctor, yielding with a half-reluctant smile. "My story is of a humming-bird, a little creature that loved its master with all its strength, and longed to do somewhat for him. It was not satisfied with its lot, because it seemed merely a vain and profitless creature. The nightingale sang praise, and the woods sounded with the glory of its strains; the fowl was valued for ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... morphia he abandons the drug entirely. In my Harper's Magazine article I have fully depicted the sufferings which now ensue—as fully, at least, as they can be depicted on paper—though that at the best must he a mere bird's-eye view. During the period of diminution he has endured considerable uneasiness and distress, but these have been trifling to compare with the suffering which he must endure for the first few days and nights, at least, after total ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... knowledge of their duties, and real good feeling towards the farmers and cultivators of their districts. For this better tone of feeling the Western Provinces are, I believe, chiefly indebted to Mr. R. M. Bird, of the Revenue Board, one of the most able public officers now in India. A settlement for twenty years is now in progress that will leave the farmers at least 35 per cent. upon the gross collections from ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... bending over their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... groves of bamboo at the back of some of the houses, and pine-apple plantations luxuriating in the dark damp shady nooks. Then there are large fields of the most vivid hues; the bird's-eye pepper and tumeric are found growing like common weeds; while the piper betel, the leaf of which is chewed with ripe or green pieces of the areca-nut, is a most graceful plant, especially when loaded with its ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... softly, behind Faith's chair, then turned and went back into the house; not caring, as it seemed, to spread the vexation. Then after a little interval of bird music, the gate opened to admit Reuben Taylor. He held a bunch of water lilies—drooping their fair heads from his hand; his own head drooped a little too. Then he raised it and came ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... Drew regarded a circling bird in the section of sky above her head—"some day I hope I'll discover just what kind of a no-account Hunt Rennie was, to make his son so unacceptable. Most of the Texans I've ridden with in the army haven't been so bad; some of them are ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... while not an official symbol, the Kiwi, a small native flightless bird, represents ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... safe distance while they sallied forth and in a neighboring street discovered an early-bird bakery. Here they were able to purchase rolls steaming from the oven, fresh pats of golden butter wrapped in clean lettuce leaves, and milk in twin bottles; all of which they prosaically carried with them back to the station, lacking leisure as they did ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... steadily while speaking, and looked at Calvert. He saw that they were full of tears. The mask was down again. There was an humbled, shamed expression on that lovely face usually so imperious. The look of appeal and distress went to his heart like a knife. She made him think of some brilliant bird cruelly wounded. ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Twins. "While I'm throwing the cakeen together do you get some potatoes from the bag, Eileen, and put them down in the ashes, and you, Larry, stir up the fire a bit, and keep the kettle full. Sure, 'tis singing away like a bird this instant minute! Put some water in it, avic, and then shut up the hens ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... intercourse that I have wonderingly lost. I learned at that hour in any case what "acclamation" might mean, and have again before me the vast high-piled auditory thundering applause at the beautiful pink lady's clear bird-notes; a thrilling, a tremendous experience and my sole other memory of concert-going, at that age, save the impression of a strange huddled hour in some smaller public place, some very minor hall, under dim lamps and again in my mother's ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... anything yet, the note of the range of the immeasurable town and sweeping away, as by a last brave brush, his usual landmarks and terms. It was in the garden, a spacious cherished remnant, out of which a dozen persons had already passed, that Chad's host presently met them while the tall bird-haunted trees, all of a twitter with the spring and the weather, and the high party-walls, on the other side of which grave hotels stood off for privacy, spoke of survival, transmission, association, a strong indifferent ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... a chill ran down his back, for a raven perched on the black doll and pecked so fiercely at it with its hard beak, that bird and image swayed to and fro like ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... London, in the house of some high-born patroness,—that friendless shadow of a friend which the jargon of society calls "companion." And she was looking on the bright storm of the world as through prison bars. Poor bird, afar from the greenwood, she had need of song,—it was her last link with freedom and nature. The patroness seems to share in her apprehensions of the boy suitor, whose wild rash prayers the fugitive had resisted; but to fear lest the suitor ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rose cocked her head on one side, like a pretty bird. "Well, now, I have a plan!" she said gaily, "I suggest that Cliff take his car, and we take ours, and the Ellises theirs, and we all go—children and all! Just a ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... element of danger, in which all the activities of War must live and move, like the bird in the air or the fish in the water. But the influences of danger all pass into the feelings, either directly—that is, instinctively—or through the medium of the understanding. The effect in the ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... They wanted to find the treasure and away. Not a sound broke the stillness but bird calls and their own footsteps. Yet they knew that, from some place among the trees, scouts were stealing toward them. They went out in a wide circle, worked in, ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... COWARDICE, a man frightened at an animal darting out of a thicket, while a bird sings on. The coward has not the ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... nevertheless! There are thousands of them that roost among the hills in that quarter. I know the place thoroughly. The heights are the greatest that we have in the surrounding country. The distance from this spot is about five miles. He, no doubt, has some fish, or bird now within his talons, with which to feed his young. He will feed them, and they will grow strong, and will finally use their own wings. Shall he continue to feed them after that? Must they never seek their ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... thinking mind the question often recurs, What makes the fragrant flower so different from the dead soil from which it grows? the trilling bird, so vastly superior to the inert atmosphere in which it flies? What subtle power paints the rose, and tunes the merry songster's voice? To explain this mystery, philosophers of olden time supposed the existence of a certain peculiar force which is called life, or vital force, or vitality. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... have the warm glow of a realised salvation in our hearts, sorrows that are but for a moment will not silence the voice of praise, though they may cast it into a minor key. The praise that rises from a sad heart is yet more melodious in God's ear than that which carols when all things go well. The bird that sings in a darkened cage makes music to its owner. 'Songs in the night' have a singular pathos and thrill the listeners. When we 'take the cup of salvation' and call on the name of the Lord, we shall offer to Him the sacrifices of thanksgiving, though He may ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... been brought to a stop, he leaped nimbly out, clutching his geological hammer in one hand and his precious sack of specimens in the other. He rushed up to the wall and stood for a minute with his head on one side, like an inquisitive bird. ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... thrilling to get something out of that bird's nest besides bills, fertilizer and incubator circulars, and the bulletins of the Department of Agriculture. Thank you very much. But if, after conferring with your aunts, you find that they don't approve of me, it will ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... this hyar road through my land," he said solemnly, "I'll be teetotally ruinationed. The cattle-thievin' that'll go on, with the woods so open an' the road so convenient, an' yit no travel sca'cely, will be a scandal ter the jay-bird. I won't hev so much lef' ez the horn of ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... that watched the hanging body of Cleomenes, saw a large snake winding about his head, and covering his face, so that no bird of prey would fly at it. This made the king superstitiously afraid, and set the women upon several expiations, as if he had been some extraordinary being, and one beloved by the gods, that had been slain. And the Alexandrians made ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... dipper is "a boy." Not infrequently the object or idea thus personified is given a title of respect; thus, "Corporal Black" is the night. Akin to personification is bold metaphor and association. In this there may or may not be some evident analogy; thus a crawfish is "a bird," the banca or canoe is "rung" (like a bell.) Not uncommonly the word "house" is used of anything thought of as containing something; thus "Santa Ana's house," "San Gabriel's house;" this use is particularly used in speaking of fruits. "Santa Ana's house is full of bullets" ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... so?" cried Karlsefin energetically, glancing round among the trees. "Come, clear yourself in this matter. See you yonder little bird on the topmost branch of that birch-tree that overhangs the stream? It is a plain object, well defined against the sky. ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... making the barren mountains a wonderland of deep purple and black and silvery gray and brown, a coyote yapped a falsetto message and was answered by one nearer at hand—his mate, it might be. In a bush under the bank that made of it a black blot in the unearthly whiteness of the sand, a little bird fluttered uneasily and sent a small, inquiring chirp into the stillness. From somewhere farther up the arroyo drifted a faint, aromatic odor ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... the night that surrounded them was rent asunder, they fled as at the approach of a storm and their eyes, filled with dread of Erik, showed them, before they disappeared, high up above them, an immense night-bird that stared at them with its blazing eyes and seemed to cling to ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... of such an article of food as bird's-nest soup? Well, this soup does not take its name from its looks, as bird's-nest pudding gets its title, but it is actually made ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... eye fondly. The National Capital is a great place for buzzards, and I make the remark in no double or allegorical sense either, for the buzzards I mean are black and harmless as doves, though perhaps hardly dovelike in their tastes. My vulture is also a bird of leisure, and sails through the ether on long flexible pinions, as if that was the one delight of his life. Some birds have wings, others have "pinions." The buzzard enjoys this latter distinctions. There is something in the sound of the word that suggests that easy, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... cure, we shall at once expel him from our state with the order not to return.'[38] Words could not be plainer than these. Yet, in spite of them, such was the allurement of the cage for this clipped singing-bird, that Tasso went obediently back to Ferrara. Possibly he had not read the letter written by a greater poet on a similar occasion: 'This is not the way of coming home, my father! Yet if you or others find ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... bird used frequently to come into some green wattle-trees near my house, and in wet weather was very noisy; from which circumstance it ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... have hit it. Crime and drink are twin brothers as no one knows better than the police. Look out for the name and address of a man dismissed for drunkenness and we shall have our bird." ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... bud compared with the rose. Wherever she appeared, her old admirers flocked in her train. The unmarried girls were, so to speak, nowhere. Marriage was a new lease of power and splendor, and she revelled in it like a humming-bird in ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Sandwich Islands total: 3,903 sq km land: 3,903 sq km water: 0 sq km note: includes Shag Rocks, Black Rock, Clerke Rocks, South Georgia Island, Bird Island, and the South Sandwich Islands, which consist of ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... screaming, Olof, but you seem to be more fond of a night bird that does scream. Tell me, what is the meaning of the owl that appears on ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... overhanging the tarn—my special throne—lay some withering wild-flowers and a book! I looked up and down, right and left: there was not the slightest sign of another human life than mine. Then I lay down for a quarter of an hour, and listened: there were only the noises of bird and squirrel, as before. At last, I took up the book, the flat breadth of which suggested only sketches. There were, indeed, some tolerable studies of rocks and trees on the first pages; a few not very striking caricatures, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... not seen the ghost, and I assured every one that it was only a white swan, I found that Larry's account was believed in preference to mine; the general opinion being that I fancied I had seen the bird, though it ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... name that belongs to every one, with its peculiar appropriation to that idea. But it is beyond the power of human capacity to frame and retain distinct ideas of all the particular things we meet with: every bird and beast men saw; every tree and plant that affected the senses, could not find a place in the most capacious understanding. If it be looked on as an instance of a prodigious memory, that some generals have been able to call every soldier in their army by his proper name, we may easily ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... Queen, said to her, "I have done thy business and 'tis as follows. This night the king will come in to thee and do thou seem asleep; and if he ask thee of aught, do thou answer him, as if in thy sleep." The Queen thanked her and the old dame went away and fetching the bird's heart, gave it to the king. Hardly was the night come, when he went in to his wife and found her lying back, a-slumbering; so he sat down by her side and laying the hoopoe's heart on her breast, waited awhile, so he might be assured that she slept. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... just enough to leave his friend the victory. Paracelsus has declared that he appreciates all he is renouncing, but that he has no choice. He knows that the way on which he is about to enter is "trackless;" but so is the bird's: God will guide him as He guides the bird. And Festus replies that the road to knowledge is not trackless. "Mighty marchers" have left their footprints upon it. Nature has not written her secrets in desert places, but in the souls of great men: ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... a bird is that?" interrupted Victor, laying his hand on Ian's arm and pointing to a small patch of reeds ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... ineffectual. The Republicans no more clearly perceived that they risked nothing on the question of slavery in organizing those Territories without restriction, than the Southern leaders perceived that they would gain nothing by it. In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird. The South had realized their inability to compete with Northern emigration by their experience in attempting to wrest Kansas from the control of free labor. They were not to be deluded now by a nominal equality of rights in Territories ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... deprivation and loneliness. But he who will fly as an eagle does into the higher levels where cloudless day abides, and live in the sunshine of God, must consent to live a comparatively lonely life. No bird is so solitary as the eagle. Eagles never fly in flocks: one, or at most two, and the two, mates, being ever seen at once. But the life that is lived unto God, however it forfeits human companionship, knows divine fellowship, and the child of God who like his ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... cloudy evening. The near heights and the mountain-tops were grey; it was very quiet; there was not even a bird to be seen. He sat or lay, with his hand on the dog. He had soon settled what to arrange with Mildrid when she awoke. There was no cloud in their future; he lay quietly looking up into the sky. He knew that their meeting was a miracle. God Himself had ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... and made him furiously command the boy to sing, laugh, and be merry. At other times he would order Louis to be silent and motionless for hours, and to have nothing to do with the bird-cage, which was on the table, and which was the only thing left that the little ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... of Spring, Autumn, Summer and Winter have been produced by most bird taxidermists at some time. Appropriate varieties of small birds are the blue birds for Spring; gold finches, Autumn; yellow birds or tanagers, Summer; snow birds, Winter. Framed with painted backgrounds and suitable ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... the more domestic weathercock, may often be seen wheeling through the air on the approach of a storm, and exhibits unmistakable signs of exultation when it is going to thunder. It is not a bird of song, but is unsurpassed as a screamer. To the common Kite, a plebeian member of the genus, has been ascribed an attribute which in fact belongs exclusively to this Banner species. The Kite, according to Dr. FRANKLIN, draws the lightning from ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... hostages stands out among the innumerable German cruelties as one of peculiar horror. Everywhere in the occupied departments the Maire has been the surety for his fellows, and the Germans have handled them often as a cruel boy torments some bird or beast he has captured, for the pleasure of showing ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in Nature's activities. From the point of view of man some are beneficial and some are destructive. In the former group may be mentioned the Dragonflies which feed upon mosquitoes, the Cochineal insects of Mexico, which furnish a dye-stuff, the Lady-bird beetles, which in the larval stage feed upon plant lice; the scale insects of India, which furnish shellac; the Bumblebees, which cross-pollinate the clover, and the Wasps, which fertilize the figs. Dr. Lutz says that the manna which fed the Children ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... diamond cut diamond. Dry channel of a stream. Tombs on the sandhills. White balls on tombs. Australian shamrock. Old canoe. Dry state of the country. Danger and difficulty of watching the cattle on the riverbanks. Uniform character of the Darling. The Grenadier bird. The Doctor and the natives. A range discovered by refraction. Dance of natives. A lake. Tombs of a tribe. Plan of natives' hut. Method of making cordage. The tall native's first visit. Channel of a small stream. The carts beset on the journey by very covetous natives. Mischievous signals. Cattle ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... reading all them books done it," Aunt Haicey said. "Thick books, and no pictures in them. I knew it'd make trouble." She plucked at the faded hand-embroidered shawl over her thin shoulders, a tiny bird-like woman with ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... rugs—so they give out. The things kep' on an' on bein' snapped up hot-cake quick, an' the crowd beginnin' to gather outside, waitin' to get in, made 'em sort o' lose their heads an' begin buyin' sole because things was cheap—bird-cages, a machine cover, odd table-leaves, an' like that. The Society was rill large then, an' what happened might 'a' been expected. When ten o'clock come an' it was time to open the door, the ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... that fellow is! Yes, I can be free to-morrow if I will. I wonder what the deuce Gambier had to do in Monmouthshire. If he has been playing with my sister's reputation, he shall have short shrift. That fellow Braintop sees her now—my little Emilia! my bird! She won't have changed her dress till she has dined. If she changes it before she goes out—by Jove, if she wears it to-night before all those people, that'll mean 'Good-bye' to me: 'Addio, caro,' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tell him all kinds of stories, which he would listen to very seriously. They all interested him, but there was one especially which filled his little soul with delight. It was "The Blue Bird." Whenever I finished that, he would say to me, "Tell it again! tell it again!" And I would tell it again until his little pale blue- veined head sank back upon ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... thee, my lady love, the freshest flowing springs, Whose cooling waters ever burst in crystal sparklings; It is for thee my shaft will wing the wild bird in the air, Or strike the swift gazelle to deck our simple ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... the very beginning—the hatching out of the eggs. Frogs' eggs and birds' eggs are really not so unlike as they seem at first sight, for though the frog's eggs have no shell, yet, just as in the bird's egg, there are two essential parts to be distinguished—the formative material out of which the young frog grows and the yolk on which the growing animal feeds. By the untrained eye nothing more can be seen in the frog's egg than ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... certain things to be done to animals which seem to touch upon cruelty. And therefore He forbade them to seethe the kid in the mother's milk (Deut. xiv. 21), or to muzzle the treading ox (Deut. xxv. 4), or to kill the old bird with the young." (Deut. xxii. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... or any of the Moluccas, in order to sell their salt pork, amber,[5] gold-dust, and other merchandise, they always carry some of these Birds-of-Paradise, which they constantly sell dead, affirming that they find them so, and that they know not whence they come or where they breed. This bird is always seen very high in the air. It is extremely light, as its bulk consists mostly of feathers, which are extremely beautiful, rendering it one of the greatest curiosities in the world. The plumage of the head is as bright as burnished gold; that of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... into the air and squinted. "Quiller," he piped, with the long echo still whining in his throat, "that whistle fooled you an' it fooled Jud, but it wouldn't fool a Bob White with the shell on its back. When the old bird hears it, she don't wait to see the long shadow travellin' on the grass, but she hollers, 'Into the weeds, boys, if you want to save your bacon.' An' you ought to see the little codgers scatter. Let it be a lesson to you, Quiller, my laddiebuck; when you hear that ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... awkward, for there still hung to the missive a basting thread, and it was as warm as a nestling bird. I bent low—everybody was emotional in those days—kissed the fragrant thing, thrust it into my bosom, ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... with great care. Every one has a separate keeper, who has his bird confined in a small bag, which he carries with him wherever he goes. The poor prisoner is rarely permitted to see the light, except when he is fed, or it is deemed necessary for his health; he is then held by the keeper on his hand, sometimes for hours. When two quails are brought ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... following morning was Master Maloney. This sounds like the beginning of a "Plod and Punctuality," or "How Great Fortunes have been Made" story; but, as a matter of fact, Master Maloney was no early bird. Larks who rose in his neighbourhood, rose alone. He did not get up with them. He was supposed to be at the office at nine o'clock. It was a point of honour with him, a sort of daily declaration of independence, never to put in an appearance before nine-thirty. On ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the Marshals,' said I; 'I saw them all at the council in the Emperor's tent. There is Ney with the red head. And there is Lefebvre with his singular mouth, and Bernadotte with the beak of a bird ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from which the country derives its name, is of volcanic origin and is almost entirely surrounded by coral reefs; home of the dodo, a large flightless bird related to pigeons, driven to extinction by the end of the 17th century through a combination of hunting and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was a child, a first cousin of John Bird Sumner[693] married a sister of my mother. I cannot remember the time when I first heard his name, but it was made very familiar to me. In time he became Bishop of Chester, and then, Archbishop of Canterbury. My reader may say that Dr. C. R. Sumner,[694] Bishop of Winchester, has just as good ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... drive, and looked rather like a handsome bird of Paradise in her bright green veil and red ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... million quivering points of light flashing from the crowded stars in a heaven of dusky blue. The air was warm, and fragrant with the sweet scent of stocks and heliotrope,—there was a great silence, for it was fully midnight, and not even the drowsy twitter of a bird broke the intense quiet. The world was asleep—or seemed so—although for fifty living organisms in Nature that sleep there are a thousand that wake, to whom night is the working day. I listened,—and fancied I could hear the delicate murmuring of voices hidden among ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... wretched little creature was but a confused lump of flesh, the lifeless carcase of some shapeless animal. Was that swollen, whitened head a skull or a stomach? And those poor hands twisted among the bedclothes, like the bent claws of a bird killed by cold! And the bed itself, that pallidity of the sheets, below the pallidity of the limbs, all that white looking so sad, those tints fading away as if typical of the supreme end! Afterwards, however, one ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the habit of imperial and princely personages in former days, enrolled himself, cross-bow in hand, among the competitors. Greater still was the enthusiasm, when the conqueror of Lepanto brought down the bird, and was proclaimed king of the year, amid the tumultuous hilarity of the crowd. According to custom, the captains of the guild suspended a golden popinjay around the neck of his Highness, and placing themselves in procession, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for Annie Hempstead. Letters did not come very regularly from Tom Reed, for it was a season of heavy snowfalls and the mails were often delayed. The letters were all that she had for comfort and company. She had bought a canary-bird, adopted a stray kitten, and filled her sunny windows with plants. She sat beside them and sewed, and tried to be happy and content, but all the time there was a frightful uncertainty deep down within her heart as to whether or not she was doing right. She knew that ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and the gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... and after killing it to throw it overboard, advanced towards it; he was evidently impelled by a supernatural power, for never shall I forget the look of horror, the faint scream of agony, which escaped him as he obeyed the summons. Like the trembling bird fascinated by the snake, he fell into the arms of the dead body; which grasping him tight, rolled over and over in convolutions like a serpent, until it gained the break of the gangway, and then tumbled into the sea with its murderer entwined ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... summer feast. He encouraged the boys and young men to botanise and observe nature in all forms, and though he would never allow nests to be taken, or even eggs if he could help it, he would give little prizes for the noting of any rare bird or butterfly. "If you want men to live in the country, they must love the country," he used to say. He kept a village club going, but he never went there. "It's embarrassing," he used to say. "They don't want me ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the houses perk up under their spruce new coats of paint, while every window that can afford it puts forth its carefully tended box of flowers. It is as though the old city suddenly awoke from her winter slumber and preened herself like a bird making its toilet; there is an atmosphere of renewal abroad—the very carters and cabmen seem conscious of it, and acknowledge it with good-humoured smiles and a flower worn jauntily in ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... threads they stick flowers of various kinds, particularly the cape-jessamine, of which they have great plenty, as it is always planted near their houses. The men sometimes stick the tail-feather of the Tropic-bird upright in their hair, which, as I have observed before, is often tied in a bunch upon the top of their heads: Sometimes they wear a kind of whimsical garland, made of flowers of various kinds, stuck into a piece of the rind of a plantain; or of scarlet peas, stuck ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... interior of this vast country is a marsh and uninhabitable...There is a dreary uniformity in the barren desolateness of this country which wearies one more than I am able to express. One tree, one soil, one water, and one description of bird, fish, or animal prevails alike for ten miles and for one hundred. A variety of wretchedness is at all times preferable to one unvarying cause ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Hydaspes old, Exploring ocean in its every nook, From the Red Sea to the cold Caspian shore, In earth, in heaven one only Phoenix dwells. What fortunate, or what disastrous bird Omen'd my fate? which Parca winds my yarn, That I alone find Pity deaf as asp, And wretched live who happy hoped to be? Let me not speak of her, but him her guide, Who all her heart with love and sweetness fills— Gifts which, from him ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... so as to get a good headway, till just as you get to the narrow place, and then trail is the word. Then the oarsmen all whip their oars out of the row-locks in an instant, and let 'em trail alongside under the boat's counters, and she shoots through the narrow place like a bird." ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... fashion. Pirate grew very indignant: he was being hurt. His speed slackened none, however; he was determined to make that fence if it was the last thing he ever did. He'd like to see any man stop him. He took the deadly fence as with the wings of a bird. But he found that the man was still on his back. He couldn't understand it. He grew worried. And then he struck the red-brown muck bordering the stream. The muck flew, but at every bound Pirate sank deeper, and the knees of his rider were beginning to tell. Warburton, full ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... form of a syllogism: All foods are oxidized in the body; alcohol is oxidized in the body; therefore alcohol is food. As logically we might say: 'All birds are bilaterally symmetrical; the earthworm is bilaterally symmetrical; therefore the earthworm is a bird.' Oxidation within the body is simply one of several important properties of food, as bilateral symmetry is one of several important characteristics ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Kill bird and draw immediately; wash carefully and cool; then cut into convenient sections. Boil until the meat can be removed from the bones; remove from the boiling liquid and take out all bones; pack ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... few days Theo was in no frame of mind to talk porcelain or any other serious subject, for his new crutches came, and after Dr. Swift had adjusted them the boy was like a bird freed from its cage. He could not, to be sure, go far from the house; but even to clump up and down the veranda and the plank walks that connected the cabins was a joy. How good it was to get about once ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... gods. This is, indeed, formally a late view, and can be paralleled only by a few passages of a comparatively recent period. Thus, in the late hymn i. 164. 46: "Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, they say; he is the sun (the bird in the sky); that which is but one they call variously," etc. So x. 114. 5 and the late passage iii. 38. 7, have reference to various ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... have never a penny to spend, They haven't a thing put by, But theirs is the dower of bird and of flower, And theirs are the earth and the sky. And though you should live in a palace of gold Or sleep in a dried-up ditch, You could never be poor as the fairies are, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... great gust came tearing along the gorge. I saw Ayesha lean herself against it, but the strong draught got under her dark cloak, and tore it from her, and away it went down the wind flapping like a wounded bird. It was dreadful to see it go, till it was lost in the blackness. I clung to the saddle of rock, and looked round, while, like a living thing, the great spur vibrated with a humming sound beneath us. The sight was a truly awesome one. There we were poised in the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... pretty plentiful, though elementary, so that modifications whose end I cannot see are certainly proceeding in everything, some of the cypresses which I met that day being immense beyond anything I ever heard of: and the thought, I remember, was in my head, that if a twig or leaf should change into a bird, or a fish with wings, and fly before my eyes, what then should I do? and I would eye a branch suspiciously anon. After a long time I penetrated into a very sombre grove. The day outside the wood was brilliant and hot, and very still, the leaves and flowers here all motionless. ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... garden; and thither her woman brought her her nightgown; and stood joying herself at the old man's going away: and several of the gallants of White Hall, of which there were many staying to see the Chancellor return, did talk to her in her birdcage; among others, Blancford, telling her she was the bird of paradise. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... The Lark!" shouted Todd as he rowed past with Babette Gold. "Only there isn't a lark or any other bird in these woods that I've been able ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... than I thought. We had tea in the garden that afternoon, and a bird of some kind struck ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... the most horrid, unearthly screaming, which at first startled me badly, though I had soon remembered the voice of Captain Flint, and even thought I could make out the bird by her bright plumage as she sat perched ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spotted with black, and named Inges'; Jennet Dibble had 'her spirit in the shape of a great black cat called Gibbe, which hath attended her now above 40 years'; Dibble's daughter, Margaret Thorpe, had a 'familiar in the shape of a bird, yellow of colour, about the bigness of a crow—the name of it is Tewhit'; Elizabeth Dickenson's spirit was 'in the likeness of a white cat, which she calleth Fillie, she hath kept it twenty years'.[849] The witch of Edmonton, Elizabeth Sawyer, in 1621, said: 'It is eight yeares ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... little lonely street. Another pedestrian had entered from the other end, a man heavily built and clad, with an astrakhan collar to his coat on this warm night, and a black slouch hat that hid his features from my bird's-eye view. His steps were the short and shuffling ones of a man advanced in years and in fatty degeneration, but of a sudden they stopped beneath my very eyes. I could have dropped a marble into the dinted crown of the black felt hat. Then, at the same moment, Raffles ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... that profound oracle read, studied, and laid to heart—was that which the fathers ascribed to the mere proclamation of Christianity, when first piercing the atmosphere circumjacent to any oracle; and, in fact, to their gross appreciations, Christian truth was like the scavenger bird in Eastern climates, or the stork in Holland, which signalizes its presence by devouring all the native brood of vermin, or nuisances, as fast as they reproduce themselves under local distemperatures of climate ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... we stayed two days making rafts to cross the river on. The last day we were there, laying on the bank of the river, I presume there came five hundred of these Indians within fifty yards of our camp. Most of them laid down under the trees. One of our men shot a bird that was in a tree close by, and I never heard such shouting or saw such running as these Indians did when the gun cracked. This convinced me that we were the first white men they had ever seen, and this the first time they ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... come? We are at the Milan Court for a little time. My father is trying to get a house. My sister is coming over to look after him. I am unfortunately only a bird of passage." ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shrine all the facts of the separate histories of man and woman. It were easier to change earth to water, and sea to land, than it is to make a womanly woman consent to appear manly. Her God made her a woman. It is not a fault. It is a glory. The bird that skims the wave would not exchange places with the bird that goes to meet the sun; but this is not to bring a charge against ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... breeze fanned her cheek and those big mountains about her made her feel happy as never before. She looked up at the mountain-tops till they all seemed to have faces, and soon they were familiar to her, like old friends. Suddenly she heard a loud, sharp scream, and looking up she beheld the largest bird she had ever seen, flying above her. With outspread wings he flew in large circles over ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... Collection is now. Certainly I never sold it; indeed, I never sold anything; not only because nobody would buy, but because, after all, one is a Collector, not a tradesman. Birds' eggs I would have collected if I could, but you had first to find the bird's nest (almost an impossible quest for a born Duffer), and to blow the eggs, which, let me tell you, needs nicety of handling. I did once find a thrush's nest, and tried blowing an egg, but it was not wholly a success, and the egg (the contents of which I accidentally absorbed) was not wholly ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... seen that they admitted metempsychosis. According to their belief, the body of an ox or an ass might be the dwelling place of a human soul. To kill these animals, therefore, was a crime equivalent to murder. "For that reason," says Bernard Gui, "they never kill an animal or a bird; for they believe that in animals and birds dwell the souls of men, who died without having been received into their sect by the imposition of hands."[1] This was also one of the signs by which they could be known ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... significant. I looked into the fucher, and wat did I see, ez them two men—one sneekin, and tother ashamed uv hisself—walked up that aisle? Wat did I see? I saw the Democrisy restored to its normal condishun. I saw the reunion uv the two wings. In fact, I saw the entire Dimokratic bird reunited. The North, one wing, and the weakest; Kentucky, the beak, sharp, hungry, and rapacious; South-west, the strong, active wing; Virginny, the legs and claws; Ohio, the heart; Pennsylvania, the stomach; South Caroliny, the tail feathers; and Noo Jersey, the balance of the bird,—I ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... the door of the office, peering through the reeking, smoke-filled atmosphere, to get a bird's-eye view of the situation before ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... spire of a stately pagoda. In another charming view a brook appeared to flow in at the front door of a stout gentleman's house, and out at his chimney. In a third a zig-zag wall went up into the sky like a flash of lightning, and a bird with two tails was apparently brooding over a fisherman whose boat was just going aground ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... and grounded; then ordered the men in Hands' sloop to come to his assistance, which they endeavoring to do, also ran aground, and so they were both lost. Then Teach went into the tender with forty hands, and upon a sandy island, about a league from shore, where there was neither bird no beast, nor herb for their subsistence, he left seventeen of his crew, who must inevitably have perished, had not Major Bonnet received intelligence of their miserable situation, and sent a long-boat for them. After this barbarous ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Ortygia, although the name is given to different places, is Aurora, or the land of Aurora. (Gerhard, Griechische Mythologie.) Ortygia is derived from Ortyx, a quail. In Sanscrit the quail is called Vartika, the bird which returns, because it is one of the birds to return in spring. This name Vartika is given in the Veda to one of the numerous beings which are set free and brought to life by the Ascini, that is, by day and night, and Vartika is one of several names for the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... birds, and to know a fair bird well is almost equal to knowing a fair woman well, though they have different ways. Two of these birds that I knew were orioles and two were bluebirds. The two orioles and the two bluebirds were husbands and wives. I stumbled upon them all last year. The bluebirds had ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... down of the debts provoked opposition and remonstrance, but the creditors wisely reflected on the difference between a bird in the hand and more in the bush, and by the beginning of 1907 holders of credits had signified their assent in sufficient amount to assure the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... seen in the night was hanging in the sea just beyond the crook of the loch. It fluttered like a snared bird. One could see the crew trying every device of sail and tacking, but with all their desperate ingenuities the ship merely hung there shivering ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... a town!" Foundation-stones were evidently lacking, and sods had to take their place. Then, dropping the halberd, he seized a spade, and began the first embankment. At that moment an eagle appeared, hovering over the Czar's head. It was struck by a shot from a musket. Peter took the wounded bird, set it on his wrist, and departed in a boat to inspect the neighborhood. This ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... The bird, who ceased, with fading light, to thread Silent the hedge or steamy rivulet's bed, [92] 325 From his grey re-appearing tower shall soon Salute with gladsome note the rising moon, While with a hoary light ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... we believe the Beltinne on St. John's Eve is peculiar to Ireland. The hunting of the wren[150] on St. Stephen's Day, in this country, is said, by Vallancey, to have been originated by the first Christian missionaries, to counteract the superstitious reverence with which this bird was regarded by the druids. Classic readers will remember the origin of the respect paid to this bird in pagan times. The peasantry in Ireland, who have never read either Pliny or Aristotle, are ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... And, light as a bird, she disappeared down the staircase, so quickly that her black veil floated high above her, as ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... observations, we have learned something about three Australian species, which lay their eggs in other birds' nests. The chief points to be referred to are three: first, that the common cuckoo, with rare exceptions, lays only one egg in a nest, so that the large and voracious young bird receives ample food. Secondly, that the eggs are remarkably small, not exceeding those of the skylark—a bird about one-fourth as large as the cuckoo. That the small size of the egg is a real case of adaptation we may infer from the fact of the mon-parasitic American cuckoo ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... year that your father died and your mother also left us, I went out one morning before daybreak to surprise the crabs asleep in the sand. As I was stooping down, hidden by a rock, I saw a kingfisher slowly floating toward the beach. The kingfisher is a sacred bird which should always be respected; knowing this, I let it alight and did not stir, for fear of frightening it. At the same moment I saw a beautiful green adder come from a cleft of the mountain and crawl along the sand ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... overture. He had extraordinary dexterity of finger for one who had had so little training, and his hands, with their great stretch, made light work of octaves and even tenths. His knowledge of the music enabled him to wake the singing bird of memory in his head, and before long flute and horn and string and woodwind began to make themselves heard in his inner ear. Twice his servant came in to tell him that his dinner was ready, but Michael had no heed for anything ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... where shade is few and far between. We drink hot, stinking water from the mountain streams, flavoured with leaves—nasty! At odd times we get a little tepid meat to eat. And the horses and the elephants make such a noise that I can't even be comfortable at night. Then the hunters and the bird-chasers—damn 'em—wake me up bright and early. They do make an ear-splitting rumpus when they start for the woods. But even that isn't the whole misery. There's a new pimple growing on the old boil. He left us behind and went hunting a deer. And there in a hermitage ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... of a pioneer aviator, had been warned by him and by the chief of staff of the Browns, who was looking on, to keep in a circle close to the ground. But he was doing so well that he thought he would try rising a little higher. When the levers responded with the ease of a bird's wings, temptation became inspiration and inspiration urged on temptation. He had gone mad with the ecstasy of his sensation, there between heaven and earth. Five seconds of this was worth five thousand years of any other form ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... are rightfully to be attributed to the direct influence of the county federation. The public schools of the county have been largely instrumental in stirring the public conscience to a livelier appreciation of the beautiful. The regular observance of Arbor and Bird Days in our schools has done much toward initiating this movement. However, the federation has been the great factor in uniting otherwise independent organizations into one large machine for stirring the social consciousness ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... force alone is a feat which is as much an impossibility as it is for a man, by the strength of his own legs, to leap thirty or forty times his own length,—a grasshopper can do that easily, and a bird can fly easily, but a man cannot, and never will be able to do so, because his peculiar ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... dartings hither and thither among the spiny bushes that fringe the shore, arrest his attention; and he sees on every hand the beautifully coloured and meek-faced ground-lizard (Ameiva dorsalis), scratching like a bird among the sand, or peering at him from beneath the shadow of a great leaf, or creeping stealthily along with its chin and belly upon the earth, or shooting over the turf with such a rapidity that it seems to fly rather than run. By the road-sides, and in the open pastures, and in the provision-grounds ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... he said grimly. "He had an idea some of us'd turn up. An idea ... I suppose a little bird told him. Oh, take me away, somebody, and let me die. Let me have one last imitation meal, and die. Where ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... carefully for any symptoms of human habitation or animal life. I made out by degrees the lines of rivers, mountain slopes covered by great forests, extensive valleys and plains, seemingly carpeted by a low, dense, rich vegetation. But my view being essentially of a bird's-eye character, it was only in those parts that lay upon my horizon that I could discern clearly the height of any object above the general level; and as yet, therefore, there might well be houses and buildings, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... they sat together looking out on the placid lake, mirrored with the foliage of the overhanging trees, with swans gliding calmly across its surface, the only sound the sweet songs of the bird, or the occasional splash of the fish as they rose to seize the careless flies fleeting above them, could never be forgotten: it brought a sense of peace, and consolation, ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... from her larger mind, That whom ill Fate would ruin, it prefers, For all the miserable are made hers. So the fair tree whereon the eagle builds, Poor sheep from tempests, and their shepherds, shields; 50 The royal bird possesses all the boughs, But shade and shelter to ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... only a few weeks before I had had a long conference with the chiefs of the tribe, Two Guns, White Calf (the son of old White Calf, the great chief who dropped dead in the White House during President Cleveland's administration), Medicine Owl and Curly Bear and Big Spring and Bird Plume and Wolf Plume and Bird Rattler and Bill Shute and Stabs-by-Mistake and Eagle Child and ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... indigent, yet most proud, which is unnatural. No man is satisfied within himself (except the good man, Prov. xiv. 14), but he goes abroad to seek it at the door of every creature, and when there are some plumes or feathers borrowed from other birds, like that foolish bird in the fable, we begin to raise our crests, and boast ourselves, as if we had all these of our own, and were beholden to none, but as things that are truly our own will not be sufficient to feed this flame ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... doubted, women, the world-worshippers, will for ever after doubt also. You can never bring women to see that the pecked-at fruit is always the richest and sweetest; they always take the benison of the wooing bird to be the malison of the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... from morn till night, Content to show his master skill In hitting every bird at sight, And shooting down the deer at will. Grand sport he deemed it, day by day, As in the tangled forest brake He brought the bounding stag to bay, Or shot ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... gets all in a muddle.' Time after time, he further expounded to his young attendants, how extremely honourable and extremely pure were the two words representing woman, that they are more valuable and precious than the auspicious animal, the felicitous bird, rare flowers and uncommon plants. 'You may not' (he was wont to say), 'on any account heedlessly utter them, you set of foul mouths and filthy tongues! these two words are of the utmost import! Whenever you have occasion to allude to them, you must, before you can do so with impunity, take pure ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... provide a lamb, a pair of doves or pigeons might be offered. We learn of the humble circumstances of Joseph and Mary from the fact that they brought the less costly offering, two doves or pigeons, instead of one bird and a lamb. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... three shots," cried Fred, his blood beginning to dance through his veins at the prospect of a struggle; "I will guarantee that every discharge brings down a bird, and as for the remainder, why, we will meet ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... where they had stopped was the loneliest part of the track that could be found in miles, on either side. It was in the midst of a thick beech woods, and the twitter of a bird, now and then, was the only sound in all ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I had been born with a good eye and a steady hand, and very soon I became a fair shot with a gun and, I believe, a really fine shot with the rifle. The sides of the Berg were full of quail and partridge and bush pheasant, and on the grassy plateau there was abundance of a bird not unlike our own blackcock, which the Dutch called korhaan. But the great sport was to stalk bush-buck in the thickets, which is a game in which the hunter is at small advantage. I have been knocked down by a wounded bush-buck ram, and but for Colin might have been badly damaged. Once, in ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... twenty by the cubit the seat of its waters, which Nebo-baladan, the son of Labasi, the son of Nur-Papsukal, has sold to Sirikki, the son of Iddin, the son of Egibi, for four manehs, ten shekels of silver, in one-shekel pieces, which are not standard, and are in the shape of a bird's tail (?). Nebo-baladan takes the responsibility for the management (?) of the ship. Nebo-baladan has received the money, four manehs ten shekels of white (silver), the price of his ship, from the ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... been selfish? I do not know but I have. It is all so utterly new that I hardly know how I am acting; but it is true that my heart has been as light as a bird's all day. The truth is, I have found a friend here at Chautauqua ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... the air; he would know he was out of place. He would fidget a little, frown a little, and get up meekly, and slink into the street. Human magnetism is such a subtle force. And Madame Chanve didn't mind in the least; she preferred a bird in the hand to a brace in the bush. From half a dozen to a score of us dined at her long table every evening; as many more drank her appetisers in the afternoon, and came again at night for grog or ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... 'Mid the bird-chorus of the May, From glade and garden madly ringing, There sounds one welcome note to-day, Round the glad world its way 'tis winging. You hear—you hear the general cheer That greets it! 'Twill suffice to show you That all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... growth upon them except moss, lichens, and coarse marsh grass. These were succeeded by ridges of crumbling rock, between which were numerous small lakes. The land seemed very barren of life. Even the shores of the ponds were hardly inhabited. No song of bird or buzz of insect broke the stillness. Rock after rock was turned over in the vain expectation of finding living things on the damp under side at least; and the cushions of moss were broken up in the same fruitless chase. All was barren and lifeless. Not ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... line is injured innocence, of course—same as when the Sergeant reported us on suspicion of smoking in the bunkers. If I hadn't thought of buyin' the pepper and spillin' it all over our clothes, he'd have smelt us. King was gha-astly facetious about that. 'Called us bird-stuffers ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... to draw his sword, "if you do not instantly desist, I will treat you like that accursed bird—cut your throat, pluck, stuff, roast, and eat you afterwards." He was, however, so confounded by the attack, that he could offer no resistance, and in retreating, caught his foot against the leg of a table, and fell backwards ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the Processional caterpillar, found on the pine-tree, has its back covered with meteorological spiracles which sense the coming weather and foretell the storm; the bird of prey, that incomparable watchman, sees the fallen mule from the heights of the clouds; the blind bats guided their flight without collision through the inextricable labyrinth of threads devised by ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... persons present, they, as consonants with vowels, in the midst of the other learned, will participate not altogether inarticulately and insignificantly. But if the greater part consists of such who can better endure the noise of any bird, fiddle-string, or piece of wood than the voice of a philosopher, Pisistratus hath shown us what to do; for being at difference with his sons, when he heard his enemies rejoiced at it, in a full assembly he declared that he had endeavored ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... now came from the obscurity; one of them was accompanied by what seemed a flight of small startled birds crossing the road ahead of them. A second larger and more sustained flight showed his astonished eyes that they were white, and each bird an enormous flake of SNOW! For an instant the air was filled with these disks, shreds, patches,—two or three clinging together,—like the downfall shaken from a tree, striking the leather roof and sides with a dull ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... the time; and was off hunting before the sun was an hour high. He was armed with an old-fashioned smooth-bore muzzle-loader; and Thorpe was astonished, after he had become better acquainted with his new companion's methods, to find that he hunted deer with fine bird shot. The Indian never expected to kill or even mortally wound his game; but he would follow for miles the blood drops caused by his little wounds, until the animals in sheer exhaustion allowed him to approach close enough for a dispatching blow. At two o'clock he returned with a small buck, tied ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... of the table Eugenia's seat separated the general from Aunt Griselda, who sat severely buttering her toast before a brown earthenware teapot ornamented by a raised design of Rebecca at the well. Aunt Griselda was a lean, dried-up old lady, with a sharp, curved nose like the beak of a bird, and smoothly parted hair brushed low over her ears and held in place by a tortoise-shell comb. There were deep channels about her eyes, worn by the constant falling of acrid tears, and her cheeks were wrinkled ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... gentle servants to us. Well: the world would yet be a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and gentle service should we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But so long as we make sport of slaying bird and beast, so long as we choose to contend rather with our fellows than with our faults, and make battlefield of our meadows instead of pasture—so long, truly, the Flaming Sword will still turn every way, and the gates of Eden remain barred close enough, till ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... and hedge-rows, and settle down for the night in the depths of the evergreens, the only refuge from their enemies and shelter from the blast. But this evening they made no ado about their home-coming. To-day perhaps none had ventured forth. I am most uneasy when the red-bird is forced by hunger to leave the covert of his cedars, since he, on the naked or white landscapes of winter, offers the most far-shining and beautiful mark for Death. I stepped across to the tree in which a pair of these birds roost and shook it, to make sure they ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... dream last night. Dost thou believe in dreams?" She had as much regard for her cousin's opinion as for the twittering of a bird, but she felt the necessity of speech at times, and at least this child never remembered what ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... virtuous things; infamy must be represented upside down, because its works are contrary to God and move towards hell. Fame should be depicted covered with tongues instead of with feathers and in the form of a bird. ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... pale eyes twinkled with a tiger's bloodthirsty greed. Her broad, flat nose, with nostrils expanded into oval cavities, breathed the fires of hell, and resembled the beak of some evil bird of prey. The spirit of intrigue lurked behind her low, cruel brow. Long hairs had grown from her wrinkled chin, betraying the masculine character of her schemes. Any one seeing that woman's face would have said that artists had failed in their ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... with his bird-like rapidity and the look of a preternaturally sage schoolboy (he had made a large fortune, quite legitimately, out of the companies of which he was a director), placed within that cold palm the tips of his still colder fingers ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... week by week, in a strange sing-song with only occasional flights of melody. The chant was determined by curious signs printed under the words, and the signs that made nice music were rather rare, and the nicest sign of all, which spun out the word with endless turns and trills, like the carol of a bird, occurred only a few times in the whole Pentateuch. The child, as he listened to the interminable incantation, thought he would have sprinkled the Code with bird-songs, and made the Scroll of the Law warble. But he knew this could ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... human nature. "Prithee, man, be of good cheer," said they, "the duchess is a young and buxom widow. She has just buried our brother, who, God rest his soul! was somewhat too much given to praying and fasting, and kept his pretty wife always tied to his girdle. She is now like a bird from a cage. Think you she will keep her vow? Pooh, pooh—impossible! Take our words for it—we know mankind, and, above all, womankind. She cannot hold out for such a length of time; it is not in womanhood—it is not in widowhood—we know it, and that's enough. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... whatever came to land: and the captain, officers, passengers, and crew, were now reduced to the same level, and obliged to take their turn to fetch water, and explore the island for food. The work of exploring was soon over—there was not a bird, nor a quadruped, nor a single tree to be seen. All was barren and desolate. The low parts were scattered over with stones and sand, and a few stunted weeds, rocks, ferns, and other plants. The top of the ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... brown mates of last spring, and he needs must hop up on the old log and drum for them, though there is little chance that they will heed his amorous call. The ruffed grouse has much brain even for a bird, as his ability to live in our Massachusetts woods in spite of the omnipresent huntsmen shows, but like the fox, he, too, sometimes gets in a brown study and may allow you to meet him ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... she was sitting on a cart-wheel thinking. She was thinking how poor her father was. There was a crow up in the air over her head. The crow was cawing. There was nobody to tell her thoughts to but the crow. She shook her fist at the big bird, and said,— ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... young; where the green lane is bordered by the guelder-rose or wayfaring tree, the raspberry, strawberry, and cherry, the wild garlic of starlike flowers, the woodruff, fragrant as new-mown hay; the yellow pimpernel on the hedge side. I see in the fields and meadows the bird's foot trefoil, the oxeye daisy, the lady smocks, sweet hemlock, butterbur, the stitchwort, and the orchis, the "long purpled" of Shakespeare. By the margin of the pond the yellow iris hangs out its golden banners over which the dragon fly skims. The hedgerows are gay with the full-blown ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... coast, and passed the river Sanaga (Senegal), which divides the Azeneghis—whom the first discoverers always called Moors—from the negroes of Jalof. The inhabitants were much astonished at the presence of the Portuguese vessel on their coasts, and at first took it for a fish or a bird or a phantasm; but when in their rude boats—hollowed logs—they neared it, and saw that there were men in it, judiciously concluding that it was a more dangerous thing than fish or bird or phantasm, they fled. Dinis Fernandez, however, captured four of them off that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... thoughtful; but after a little my mind wandered back again to the sunny hours of youth, and I lived them over. Eliza had been in our family for several years, and was one of the most cheerful, kind-hearted girls one could wish to see. She had a fine voice, and it seemed as natural for her to sing as a bird. This, with her happy disposition, made her the light and life of the house. She was like the little burn that went dancing so lightly over the pebbles in the meadow—bright, sparkling, joyous, delighting in pranks and fun ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... Dramatic "biz" preferred? There you may "boom" it like a bird. Turn on the Absolute-Absurd; By that strange tap the mob is stirred. Be dismal, deathly, dirty, dim; Grovelling, ghastly, gruesome, grim, Anything meaning morbid whim; Quidnuncs will cry, "What treuth! what ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... had remonstrated with him for speaking against the Prince and an officer of the army, and warned him to be careful of his tongue, "ye needna be feart that a word o' this will be heard ootside. I mind the word in the Good Book, 'Speak not against the King, lest a bird of the air carry the matter.' There's plenty o' birds in this camp that would be glad enough to work us wrang. Gin onybody speaks to me aboot Captain MacKay being made a colonel, I'll give him to understand that my master was offered the post and declined to take it for special reasons o' his own; ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... startled when she saw her. Lisbeth had no time to offer a greeting before Kjersti said: "What in the world! Is this a mountain bird that has taken flight? There is nothing the matter at the ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... clouds"; and the "curls of hundred-headed Typho"; and the "hard-blowing tempests"; and then "aerial, moist"; "crooked-clawed birds, floating in air"; and "the showers of rain from dewy Clouds". And then, in return for these, they swallow "slices of great, fine mullets, and bird's-flesh ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... able to go with you everywhere. When you are enjoying a "Bird Chat;" "Buying the Mirror;" learning when "We must not Believe our Eyes;" visiting "A City under the Ground;" hearing of "The Coachman's" troubles; sitting under "The Oak-tree;" finding out wonderful things "About Glass;" watching what happens when "School's Out;" or following ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... into a kind of citadel, and that the port to which his supplies were chiefly carried was Peekshill, about fifty mites up the Hudson River. Acting upon this information he sent a detachment of five hundred men, under the command of Colonel Bird, in a couple of transports, to drive the Americans away from Peekshill, and to capture their stores. As Bird approached the Americans fled from their position, but before they retreated they set fire to their store-houses, so that no booty was obtained. Shortly after this ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... speaking, has a home. How many ties, how many resources, he has!—his friendship with his cattle, his team, his dog, his trees; the satisfaction in his growing crops, in his improved fields; his intimacy with nature, with bird and beast, and with the quickening elemental forces; his co-operations with the cloud, the sun, the seasons, heat, wind, rain, frost. It humbles him, teaches him patience and reverence. Cling to the farm, make much of it, put yourself into it, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... pushed aside Need champions for their cause; Man, where'er he is or what he be Is none the less my brother And needs the strong to cheer him on. What we extend in help and cheer, Brings its reward in Happiness. It is not for me to say or think Look out for myself first; The bird, the beast, the stream that flows, The hills, the fields, the land, the sea, Are Parts, are Things like me, And all belong to one Grand Plan; The stars, the moon, the sky, And endless space as well, Are Parts of one machine, That ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... my dear, in a minute; but you must think I should be a little anxious. I leave you as gay as a bird, and healthy and rosy,—and when I come back, I find you white and sad and ill. I am sure something weighs on your mind. I assure you, my little Ivy, and you must believe, that I am your true friend,—and if you would confide in me, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... circumspectly, she dared not count in his favor. Was it not always so in the beginning? He seemed like a jolly, kindly boy. She had the impulse to scream and to run out of the house, to hide in the shrubbery, to throw herself into the water. Her heart beat like that of a trapped bird. She heard the front ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... foliage of the trees. "'Willy,' said the little girl, as they sat down on the low railing of the grass plats, to breathe for a moment, and listen to the chirrup and songs of the birds in the boughs above them, 'Willy, wouldn't you like to be a little bird?' ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress, Nor coin of vantage, but this bird hath made His pendent bed, and procreant cradle: where they Most breed and haunt, I have observed, the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... speak no English, yet they must needs find a medium of exchange for their valuable views, she tried to teach him to speak Cherokee. He was a bird, her little bird, she told him by signs, and his name was Tsiskwa. This she repeated again and again in the velvet-soft fluting of her voice. But no! he revolted. His name was Archie Royston, he declaimed proudly. He soon became the monarch of this poor ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... you didn't manage that much better, either. The trouble is, you haven't quite turned into a little bird, yet. You haven't any little beak to pick up clean with, nor any wings to fly with. You'll have to wait till ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... in a whisper, his eyes fixed upon the burning eyes of Lord Claud, which seemed to fascinate and hold him as the snake does the bird. ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of the constructive fancy has been substituted for a single flash of sympathetic imagination. Tasso does not doubt that the nightingale is pouring out her love in song. Guarini says that if the bird had human soul, it would exclaim, Ardo d'amore. Tasso sees it flying from branch to branch. Guarini teases our sense of mental vision by particularizing pine and beech and myrtle. The same is true of Linco's speech in general when compared with Dafne's on the ruling ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... dare-devil? Ay, and what does the ramping bird want in the ould nest? Welcome back to Yorkshire, Richard, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and had only slipped in when those in charge of the door were intent upon hearing Mr. Brook's address. Without a word of thanks, the instant the hands restraining her were loosed she dived into the crowd and escaped like a bird from a snare. Satisfied that justice had been done, Jack now said a few words of thanks to his employer and the subscribers to his present, and the meeting then broke up, Jack returning with Bill Haden and his mother, both beaming ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... bow. "Thank you, fairy god-mother! I believe you are right. That may be why happiness is so shy a bird. We spread the net too openly. Well," he heaved a sigh, "we live and learn." He turned to the table and took up his riding whip. "I suppose my wife will be in bed and sulk all day because I vetoed ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... are!" he breathed. "They got the end room on the right, so's they could get in an' out with out bein' seen, an so's even Charlie'd swear they was here all the time. You're too old a bird to fall down, Nan. If the door's locked, knock—an' give 'em any old kind of a song an' dance till you gets 'em off their guard. The Pug an' me 'll see you through. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... cage they both were his: 'Twas my son's bird; and neat and trim He kept it: many voyages This singing-bird hath gone with him; When last he sailed he left the bird behind; As it might be, perhaps, from ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... So let me repeat and impress upon you, men, that the rifle is an effete weapon—extinct as the—what-you-call-it bird. It played its part, a good part, in the South African War, but we who observed what the machine gun did then and foretold its immense development [he was just nine years old at that time] knew that the rifle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... not been in spring-time's early hours, Where the lone bird its short sweet carol gave To the young bursting leaves and budding flowers, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... keep out of his head. Pictures crept in and out of his brain, joined as by some thin filament. He thought somehow of her soul, and then wondered what a soul was like. And then he thought of a dove, and then of a bat fluttering through the dark, and then of a bird lost at twilight. He thought of it as some lonely flying thing with a long journey before it and no place to rest. He could imagine it uttering the vibrant, plaintive cry of a peewit. And then it struck him with a great sense of pity that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the future was very terrible," says one who looks as if it might have descended from some sort of large bird like a penguin. "So much— Your ...
— The Carnivore • G. A. Morris
... by sounds of melody issuing from wind, wave, or bird, the rapt mind in strange and pleasing wonder contemplating the new and charming harmonies,—then it was that man received his first impressions, and took his ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
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